411 on volontary recall P1273 LEAF VCM LBC TCU NTB12-014

[ericsf]

I've just noticed something new yesterday: Turning on the climate control to pre-heat the car does not recharge the battery at the same time. Has anybody else noticed the same too?

I charge to 80%. Before the update, 20-30min of "climate control" before leaving would get me an extra bar of charge. Now, the time to 80% displays "10 min" (meaning that not only it did not charge but instead the charge dropped!

 

[LEAFfan]

I've just noticed something new yesterday: Turning on the climate control to pre-heat the car does not recharge the battery at the same time. Has anybody else noticed the same too?
I charge to 80%. Before the update, 20-30min of "climate control" before leaving would get me an extra bar of charge. Now, the time to 80% displays "10 min" (meaning that not only it did not charge but instead the charge dropped!

Eric, I've posted about this many times. When you use 'preheating' while plugged in, the heater uses more energy/juice than you're putting in, so it takes it from the battery pack. That's why I've recommended 5-10 minutes to preheat. Cooling doesn't use nearly as much, so it will charge while cooling. But again, even with precooling, you only need 5-10 minutes to make the cabin comfortable, which is the intent of preconditioning, not to completely cool down the cabin. It just wastes money, time, and energy.

 

[ttweed]

I've just noticed something new yesterday: Turning on the climate control to pre-heat the car does not recharge the battery at the same time. Has anybody else noticed the same too?
I charge to 80%. Before the update, 20-30min of "climate control" before leaving would get me an extra bar of charge. Now, the time to 80% displays "10 min" (meaning that not only it did not charge but instead the charge dropped!

Eric, I've posted about this many times. When you use 'preheating' while plugged in, the heater uses more energy/juice than you're putting in, so it takes it from the battery pack.

My experience has been the same as Eric's. When charging routinely to 80% overnight, and then getting up on a cold morning this winter and activating the heater remotely using the Carwings interface, it not only heats the car but adds to the battery pack charge. Many times when I've gone out to get into the car, especially if it is an hour later or so, the car has gained an extra bar of charge and is displaying 11 instead of 10. The heater may be able to pull more juice than the charger can when on max output (or if the charger is connected to a 120V outlet), but it is not on max setting for the entire preconditioning period, and over a long enough time (while connected to 240V supply), the car definitely ends up getting a net energy input from the wall beyond the 80% programmed charge. The operating manual says "The climate control can be operated for a maximum of 2 hours when the charge connector is connected to the vehicle," and also says "If remote climate control operation is started while the vehicle is in normal charge mode, the climate control operates in climate control priority mode and charging is continued." If you leave it connected for the full two hours to a L2 EVSE, and it isn't freezing outside but just cold, I think the 77F preset temp is reached fairly easily, the heater demand tapers off, and the traction pack continues charging on the excess juice. There is no other way to explain why I have found the car in a greater than 80%-charged state on many occasions when I have done this.

I just had the update done, so I will try this scenario again tomorrow morning and see if my results are the same still, or if this behavior has changed, as Eric reports.

TT

 

[Ingineer]

Folks, this is really simple; If your preheat conditions demand more than 3.3kW average, you will lose a bit of charge. If you average less, you will gain a bit. The charger comes on everytime you preheat while it's still connected, but it can only provide 3.3kW, whereas the PTC heater can pull up to 5kW.

So if you have a colder morning, expect to lose a tiny bit.

Nothing here has changed!

-Phil

 

[ttweed]

Nothing here has changed!

As far as I can tell, Phil is correct about this. The post-update behavior of my car in this pre-heating scenario has not changed, according to my overnight experiment. The car charged to 80% by 2:38am this morning on the car's timer, as usual, and stopped, sending me a Carwings "charging stopped" notification by email. Then I started the climate control remotely thru Carwings at about 6:00am, while it was still plugged into the Blink unit in the garage. It was a fairly mild night here, maybe low 50s in the garage this morning, so the heater did not have to work that hard to get the Leaf's interior up to temp, and when I went out to the garage at 7:30am, the car was charging (third blue light on the dash blinking) and I could hear the water pumps whining and gurgling. When we got in and turned the car on, it was toasty warm and displayed 12 bars on the dash gauge instead of 10, but it was not quite to 100% as we lost the first bar fairly quickly when we started driving. This is exactly the same behavior I experienced pre-update. If I had left it on the charger for another 1/2 hour, it probably would have gone all the way to 100%, which I generally avoid. So I don't think that ericsf's belief that this pre-heating behavior has changed is true, nor do I think that LEAFfan's contention that pre-heating always results in a net loss of traction pack charge is correct. If it's not that cold, the heater does not pull 5kW continuously, and the result will be increased charge when it is left on long enough.

BTW, the dealer ran our 1-year battery check on the car when it was in for the update, even though we are a few weeks short of 12-months of ownership, and the car registered 5 stars in all categories on the report card after nearly 12k miles of driving. No perceivable loss of capacity yet.

TT

 

[MrFish]

Folks, this is really simple; If your preheat conditions demand more than 3.3kW average, you will lose a bit of charge. If you average less, you will gain a bit. The charger comes on everytime you preheat while it's still connected, but it can only provide 3.3kW, whereas the PTC heater can pull up to 5kW.

So if you have a colder morning, expect to lose a tiny bit.

Nothing here has changed!

-Phil

+1
Temperature matters.
Cool morning with pre-heat (heater draws <3.3 Kw) = battery gains a bit
Cold morning with pre-heat (heater draws 5 Kw) = battery looses a bit

 

[LEAFfan]

nor do I think that LEAFfan's contention that pre-heating always results in a net loss of traction pack charge is correct.
BTW, the dealer ran our 1-year battery check on the car when it was in for the update, even though we are a few weeks short of 12-months of ownership, and the car registered 5 stars in all categories on the report card after nearly 12k miles of driving. No perceivable loss of capacity yet.
TT

I didn't say 'always'. What I meant was it can lose while pre-heating. Mine has always lost SOC while pre-heating and I only have done it for 5-10 minutes. The coldest the garage gets in the winter is in the low 40s F.
You aren't going to see any loss of capacity with your battery pack until it reaches 85% (15% loss). That should be many years before you lose the first bar.

 

[TonyWilliams]

You aren't going to see any loss of capacity with your battery pack until it reaches 85% (15% loss). That should be many years before you lose the first bar.

We aren't going to see that loss in_the_capacity_gauge until 15%, but we will surely see the loss in performance.

 

[ericsf]

I've just noticed something new yesterday: Turning on the climate control to pre-heat the car does not recharge the battery at the same time. Has anybody else noticed the same too?
I charge to 80%. Before the update, 20-30min of "climate control" before leaving would get me an extra bar of charge. Now, the time to 80% displays "10 min" (meaning that not only it did not charge but instead the charge dropped!

Eric, I've posted about this many times. When you use 'preheating' while plugged in, the heater uses more energy/juice than you're putting in, so it takes it from the battery pack. That's why I've recommended 5-10 minutes to preheat. Cooling doesn't use nearly as much, so it will charge while cooling. But again, even with precooling, you only need 5-10 minutes to make the cabin comfortable, which is the intent of preconditioning, not to completely cool down the cabin. It just wastes money, time, and energy.

Well, my experience before NTB12-014 was that I would gain at 1 bar of charge (would go from 10 to 11 bars) by pre-heating for 20-30 minutes. I experienced this every time so it's was not a fluke. I do remember reading about other people complaining about this.

I don't see what would prevent the heater and the charger to draw power at the same time. The charging station is rated for 30A.

So it looks like the update was simply made my car behave like yours.

 

[TomT]

The fact that the in-car charger is only rated at 3.3Kw and the heater draw can easily exceed that, depending on what the temperature is. Thus, you are limited to roughly a 16amp maximum draw from the EVSE. Remember that the heater draws its power from the battery.

I don't see what would prevent the heater and the charger to draw power at the same time. The charging station is rated for 30A.

 

[jkirkebo]

The fact that the in-car charger is only rated at 3.3Kw and the heater draw can easily exceed that, depending on what the temperature is. Thus, you are limited to roughly a 16amp maximum draw from the EVSE. Remember that the heater draws its power from the battery.

Yep. 5kW to heater + fans&pumps and 3.3kW from charger=easy 1.9kW draw from the battery.

I wish there were an option to have the heater+fans/pumps use no more than 3.3kW when pre-heating. As it is now, my previously 100% charged battery is often down to 95-96% in winter when leaving. I'd rather pre-heat longer and keep my battery at 100% for driving.

 

[ericsf]

The fact that the in-car charger is only rated at 3.3Kw and the heater draw can easily exceed that, depending on what the temperature is. Thus, you are limited to roughly a 16amp maximum draw from the EVSE. Remember that the heater draws its power from the battery.

I don't see what would prevent the heater and the charger to draw power at the same time. The charging station is rated for 30A.

It doesn't get very cold around here and I've rarely seen the heater's power consumption go above 3kW while driving. And even if that happened, it never lasted very long. On top of that, my car's in a garage. So there is no way my heater would draw more than 3kW continuously for 20min.

Based on what you guys know about the heater, I suppose that what was happening is that the charger in my car (and I believe several others) would draw it maximum power (3.3K) from the grid for the whole time pre-heating would be ON. After the 70F cabin temperature was reached, the heater would use less and the excess power would go into charging the battery. At 80%, the 10th bar is more than half full, so 15-20 min, even with 2kW charge could definitely get enough charge to light up the 11th bar.

For me the new behavior is that the charger is somehow limiting the power it feeds into the battery to what the heater's drawing when that goes below 3.3kW. I don't have a separate meter on my EVSE so I can't really tell what is exactly going on there.

Now, I've just realized that 2 things have changed for me: The P1273 update of course, and I've also switched to using the "end of charge" timer instead of the "start of charge" timer. Tomorrow I'll go back to the "start of charge" time and see if the pre-heat charging is back.

 

[dgpcolorado]

The fact that the in-car charger is only rated at 3.3Kw and the heater draw can easily exceed that, depending on what the temperature is. Thus, you are limited to roughly a 16amp maximum draw from the EVSE. Remember that the heater draws its power from the battery.

Yep. 5kW to heater + fans&pumps and 3.3kW from charger=easy 1.9kW draw from the battery.

I wish there were an option to have the heater+fans/pumps use no more than 3.3kW when pre-heating. As it is now, my previously 100% charged battery is often down to 95-96% in winter when leaving. I'd rather pre-heat longer and keep my battery at 100% for driving.

Have you tried setting the CC timer priority to "Charge Priority"? I have mine set to "CC Priority" because I don't (usually) care about having the absolute maximum charge and do care about preheating. From page 4-10 of the owner's manual:

If the timer charge function and the Climate Ctrl. Timer are in operation at the same time due to an overlap of the timer settings, either function can be set to be preferentially provided with electric power. For the details of “Timer Priority” settings, refer to separate LEAF Navigation System Owner’s Manual.

I haven't looked it up in the Nav manual lately because it has been awhile since I last set it.

 

[davewill]

... Mine has always lost SOC while pre-heating and I only have done it for 5-10 minutes. ...

And that makes perfect sense. The first 5-10 minutes should show the largest heater current draw since you are heating up the system AND the car. The folks who report getting significant charge are obviously letting it run much longer than you are.

 

[lpickup]

Have you tried setting the CC timer priority to "Charge Priority"?

I think this is just going to control whether the timer fires at all (i.e. it WON'T fire if you are below 80% SOC and the car is still charging). I don't believe it will result in limiting the CC energy usage.

 

[ericsf]

So I went back to my previous charging routine (charge starting at midnight to 80% instead of end at 7am at 80%) and found that the pre-heating makes me gain charge as much as before the P1273 update. So the difference I see is not due to the update but to the fact that I changed the way I programmed the overnight charging.

BTW, I always had the timer priority set to "charge". But since I am turning on the heater function "manually" I do not think this would matter. Instead I think that maybe the fact that charge ended less than one hour before pre-heating instead of several hours could be the reason why in one case my battery is getting charged while pre-heating and in the other, not. If I make other observations I'll put those in the pre-heat threads rather than here.

 

[TomT]

After a few weeks of driving it over a route I know well and had good numbers for before the latest upgrade, it now appears obvious that the GOM change is that they have shorted the integration period. Thus, the GOM numbers now go up and down faster and over a shorter period than they did before.

 

[edatoakrun]

After a few weeks of driving it over a route I know well and had good numbers for before the latest upgrade, it now appears obvious that the GOM change is that they have shorted the integration period. Thus, the GOM numbers now go up and down faster and over a shorter period than they did before.

So, they've basically made the GOM number more "conservative", when you increase your short-term kW demand, and the GOM number increases more, when you decrease short term kW use?

Beginning to notice a Pattern, in updates?

The more people complain, the more Nissan "dumbs down" driver information.

First they made the bars less accurate, to increase the "hidden" reserve, now they reduce the GOM number, when you increase kW use, to a number that is even less accurate, compared to your average driving experience.

Will you people please stop complaining to Nissan?

 

[garygid]

I think that a/the shorter time constant on the GOM average consumption (kWh/mile) will give more useful results for me.

A even shorter integration period helps answer the question: If I keep driving the way I am right NOW (or during the last 10 seconds), how far might I expect to go?

A longer period (days) displays the (approximate) Range you would get if you drove the rest of the e-tank at the 'average' of the past day(s) speeds, conditions, ... kWh per mile. Not very useful to me if I KNOW that today's conditions are different.

 

[LEAFer]

I was thinking of starting a new thread ... but
a) we already have all sorts of OT stuff in this one; ;-)
b) I do not follow MNL religiously anymore, and so am not aware if it's already mentioned somewhere else;
c) there is some discussion in this thread (10-15 pages back?) about this ...

... OVER THE AIR PROGRAMMING ...

I don't drive the LEAF often enough to know if today is truly the first time this happened. But I think it is at least very recent. And there is another "First" over the past week.

Background: Last July 1 this LEAF received its first software update (GOM accuracy). Next dealer visit was Jan 10 for its 1st year/15k check. We did receive the email and snailmail notifications about P1273, but have *NOT* yet had it done.

On 3/18 for the first time CarWings sent a "Charging Started" ... never before saw that one. We do live in a rural area and there have been relatively regular "Status Request Failed" occurrences. "Charging Stopped" (10 bars for 80%; or premature stop (less than 10 bars)) and "Charging Complete" messages have been, if not perfect, relatively reliable (also indicating # of bars). Despite daily charging, the next "Charging Started" did not come until last night at 21:14.

Here's all of last night's and this mornings notifications:
21:11 Status Updated (58% charged; 55/52 miles range)
21:14 Charging Started -- The timers are set to 80%; however, my son must have used the timer override button or "start charging" via Android last night.
23:28 Charging Complete (12 of 12 bars);
06:11 Charging Started
06:12 Climate Control On
06:12 Charging Complete (12 of 12 bars)
06:33 Climate Control Auto Off

My son then drove 18 miles at 50mph and reported the following (see image below). I have never seen the timer estimate to 80% charging before. He was also surprised by how few bars had been used.

Although I think it improbable, I can only suspect that CarWings (and other portions of firmware ?) was updated "over-the-air". Any thoughts on that ?