Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[occ]

as predicted, I lost the first bar at 55.29 Ahr. Does anyone have consensus data for Ahr reading that triggers loss of the 2nd bar? At 26 months, 23K mi, seems as tho i'm on my way to the warranty milestones.

I didn't have any measurements for when I lost my first bar, but it was around April of this year at around 18K miles (also, that's after about a month of seeing only 9 bars charge to 80%). I just lost my 2nd bar last week 8/25/13 at 20,550 miles AHr=51.66 (this reading was before the p3227 update)

 

[opencar]

as predicted, I lost the first bar at 55.29 Ahr. Does anyone have consensus data for Ahr reading that triggers loss of the 2nd bar? At 26 months, 23K mi, seems as tho i'm on my way to the warranty milestones.

I didn't have any measurements for when I lost my first bar, but it was around April of this year at around 18K miles (also, that's after about a month of seeing only 9 bars charge to 80%). I just lost my 2nd bar last week 8/25/13 at 20,550 miles AHr=51.66 (this reading was before the p3227 update)

your 2nd bar loss sure was quick after the first; so much for plateauing of the degradation rate!

 

[TickTock]

Lost my first bar for the third time this morning - almost 2 months after getting reset to 12 at the dealer on 7/10/2013 (was down three bars when it went in). 46.99 Ahr/71.6% SOH & 201 gids at 100% charge is the current state but none of these correspond to a 1 bar loser. My car's capacity bars have just not caught up yet.

One thing that can be taken away from this is the Ahr value is not directly tied to cap bars. It may be based on it and just highly filtered but you may not see consistent AHr values we read associated with bar loss.

It is disturbing to me that your dealer has reset your capacity bars (twice no less). Since the cap warranty is based on bars, it just feels wrong. (I understand that the first reset pre-dated the capacity warranty by several months.) Has anyone else's bars been reset?

For reference, here's my 4BL info from this a.m. AHr = 45.99 / 69.42%

Yeah- I'm a creature of habit but I will probably take it somewhere else next time. What was you AHr when you first lost the 4th bar?

 

[mksE55]

I second that question , I am at 44.25 amp/hr now and still havent lost the 4th bar. but I am close.

 

[Reddy]

Ok, maybe not big news to folks down south, but.... I just talked with another Leaf owner here in the PNW (SE WA so much hotter than Seattle). He just lost his first capacity bar last week and is at 24,000 miles. He charges exclusively on L1 and has about 40 mi RT commute. However, the whole family uses the Leaf as their primary car, so it's probably charged to 100% nightly.

 

[jhm614]

Yeah- I'm a creature of habit but I will probably take it somewhere else next time. What was you AHr when you first lost the 4th bar?

I believe I lost bar 4 at 42.56 AHr. I know it looks odd that I lost the bar at 42.56 and I list my current as 45.99. When I had the P3227 update done my AHr jumped up to 50.97. (Acutally, it was probably a little higher. I am not rigorous in my data tracking -- I had the update done on 7/17 but didn't take a reading until 7/19.)

 

[LeafyEV]

Well, Dropped our 2nd bar during the 2nd week of August. 27,200 miles. 27 months old.

Range is significantly diminished. When the car was new I could go 61 miles on an 80% charge (my usual mixed freeway, sidestreets, hilly area). Now it will go 45 miles under the same conditions. That's 26% degradation in range in 27 months. Haven't gotten the new software update yet. Don't know if that will improve or degrade the situation. If this keeps up, my wife and I will have to 100% charge the car all the time to do the things we need to do.

Will be looking long and hard at a Volt next April (when the lease is up)...ARE YOU LISTENING NISSAN?

 

[LeafyEV]

Can someone add my Capacity Loss Info on the Wiki page, can't seem to remember how to do my info (it won't let me into the page to enter my info).

I was #80 on the Lost 1 Bar list and no info on our Driving conditions/habits have changed. Lifetime 4.5 mile/kwh driver.

Thanks!

BTW, still driving on the original tires...less than 40% wear (that is 60%+ remaining). What is everyone on this site doing to chew these tires up so quickly? My wife and I are not "Hyper-Milers" but we don't corner or break hard in ANY vehicle (brakes in our vehicles last 80k to 130k, tires about the same). And no we're not Freeway only drivers, true mixture of freeway, streets, traffic, mountain highways and it's quite warm here in Summer. Sorry, don't mean to offend, but I'm at a loss to understand this tire wear issue.

 

[TimLee]

Another 2011 LEAF capacity bar bites the dust in Tennessee. :shock:
Lost my first capacity bar with 15686 miles on Wednesday, 2013-09-03.
Overall lifetime m/kWh is ~3.4. At ~21.5 kWh usable capacity, that is ~215 battery cycles. Clear that the 2011 / 2012 & maybe even the 2013 LEAF battery will not come anywhere close to 2000 cycles prior to dropping to <70% capacity.
Mostly charge to 80%, although for the last year since range dropped off some have typically charged to 100% shortly prior to departure on days with more mileage than 40 miles.
Lots of DCQC, probably 75+ times.
Only saw 7 battery temperature bars show up on two or three occasions while doing DCQC. One being a multiple DCQC day on the last one of the day on a 200 mile round trip to Knoxville and back. I did see 7 temperature bars for a week or two straight last summer when it hit 103F high several days in a row, and nighttime temperature did not drop enough to cool the battery back down to 6 bars for several days.
I knew the capacity was down at least 12% or so based on range fall off, thought the bar loss might wait till spring to happen.
Been meaning to get the ELM device and Android software, but haven't done it yet. So no hard data on what the LEAF thinks, other than the missing capacity bar saying 15% loss.
I have not had the capacity warranty / capacity gauge software change done yet.
If I get the equipment and have the software change done, might get the capacity bar back for a few days.
But everyone else has reported it relearns pretty soon and it soon goes away again. :shock:
Most likely I'll end up in the large substantial majority group that never gets anything from Nissan on capacity warranty. Probably won't hit 4 capacity bar losses till around 7 years and 45,000 miles, and will be hoping capacity doesn't fall off a cliff after 70% and that the vehicle maintains some reasonable local use functionality till maybe 70,000 miles and 10 years of use.
Highly unlikely it will make 100,000 miles without a costly battery replacement. 100,000 miles is now typical for most ICE vehicles without any major repair.

 

[opencar]

Another 2011 LEAF capacity bar bites the dust in Tennessee. :shock:
Lost my first capacity bar with 15686 miles on Wednesday, 2013-09-03.
Overall lifetime m/kWh is ~3.4. At ~21.5 kWh usable capacity, that is ~215 battery cycles. Clear that the 2011 / 2012 & maybe even the 2013 LEAF battery will not come anywhere close to 2000 cycles prior to dropping to <70% capacity.
Mostly charge to 80%, although for the last year since range dropped off some have typically charged to 100% shortly prior to departure on days with more mileage than 40 miles.
Lots of DCQC, probably 75+ times.
Only saw 7 battery temperature bars show up on two or three occasions while doing DCQC. One being a multiple DCQC day on the last one of the day on a 200 mile round trip to Knoxville and back. I did see 7 temperature bars for a week or two straight last summer when it hit 103F high several days in a row, and nighttime temperature did not drop enough to cool the battery back down to 6 bars for several days.
I knew the capacity was down at least 12% or so based on range fall off, thought the bar loss might wait till spring to happen.
Been meaning to get the ELM device and Android software, but haven't done it yet. So no hard data on what the LEAF thinks, other than the missing capacity bar saying 15% loss.
I have not had the capacity warranty / capacity gauge software change done yet.
If I get the equipment and have the software change done, might get the capacity bar back for a few days.
But everyone else has reported it relearns pretty soon and it soon goes away again. :shock:
Most likely I'll end up in the large substantial majority group that never gets anything from Nissan on capacity warranty. Probably won't hit 4 capacity bar losses till around 7 years and 45,000 miles, and will be hoping capacity doesn't fall off a cliff after 70% and that the vehicle maintains some reasonable local use functionality till maybe 70,000 miles and 10 years of use.
Highly unlikely it will make 100,000 miles without a costly battery replacement. 100,000 miles is now typical for most ICE vehicles without any major repair.

You & I are roughly in the same situation (delivery same time frame, lost bar same time, but I have 23K mi). I think you have a good chance qualifying for warranty service since your degradation is roughly 1/2 the way there (15% out of roughly 34%). Remember that bars 2-4 are 6.25% each.

 

[TimLee]

You & I are roughly in the same situation (delivery same time frame, lost bar same time, but I have 23K mi). I think you have a good chance qualifying for warranty service since your degradation is roughly 1/2 the way there (15% out of roughly 34%). Remember that bars 2-4 are 6.25% each.

You could be correct. I haven't plotted out the miles.
Stoaty's model last time I ran it indicated around 7 years, 45,000 miles for me.
But that doesn't reflect DCQCs.
But I have improved some on m/kWh in the past 6 months, less fast driving to make work on time since I retired spring 2012, and started leaving the garage door open on most summer nights to accelerate cool down (some morning I'll come out and find weed trimmer, blower, and car supplies missing, but so far not yet). I only did that during the hottest 4 or 5 weeks last summer, but it was nearly 20 F hotter last summer in TN. So the degradation curve is not linear.
I'm a mechanical engineer, and would never intentionally mistreat a piece of equipment. The discussion in the other thread was all in dry humor jest.
But it is really troubling when an OEMs novel and bold introduction of EVs has a substantially sub-par battery compared to where they may get to with the "hot" battery, and the early adopters with the current warranty and rent a battery approach basically get left holding the bag.
The LEAF battery life / cost concerns I stated to attendees at last year's plug-in day were mainly a pragmatic focus on being a bit cautious. The LEAF battery life / cost concerns I state this year will be 500% more blunt, as my comments have rapidly become over the past 4 to 6 months to everyone that asks about the LEAF, including the newspaper interview at the drive across America event a couple months back.

 

[DarkDave]

Just posting an update on a Phoenix Leaf owner for comparison out there.

I have owned my 2011 Leaf for a few days more than 29 months. (Drove it home 3/31/11).
I have only driven 17300 on my Leaf, my average daily commute during the work week is 27 miles.
I currently am getting 160-161 gids on an 80% charge (as of 9/5/13). I charge at 4am every day during the week to charge during the coolest (overnight low is around 90 degrees) part of the day here in Phoenix. I expect my state of charge to improve as it has the past two years as the weather gets cooler.
I never charge to 100%
I park in the shade nearly every day I can at work to limit the ambient temps on the car.
I have not taken my car in for the 2013 software update yet... Just haven't had the time with my work schedule to drop of my car for a few hours.
I can still get ~55 miles on a charge driving down to VLBW with my driving habits. The speed limit of the surface streets here is 45mph here. I drive between 40-45 mph.

If I can last until the hot weather battery is ready next year, I will be doing good. I still love my car, and even with roughly 50 miles of usable worry free range every day at an 80% charge, the car still meets my daily needs. I'm planning on keeping this car as long as possible. I just wish I had a charging station at work (my work is _finally_ putting in stations towards the end of Sept.)

 

[surfingslovak]

Just posting an update on a Phoenix Leaf owner for comparison out there.

Very interesting. Thanks for the report, Dave, much appreciated.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Dave, How many capacity bars are missing? 3 or 4 ?

The capacity bars are number 14 in the pic:

 

[surfingslovak]

I meant to ask the same question, but then noticed his sig. Hopefully, Dave keeps it reasonably current.

17,000 miles, 9/12 bars
~72% Battery Capacity

 

[DarkDave]

Dave, How many capacity bars are missing? 3 or 4 ?

Doh! I missed that in my post. I lost my third capacity bar this past June. At the time it disappeared, my gidmeter reported that the battery only charged to 166 gids on an 80% charge.

 

[Cinnabar]

Dang, 630 pages on this one and counting??

I lost my first bar yesterday after 28 months and 35.7k miles. Disappointing, but not at all unexpected.

 

[TimLee]

Most likely I'll end up in the large substantial majority group that never gets anything from Nissan on capacity warranty. Probably won't hit 4 capacity bar losses till around 7 years and 45,000 miles, and will be hoping capacity doesn't fall off a cliff after 70% and that the vehicle maintains some reasonable local use functionality till maybe 70,000 miles and 10 years of use.

7 years, 45,000 miles to 70% capacity loss is probably optimistic.
Linear extrapolation gives 5 years, 2 months and 35,000 miles.

 

[smkettner]

Dang, 630 pages on this one and counting??

I lost my first bar yesterday after 28 months and 35.7k miles. Disappointing, but not at all unexpected.

Going to be sad with three bars missing as the warranty expires
Nissan really should have a prorated period that extends another 2yr/24k..... Except we would need a price to prorate the cost :roll:

 

[dhanson865]

Dang, 630 pages on this one and counting??

I lost my first bar yesterday after 28 months and 35.7k miles. Disappointing, but not at all unexpected.

Going to be sad with three bars missing as the warranty expires
Nissan really should have a prorated period that extends another 2yr/24k..... Except we would need a price to prorate the cost :roll:

The CarMax guys are probably dumb enough to buy it off of you with 3 bars lost and then you could go grab another one new or used that will either have a 2013 battery chemistry or be degraded enough to get a battery replacement and use the "hot battery" voucher when it is valid.

I feel sorry for the person that buys a 3 bar loser on the used car market no matter who the seller is.