Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[vrwl]

Sounds like you'll hit the months before you lose the 4th bar unless you take it back south again.

Oh yeah, there's no way in hell I'll lose two more bars in a year in Northeastern PA. Car officially went into service Oct 2011, so one year from now is the deadline. Won't happen.

 

[highend]

Lost 1st bar in Poland / Europe yesterday, at 32.000km (so about 20.000 miles) and after 2.5 years usage,
Leaf is 1st registered 07.01.2012 so I believe it is 2011 model.
First year I observed no capacity drop
second year it was from 97% to 88%
and now 88% to 84% SOH reported by Leaf Spy.

Warranty remaining till 07.01.2017, so I have one year and 3 months to loose remaining three bars to get new battery.
Seems impossible

In Poland we have very hot summer and last winters are not cold and not too much snow. You can see Warsaw profile in Leaf Battery Degradation spreadshet

I have only 17 quick charges as I here are not many CHAdeMO chargers...

cheers!

 

[Canuck]

Just lost my first bar. 2012 with 25,400 km or 15,780 miles. Disappointing.

 

[tivollix]

My 2011 Leaf build in june 2011 lost it's first bar in september 2014. The car spent a least one summer near San Fransico, CA but the battery almost never reached 30C after that. The car never stayed at 100% charge for long and was kept in cool and shaded places.

The time is the main degradation factor on this first gen battery.

 

[highend]

I see lot's of 2011-2012 Leaf lost 1st bar in normal climate... still 15 months battery warranty.
3 bars to go.... not possible in that period?... unless heat battery :mrgreen:

 

[Dyna]

Lost my fourth bar today. 52,856 miles, VIN 6819, built 6/11. Was a Sacramento car until this August. No Leaf Spy available.

 

[dhanson865]

I get to join the club now.

2nd bar loss

Nov 8, 2015
43,163 miles
51.594 AHr
78% SOH
60.42 Hx
mfg date 10/11
2012 SL
VIN 16156

I bought the car in May 2015 (used 2012 SL) and one summer has cost me 5% SOH, over 3 AHr, and 8 Hx

I'll have to dig around in my old posts and see if I can find stats from when I bought it for more specific data. It'll also be interesting when May comes around to see how little/much I'll lose over the winter vs summer and how the 12 month loss turns out.

I didn't get leafspy logging trip data until May 16th my oldest record appears to be.

38,499 miles
54.664 AHr
83% SOH
68.01% Hx
mfg date 10/11
2012 SL
VIN 16156

 

[Reddy]

Lost my fourth bar today. 52,856 miles, VIN 6819, built 6/11. Was a Sacramento car until this August. No Leaf Spy available.

Congratulations. You won the new battery lottery! Make sure to submit a claim to Nissan and get that new battery before you reach 60,000 miles and Jun 2016.

 

[RonDawg]

Just joined the "missing tooth" club after a 100% charge last night:

VIN 027089. Manufacture date 8/2012 but not leased until 1/2013.

230 Gids, 17.83 kWH, SOC 93.18%, SOH 83.39%, 69.49% HX, 55.25 Ahr.

FWIW, car was continuously garaged both at home and at work until I got the eGolf at the end of July. No QC port, and was only charging to 80% until that time (went to 100% afterward to reduce the number of times my cars needed to play "musical garage spaces"). Live in a climate similar to "Burbank CA" on the battery degradation model thread.

Car goes back to NMAC sometime before the end of the year.

 

[dhanson865]

It's going to be below freezing here again tomorrow night.

I'm still losing aHr and Hx. Can I look forward to little or no degradation this winter or will I greet spring with noticably less capacity than I start winter with?

 

[TimLee]

Can I look forward to little or no degradation this winter or will I greet spring with noticably less capacity than I start winter with?

I need to plot the near two years of data I now have to give you a more precise answer.
I think in the winter the slow calendar degradation continues.
But at colder temperatures it gets hidden.

For example over the past six weeks the peak battery temperatures I see have dropped from low to mid 90F to low to mid 70F and that is after spirited driving with 55F to 60F ambient.
In that time AHr has climbed 3 AHr.
But I am pre P3227, may be bit less jump with the software change.
But winter cold still hides the losses.
I lost third bar late this past spring after weather warmed up.

That is what you will see.
No losses in winter then as the weather warms up they show up.

 

[kolmstead]

Another behavior that masks battery capacity loss is not driving your car very far. I've noted a number of folks posting recently who drive less than ten miles a day and charge infrequently. They have been asking about strange LeafSpy results; cells way out of balance, Ahr readings that seem too high for older Leafs, etc.

I'm convinced that it is important to run the battery down to VLBW or below once in a while, maybe every three months. And then recharge to 100%. What this does is give the battery management system a chance to measure how much capacity the battery really has. The charge to 100% helps the battery perform cell balancing. Yes, staying in the 30-70% charged region is probably best for battery life, but if you never exercise the battery fully, the BMS is going to lack important data.

In my case, my car was reporting three bad cell pairs on the CVLI test this summer. After three days of charging and discharging enthusiastically, the problem went away and hasn't come back. More recently, my Ahr and Hx readings froze for about three weeks. After running the battery down close to turtle, the BMS updated the numbers. They say that my battery continues to degrade, but at a much lower rate than it did last summer.

If your battery is behaving oddly, you need to use it more!

-Karl

 

[dhanson865]

Another behavior that masks battery capacity loss is not driving your car very far. I've noted a number of folks posting recently who drive less than ten miles a day and charge infrequently. They have been asking about strange LeafSpy results; cells way out of balance, Ahr readings that seem too high for older Leafs, etc.

fwiw I looked and my cells were at 10mv during a drive today. Sitting at 14mv difference waiting for a charge.

My daily drive is about 15 miles to work, about 1 mile to lunch, about 1 mile back, about 15 miles home. Maybe 32-37 miles a day depending on the lunch and the partial miles.

I'm at 78% SOH so I'm driving from 80% SOC to around 60% at work getting home around 40% SOC.

I don't see lbw or vlbw unless I forget to charge but I'm not afraid to drive into vlbw since I use leafspy and I have very predictable routes. Heck I drive past vlbw if convenient or necessary so long as leafspy says I have more than 2 miles range left but I haven't done that in a month or two.

I'm doing all my charging at L2 now with either ~11.5a * ~242v (around 2.8 KW gross before charging losses) or ~16a * 208V (not sure on the v and a on the public charger but leafspy says 3.3KW gross). I usually only get 10 or 15 minutes at the higher rate during lunch a couple of days a week but charge back to 80% the next morning from 6a to about an hour before I drive to work. I could charge faster at home but I've got the EVSE dialed back to 12a just to make the charging cycle more efficient. The leaf seems to pick something between 15.5 and 15.7 amps when I tell it to take 12 amps. If I ever get to the point where charging slower is an issue (like say I get a second EV) then I'll probably turn my home EVSE back up to 30 amps and let them charge at the full rate.

 

[kolmstead]

Your commute is just about like mine; I average 38 miles round trip. That gets me home about 10 GIDs above lbw. Doing that, and hitting lbw a couple of times a week because of headwinds, my stats just stopped changing when the weather cooled off. Since I'm rapidly running out of warranty, I want my battery stats to refresh quickly. When I got off work early a couple of days, I drove until the car was well below vlbw. That did the trick; Ahr numbers started to change again.

If you're only seeing 15 mV difference between cell pairs, you are not using much of the battery. I see 200 to 375 mV frequently. Or your battery is in much better shape than mine!

-Karl

 

[mwalsh]

If you're only seeing 15 mV difference between cell pairs, you are not using much of the battery. I see 200 to 375 mV frequently. Or your battery is in much better shape than mine!

-Karl

When almost completely discharged, right?

 

[kolmstead]

Right. Five to ten mV when fully charged and given time to balance.

-Karl

 

[CarPortal]

My 2013 SL just lost two bars...either I didn't notice it happening earlier or it lost two at once. After reading some of the discussion here I ordered an OBD2 scanner which is arriving today so I can use Leaf Spy to get some stats on the battery.

Is this type of degradation normal for a 2013? The car has lived its life in CA, but we are in the Central Valley where summer temps get above 100F for several weeks and winter temps hover between 35-55F. Our weather is similar but slightly less extreme than Phoenix where 2011/12 Leaf owners had so much trouble with their batteries. I have never used the 80% charge setting on the car, and to be honest I have "drifted" into my garage or a parking spot with a public charger on many occasions. Finally, almost all charging has been level 2. I've only used a DCFC ~15 times over the last 30 months. Perhaps the extreme temps combined with draining the battery caused this problem?

It's kind of a bummer because I had planned to take advantage of the depressed prices of 2013 cars plus the $5K incentive to negotiate a great deal when my 3 year lease expires in April. I was planning to drive the car two more years and then give it to my oldest son as his first car.

Thanks for any input. I'll do some more reading here and look for any discussion pertaining to battery degradation in 2013 cars.

 

[dhanson865]

My 2013 SL just lost two bars...either I didn't notice it happening earlier or it lost two at once. After reading some of the discussion here I ordered an OBD2 scanner which is arriving today so I can use Leaf Spy to get some stats on the battery.

Is this type of degradation normal for a 2013? The car has lived its life in CA, but we are in the Central Valley where summer temps get above 100F for several weeks and winter temps hover between 35-55F. Our weather is similar but slightly less extreme than Phoenix where 2011/12 Leaf owners had so much trouble with their batteries. I have never used the 80% charge setting on the car, and to be honest I have "drifted" into my garage or a parking spot with a public charger on many occasions. Finally, almost all charging has been level 2. I've only used a DCFC ~15 times over the last 30 months. Perhaps the extreme temps combined with draining the battery caused this problem?

It's kind of a bummer because I had planned to take advantage of the depressed prices of 2013 cars plus the $5K incentive to negotiate a great deal when my 3 year lease expires in April. I was planning to drive the car two more years and then give it to my oldest son as his first car.

Thanks for any input. I'll do some more reading here and look for any discussion pertaining to battery degradation in 2013 cars.

Well it's very very easy to keep driving the car and not notice a bar lost. The change between the day before the loss and the day after is unnoticeable in terms of miles range left.

I'd say you lost the first bar several months ago and noticed now when you lost the second bar.

Check out the wiki for other 2013 losers but I wouldn't say it's terribly unusual for a 2013 to lose a bar or two.

Plenty of Leafs in southern California lose bars due to the heat.

Give us the data missing below and I'll add yours to the wiki

| date of loss? (Nov 27th 2015?)
| Motarra
| city, st?
| odometer mileage at date of loss?
|
| manufacturing date from drivers door jamb?
| 2013 Model
| VIN 405122?

 

[CarPortal]

| date of loss: Nov 27th 2015
| user: Motarra
| city, st? Stockton, CA
| odometer mileage at date of loss? 24,105
|
| manufacturing date: 03/13
| 2013 Model
| VIN 405122

I perused the wiki (using the link from your signature) and I don't see any 2013's reported that have lost 2 bars. Am I reading it wrong?

Also my Leaf Spy data says the battery is only holding 16.5 kWh, with a 95.3% SOC while the car indicates its 100% charged. 16.7 kWh is only 69% of 24 kWh so does this mean I'm about to loose a third bar? I took my measurements during and after an L2 charge in my garage starting at 70% SOC.

Perhaps this explains why I can only get low 60ish miles out of the car these days (at 3.5 miles/kWh efficiency).

Also is this the right place to be posting these questions, and if not I can move over to another thread.

 

[Valdemar]

What are the AHr and SOH values? They tell you directly how your battery is degraded, well, the SOH in particular, it gives you the remaining % of capacity from new. They do not depend on the SOC.