Plug In America LEAF Battery Survey

[Boomer23]

Duplicate, deleted.

 

[palmermd]

Did everyone in AZ already return their cars? Only 6 entries? WA is well represented. What happened to OR and TX? Or is this truly how the cars are distributed.

 

[mwalsh]

Did everyone in AZ already return their cars? Only 6 entries?

I think many AZ owners are still curled up in a fetal position, following this summer's woes.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Did everyone in AZ already return their cars? Only 6 entries? WA is well represented. What happened to OR and TX? Or is this truly how the cars are distributed.

Can't we merge the data from the Wiki to this study?

 

[tomsax]

Thanks to everyone for all the reports, 145 vehicles as of last check! Also, thanks to the many people who have tolerate some rough edges and made helpful suggestions.

I just uploaded a big update that gives everyone access to all of the data, except where privacy is an issue (name, email and VIN).

To answer some of the questions that have been posted while I was buried doing maintenance and upgrades...

SQL Glitch

The Plug In America server is different from my development server in a few subtle ways. The SQL error some people saw when I added the ownership status question happened because I forgot to do one step that is required on the PIA server. So all of the testing I did locally missed the problem. My apologies to people who were inconvenienced by that.

Perceived Range Question

When it comes to customer satisfaction, perception is king. I put that question in there because I wanted find out how people feel about their range, even if there's no scientific backing to how they arrive at that perception. Thanks to surfingslovak for the suggestion.

Manufactured Date Sticker

Finding that tripped me up the first time, too. I want to add a photo to explain it better, but I've had other fires to put out first.

How to Correct a Report

If you make a mistake, send me a message and I can usually fix it.

How to Update a Report

Just submit a new report. I'll match it up with your previous reports. I use the country, model year and VIN sequence number to uniquely identify vehicles, so it's really important that you enter your correct VIN number.

How to Refer to Vehicles

The Vehicles page now shows the internal ID number of each vehicle, which makes it easier to talk about a vehicle. For example, you might notice that vehicle 15 has two reports, from different cities. That's two people who entered zero for their VIN, so it's really two cars but gets counted as one. Did I mention that it's really important that you enter your correct VIN number?

10-bar Reports on New Cars with Low Miles

As everyone here knows, the Leaf's state of charge instrumentation isn't as good as it could be. Many owners have no idea what the capacity bars are. In fact, a lot of owners don't even notice the SOC bars, all they can see is the GOM. So, it's no surprise that a few people have confused the SOC bars with the Battery Capacity bars, and thus we have had a few new-ish vehicles with low miles in a mild climate report 10 capacity bars. I got two or them fixed. There's one more I need to track down.

I'll bet there are some people who have reported 12 capacity bars because their 100% charge shows 12 SOC bars. Those errors are harder to spot. I haven't started looking for those errors yet.

Extracting the Survey Data

If you're considering scraping the survey pages to extract the data, send me a message. If people want it, I'll provide something that will be a lot easier than scraping HTML and will put a lot less load on the PIA sever.

 

[camasleaf]

Done.

 

[eclecticflower]

dgpcolorado wrote:
The warranty requires an annual battery check, which is free for the first two years. If your dealer is suggesting a six month battery check it better be free or you should just pass on it. (Sounds like a scam to drum up more service business.)

eclecticflower wrote:
I received the survey recently, finally adding my numbers yesterday (link to current results below), but my stats may have little effect on the overall picture, since I've only been driving since 6-4-12. I haven't done the 6-month battery check (due December 2012), so I couldn't add those specs. With the weather cooling, my LEAF uses slightly fewer bars in my daily RT, so had to guess I had increased range (all I can do without a gid meter)...

My New Vehicle Delivery Checklist indicates:
2. A.) Maintenance requirements

• X Recommended maintenance:
  • Schedule 1 or Schedule 2? 1
    Maintenance Intervals - months: 6 or miles 7500
  X Recommendation of peridocal EV Battery usage report

6. Tour The Dealership section:

• Schedule first maintenance appointment on:
  • Date: 11-4-12 Time: _____

My delivery date was 6/4/12, so the First Scheduled Appointment Date of 11-4-12 is wrong (5 months). I'll be asking them to correct that to 12-4-12 on their records, but I can only imagine what they think they'll do in December on a 6 month old car that currently has ~ 2800 miles on it. It was made clear to me at delivery that the car had to be seen in 6 months for a check-up, for warranty purposes. Trust me, they won't be getting away with selling me anything...but I'll probably get a free car wash. :lol:

 

[mwalsh]

My New Vehicle Delivery Checklist indicates:
2. A.) Maintenance requirements

• X Recommended maintenance:
  • Schedule 1 or Schedule 2? 1
    Maintenance Intervals - months: 6 or miles 7500
  X Recommendation of peridocal EV Battery usage report

6. Tour The Dealership section:

• Schedule first maintenance appointment on:
  • Date: 11-4-12 Time: _____

My delivery date was 6/4/12, so the First Scheduled Appointment Date of 11-4-12 is wrong (5 months). I'll be asking them to correct that to 12-4-12 on their records, but I can only imagine what they think they'll do in December on a 6 month old car that currently has ~ 2800 miles on it. It was made clear to me at delivery that the car had to be seen in 6 months for a check-up, for warranty purposes. Trust me, they won't be getting away with selling me anything...but I'll probably get a free car wash. :lol:

i wouldn't have let the dealership decide what maintenance schedule I'd be on. I know how I drive my car, and in what kind of conditions. If you feel like you're a Schedule 1 candidate, fair enough. But I barely needed the new cabin air filter at one year, never mind anything else, so it was Schedule 2 for me.

 

[eclecticflower]

@ mwalsh:
The checklist was completed/marked up before I even took delivery (which it shouldn't have been). My guesstimate is the LEAF "expert" didn't want my delivery to take as long as it could have. Not sure that I have any recourse, other than discussing the schedule with them and asking for it to be changed.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

@ mwalsh:
The checklist was completed/marked up before I even took delivery (which it shouldn't have been). My guesstimate is the LEAF "expert" didn't want my delivery to take as long as it could have. Not sure that I have any recourse, other than discussing the schedule with them and asking for it to be changed.

did it sit on lot for 6 months before you bought it?

 

[eclecticflower]

daveinolywa wrote:
did it sit on lot for 6 months before you bought it?

Nope, I ordered it in March '12, it was built in April '12 (and I believe shipped from Japan), it arrived @ my dealer's by end of May/first of June; it was prepped & I took delivery 6/4.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

daveinolywa wrote:
did it sit on lot for 6 months before you bought it?

Nope, I ordered it in March '12, it was built in April '12 (and I believe shipped from Japan), it arrived @ my dealer's by end of May/first of June; it was prepped & I took delivery 6/4.

i wouldnt worry about it. it says 6 months OR 7500 miles...i do the latter. call them up, let them know

either that or get an explanation from them. maybe due to the battery issues in AZ the dealership has taken on a policy of getting a baseline health report for your battery. i am semi relatively sure that they get a lot more info from the report than they pass on to you.

mine was one year or 15,000 miles and in an AZ case. that was/is too late...

 

[KJD]

I just wanted to say Thank You to Tom Saxton for putting this survey together. I would urge everyone on this forum to take a couple of minutes and fill out the survey.

The results are interesting.
http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/vehicles.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The battery pack on my car is holding up really well, but I only have about 9,000 miles on it so far. It looks like most people start to see some loss of range at about 25,000 or higher.

 

[tomsax]

I just added a FAQ and download links so others can get the data for analysis or mash-ups.

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/faq.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Coming soon: charts and graphs!

 

[gbarry42]

Even more amusing, as I had read that plate many months ago, and when I went to look at it this time, I couldn't find it again! So don't feel badly about not being able to find it

 

[rickbecker]

Even more amusing, as I had read that plate many months ago, and when I went to look at it this time, I couldn't find it again! So don't feel badly about not being able to find it

Aha! Thanks! It amazes me that I can look right at something and not see it!

 

[gbarry42]

Let's just suppose I have kept a spreadsheet and can give fairly accurate answers. Do you want that data, or do you really want the CarWings data so that it correlates with everyone else's readings?

5.4 Mi/kWh, indeed :lol:

 

[TopHat]

Here is a quick link to the survey. I had a little bit of a difficult time getting to the actual survey from their site:

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/survey.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[KJD]

Things seem to have slowed down here lately.

 

[tomsax]

Things have slowed down, but I'm still getting data coming in. Last week, I got a LEAF from Kent, WA with 57,600 miles still showing 12 capacity bars and 245 gids for a 100% charge.

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/vehicle.php?vid=240" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I've also found out about a LEAF that was at 10 bars in September, then went back up to 11 bars, and is now showing 245 gids for a 100% charge which seems like it ought to be showing 12 bars.

I'm still very interested in getting more vehicles into the data set: low mile, high mile, hot/cold/moderate weather, everything.