The bar that should be lost but sticks around

[gbarry42]

am I the only one that finds the Search feature unusable?.

Since you didn't know about the first bar percentage, I wanted to make sure you knew there was a "better search" available. Above all the search stuff, find the line that says "Annoyed with the standard search on this forum?" That's a separate search provided by Google. It actually works.

As long as we're on the subject, there's a third method that I sometimes use when the above isn't returning the results I want. Google (not this forum) has a "site keyword" you can use in their search. For example, search for:

site:www.mynissanleaf.com bars percentage

And there really is no space after "site:".

 

[ericsf]

My 12th bar which had been vaillantly hanging in there finally died yesterday. It wasn't a surprise. My range had noticably dropped and it was about time. But I'm okay. If the capacity degradation doesn't accelerate I will probably hang on to this car for another 3 years for my daily commute and drive it up to 100K.

53700 miles - 33 and 1/2 month of ownership.... RIP bar #12.

 

[davewill]

DO
...
Save a charging cycle if you think you can go two days on one charge.
...

This one is not so. Cycles are counted according to how much of the battery is being charged, so splitting an identical charge into two events makes no difference. The only way you can "save cycles" is by using less battery power (i.e. drive less miles and/or drive more efficiently.)

P.S. As others have intimated, climate seems to dwarf all of those other factors by a large margin.

 

[mwalsh]

Preserve your Leaf Battery

DO
Live in the Pacifc Northwest

DO NOT
Live anywhere hot.

Preserve your LEAF battery


DO
Remove it from the vehicle at 50% charged and store it in the cellar with your fine wines.

That is all.

 

[vrwl]

I am also still waiting for my first bar to drop off. Here's my latest details from the Leaf Spy App:

2011 Silver SL - Mfg 8/11 - Purch 6/12
8450 miles
12 Bars
4.6kWh avg
229 GID at 100%
193 GID at 80%
54.72Ahr
83.42% CAP
68.16% Hlth

I got the P3227 update back in July, so that's not currently affecting any readings. But my amp hours and capacity are definitely below anyone else who has recently lost a bar and had the app to measure the data.

I'm still waiting for that bar to go, readings above were for early November, my readings now are:

2011 Silver SL - Mfg 8/11 - Purch 6/12
9660 miles
12 Bars
4.6kWh avg
219 GID at 100%
192 GID at 80%
54.07 Ahr
82% CAP
66.53% Hlth

 

[TomT]

Yeah, it should already be gone at those numbers...

54.07 Ahr
82% CAP

 

[vrwl]

Yeah, it should already be gone at those numbers...

54.07 Ahr
82% CAP

I've gone down to as low as 53.88 Ahr about a week ago, but got a little bounce back up with the colder weather. Still had 12 bars then too. Go figure.

 

[LEAFfan]

Yeah, it should already be gone at those numbers...

54.07 Ahr
82% CAP

I've gone down to as low as 53.88 Ahr about a week ago, but got a little bounce back up with the colder weather. Still had 12 bars then too. Go figure.

Vicki, your 100% Gid % is 78%. I've tested many 2011 LEAFs and ALL of them lost a bar around 80-81% Gids. Yours is the first one I've seen that has gone that low without losing a bar...very strange.
However, the 2013's will lose a bar at 85%/239 Gids.

 

[ttweed]

I've tested many 2011 LEAFs and ALL of them lost a bar around 80-81% Gids. Yours is the first one I've seen that has gone that low without losing a bar...very strange.

That is very strange. My 2011 lost a bar while Ahr was still reading above 55! I still got 219 Gids on a 100% charge after losing 2 bars--how could Vicki still have 12 bars with those readings???

TT

 

[vrwl]

I've tested many 2011 LEAFs and ALL of them lost a bar around 80-81% Gids. Yours is the first one I've seen that has gone that low without losing a bar...very strange.

That is very strange. My 2011 lost a bar while Ahr was still reading above 55! I still got 219 Gids on a 100% charge after losing 2 bars--how could Vicki still have 12 bars with those readings???

TT

There was another thread where I was posting this information and someone thought the reason was because I put so few miles on the car. I've only got 9600 miles on it and I've had it 19 months now. Not sure if that's really the reason, but that was a theory which was offered in the discussion.

 

[vrwl]

And just to make sure I'm not imagining things, here's a pic I took this morning from the dash....

 

[TickTock]

Vicki, Any chance you've had the Leaf serviced in the last few months. If you have had service, you may have been on the verge of losing it but the dealer reset the BMS so it has to realign. This can take several months. I am down three bars and it takes 2 months for the first to disappear after getting reset (six months for all three). The Ah reading, OTOH, gets back to normal after one charge.

 

[vrwl]

Vicki, Any chance you've had the Leaf serviced in the last few months. If you have had service, you may have been on the verge of losing it but the dealer reset the BMS so it has to realign. This can take several months. I am down three bars and it takes 2 months for the first to disappear after getting reset (six months for all three). The Ah reading, OTOH, gets back to normal after one charge.

On 12-31-2013, I took it in for the yearly battery check and state inspection sticker. If the BMS is reset, would any of my readings change via Leaf Spy? I keep daily logs of my car's readings, so I can go back and look to see if anything changed, but I don't recall an "ah ha!" moment that day.

 

[TickTock]

Vicki, Any chance you've had the Leaf serviced in the last few months. If you have had service, you may have been on the verge of losing it but the dealer reset the BMS so it has to realign. This can take several months. I am down three bars and it takes 2 months for the first to disappear after getting reset (six months for all three). The Ah reading, OTOH, gets back to normal after one charge.

On 12-31-2013, I took it in for the yearly battery check and state inspection sticker. If the BMS is reset, would any of my readings change via Leaf Spy? I keep daily logs of my car's readings, so I can go back and look to see if anything changed, but I don't recall an "ah ha!" moment that day.

Yes!
When I brought it in on 7/10/2013 I was at:

• 9 bars
  68% SOH
  62.4% Hx
  45.59 Ah

when I took possession again, before leaving the dealer I was at:

• 12 bars
  100% SOH
  100% Hx
  65.6 Ah

by the time I got home I was at:

• 12 bars
  72% SOH
  50.9% Hx
  65.6 Ah

the next morning after a full charge I read:

• 12 bars
  72% SOH
  50.9% Hx
  46.92 Ah

On 9/4/2013, I re-lost the first bar
On 10/12/2013, I re-lost the second bar
On 1/2/2014, I re-lost the third bar

currently I read:

• 9 bars
  68% SOH
  47.1% Hx
  44.63 Ah

 

[Deleted member 1622]

I wanted to post an update as the OP, because, nobody should be very surprised, I STILL have not lost any bars. I don't know whether to be pleased or suspicious. Probably more suspicious.
My Leaf Spy (early version) tells me that I have been at 84.28% capacity for several weeks now. There was a steady decrease down to that level until about a month ago when it hovered around that level and stuck. I thought it might have something to do with it getting colder in the Bay Area.
I have my suspicions that the car is not outputting true capacity numbers... the other day I charged to 100% and did a 56 mile highway trip with a bit of heat turned on. I barely made it home, about 2 miles from turtle mode. Even if we assume that when the car was new the real 100% range was 70 highway miles, that means I'm at about 80% now, but the car keeps telling me 84%, and my bars stay at 12.
Has anyone else experienced a stuck capacity reading on the Leaf Spy?
Best,
Josh

P.S. - Sometimes I look back on 2010 and remember that many of us thought we were getting a 100-mile car because that's the way it was marketed. I quickly learned the realities, and I'm not really resentful about it. But I still think that Nissan needs to do a better job of setting expectations at reasonable levels and telling folks that in the long-term they are getting a 50-mile car.

 

[EatsShootsandLeafs]

Thanks for the education, I didn't know the first bar drops at 15%, with 6.25% for each bar after... I actually would prefer it if Nissan just made each bar count for the same capacity, why does Nissan want to fool the majority of Leaf owners who don't know this piece of information? Someone who made the logical assumption like me that each bar is equal and doesn't have a reader to prove otherwise thinks they have 92% capacity when it's actually 85. I suppose they reason that even new cars don't register at 100% capacity, but then why not just count down from 96 or whatever the real capacity max is.
My car is in the Bay Area, and I know location changes the equation (I've seen Stoaty's spreadsheet). I had no idea "solar loading" was a real factor, I always assumed that since Bay Area temps (in Berkeley, anyway) never get far above 85 that parking in the sun wasn't a problem.

Best,
Josh

I think you answered your own question as you asked it; "why does Nissan want to fool?" Exactly.

Even if we assume that when the car was new the real 100% range was 70 highway miles

It wasn't, though. The leaf with heat on at real highway will never do 70 miles unless it's on a flatbed trailer.

P.S. - Sometimes I look back on 2010 and remember that many of us thought we were getting a 100-mile car because that's the way it was marketed. I quickly learned the realities, and I'm not really resentful about it. But I still think that Nissan needs to do a better job of setting expectations at reasonable levels and telling folks that in the long-term they are getting a 50-mile car.

I knew for the most part what I was getting into. I knew its real range was estimated at 73 give or take, but its worst-case would be low 40's. In my personal case I'd say even that worst-case is not worse enough. I hit VLBW yesterday after only 37.0 miles with heat on at 22 F temps, that on a car with all its bars. I basically set the heat on 90 and leave it there, though, and most people don't do that.

 

[vrwl]

Well, I finally saw that first bar go away on Feb 1. Here's the post where I listed the readings from my Leaf Spy Pro taken the day the bar went away: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=974&start=810#p351947" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[kdo]

I guess we have the same problem discussed here. We bought a 2013 with 30000 miles. All battery capacity bars are lit, but the actual usable capacity seems to be about 15kwh. I derived this number in two ways: I divided the mileage by the mi/kWh reported on the dashboard (5.3), and I used the reported energy restored by various EVSEs, multiplying by 0.9 for charger losses. Either way I get a number of kWh, which I then divide by the percentage of battery that the car reports having been used to get a figure for kWh corresponding to 100%.

This gives roughly 15kWh, which means that we have about 68% of the original 22kWh usable capacity, and we should have lost 3 bars, but in fact all are lit. We've driven 1500 miles with no change. We bought the car from a used car dealer but not a Nissan dealer, but perhaps they had it serviced when they got it and the bars were reset. I suppose they could have deliberately done something to reset the bars to help sell the car, but it seems unlikely, because they didn't seem to have a clue about anything related to electric cars.

I guess this loss of capacity after 30000 miles is in keeping with what some other people have seen, but I wish the car would tell the truth about the remaining capacity. Fortunately we are not dependent on longer range, and even with this degree of loss we can still drive much further than in the Solectria Force that we had before buying the Leaf.

 

[mwalsh]

This gives roughly 15kWh, which means that we have about 68% of the original 22kWh usable capacity, and we should have lost 3 bars, but in fact all are lit. We've driven 1500 miles with no change. We bought the car from a used car dealer but not a Nissan dealer, but perhaps they had it serviced when they got it and the bars were reset. I suppose they could have deliberately done something to reset the bars to help sell the car, but it seems unlikely, because they didn't seem to have a clue about anything related to electric cars.

You really need to get you a LEAFSpy setup. Given the age of the car and the number of miles, I would expect you to be one, maybe two bars down at worst. Certainly not three, unless perhaps you were in a brutally hot enviroment. Plus it's a 2013, which is supposed to do at least a bit better than a 2011/2012.

 

[vrwl]

Agreed, the only way to know for sure what your battery capacity actually is would be to hook up one of the meters or apps that have been developed specifically for that purpose. I have both versions of LeafSpyPro (iOS and Andriod) and have found it to be well worth the minor investment.