Normal Temp Bars Level on Gen 1 Leaf

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coupedncal

Active member
Joined
Nov 14, 2017
Messages
25
I have a '17 SV with the 30kWh battery and i have had the car about 9 months. The temp "meter" used to stay at 5 bars almost exclusively since I got this car but lately i have been seeing the bar stay more or less at 6 bars and i have seen 7 bars at least three times in the past 3 weeks. This seems very unusual. This is with ZERO quick charges and this is with parking the car in the garage.

Is my experience consistent with other cars as well as we get into the summer season? I am getting 6 bars even on relatively cool days here in SF Bay Area.
 
Summer means higher. Winter means lower. Basically it is a "don't worry about it" until it gets into the red. This is why auto manufacturers fake gauges because people worry too much. Temp gauges in most cars show "in the middle" 99% of the time. They get there fast after starting and stay there until things are way past horribly wrong. Because if it actually showed the temp gauge moving around with normal operation people would freak out and think the car is broken. In the Leaf, they give too much granularity for most so some movement is normal. Basically if it is the top bar or two, it is hot. If it is the lowest bar, it's cold. Otherwise there's no problem.
 
coupedncal said:
I have a '17 SV with the 30kWh battery and i have had the car about 9 months. The temp "meter" used to stay at 5 bars almost exclusively since I got this car but lately i have been seeing the bar stay more or less at 6 bars and i have seen 7 bars at least three times in the past 3 weeks. This seems very unusual. This is with ZERO quick charges and this is with parking the car in the garage.

Is my experience consistent with other cars as well as we get into the summer season? I am getting 6 bars even on relatively cool days here in SF Bay Area.

Pretty much the same as what we see. In the fall it will go back to 5 or 6 bars and a couple months later 4 or 5 bars. Today after a good run it was 7...but its 34 degrees here today so its cookin.
 
Summer means higher. Winter means lower. Basically it is a "don't worry about it" until it gets into the red.

Please disregard this advice. it applies well enough to ICE vehicles, but not to the Leaf. In this case, try to avoid getting to 8 temp bars, and avoid 7 bars as much as possible. And as noted, the bars go up and down with ambient temps, whether or not the car is used. The only thing you can do about that is keep the car in a cool garage.
 
I see as low as 4 temperature bars on a "cold" morning in December, but 6, 7, or 8 are more typical this time of year here in Phoenix. The number of temperature bars displayed after parking overnight will be higher in the summer and lower in the winter. Don't worry about 5, 6, or 7 bars in your climate during the summer.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Summer means higher. Winter means lower. Basically it is a "don't worry about it" until it gets into the red.

Please disregard this advice. it applies well enough to ICE vehicles, but not to the Leaf. In this case, try to avoid getting to 8 temp bars, and avoid 7 bars as much as possible. And as noted, the bars go up and down with ambient temps, whether or not the car is used. The only thing you can do about that is keep the car in a cool garage.

I also charge it to 100% and let it sit for extended periods. I just use it and abuse it. Jack rabbit everywhere. Still have near new range at 32K miles. Maybe if I obsessed and babied it the past 5 years it would have close to zero degradation but in reality it is not worth the time and hassle. Just drive it is my motto.

I work with batteries quite a bit, and the range for the Leaf isn't really a concern unless you get it super hot and it stays super hot.
 
LeftieBiker said:
The only thing you can do about that is keep the car in a cool garage.
At night time, the outside air temp is much cooler than my garage. It's better for me to leave it outside for many hours before driving it in or outside overnight before it gets hot out.

OP, the battery temp display has huge overlapping ranges and a lack of granularity besides being altered/corrected by some mystery black box algorithm: http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Battery#Battery_Temperature_Gauge. You'll need tools like Leaf Spy to see what the temp sensors actually report.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Why give this advice to people who care about their cars, when you don't care about yours...?

I do care about mine. The point is the difference between ideal and within design normals is huge. However the outcomes are very much less so, to the point of the differences get lost in the noise.

If Person-A babies their car and goes out of their way to keep it as ideally as possible and Person-B not only "just drives it" but abuses it, purposefully doing things that are opposite of known ideals, you can then start drawing conclusions about how much babying versus not babying makes a difference.

In real world scenarios, the human behind the wheel doesn't have a huge effect over the life of the vehicle. Things like climate and age make the most difference. The battery is happiest when humans are happiest as a general rule of thumb. If you're hot, the batteries are hot. If you're cold the batteries are cold. There is an ideal temperature and when we test batteries in the lab for other conditions it is done in temperature and humidity controlled chambers to reduce that variable as much as possible. Then there is a much bigger range outside of happiest where we can call it just happy. That is basically the entire range that isn't red on the Leaf. It is not ideal, but it is perfectly acceptable for a lithium battery and the damage that excess heat does over a lifetime may be measurable if sustained for a very long time but generally not.

The short of it is if you baby the car you will get X miles out of it. If you abuse the car you will get Y miles out of it. X and Y have almost no correlation because of all these other factors. If we were neighbours that were identical twins and drove the same routes at the same time to the same places in the same climates etc etc etc, my abused car will show more degredation. But how much? Doubt it can be measured. I have more range and capacity than most others at similar age and miles that have taken the baby approach to the pack because I live in a climate that makes the car happier.
 
2k1Toaster said:
In real world scenarios, the human behind the wheel doesn't have a huge effect over the life of the vehicle
...
but it is perfectly acceptable for a lithium battery and the damage that excess heat does over a lifetime may be measurable if sustained for a very long time but generally not.
...
I live in a climate that makes the car happier.
FWIW, I do try to baby the battery on my used Leaf on weekdays (see http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=509210#p509210) and somewhat on weekends, partly due to counteract my not so cool temps in my part of the Bay Area (got past 95 F yesterday) and my keeping the battery fuller (often at 80 to 90ish %) on Fridays and sometimes Saturdays for long periods of time (Friday night until Sat afternoon and possibly Sat night until Sunday afternoon).

Both the part of the city where I live and where I work are on the hotter side for the Bay Area. Some folks in my larger region (South Bay) were able to become 4 bar losers on their '11 Leafs before the capacity warranty expired, if that's any indication. Some hit 4 bars but were past the warranty.

At http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24779&p=509371&hilit=contrast+phoenix#p509371, I pointed to two examples: someone in a mild climate with a '13 who has better battery stats than me and someone in Phoenix w/the same build month as mine but lost 4 bars years ago.

I lost my 1st bar in Nov 2017 at around 45K miles. I'm still down 1 bar.

If I didn't care at all, I'd be parking and charging my car in the sun at work. I'd charge to 100% every day and leave it like that for many hours...
 
cwerdna said:
LeftieBiker said:
The only thing you can do about that is keep the car in a cool garage.
At night time, the outside air temp is much cooler than my garage. It's better for me to leave it outside for many hours before driving it in or outside overnight before it gets hot out.

I understand that, which is why I wrote "cool garage." I wasn't implying that all garages are cool, but that a cool one is better when the outside is hot. I've done two things to cool my garage over the years. (It sits on a big slab of concrete, and is partially shaded by trees, which helps a lot.) First I installed a widow fan on a timer in the East window, with a plain screen in the other (South) window. The fan ran from about midnight to 6:00am, and helped keep the garage cool. Then, when I got the 2018 Leaf, I installed an old A/C unit in the window that had the fan, and have that running 4 hours a night, 2:00am to 6:00am, unless I turn the unit off. My garage temp is generally from 62F to 72F, which I think you'll agree is a good temp for storing a Leaf. Now for the important part:

In hot weather, I keep the Leaf in the garage in the daytime as well, taking it out only as needed. I've written elsewhere that this works well for me because I'm retired and don't drive a lot, but a similar situation can work for other people, provided they don't have to park the car all day in sweltering temps. Those people should consider a Bolt.
 
cwerdna said:
OP, the battery temp display has huge overlapping ranges and a lack of granularity besides being altered/corrected by some mystery black box algorithm: http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Battery#Battery_Temperature_Gauge. You'll need tools like Leaf Spy to see what the temp sensors actually report.
Also, regarding the crappy temp bars, I wrote about at a bunch of times before like at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=528265#p528265.

Today I left home in the evening with 6 temp bars. I don't recall the battery temps but I think the average sensor value was in the high 70F range (like 77+ F). I later noticed I'd dropped to 5 bars and IIRC, the average sensor value was ~76.x F. I pulled up to my driveway with average sensor value at 76.4 F.

This was all with SoC % (per dash display) below 60%.
 
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