Leaf battery overheating shutdown?

So, after doing some searching and not finding an answer I want to ask the forum: Will the Leaf cease to operate if the battery gets too hot?

Reason I ask is I recently bested my 360 miles in a day and traveled 450 miles in one (long!) day. I had to check out the fartherest east (Arlington, OR) I could go on I-84 in the Columbia Gorge, Oregon side. Suffice it to say it was awesome! 8 QCs with one L2 session in the middle. But i'm an over-eager EV nut with my Leaf coming up on 1 year old. I can't get enough EV travel.

So the max AVG temp of the battery was 122 F. 11 bars of temp showed on the left side of the Leaf display, so one bar into the red, but not a 12-bar temp! Ambient was between 60 F and 84 F. I am using LeafStat with a wifi adapter that my iPhone displays. Not as comprehensive as LeafSpy but less expensive and simply does what I need it to do (kwh, battery temp, battery SOH, Gids, and tire pressure).

Would the Leaf shutdown whilst in motion due to heat? Would it simply not QC or even L2 charge?

Nothing was out of the ordinary after the 4th QC other than a 100 F AVG battery temp. Drove, accelerated, braked (regen) as it always does. No driving differences at 122 F AVG battery temp.

Thanks for any input to this query.

Curt

It will limit your power, much like turtle mode does. Probably limits fast charge rate, too. The power bubbles will disappear accordingly. I've never heard of one shutting down.

I had my 2011 limit power output after highway driving followed by QC at high ambient temperatures. I think it was at 11 temperature bars for a while after the QC before air flow over the battery cooled it down and the power bubbles came back. The power limitation was not as severe as Turtle because it would still travel at normal speed, but acceleration was restricted.

Gerry

According to the 2011 service manual, there is a temperature at which it will ultimately shut down to protect the battery. I forget exactly what that value is...

Thanks for the replies. I was driving in ECO so maybe that limited acceleration anyways. Or at least masked the fact that the battery was hot? I would not notice if it was heat related limit or ECO mode limit. Even though I know ECO is just pedal feel/feedback. All the power is there if the go-pedal is depressed far enough.

I was always able to do 65 MPH, so no noticeable limit there. Anyone come up with a shutdown temp, I'd appreciate it for future reference! Not that I would ever push things past...er...nevermind. More than likely I will encounter these things as I can't help it. A year later and I'm still having fun. Quite possibly after a capacity bar is lost I will start to feel differently. Until then it's all good.

Curt

finman,

Any personally updated discoveries on this issue? We are planning a 5000 km, 8-week, roundtripper from Stockholm to Spain and back in Sept & Oct. The hot ambient temperature & battery performance is a new concept to a Swede (we have the cold winter to contend with instead.)

How far have you pushed that EV in a day? I can't see us doing that by choice, as the trip through Germany, Holland, France and Spain is too enticing to speed through. The museums, parks, villages etc... are to be savored. But your info is needed if (great-spaghetti monster forbid), we get a drastic "Get you ass back here" call from a neighbor of family member.

finman100 said:

Thanks for the replies. I was driving in ECO so maybe that limited acceleration anyways. Or at least masked the fact that the battery was hot? I would not notice if it was heat related limit or ECO mode limit. Even though I know ECO is just pedal feel/feedback. All the power is there if the go-pedal is depressed far enough.

Click to expand...

How could you leave out that point originally (bold emphasis added)? That pretty much invalidates any theories you had. It takes a lot of heat to impact Leaf power (but no so much to degrade the battery).

The 450 miles was the most in one day so far. Pretty much flat but very warm.

The previous 360 miles was over the Cascade mountains and back. That was a bit of climbing (300 feet start to just over 4400 feet elevation and back again to 300 feet).

No problems with either trip. Just very warm battery temps due to multiple QCs.

good luck on your long trip!

bedtimeforbonzo said:

finman,

Any personally updated discoveries on this issue? We are planning a 5000 km, 8-week, roundtripper from Stockholm to Spain and back in Sept & Oct. The hot ambient temperature & battery performance is a new concept to a Swede (we have the cold winter to contend with instead.)

How far have you pushed that EV in a day? I can't see us doing that by choice, as the trip through Germany, Holland, France and Spain is too enticing to speed through. The museums, parks, villages etc... are to be savored. But your info is needed if (great-spaghetti monster forbid), we get a drastic "Get you ass back here" call from a neighbor of family member.

Click to expand...

Get more info here http://nissanleaf.guru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=27
but the summary of that link is that I drove +500 miles (+800 KM) for the first day and riding nearly all temperature bars the entire time without any issues and towing at the same time through some really high elevation drives. I was keeping track of distance, cost, and temperature bars for the entire trip. Didn't have any issues with the vehicle, worked flawless the entire trip.

Wow, that's a lot of quick charging and consequent battery heat!

Particularly as we own our LEAF and are on the original battery at over 5 years and 60,000 miles, the capacity warranty thresholds, I get nervous pushing the battery temperature much above 100 F (~40 C), into 7-temperature-bar territory. Rather than doing a rapid string of quick charges, I figure we're better off driving the Prius if we have to. Accelerating our battery's degradation doesn't seem like the best choice in the long run.

That said, not too long ago, we did three QCs in one day on a 200 mile (320 km) drive. It helped that the weather was unusually cool, the battery still didn't get over 100 F, and it cooled off pretty rapidly during the following night parked outdoors.

When doing longer (50 - 200 mile) drives in warmer weather, we try to do as much L2 destination/opportunity charging as possible and do no more than one QC session.

abasile said:

Wow, that's a lot of quick charging and consequent battery heat!

Click to expand...

Indeed, I am often running near max heat capacity bars often because of all the QC I do, my battery runs toasty year round without a break. I never give them time to cool down, no need to with capacity warranty. :twisted: