new 80% charging problem???

I have always used the charge to 80% by 6 am. No heating set. Once a month I charge to 100%.
My charges for 2 years have alway been a perfect 80%

Now 3 times this month it has only charged to 70%.... Anyone else seen this??????

You mean that 9 fuel bars are lit instead of 10 bars? It happens as the car ages...

If you were to start charging again after the 80% charge is done, it wouldn't take much to light that 10th fuel bar...

I can't think of any place where you would have actually seen "70%" on your 2012 so, like Randy, I assume you must be referring to 9 fuel bars, which you may be thinking of as "7" by discounting the two "red bars" at the bottom, which aren't red at all. The mapping of fuel bars to charge% is nowhere close to 10% per bar. It is different for 2013, but for your car see Tony's chart. I've pointed you to the one for 100% battery capacity, not the one for a year-old car with 12 capacity bars. That's because Tony's charts are scaled so that as the battery degrades the percentages show capacity relative to what it was when the battery was new. When you ask for an 80% charge you don't get 80% of a new battery; you get 80% of what the battery can currently hold. So only the new chart shows percentage numbers comparable to the 80% charge option.

If you imagine the bars filling up with electrons, but lighting up on the dash when each bar starts to fill, you can see from the chart that 80% is really nine full bars plus a little bit of the tenth one. Due to measurement inaccuracies, the tenth bar can come and go with an 80% charge. There is some evidence that you are more likely to see only nine bars when you are about to lose your 12th capacity bar, but no real explanation of that.

Ray

Yes. I've had a similar situation with my LEAF.

I have 17800 miles on my LEAF and 21 months on the road. A few times over the last couple of months when charging to 80% I have seen 9 'fuel' bars instead of 10. And once when charging to 100% I checked the charge level with the Android app and it was 93%. I started charging again and it went up to 100.

I did charge to 100% one night, it completed charging around 11:30pm then I had another charging complete message around 430am. I think I remember hearing it mentioned, that means battery balancing has occurred, but I've still had the 9 'fuel' bar 80% charge on a couple of occasions.

I thought I might call the dealer to see what they had to say.

Ok... And I think I will get the andriod app so I can keep an eye in things
thanks all

There's already a 291 post thread on this topic:

80% Charge only 9 bars?

tl;dr;

1. The 10th bar is only partially full on a 80% charge.
2. The 10th bar stops showing up when the car starts getting close to losing the 12th capacity bar, or the car is or between 10-15% capacity loss as measured by GIDs or Ah.
3. Pre P3227 update if the weather cooled down, you'd get your 10th bar back on 80% charges.
4. Once you lost your 12th capacity bar you pretty much never see 10 bars on 80% charges again.

drees said:

There's already a 291 post thread on this topic:

80% Charge only 9 bars?

tl;dr;

1. The 10th bar is only partially full on a 80% charge.
2. The 10th bar stops showing up when the car starts getting close to losing the 12th capacity bar, or the car is or between 10-15% capacity loss as measured by GIDs or Ah.
3. Pre P3227 update if the weather cooled down, you'd get your 10th bar back on 80% charges.
4. Once you lost your 12th capacity bar you pretty much never see 10 bars on 80% charges again.

Click to expand...

Nice summary. I did do a "strenuous" run up to a local hill, Mount Baldy, going from 100% to down to one bar, and for the next few charges back in Santa Monica, home base, charging to 80% brought 10 bars twice, and then back to the 9 bars. I expect to lose a capacity notch soon enough... Still happy though with the LEAF.

After messing with the fuse boxes the other day, I am seeing the same issue with charging stopped at 70%, with a few twists.

Quick background: blew a fuse while changing light bulb. With L1 plugged in, I checked a number of fuses to see which one is out. Since then, the charger would stop at 70%, as shown on the dash ('13 Leaf).

However, with Carwings, I can see that it's still charged to 80% (or 10 bars). I am thinking the cashboard reading of battery charge is off because I was messing around with the fuses...

My capacity still look good.

69800:

Those numbers look great. I don't think you have anything to worry about. BTW, I have never seen 15.5 volts on my 12v battery. Usually only 14.5v the highest.

There is a calibration on the app and I calibrated it wrong. Volt meter shows 14.2 then drops down to 13.2

This is only partly related to the topic, but it's close enough, I think...

For many months now my 2013 SV has been charging to 79% when set for 80%. I understand this is a symptom of an imminent bar loss, but that hasn't happened, so far. What has been happening lately is the car will, according to emails from CarWings, charge to 9 bars, stop as usual, but then start charging again later on, stopping again at 10 bars (80%). It restarts at 8:00am, which is when the 'looped' charge timer is set: 8:00am on, 8:00am off, to get continuous charging available. Is anyone else seeing this? Ideas from the more experienced Leafers, please?

My 2012 LEAF SL lost its first capacity bar about six months ago at about 20,000 mi. As you described below when charging to 80% I would only see 9 charge bars lit. I thought it was a problem but it turns out that the first capacity bar disappeared shortly after that. I don't remember exactly how long.

I have not experienced the loop charging that you describe but I set my timer to finish charging by 6:30am. When I want to charge right away I push the 'cancel timer' button on the dash.

I have allowed the car to charge to 100% then leave it plugged in over night. I have received two charge complete messages from Carwings on my phone on a couple of occasions doing this. I am told this balances the pack.

LeftieBiker said:

This is only partly related to the topic, but it's close enough, I think...

For many months now my 2013 SV has been charging to 79% when set for 80%. I understand this is a symptom of an imminent bar loss, but that hasn't happened, so far. What has been happening lately is the car will, according to emails from CarWings, charge to 9 bars, stop as usual, but then start charging again later on, stopping again at 10 bars (80%). It restarts at 8:00am, which is when the 'looped' charge timer is set: 8:00am on, 8:00am off, to get continuous charging available. Is anyone else seeing this? Ideas from the more experienced Leafers, please?

Click to expand...

AFAIK, no balancing occurs when the charge is to 80% (or 79%). I understand the capacity loss issue, but wonder why the car is only now restarting the charge at 79%. Maybe it means I'm really close to that bar loss...

An interesting development: today (and I think yesterday) the Carwings email reported that the car had charged to 10 bars, not nine. The SOC is still at 79%, but I'm hoping that charging to 100% a few times and letting the pack equalize may have helped it regain a little bit of capacity...

I noticed that my car was reportin 79% in the morning after an 80% charge limit. The other thing that I suspect is related is that it was cooler on those nights and the battery temp bars was showing only 5 bars (I've almost always seen 6) in the morning.

My theory (tell me if it sounds like bunk) is that perhaps the car charged to 80% and stopped (with temp bars at 6) then the battery cooled a bit (thus the 5 bars) and in so doing it now has a higher capacity (or lost some energy?) thus the reported state of charge is reported as 79%. Seem plausible to anyone?

I only have about 2200 miles on the car - I certainly hope I'm not about to lose a capacity bar!

LeftieBiker said:

AFAIK, no balancing occurs when the charge is to 80% (or 79%) ...

Click to expand...

Some balancing can occur at any % charge.
But the most optimal complete balancing on 2011 and 2012 LEAFs is when charging to 100% and can sometimes recover small amount of capacity that may have been unavailable due to slight cell imbalance.
2013 forward LEAFs have been reported to have more optimal balancing built into their software that is also probably when charging to 100%.

I don't think having tenth bar not light when charging to 80% has much to do with cell balance.
On my 2011 it started in hot weather when only four months old.
Didn't lose first capacity bar for more than a year.
Fairly normal even with very good capacity.

I'm not certain that the car itself ever indicated 9 bars - it was the emails that said that. I do know that it had 10 yesterday, and the email also read 10. If it goes to next Summer before the first bar loss, I'll be fairly happy. Now that I'm retired, and more charging points are popping up, I don't absolutely need full capacity. I'll keep leasing the car until I lose a second bar.