lost first battery capacity bar at 4000 miles

I have a 2013 Leaf SV. Delivered 6/18/13. In late March of this year (2014), I noticed I have already lost one capacity bar at about 4000 total miles, approximately 200 hours of total operating time, only about 9 months old.
I am using the 120V Level 1 charger than came with the car; only charge to 80%. The Leaf is kept in the garage when not in operation. I live in the North Texas area.

Could this be a software indication problem, or a bad battery cell? Could the battery already be down 15% (first bar loss)? I have not yet taken to the dealer because I wanted to do some background checking on this forum so that I would be more knowledgeable before listening to what the dealer might say.

UPDATED 4/13/14:
Additional Information as requested from person's replying:
Garaged Location: Plano, Texas
Purchased New/Dealer - Courtesy Nissan
Ordered May 2, 2013
Production Month May 2013
Delivered/picked up: June 18, 2013
Mileage on delivery: 9
When lost 1st battery capacity bar:
approx 4000 miles
approx 200 operating hours

It would be helpful if you would update your profile with your location so we have some idea of where you are...

Need more info (in addition to exact location): purchased new? how many miles? did it sit on a dealer lot? Also, the operational hours don't make sense (unless you drive about 111 m/hr)??

He said he's in north Texas.

Losing one bar at 9 months seems very premature even for Texas considering that the car is only charged to 80% unless it's stored somewhere temps are significantly over ambient or something.

Do yourself a favor and get the LeafSpy app and the recommended ELM327 dongle to check the battery yourself. In 3 months you are coming up for the yearly dealer battery test, but you probably won't get much information from that. Do you know if your car sat for a long time on the dealer lot? There have been reports of some dealers charging a Leaf to 100% and letting it sit for weeks or months at a time fully charged, which results in degradation.

We have a 2013 SV, which we took off of the lot in May of 13. We have 4300 miles on the car, and LeafSpy is showing 255 GIDS and 89% SOC. So we are still a few percent from losing a bar, but it feels lower then it should be given how temperate (or downright frigid) our climate has been over the year.

My personal conspiracy theory is that in the first 6 months of 2013, quality control was still a little choppy in TN, and the let alot of B rated battery packs into the market to meet demand.

From a few ancillary posts, there are some late 2013 and 2014 models which are showing outstanding lack of degredation.

Did you lease or buy

Interesting... my '13 Leaf SV has a build month of 6/2013. I got it at end of July 2013. I'm past 8300 miles on it and still have all capacity bars. However, my climate is probably not as hot as the OP's.

My car is garaged at home and almost always in underground parking @ work. When I first got the car, I didn't care about charging to 100% and leaving it like that for many hours at work. Then I realized that even though my lease is only 2 years, I kinda wanna preserve its range for myself, so I am taking a better care of the battery now.

Unfortunately, I have no tools like Leaf Spy, so I have no idea how many gids I get at full charge or any relative sense of health or pack balance.

My guess is that by the end of my 2 year/24K mile lease, the car will have lost 1 or 2 capacity bars. I'm not in a cooler part of the Bay Area (e.g. SF) but I'm not in the hottest either (e.g. Walnut Creek, Concord, etc.). However, my area is definitely on the hotter side.

While Stoaty's LEAF Battery Degradation Model is not calibrated for MY2013 LEAFs, it is interesting to see what it predicts for your vehicle, to see how it compares to a 2011/2012 in Plano. Here is the information I used:

Do you currently own a Nissan LEAF? Yes
City (Sorted by Name) Dallas, TX
Miles/kWh 4.0
Days/week in Sun 5.0
Total Mileage (Odometer) 4000
Manufacture Date 5/13/2013
Date of Delivery 6/18/2013
Date of Reading 4/12/2014
Actual Capacity (AH) 55.25

The calculator estimates that in your climate, a 2011/2012 in your situation should not lose the first bar until after about 1 year and 7 months. In other words, your LEAF battery capacity is much lower than would be expected, particularly since the 2013s are *rumored* to have improved battery life (though I have yet to see clear evidence of this).

There have been several 2013s reported on this forum which started out life with about 60 Ah of capacity (instead of a normal of about 66.25 Ah). Perhaps your LEAF is like one of those and lost enough capacity to get down to the 55.25 Ah threshold for the first bar loss. I will note that those LEAFs with the lower capacity reported by the LEAF BMS still appear to have normal total driving range.

OK - I have just purchased the LeafStat app and now have some info on the battery status. It doesn't look very good. I now have about 5300 miles on the Leaf. Battery Health info from LeafStat app shows 85.97% State of Health, 86.35% capacity, 57.21 Ahr

Again the Leaf info is:
Garaged Location: Plano, Texas
Purchased New/Dealer - Courtesy Nissan
Ordered May 2, 2013
Production Month May 2013
Delivered/picked up: June 18, 2013
Mileage on delivery: 9
When lost 1st battery capacity bar:
approx 4000 miles
approx 200 operating hours

I will be taking it in for the 12 month maintenance which supposedly includes a battery check in a few weeks. Any advice or tips before I take it in would be appreciated.

May as well charge to 100% and let the battery warranty take care of it.

Do any of the cells look a lot lower than most? What is the mv spread between your highest and lowest cell? You might need to do several 100% charges to balance the pack.

Is there a way to see the values for each cell? Will I see that from the 12-month battery report provided by the dealer? Since I have only done probably 5-10 100% charges since I have had the Leaf, do you think doing a few 100% charges will possibly balance the battery pack and recover the lost bar?

hhgblueleaf said:

Is there a way to see the values for each cell?

Click to expand...

Yes you can look at each of the 48 modules with LEAF Spy.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14285" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Will I see that from the 12-month battery report provided by the dealer?

Click to expand...

The dealer supplied battery report is close to worthless.

Since I have only done probably 5-10 100% charges since I have had the Leaf, do you think doing a few 100% charges will possibly balance the battery pack and recover the lost bar?

Click to expand...

Sorry not going to happen.

hhgblueleaf said:

Will I see that from the 12-month battery report provided by the dealer? Since I have only done probably 5-10 100% charges since I have had the Leaf, do you think doing a few 100% charges will possibly balance the battery pack and recover the lost bar?

Click to expand...

Battery report provides everything to Nissan and nothing to the vehicle owner.

Charging to 100% does not seem to harm the battery or reduce life in any way. Some will say 100% will improve battery life.
The real issue is leaving the battery at 100% for extended periods in hot temperatures (95+?)

Just go with the 100% and let the warranty handle the replacement.

It appears your battery had less than 100% of its original capacity when you bought the car. You will not be able to prove this, however. The advice traditionally given here is to call the NO-GAS-EV number and report it. They, too, are mostly clueless, but opening a case at least gets you on record as having noticed the discrepancy early on.

KJD said:

Yes you can look at each of the 48 modules with LEAF Spy.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14285" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

I don't have an android device, have iOS devices and ELM327 wifi. Is there any application that will provide the cell data using iOS? I have purchased LeafStat app for iOS, but it doesn't seem to support cell data yet.

hhgblueleaf said:

KJD said:

Yes you can look at each of the 48 modules with LEAF Spy.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14285" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

I don't have an android device, have iOS devices and ELM327 wifi. Is there any application that will provide the cell data using iOS? I have purchased LeafStat app for iOS, but it doesn't seem to support cell data yet.

Click to expand...

With LEAF Spy for Android you can see the 96 cell-pair voltages in the 48 modules, displayed graphically as well a in a .csv spreadsheet.

Just buy a cheap, used Android cell phone for 20 bucks or so (it doesn't even have to be activated) and use it for the purpose with a Bluetooth adapter. I doubt that the IOS version of the Leaf app will ever approach the functionality of Leaf Spy... You can get such an Android phone and Bluetooth module for less than just the cost of a WiFi adapter...

hhgblueleaf said:

I don't have an android device, have iOS devices and ELM327 wifi. Is there any application that will provide the cell data using iOS? I have purchased LeafStat app for iOS, but it doesn't seem to support cell data yet.

Click to expand...

There's no ios application that will read the cell voltages...at least, not yet. Perhaps you can find someone with a LeafSpy and you can get a reading. It's easy to do.

Notwithstanding any of this monitoring equipment, I have to say that a cell failure is very rare. And if you have such a thing happen, it will either (a) get noticed by Nissan, (b) throw an error code in the car, or (c) get so bad that there won't be any debate that a warranty fix is necessary. Sadly, the normal way these batteries go is for all the cells to degrade slowly, together.

hhgblueleaf said:

KJD said:

Yes you can look at each of the 48 modules with LEAF Spy.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14285" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Click to expand...

I don't have an android device, have iOS devices and ELM327 wifi. Is there any application that will provide the cell data using iOS? I have purchased LeafStat app for iOS, but it doesn't seem to support cell data yet.

Click to expand...

The Kyocera Event is a very low cost android device (No monthly fee). This is what I use and it works great. At only 30 bucks it is well worth it.
http://www.amazon.com/Kyocera-Event-Prepaid-Android-Virgin/dp/B00B9K6ESC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402255500&sr=8-1&keywords=kyocera+event" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;