Just lost a bar this morning

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tzzhc4

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 4, 2011
Messages
139
For the last few months my LEAF has only been charging to 75% when set to 80% charging and my gidmeter showed I was close to losing a bar. This morning was one of the days I had a 100% charge queued up and when I pinged the car via AutoFlugel I noticed the car was "109% charged" so I loaded up the car turned it on and saw I had lost a capacity bar. My garage is air conditioned (though obviously I drive it in the Texas heat) and I typically only charge 80% (only charging to 100% once or twice a month at most and using the car immediately after reaching 100%, never sits at full charge for a long period of time).


7980958157_91ac47e7f4_d.jpg


VIN:02192
month and year of manufacture: 3/2011
case number of report: 457253
date of report: 9/12/12
Location: Anna, TX (north of Dallas)
100% - Maybe 20 times
80% - Approx 300 times
QC - Never
L1 - ~200 charges (guess)
L2 - Remaining
 
John, sorry to hear that. I wonder if in your case battery was not so great when you bought the car. AC in garage and relatively low mileage. Hopefully there is a resolution and hopefully soon
 
EdmondLeaf said:
John, sorry to hear that. I wonder if in your case battery was not so great when you bought the car. AC in garage and relatively low mileage. Hopefully there is a resolution and hopefully soon
Click to expand...

We have coastal California LEAFs with a missing bar, that don't need air conditioning to keep cool in the garage, and have never been exposed to Texas or Phoenix heat.

Heat only amplifies and accelerates the root problem. Well, unless you believe the "bad instrument" arguement.
 
Sad to hear. What's more sad is I see my Leaf following sometime soon. All the signs are there and it is about the same age as yours.
 
15 months old car and the temp bar seems more active, likely the battery is getting hotter than before.

i see my coastal la car goes to 6 temp bars when charging even in temperatures below 74 degrees.
also, it will go from 5-6 TB on a freeway drive at speeds of under 60mph.
this was not the case before this june.
 
Sounds like the internal resistance is going up

thankyouOB said:
i see my coastal la car goes to 6 temp bars when charging even in temperatures below 74 degrees.
also, it will go from 5-6 TB on a freeway drive at speeds of under 60mph.
this was not the case before this june.
Click to expand...
 
Herm said:
Sounds like the internal resistance is going up

thankyouOB said:
i see my coastal la car goes to 6 temp bars when charging even in temperatures below 74 degrees.
also, it will go from 5-6 TB on a freeway drive at speeds of under 60mph.
this was not the case before this june.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. I made a similar observation as well. Additionally, whenever I'm close to turtle, I typically hit six temp bars now, even when going very slowly. This wasn't the case last year. I was looking for energy economy numbers to drop, but perhaps the internal resistance increase is not enough. That or we are all becoming better drivers ;-)
 
Well, I have a little less mileage on my Leaf. But I look at the capacity gauge almost every day. I figure it is only a matter of time before I lose one. Of course it isn't like I'll wake up one morning and have one less bar and suddenly have less range. its sort of like saying the difference between 12:00 noon and 11:59am. There isn't that much difference, but it finally hit a predefined threshold.
 
adric22 said:
Of course it isn't like I'll wake up one morning and have one less bar and suddenly have less range. its sort of like saying the difference between 12:00 noon and 11:59am. There isn't that much difference, but it finally hit a predefined threshold.
Click to expand...

The time difference is around 1-2%, but if you lose a bar you will have 15-20% less capacity. You don't think that's much of a range difference? If you have been getting 80 miles on a 100% charge, you may only get around 64 miles.
 
LEAFfan said:
adric22 said:
Of course it isn't like I'll wake up one morning and have one less bar and suddenly have less range. its sort of like saying the difference between 12:00 noon and 11:59am. There isn't that much difference, but it finally hit a predefined threshold.
Click to expand...

The time difference is around 1-2%, but if you lose a bar you will have 15-20% less capacity. You don't think that's much of a range difference? If you have been getting 80 miles on a 100% charge, you may only get around 64 miles.
Click to expand...

The point I was trying to make is that you won't have lost 15% overnight. The loss of that bar does not indicate you JUST LOST 15% the moment you see the bar disappear. You will have been losing that 15% of the entire life you've had your car. Just that the car didn't tell you about it during the first 14%.
 
I have been noticing the same thing with my car for the past week. It is only charging to the 9th bar and I just checked on Carwings and noticed that it is only charging to 75%. The car just turned 1 year at the end of August and I have been averaging 4.6 m/kw up from 4.2 in the winter. Since it has been charging to 82% before this drop hasn't it only lost 7% instead of the 15-20% stated by someone else on this thread? Either way it stills concerns me since in one year it has lost 7% at that rate in 5 years it should lose 35%. Hopefully Nissan is correct and it starts slowing down.
 
marccbr said:
I have been noticing the same thing with my car for the past week. It is only charging to the 9th bar and I just checked on Carwings and noticed that it is only charging to 75%. The car just turned 1 year at the end of August and I have been averaging 4.6 m/kw up from 4.2 in the winter. Since it has been charging to 82% before this drop hasn't it only lost 7% instead of the 15-20% stated by someone else on this thread?
Click to expand...
There are several misconceptions here:
  • The numbers reported by Carwings are really bogus. The car is not telling Carwings that it is charging to 75%. It is just reporting that it is showing 9 charge bars on the dash. It is really some rather silly programming logic on the website that is deciding (if you will let me anthropomorphise), "Hmm, there are 12 bars, and only 9 of them are lit, so the battery must be 9/12 full. 9/12 = 3/4 = 0.75. I think I'll try to impress them, and say 75%." Note that it was doing the same thing with 10 bars, since 10/12 = 0.83333. The whole concept is fatally flawed, since the battery is not at 0% when the last bar disappears; the bars don't all represent the same amount of electricity; and the amount of electricity doesn't suddenly jump when you lose a bar.
  • If the battery is as full as the car will let it get, you will have 12 charge bars. That will still be true no matter how worn out the battery is, because the charge bars tell you how full the battery is, not how much electricity is stored in it. The difference you will see with a worn battery is that the bars will disappear a lot faster. You might get 3 miles per bar in a situation where you used to get 6 miles per bar.
  • The reference to a 15% loss is for the loss of a capacity bar rather than a charge bar. The capacity bars are the skinny white ones at the far right, with the two bottom ones red. Those tell you how healthy your battery is, and will start disappearing over time as it wears out. There was a table in the first edition of the service manual which said the top capacity bar would disappear when the battery lost 15% of its capacity. That table was removed in the second edition so we don't even know for sure if it was right. It may have been removed by accident, or because it was wrong, or because Nissan didn't want us to know.

Ray
 
Thanks for the explanation. I haven’t lost the first bar yet but I have a feeling that that will be coming soon considering all the clues. It seems like with loosing 15% in the first year there is no way that in 5 years it will have 80% remaining. I hope I’m wrong. We shall see.
 
thankyouOB said:
Herm said:
Sounds like the internal resistance is going up
Click to expand...
Mr. Herm,
can you explain for us EE illiterates, please, also the possible implications?
Click to expand...

This the other way that a battery degrades, the internal resistance increases and this causes an increase in heat generation when it charges or discharges.. either on the road or while charging. This will also reduce the power (horsepower or kW) that the battery can generate and IS covered by the warranty once it gets bad enough.
 

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