2013 Low Battery Capacity AHr Battery Degradation

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stjohnh

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 18, 2013
Messages
363
Location
Palo Alto, CA
There have been several reports of nearly new 2013 Leafs with battery capacity readings in the 60-62 AHr range, and several with 66-67 range. A new Leaf ordinarily should have a capacity of 66 AHr. I know there are several battery threads, but none that specifically address this question. I have asked in other sections some of the battery experts and no one seems to have an explanation.

I would like people with 2013 Leafs to report their capacity (AHr) and if they actually have range loss. Other useful info is SOC at LBW. Anything else useful, as well.

I have 2 Leafs, a 2013 S and 2013 SV, both with capacity readings of 60.5-60.9. Both about 2 mo old (manufactured May 2013), both with about 1400 miles. Both run about 65 miles from 100% to LBW at 4mi/Kwh. Both show 18% SOC on the Leaf dash meter at LBW.

My range seems a bit low for a new Leaf, but not really as low as would be expected for a 10% capacity loss (66 AHr to 60 AHr). Additionally, real degradation is usually associated with a higher SOC at LBW (I would expect SOC to read in the 20-22% range at LBW for real degradation).

Anyway, this data is confusing and concerning, especially for those with a new Leaf and wondering if they got a lemon.

If you want to check your capacity in AHr, you have several options, if you already have an android phone or tablet, the following is the least expensive. (Other options are the WattsLeft meter, LeafDD meter, and others).
You will need:
1. OBDII scanner $17 on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008U1MOM8/ref=oh_details_o07_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
2. Android phone or tablet with Bluetooth, Wifi, and google play store capability (I use the Google Nexus 7 tablet, which is a wonderful general purpose tablet, about $200). Check the Leaf Battery App Manual wiki for more info http://www.mynissanleaf.com/wiki/index.php?title=Leaf_Battery_Application" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. You can buy a phone for less than $50 to use, it does NOT need to be activated.
3. The Leaf Battery App. Link is in the wiki.

******May 2014 update*****
Battery is normal, still indicates capacity about 60-61. Handy way of estimating true range of these cars is in my post in this thread of May 14, 2014
 
surfingslovak said:
Referencing a previous thread ELROY has started. Hopefully, there will a plausible explanation for this.

POST YOUR BATTERY DEGRADATION RESULTS

The battery degradation thread has some of this info, but is mostly about real degradation, mostly of 2011 and 2012 cars. It is not at all clear that the low capacity 2013s have any unusual degradation, they just seem to arrive with low capacity.
 
I've been in a new (1400miles) 2013 for 3 weeks now (and added about 1000 miles to the odo.. so 2400 now). When I got it the health was around 110%H and over the last 3 weeks/1000mi has drifted down to about 108%H.. Ah Capacity pegged at 67.3620Ah the whole time. Battery temps have been in the high 20s, low 30s Celsius. Curious to see at what health% the Ah Cap will drop below 67.3620 but I'm getting my 2012 back tonight so maybe IraqiInvaderGnr can let us know..
 
stjohnh said:
surfingslovak said:
Referencing a previous thread ELROY has started. Hopefully, there will a plausible explanation for this.

POST YOUR BATTERY DEGRADATION RESULTS

The battery degradation thread has some of this info, but is mostly about real degradation, mostly of 2011 and 2012 cars. It is not at all clear that the low capacity 2013s have any unusual degradation, they just seem to arrive with low capacity.
To be clear, I'm not playing thread police just suggesting that these two topics are related and wanted to make sure you were aware of the other one. The older thread has more people following it. You might want to cross-post there and define a bit better in the title of this thread what you would like to accomplish. If it's collecting Ah and SOH readouts from relatively new vehicles, then state that directly. I remember GregH, LEAFfan and Boomer collecting this type of data.

I responded to you in the ELM327 thread indicating that I don't believe this was an issue, but it's worth monitoring and investigating. What are the GID counts from both vehicles on a full charge? I don't recall seeing them posted anywhere. How do you know that your range is impacted aside from SOC readouts? Also, you might want to check the manufacturing date on both cars. It's on the B pillar, drivers side.

If you are genuinely concerned, have you reported the issue to your dealer and to Nissan? They can check your LEAFs with their instruments. It might be interesting to hear what they have to say about this. Best of luck to you.
 
Not mine, but a friend who just bought a 2013 Leaf over the weekend:

  • Hlth : 93.5%
    Ah : 60.85
    100%gids : 265

Dealer told him it had been sitting on the lot for over a month.

[Edit: changed SOH to Hlth since this doesn't appear to be battery capacity SOH but rather the health of something else. The real SOH is 92.7%]
 
surfingslovak said:
I responded to you in the ELM327 thread indicating that I don't believe this was an issue, but it's worth monitoring and investigating. What are the GID counts from both vehicles on a full charge? I don't recall seeing them posted anywhere. How do you know that your range is impacted aside from SOC readouts? Also, you might want to check the manufacturing date on both cars. It's on the B pillar, drivers side.

If you are genuinely concerned, have you reported the issue to your dealer and to Nissan? They can check your LEAFs with their instruments. It might be interesting to head what they have to say about this. Best of luck to you.

You have made several very helpful posts on this and related topics, and I thank you for your suggestions. I've cross posted on the other Degradation thread.

GIDs (real) at 100% charge are 262 on the 2013 S and 264 on the SV.
Both manufactured May 2013
Range was measured on a hiway drive, nearly flat, ambient temp about 75 F, Battery temp 83 F at end of range test to LBW. When I did the test I was using the older version of the Leaf Battery App that displayed simulated GIDs and reading at LBW was 72 simulated 'GIDs. I'm not sure how related that is to real GIDs and certainly suggests there are more KWh below LBW than is usual. I have yet to measure actual range from LBW to turtle.
 
TickTock said:
Not mine, but a friend who just bought a 2013 Leaf over the weekend:

  • SOH : 93.5%
    Ah : 60.85
    100%gids : 265

Dealer told him it had been sitting on the lot for over a month.
:shock:
Imagine if all the gasoline cars sitting beside it for a month had their gas tanks shrink by a gallon... boggles the mind.
It would be interesting to hear how your friend's capacity changes after a few full->VLBW cycles. Can the car really make these capacity estimate adjustments based entirely on hours spent at elevated temperature without any cycling? Does it just wake up every few hours and say
if(temp>X) AhCap--;
?
 
My friend is just as much a data junky as me. I've already hooked him up with a loaner gid-o-meter until he decides what he wants to buy/build so we will see where things go from here.

GregH said:
TickTock said:
Not mine, but a friend who just bought a 2013 Leaf over the weekend:

  • SOH : 93.5%
    Ah : 60.85
    100%gids : 265

Dealer told him it had been sitting on the lot for over a month.
:shock:
Imagine if all the gasoline cars sitting beside it for a month had their gas tanks shrink by a gallon... boggles the mind.
It would be interesting to hear how your friend's capacity changes after a few full->VLBW cycles. Can the car really make these capacity estimate adjustments based entirely on hours spent at elevated temperature without any cycling? Does it just wake up every few hours and say
if(temp>X) AhCap--;
?
 
I've worried about this as well. I leased my 2013 SV 5/31/2013. Date of manufacture shows 3/2013. It had fairly low miles, ~50 when I leased it.

I don't have an expectation for range so I can't tell if its too little or not. I purchased an ELM two weeks after purchase.

The readings have been erratic, up and down but trending down.

The highest readings I've EVER seen on this car: 63.39Ahr, 95.67% capacity.
Lowest reading was a week later at 61.50Ahr, 92.82%.

Today's reading is 61.99Ahr, 93.56%, health says 95.37%.
I tried to charge the car to 100% today but we ran out of time. Car reported 98%.
The Leaf app said 21.6kwh. That's higher than I remember. I had always been figuring 21kwh capacity.
Leaf app reported 270 GIDs, of 97% of GIDs.

I can't tell what values are derived and which are obtained from the car. Why is the capacity reading lower than the GID % report. The app also reported roughly 97% SOC. Is the SOC reported in the app based on expected new battery capacity, or within the degraded battery capacity?

Here's a dump of all the data I've maintained so far:
Code:
Days	Date AHr	        Cap	    Health	Soc   	GIDs	GID%	 Car %	Mileage
0	03/01/13								
91	05/31/13								
105	06/14/13	63.10	95.24%						
112	06/21/13	63.39	95.67%		78.10%				
126	07/05/13	61.67	93.08%		59.80%				        1,600
128	07/07/13	61.50	92.82%		14.60%			  10%        1,668
129	07/08/13	61.87	93.38%		50.00%	139	49.5% 46%	1,704
132	07/11/13	63.28	95.51%		41.20%	117	41.7%		
138	07/17/13	62.04	93.63%		52.00%	145	51.7% 48%	2,090
140	07/19/13	62.71	94.64%		31.70%	89	31.8% 24%	
141	07/20/13	62.71	94.64%		96.90%	274	97.3% 100%	
144	07/23/13	62.39	94.17%		48.10%	135	48.0%		2,373
145	07/24/13	62.42	94.21%		37.10%				
148	07/27/13	62.15	93.80%		36.70%	103	36.5% 37%	
149	07/28/13	61.95	93.51% 95.46%	57.80%	146	52.0% 54%	
151	07/30/13	61.99	93.56% 95.37%	52.90%	132	47.0% 49%	2,728
I couldn't get the columns to format well, but the date and Ahr and capacity shows up ok.

I don't know what to expect to know if this indicates a problem a dealer would do something about.

I've hit LBW around 18-19%.
 
Thank you for starting this thread! I recently bought a new 2013, and just in the last week I also purchased an ELM 327 described in the Leaf Battery App portion of Stoatys wiki. I was disappointed to see battery capacity hovering near 91 to 93 percent. Today I hit LBW at exactly 50 GIDs as reported by Turbo3s app. Not too sure what to think with so many variables in play.
 
I always thought my numbers were low compared with other other 2013's, so I recently started recording this data, just so I can watch trends. Got the car in May 2013, so I'm missing about a months worth of data.

Code:
DATE			GID	SoC %	CAP		Health	Temp		Miles
6/23/2013	278	97.2500	63.9939	98.15	78.8			
6/26/2013	277	97.0388	63.9612	98.11	82.4			
6/28/2013	281	96.9135	64.8179	99.24	83.5			
7/15/2013	276	97.0023	63.7453	97.82	82.6		2096
7/24/2013 	20	14.1874	64.3274	98.59	77.9		2625	
7/27/2013	274	96.3700	63.8369	97.94	82.8		2748
 
Especially for those reporting 110% capacity, 67Ahr range numbers, what does the GOM report when at 100%?

When I drive fairly conservatively, w recent 5ish miles/kWh and I charge to 100%, the GOM usually reports around 100 mile range even though my battery capacity is down to 93%. If others have 107% capacity! that implies 14% more capacity. Does that mean your GOM sometimes reports as high as 115 miles?
 
We need to be careful with our assumptions on what we are calling SOH. Although in most cases it does appear to track capacity/health, there are a couple cases that put this into question.

  • #1) 110%
    #2) I am presently reading 51.7% for "SOH" while gids, range, Ah, wall power, and official diagnostic equipment indicate 72%

Jim, Greg, can you add msgId 5B3:D2 divided by 2 to your devices? This, I believe, is what Nissan looks at when they check SOH. There aren't enough CANary devices out there to gather much data but on my car it matches the 72 Nissan reported and also has been steadily declining since I first started logging.
 
My 2013 SL with 1,400 miles on it now reports the following:

61.89 AH
95.38 Health
Most recent Gids at 100% charge = 275 = 97.8 % Gids
Most recent Gids at 80% charge = 212 = 75.4 % Gids
Full range test 100% charge to Turtle on June 20 gave me 98.3 miles at indicated 4.5 mi/kWh (calculates to 21.8 kWh usable)
Recharge energy required from Turtle to Full charge was 25.3 kWh from the power panel, measured by TED device (calculates to 86% efficient charging at 21.8 kWh usable, which is reasonable)

My car was manufactured May 2013 (per the plate on driver's door jamb)
Delivered June 15, 2013

I recommend that everyone report the mfr date and delivery date with your data

It is most likely that dealers will keep LEAFs on their lot fully charged because they don't know better. So my car may have sat at 100% charge for a month.

I was concerned, as you are, at first, but after my full range test, I am no longer concerned.

Please note that my Gid readings were very strange at low state of charge in my Turtle test. At only 10 Gids remaining, I was at a driven range of 90.4 miles. But I drove almost 8 more miles between 10 Gids and 4 Gids, when my car Turtled. My car appeared to have a large amount of usable energy below the 10 Gid reading. I haven't repeated the range test to see if the car behaves the same way. It is possible that my BMS was "learning" my pack and it wouldn't behave the same way a second time.

I recommend that each of the concerned 2013 owners clear your energy economy meter and drive your cars from full charge to Turtle (carefully, and be close to a charge point when you Turtle, you'll have less than 1/2 a mile to drive). Report your range and estimated usable kWh by dividing miles driven by energy economy. If you get close to 86 miles of range at an average of 4.0 mi/kWh or 98 miles of range at 4.5 mi/kWh, you shouldn't be concerned. Assuming we can believe the dash energy economy meter (a big IF, I agree), you'll be close to 21.5 usable kWh, which we believe is what the LEAF pack holds.

Here is an Amp Hour and 100% Gid history for my car:
At delivery: 60.89 AH, 263 Gid
June 16: 61.63 AH, 267 Gid
June 18: 63.01 AH
June 19: 62.83 AH
June 20: 62.47 AH, 272 Gid
June 21: 63.71 AH, 277 Gid
June 27: 65.33 AH, 284 Gid 99% Health per GregH and his LEAF DD
July 1: 64.51 AH
July 3: 64.03 AH
July 7: 64.05 AH, 277 Gid
July 8: 64.35 AH
July 12: 63.65 AH, 276 Gid
July 15: 64.06 Gid
July 18: 63.16 AH, 274 Gid
July 23: 62.72 AH
July 28: 61.89 AH, 95.38 Health
 
Boomer23 said:
If you get close to 86 miles of range at an average of 4.0 mi/kWh or 98 miles of range at 4.5 mi/kWh, you shouldn't be concerned. Assuming we can believe the dash energy economy meter (a big IF, I agree), you'll be close to 21.5 usable kWh, which we believe is what the LEAF pack holds.

Which is exactly why we do range tests at a fixed speed, hence fixed power consumption on level, no wind dry hard surface roadways, tires at 36 psi (on the Ecopias... the new Michelins might be a little off).

Then, we can see the errors more clearly. If you car was doing funny business with the low end Gids, I would not trust it to be very accurate with the economy.

If the car can drive at 100km/hr ground speed (whatever that is on your speedometer, typically 65mph) for a distance of 84 miles, then you have 21kWh useable. On the flat terrain described above, it should be 4.0 miles/kWh. But, even if the economy showed some crazy number, the fact remains that the power consumed will be a constant.

Oh, and the battery needs to be close to 70F. If it's hotter, obviously it has a wee bit more oomph.
 
Rauv said:
Today I hit LBW at exactly 50 GIDs as reported by Turbo3s app. Not too sure what to think with so many variables in play.

That's correct. 50 * 80 watthours = 4kWh stored but not useable at Low Battery Warning (useable, about 3.1kWh)

25 * 80 = 2kWh stored but not useable at Very Low Battery (useable, about 1.3kWh)

Those a "real" Gids, not the (')Gids that were simulated in the earlier app.
 
dm33 said:
The Leaf app said 21.6kwh. That's higher than I remember. I had always been figuring 21kwh capacity.
Leaf app reported 270 GIDs, of 97% of GIDs.

The ACTUAL stored energy that is useable to you varies with GIDs and that value varies with temperature. So, there is no singular magic hard number, but we use 21kWh useable at 70F for 281 GID. When the battery is hotter or colder, the kWh changes. I use a rule of thumb of 1% loss for each 4F degrees below 70F, and 1% gain for each 8F degrees hotter.

The app makes calculations that (apparently) are strictly stored energy with the simple formula of GID * 80 wattHours = 22.48kWh (it may actually use some other formula, too).

Since you don't drive the car to empty, there is ALWAYS about 0.48kWh remaining (the lowest cell pair voltage determines the actual remaining, but it will be 0.48-ish or HIGHER remaining). So, that would leave 22kWh or LESS that is actually available for you to consume.

Then, there are losses pulling the stored energy out of the battery, hence the 21kWh at 70F.
 
TonyWilliams said:
The app makes calculations that (apparently) are strictly stored energy with the simple formula of GID * 80 wattHours = 22.48kWh (it may actually use some other formula, too).

Since you don't drive the car to empty, there is ALWAYS about 0.48kWh remaining (the lowest cell pair voltage determines the actual remaining, but it will be 0.48-ish or HIGHER remaining). So, that would leave 22kWh or LESS that is actually available for you to consume.

Then, there are losses pulling the stored energy out of the battery, hence the 21kWh at 70F.
Yes, it's unfortunate that the app, as much as it democratizes access to information, it also creates some misperceptions. I asked Jim to consider battery losses and introduce a battery efficiency factor in the preferences of his battery app. If memory serves, Tony asked for a battery temperature capacity coefficient. Jim has done an awesome job, and perhaps he will find some time to implement this in the future. In the meantime, I wouldn't trust the app blindly. It's amazing and provides so much information, but not all of it has to be 100% correct.
 
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