Brand new 2014 has 255 GIDs on 100% !!

I just returned my 2011 SV and leased a 2014 SV this evening. The car was manufactured on 1/14 and it had 25 miles in the Odo, and was just delivered overnight to the dealer's lot.

I told my dealer contact to have it charged to 100%, and the car just finished charging fully 15 minutes after I reached there. The first thing I did was to plug in the GID meter and to my shock and horror I saw only 255 Gids. In my previous 2011 Leaf this is what I had after 1 year and 12K miles.

I called the service manager and explained the whole thing to him and showed him the GID meter and the number and impressed upon him that 255 essentially means 10% degradation . He was very impressed with my knowledge and agreed to my request that he will have his chief Leaf technician look into this in the next few days by connecting to the Nissan leaf battery diagnostics computer. But he also postulated there are so many changes in the Leaf in 2014 that it is possible what the BMS outputs in 2014 might be a different set of values than that of 2011, that I shouldn't really take those numbers that matched my 2011 in face value. This same GID meter I had hooked it up to a 2013 SV and it showed 283 Gids on a 100% charge.

I am going to now bring it down to LBW and charge it fully to see if there is recovery in the GID value, and try that a few times to see if things get better. If not I have a tough fight in my hands.

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Update on 02/10: This is not really a problem. Please see my update on this same topic on Page 2 here: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=15743&start=10#p353347

Anyone think the GID may have gained some weight?
Need to look back how the measure was initially defined to see if there have been changes in scale.

See my Signature below.

I know how worried you are, I felt the same way when I got my new 2013 and it had 263 Gid at the dealer. I was bummed and felt like I'd made a mistake taking delivery of the car. It turned out there was nothing wrong with the battery. Some of the 2013 cars show low Gids on a Gidmeter and Amp Hours on the LeafSpy, but the batteries seem to have the same capacity and usable range as any new LEAF. It appears that these cars just show different readings than the older cars that we've come to regard as expected for a LEAF.

There are a couple of threads here that would be worth a read for you, especially one titled "2013 Low Capacity.. "

The bottom line is that several of us, including myself and stjohnh have carefully evaluated 2013 LEAFs that show these kinds of low readings. We've shown that the cars have the full range autonomy and capacity expected. We've done this by driving the cars at a controlled speed of 100 km/hr over a round trip course and achieving expected range to Turtle of about 88 miles. In addition, I measured the kWh required to recharge from Turtle, and it matched the expected capacity of about 21.5 kWh after allowing for charging losses (actual measured energy used for charging was about 26 kWh).

So when I suggest that you not worry too much, I'm speaking from experience.

Here's the kicker, though: In our cars, we found that we needed to take the car down to Turtle to see the full range. These cars acted like they were storing more energy than expected below VLBW, and we get several MILES of range below a reading of 10 Gids! This us NOT a good thing, obviously, because most of us want to park it at VLBW, and from what we've seen, you'd be sacrificing 8 or more miles of range if you stop there. But that's what we've found, and once you know how your car will behave at low SOC, you can live with it quite happily.

I also found that several charge cycles up to 100% without an end timer gives the pack a chance to balance better, and your Gids should rise. In fact, during a long trip with several successive 100% L2 charges over two days, I saw a Gid reading of 284! Weird but true.

My experience pretty much lines up with Boomer's comments above. I once drove it 9.8 miles after VLBW and never hit turtle, Leaf Spy showed 7 Gids remaining. During a full range test, I drove 14.3 miles after VLBW and finally hit turtle when Leaf Spy showed 5 Gids remaining. Prior to these two deep discharges, a 100% charge usually showed low to mid 260s Gids, sometimes lower. After these tests a 100% charge showed 282 and 283 Gids. Now it usually shows around 274 - 277 Gids, I charge daily to 100% for my 50 mile RT commute. I did not have Leaf Spy until after I had my Leaf for 3 weeks so I don't know what my numbers were at delivery.

I've been meaning to post for a while but hadn't. I don't have my exact numbers with me but I'll swag.

After our 2013 LEAF was totaled in October, we finally were able to get a replacement 2013 LEAF in November 2013. It was a brand new car. Practically no one had ever driven it. When I first sat in it, it had a grand total of 8 miles on the odometer. I plugged in the OBDII adapter and checked it before moving it.

Capacity of the car with 8 miles on the odometer, brand new delivery, manufactured just a few weeks before and sitting in cool weather was 86% of normal. Much worse than our previous car.

But there clearly wasn't anything wrong with the car so we leased it. As we've driven it, mostly charging to 80%, the capacity has slowly gone up. We went through a week of constantly charging it to 100% and running it fairly low. I hadn't checked capacity for a while but was amazed to check one day and it reported >100% capacity and >101% SOH.

Clearly nothing wrong with the car, I've stopped worrying about it, especially in the cool weather we're having now. Its nice not having to worry about battery degradation unlike our previous vehicle in the summer that was on a clear downward trend.

I had discussed with boomer23 on our previous car, and I'm now a believer that the 2013-2014s have more capacity than it sometimes reports.

My first full charge was to 264 Gids. Then, over the course of a month, the number creeped up to 276. I read in this forum that it takes some time for the BMS to know the battery or for the battery to be conditioned, so peak capacity doesn't normally come when the vehicle is new.

After the maximum of 276, full charge GIDs started sliding and bottomed out at 262 in October. At this point, I didn't expect them to go back up, except perhaps slightly with the cooler weather. Surprise, I've been at 284 since mid-December.

Six months, 6400 miles. Hx = 102.70 (Max 102.89) AHr = 66.84 (Max 66.90) SOH = 100%.

I wonder if the LBC in recent LEAFs basically start off thinking the pack is close to 15% / 1-bar down when it's fully reset? That way if the LBC is reset after the battery has worn some, it won't show overly optimistic capacity numbers...

On the early production 2013's that I tested, both with about 100 miles on them, they both went to 281 GID.

Boomer: Thanks for your detailed reply. I sure was less agitated after reading your post. All of my overnight observations pretty much match your experience too.

I drove this all the way from 100% to VLBW, a total of 76 miles, with 40 of those pretty hard at between 65 and 70 mph and the rest on the surface roads around 45-50 mph. Some observations that were different from my 2011 SV:

- The efficiency was almost the same or slightly less than my 2011, but I attribute that to new tires. I had around 3.8 m/kWh end of the day and I know I can get it to 4+ maybe after a few thousand miles on the Odo.

- LBW hit exactly at 49 Gids. No surprises there, but what was different this time the GOM showed 14 miles range left when I hit LBW. In my 2011 it was almost always 9 miles (or less if I drive hard). It stayed at 49 Gids for nearly a mile of driving at 45 mph on flat road. I thought was strange too. And also the GoM stayed at 14 miles for nearly 3 miles of driving.

- I drove nearly 11 miles before I hit VLB at 24 Gids, the most I had driven between LBW to VLB while maintaining 45-50 mph. And GoM had 8 miles, which is different from my 2011 which almost always had 4 miles left at VLB.

- Total distance traveled 76 miles from 100% to VLB with 8 left in the GoM.

Plugging in overnight, this morning I saw 266 Gids. And those 11 extra gids I got this morning all was consumed in just 2 miles of slow driving! My Clippercreek does not display the kWh transferred, I am planning to charge my Leaf from VLB to 100% in my office Charge Point which will give me the kWh, and that is the probably definitive measure of battery capacity and not the Gids.

Conclusions ?:

- As Boomer and others have expressed, on a brand new 2014 the Gid value at 100% charge don't really mean much. I am now not convinced that my battery has lost any capacity. A week or two more of driving will establish that

- There is a lot of hidden energy below LBW, which is a shame, because if you fix LBW as the definitive end point for you to recharge then there is a lot of range that is left unused.

I will get back here with more details as and when I discover them.

-Jay

mkjayakumar said:

I am planning to charge my Leaf from VLB to 100% in my office Charge Point which will give me the kWh, and that is the probably definitive measure of battery capacity and not the Gids.

Click to expand...

You might want to use HVAC to drain down to turtle (max heat & defrost, windows open) to get a true reading, since others have reported that VLBW is still hiding extra capacity down lower.

Or use LEAF Spy and watch the lowest cell-pair voltage and stop at 3.2V if you don't want to go all the way down to turtle (3.0V).

my 2013 was built in Nov, i picked it up Dec 20th and it had just been driven from Tacoma Nissan and had 37.3 miles on it. I plugged in LEAF Spy and it started with ahr 67.00 and Hx of 102% and has gone up slightly from that. The one thing that was strange was that at 37.3 miles it had been QC'd 4 times including once at Oly Nissan when I picked it up. Other than that, it "seems" to have more range than my 2011 did. Last week, drove it over 75 miles and still had 19 miles on GOM and 15.9 miles on LEAF Spy set to 2.9 miles/kwh. pretty good range considering it was Winter (morning half of drive was in the upper 20's) and about 2/3rds freeway speeds

From what I read on here from other threads, those new batteries have a break in period, others report lower then usual GIDs on the 2013 batteries. After the break-in period when ever that is, the GIDs will climb back up to the usual higher GIDs etc. Keep an Eye on it, let us know.


Fred

All battery technologies need a break in period befor they reach peak performanceI wasn't geting a good discharge curve from mine till I taken it well below vlbw a few times but not quite to turtle, now I get a very nice discharge curve and range with the car.

mkjayakumar said:

- There is a lot of hidden energy below LBW, which is a shame, because if you fix LBW as the definitive end point for you to recharge then there is a lot of range that is left unused.

-Jay

Click to expand...

You 'may' want to also consider the energy hidden below Turtle. I think most will say you immediately pull over when you get to Turtle, but last month I drove just over 2 miles (very level @ ~25 mph) on Turtle in a rental Leaf in Orlando and I made it to a charging station! No way this was on purpose, it just happened that way. Anyway, I think the amount hidden below Turtle is much like the amount hidden under VLBW and LBW. When the warning kicks in is highly dependent on how much power is being drawn from the battery at that moment. How far you can go afterwards depends on how light and smooth you can drive.

Reporting back after just three VLB to 100% charges: The Gids steadly increased and this morning I hit 284 Gids !!

So I guess there is nothing to be concerned here. Thanks everyone for chiming in.

mkjayakumar said:

Reporting back after just three VLB to 100% charges: The Gids steadly increased and this morning I hit 284 Gids !!

So I guess there is nothing to be concerned here. Thanks everyone for chiming in.

Click to expand...

yep; several reporting a slow ascent to "new battery" status.

mkjayakumar said:

I drove this all the way from 100% to VLBW, a total of 76 miles ...
I had around 3.8 m/kWh end of the day ...
- Total distance traveled 76 miles from 100% to VLB with 8 left in the GoM.
-Jay

Click to expand...

Playing with your numbers, This would appear that when your GIDs were only 255 or so, you had a usable battery capacity of 76/3.8 = 20 kWh above VLBW, and if you included the 8-9% SOC below VLBW, you would have a usable battery capacity of 21.7 kWh which I would think is pretty good.

mkjayakumar said:

The Gids steadly increased and this morning I hit 284 Gids !!

Click to expand...

Now that you have your GIDs up to 284, do you see a larger usable battery capacity?
If GIDs, %SOC, and driving efficiency measure what we think, then you should have a usable battery capacity of about 24 kWh, which seems too high.

Sometime this weekend I will charge it fully, and get it down to VLB and post the details here.