3 rd bar loss

Lost my third bar this morning, here are the details:

Mileage: 35989
AHr: 47.47
SOH: 72%
Hx: 65.77%
QC: 16
L1/L2: 1726

This is what I had to do to counter this loss:

1. Limit my max driving speed to 65 mph
2. Try to drive at 55 mph when possible
3. Skip driving to lunch
4. Avoid carpool lanes whenever possible

With careful driving I commute 46 miles RT without VLB warning.

Sorry for your loss... Sounds like a miserable experience

gaswalla said:

Sorry for your loss... Sounds like a miserable experience

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Its manageable for now. Thanks though.

If I had lost my 3rd bar at 35,000 I would still have my LEAF.

sksingh said:

Lost my third bar this morning, here are the details:

Mileage: 35989
AHr: 47.47
SOH: 72%
Hx: 65.77%
QC: 16
L1/L2: 1726

Click to expand...

On the bright side, you're pretty close to a replacement battery under Nissan's new warranty. How long have you had your car? is it leased or purchased? What are your plans?

adric22 said:

sksingh said:

Lost my third bar this morning, here are the details:

Mileage: 35989
AHr: 47.47
SOH: 72%
Hx: 65.77%
QC: 16
L1/L2: 1726

Click to expand...

On the bright side, you're pretty close to a replacement battery under Nissan's new warranty. How long have you had your car? is it leased or purchased? What are your plans?

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Have my Leaf since May 11, I purchased it. Plan to keep it till its useful. The battery warranty will prove crucial.
Still love the car.

sksingh said:

Have my Leaf since May 11, I purchased it. Plan to keep it till its useful. The battery warranty will prove crucial. Still love the car.

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At least it is still useful for your circumstance. It does not look like you have that hot of weather either.

hopefully soon, someone will put a quick charger on the path of your commute. Then a quick cup of coffee and you'll be on your way again. That's kind of scary though. I've only had my car 6 months, and I have a 60 mile commute! Definitely in my future, but with the mild PNW weather, I bet my battery will just skitch by and not be covered under the warranty. I'd say 5 years out. Maybe I should retire when my car will no longer make the round trip.

Yes its not very hot around here. Charging at work would work out great, if that could ever happen. Tustin Nissan has a quick charger and is near my work, but the idea to use it on a routine basis is not appealing.
Times I have charged outside has basically been for novelty. Only once I had to charge because I needed to.
The idea of retiring when my car can no longer make it to work is appealing.

johnrhansen said:

hopefully soon, someone will put a quick charger on the path of your commute. Then a quick cup of coffee and you'll be on your way again. That's kind of scary though. I've only had my car 6 months, and I have a 60 mile commute! Definitely in my future, but with the mild PNW weather, I bet my battery will just skitch by and not be covered under the warranty. I'd say 5 years out. Maybe I should retire when my car will no longer make the round trip.

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And the PNW is stupid with quick charging. If you have an Aerovironment on your trip, that $20/month plan would actually be a pretty good deal. You probably have at least a couple years before you can't make 60 miles though. If Nissan only sold in WA no one would even know these batteries had a degradation problem.

sksingh said:

Lost my third bar this morning, here are the details:

Mileage: 35989
AHr: 47.47
SOH: 72%
Hx: 65.77%
QC: 16
L1/L2: 1726

Click to expand...

Just wondering about the high number of L1/L2 charges, that works out to a charge every 20 miles or so. Were you topping the battery after it charged on a regular basis? Or were you charging at work just because it was there for free? I wonder how much of a difference the number of swallow discharge cycles makes on the battery. I have read a lot of the studies, most talk about depth of discharge and number of cycles but does anyone know if swallow cycles have the same affect on the battery as deep cycles?

biggsy said:

sksingh said:

Lost my third bar this morning, here are the details:

Mileage: 35989
AHr: 47.47
SOH: 72%
Hx: 65.77%
QC: 16
L1/L2: 1726

Click to expand...

Just wondering about the high number of L1/L2 charges, that works out to a charge every 20 miles or so. Were you topping the battery after it charged on a regular basis? Or were you charging at work just because it was there for free? I wonder how much of a difference the number of swallow discharge cycles makes on the battery. I have read a lot of the studies, most talk about depth of discharge and number of cycles but does anyone know if swallow cycles have the same affect on the battery as deep cycles?

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shallow cycles from 40 to 60 or from 60 to 80 don't count as any worse than half as many cycles from 40 to 80 but if you constantly cycle from 10 to 30 or from 80 to 100 that would be worse than any sort of charging in the middle of the range from 0 to 100.

charging at 10 to 30 means you are constantly leaving the battery low on charge

charging at 80 to 100 means you are constantly leaving the battery high on charge

Both low charge and high charge will age the battery more than charges in the middle of the range.

Take a watch of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxP0Cu00sZs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; if you have 60 minutes or so to spare. It's a very good presentation on what ages your battery.

biggsy said:

Just wondering about the high number of L1/L2 charges, that works out to a charge every 20 miles or so.

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If you use the car's timer to charge the car at night (like I do), the number of reported charges is twice what the actual number of such charge events actually is. When you plug the car in with the timer on, the pilot signal is sensed and the charge event starts and is recorded by the car, but then it immediately shuts off and waits for the timer to trigger the actual charge event later--thus the high reporting by the app. Using that number to estimate that someone has done "a charge every 20 miles or so" is not a reliable statement.

My car shows 2,712 L1/L2 charge events with the battery app, but I have owned the car only 1,075 days now, and I know for a fact that on the majority of those days, the car was only charged once during off-peak hours late at night using the timer. That accounts for 2,150 of the reported charge events. The other 562 events were the "ad hoc" charging I did over the last 3 years during the daytime hours without using the timer. And some of these ad-hoc charging events were also "double-reported" since I would sometimes forget to push the "immediate charge" button BEFORE plugging it in, and the fact that the timer was set would cause it to shut off until I reached back in the car and pushed the button.

TT

dhanson865 said:

charging at 10 to 30 means you are constantly leaving the battery low on charge

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Why is this a bad thing? 10 to 30 I would guess would be in the 3.65-3.75V range which should be well higher than anything that could cause trouble. Not that I'm advocating this and the effect is probably minimal... but spending more hours at 3.7V may actually be better long term than spending the time at 3.9xV (50-70%)
Yes spending a lot of time in turtle mode (3.0-3.3V 4-6Gids) may be unwise but certainly VLBW (3.6V 24Gids) shouldn't be problematic (for cell longevity) and may actually be slightly beneficial.. albeit not very practical. ?

GregH said:

dhanson865 said:

charging at 10 to 30 means you are constantly leaving the battery low on charge

Click to expand...

Why is this a bad thing? 10 to 30 I would guess would be in the 3.65-3.75V range which should be well higher than anything that could cause trouble. Not that I'm advocating this and the effect is probably minimal... but spending more hours at 3.7V may actually be better long term than spending the time at 3.9xV (50-70%)
Yes spending a lot of time in turtle mode (3.0-3.3V 4-6Gids) may be unwise but certainly VLBW (3.6V 24Gids) shouldn't be problematic (for cell longevity) and may actually be slightly beneficial.. albeit not very practical. ?

Click to expand...

I'm talking SOC actual 10% which is displayed as --- on the 2013/2014 Leaf dash. See http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=14142" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for actual voltages and soc at low levels. In his case the 10% actual soc is more like 3.6V.

From his post the SOC comparisons I'm highlighting are:

LBW dash soc 18% actual soc 25%
VLBW dash soc 8% actual soc 14.6%
change to dash soc --- actual soc 10%
Turtle dash soc ---% actual soc 1.4%

It's been stated many times many ways that very low state of charge is hard on lithium ion batteries. It's also been stated many times many ways that for usability (avoiding sitting on the side of the road) it's good to have a buffer.

If you are driving to 10% actual SOC you are driving past two levels of battery warnings and the next event is the car turtling. Not something I'd recommend doing for the daily habit.

I'm not sure I'll catch all the issues in this post with driving at low SOC but for one if you never charge above 30% soc you'll end up with unbalanced cells in your battery pack since the car balances at the top of the charge cycle you'd have to do some occasional 100% charges leaving the car plugged up well past the normal end of charging to give the system time to balance.

If you didn't balance the pack you might find your car going from VLBW to turtle without much, if any, warning in between the two events after it gets out of balance.

ttweed said:

biggsy said:

Just wondering about the high number of L1/L2 charges, that works out to a charge every 20 miles or so.

Click to expand...

If you use the car's timer to charge the car at night (like I do), the number of reported charges is twice what the actual number of such charge events actually is.

TT

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Thanks TT and dhanson, I had not thought about the timer showing two cycles and the info from dhanson is what I was looking for. The youtube video is a bit long, but interesting.

dhanson865 said:

It's been stated many times many ways that very low state of charge is hard on lithium ion batteries.

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Not nearly as often as it's been shown that higher voltages are problematic.
From all that I've read, the detrimental low voltages are in the sub 2.5V range which a Leaf couldn't reach if you tried.
3.6V would certainly not be considered a low voltage. I usually don't hit 345.6 resting volts until at or very near VLBW.

[edit] P.S. according to the thread you referenced, 10% SOC on the 13/14 dash was 30 Gids, 3.725V!
On the same chart, 3.6V isn't reached until 13 Gids, well below VLBW.

Yes I charge my car on automatic timer between 12 midnight and 6 am. When I plug in, the car goes into charging mode momentarily and then stops.

I have yet to hit turtle mode on my car, very seldom do I hit VLB. I charge to 100 % and by the time I get home I am down to the two red bars.

I can say 95% or more the charging has been from two bars to 100%.

After I lost my second bar within a month of the first bar, I charge my car within 20 min of full charge.

It took 9 months for my third bar to disappear.

Temperatures over 80F seem to accelerate battery degradation more than any other normal use factor.

GregH said:

[edit] P.S. according to the thread you referenced, 10% SOC on the 13/14 dash was...

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When are you going to get it through your head that I wasn't talking dash SOC %?

10% actual SOC is all I was talking about, I don't care what the voltage was at dash 10%.

Updated readings as of 19June2014

AHr 44.73
SOH 68%
Hx 61.46%
Mileage 38260

Fourth bar loss is imminent.
Question is whether it is beneficial to delay the warranty replacement.
Welcome any feedback.
Thanks