Little Battery Change With Time

Hi,

I have Leaf Spy Pro (thank you, Turbo3!) and use it with my 2013 Leaf SV (new June 2013). I started using it after having the car for a few months. In November 2013, I charged the battery to 100% and LeafSpyPro showed 245 GIDs. Nine months later, August 2014, I charged the battery to 100% and LeafSpyPro showed 246 GIDs. Although I treat the battery really gently and live in a cold climate, I expected more degradation than that.

Do you have any theories why this could be?

Here's some of my theories:

Possible Explanation #1: Battery capacity hasn't changed measurably in 9 months because I live in a colder climate, have only put <10,000 miles on the car, almost always charge to 80%, and almost never discharge below 2 bars.

Possible Explanation #2: My two readings are not comparable because one was in August and the other was in November (colder air temperature). Perhaps the Leaf charges to a different point depending on outside air temperature or reads GIDs differently at different temperatures.

Possible Explanation #3: The Leaf Charger doesn't shut off at exactly the same point every time. There is some uncertainty in GIDs at full charge because there is some uncertainty in full charge. So I may have a little bit of battery capacity loss, but don't see it because of randomness in the measurement.

Possible Explanation #4: The battery degraded a lot in the first few months but further degradation will be much slower.

What do you think? Thank you for your help.

Bob

People where wonder where you live. Perhaps put your zip code or something in your profile.

#3 is some what correct. 100% charge does fluctuate some. Most consistent after cells are well balanced.

But new battery readings often don't stabilize for four to six weeks so your early reading is near meaningless. You need a graph, with weekly data to really know much. See battery replacement thread, lots of discussion there.

But also some 2013 have read low all along too. Even though their range is normal.

Tim,

Thanks for the ideas. My first reading was after a few months of ownership/use.

Bob