Bar loss when parked on roadtrip

I don't think it's coincidence that I have 1 less bar of capacity after a stop for food (30 - 60 minutes). Park and power off with say 6 bars, then returning at start up, it's showing 5 bars. It's happening quite often this year and never happened in the first 2 years. Anyone else seeing this behavior?

Very common.
The only time the LEAF has a pretty accurate measurement of stored energy is under no load on the battery.
The rest of the time it is tracking energy used to estimate stored energy.
Once you stop and take the load off the battery it now gets a more accurate measurement.
Depending on power usage, regen, temperature, etc. it is not unusual to lose a status of charge bar when you restart.

On one occasion after a fairly long drive I lost two.
Get LEAF Spy, you will have a more precise number than the rough bars.
But that # does sometimes drop after you restart.

Has to do with how the LEAF displays fuel bars. When driving it will show the current bar until it is used up. After turning the car off it will calculate a new average for the bar and if less than half "full" it will not show it. So, "losing" a fuel bar after turning the car off is very common.

A related issue for those of us with 80% charging: at 80% bar 10 is only slightly more than half full. So it drops off very quickly when driving. And sometimes an 80% charge will only show nine bars, especially as the battery loses capacity (the fuel bars are being adjusted so that twelve bars is always "100%" — actually 93-95%).

The twelve fuel bars are such a coarse fuel gauge that it was very helpful when Nissan added the SOC meter to the 2013 and later LEAFs. Many of us with older LEAFs use "Gid" meters to get a (much) more precise measurement of fuel levels. It completely changes how one uses the bottom of the battery capacity and increases the usable range without any "range anxiety".

dgpcolorado said:

Has to do with how the LEAF displays fuel bars. When driving it will show the current bar until it is used up. After turning the car off it will calculate a new average for the bar and if less than half "full" it will not show it. So, "losing" a fuel bar after turning the car off is very common.

Click to expand...

+1

This is known as "hysteresis". Basically, the LEAF's charge display has transitions between adjacent bars at lower levels when in READY mode than when OFF (and therefore possibly charging). This approach prevents the annoyance of charge bars flickering on and off as you go up and down hills, unless you are on very large "hills" like they have in Colorado.

Thank you for all the answers. I finally decided to join the crowd and ordered the bluetooth scan tool. I can monitor and talk GID's with you all now.

Do you normally charge to 80%? After a long period of this, in my experience, the cell balancing suffers. The "cure" was to run a 100% charge, and leave plugged in for several hours afterwards to allow re-balancing to complete. If the balance was far off, this may need to be repeated on the next charge.

I find that one of these extended 100% charge sessions helps keep things accurate, when done monthly -- whether I need it or not.

Maybe one of the reasons Nissan decided to ditch the 80% mode?

Nubo said:

Do you normally charge to 80%? After a long period of this, in my experience, the cell balancing suffers. The "cure" was to run a 100% charge, and leave plugged in for several hours afterwards to allow re-balancing to complete. If the balance was far off, this may need to be repeated on the next charge.

I find that one of these extended 100% charge sessions helps keep things accurate, when done monthly -- whether I need it or not.

Maybe one of the reasons Nissan decided to ditch the 80% mode?

Click to expand...

I usually charge to 100% every other week or so. Usually on accident…
I typically charge to about 90-95%, just because the last ~5% and balance cycle take over an hour. That time could easily give another driver 20-30mi of range, where I'd only get… 5?