New Leaf Owner - Question on battery temp gauge

New 2014 leaf owner (2 days ago) - this is likely a dumb question:
Is it normal for the battery temp gauge to barely budge?
Yesterday after driving over 70+ miles in 80f weather I took the car down to “---“ on the range display then went home and put it on the trickle charger (level 2 unit on order) – did not wait for it cool down. I checked the batter temp while charging that evening and it showed 6 bars.

This morning I disconnected the charger at 90% and checked the battery to see it was still at 6 bars (this is now about 8 hours after being put on the level 1). Next, I waited about 4 hours I then checked the batter temp again; still at 6 bars. It is warmer today (about 85f).

Car is in northern Delaware
2014 SL

Yes. Battery bars have a very wide range of temperatures.

If you want to know battery temperature, get LEAF Spy.
The built in LEAF gauges are completely inadequate.
LEAF Spy Pro at $15 is a great value.
Data logging, tire pressures with calibration, charging power and status of charge curves, etc.

Drove LEAF 30 months without it.
Looking back it was archaic.

Battery temperature bars are close to useless due to wide temperature range. For example, 5 bars on a new Leaf is for temperature around 50-75 degrees F., 6 bars is 75-98 degrees F. Agree with getting Leaf Spy (link in my signature).

+1

Have yet to see mine move off of 6 bars.

The bars aren't precise, but don't start ignoring them. I don't charge the car if it has more than six temp bars, and don't charge unless I have to above five. They are meant to be a rough guide, and work ok as such.

BTW, the other reason they don't move much is that the car has a big, massive battery pack with no active cooling system - just passive air cooling. So when it sits or the air temp is close to pack temp, it can go for days without changing more than one bar.

thanks everyone; leafspy app looks super useful

really enjoying driving the leaf; its amazing to think what a game-changer this vehicle could be if the range was doubled...

TimLee said:

Yes. Battery bars have a very wide range of temperatures.

If you want to know battery temperature, get LEAF Spy.
The built in LEAF gauges are completely inadequate.
LEAF Spy Pro at $15 is a great value.
Data logging, tire pressures with calibration, charging power and status of charge curves, etc.

Drove LEAF 30 months without it.
Looking back it was archaic.

Click to expand...

Wait, can you really get charging power? So I can read exactly how much power is coming out of a quick charger?

pkulak said:

Wait, can you really get charging power? So I can read exactly how much power is coming out of a quick charger?

Click to expand...

Yes.
Several people had asked for power readout.
But Jim implemented it in a marvelous fashion with real time graph of power, status of charge %, and GIDS % on screen 2. Can save and recall the graphs.
Works for any level of charging.
The wonderful enhanced feature has been in the production version for two or three months.