Quick Charge 80%...........

I have a brand new SL and I am lucky enough to live near a bunch of QC locations in Chicago. Everything I have seen and read says that it will charge up to 80% but I put mine on the charger yesterday and it went above 80%. Am I supposed to monitor it and keep it from going above 80% to avoid damaging it or will it "self regulate".

On a hopefully unrelated note, my wife drove it today and while it said almost 80 mile range she only drove about 25 in traffic using B mode and econ and the Leaf now says it is down 20.....is this normal?

thanks, John

John,

Congratulations on your new car. The Leaf is a great vehicle, but charging and range are two confusing aspects.

It is fact that charging a battery to 100% and discharging to 0% will stress the battery and could lead to shorter life. No one has statistics that say whether the life is 1% shorter or 50% shorter when you always do that.

To be safe, don't leave your car for long periods with 0% or 100% charge. If you are parking the car for a few days, leave it between 30% and 60%. That seems to be the sweet spot for minimum stress to the battery.

Older Leafs had a feature to stop at 80%. Nissan removed that feature on newer models. Some hypothesize that Nissan concluded that it didn't affect battery life. Others hypothesize that it was confusing owners, so Nissan simplified things. Again, we just don't know.

For your car, if you want to baby it and try to get as much life as possible, you can try to stop charging before it is 100%, either by using the charge timer or by watching the clock.

As to the range left in the battery, we all moan about the dashboard display giving bogus readings. Rather than trying to explain why it works badly, my best advice is to ignore the dashboard range left display and instead pay attention to % charge remaining. You should get >60 miles at highway speed and >80 miles of city driving from a fully charged battery, so back calculate that from the % charge displayed. Also figure 10-20% less range if running the heat or A/C.

Sorry if this isn't clear. It is a confusing subject. Please keep asking questions and others will explain things better that I can.

Bob

MaximumOtter said:

I have a brand new SL and I am lucky enough to live near a bunch of QC locations in Chicago. Everything I have seen and read says that it will charge up to 80% but I put mine on the charger yesterday and it went above 80%. Am I supposed to monitor it and keep it from going above 80% to avoid damaging it or will it "self regulate".

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The car's system has the final say as to how the charging goes, so you're not risking any damage by leaving it connected to a QC. Different models of QC station behave differently; for example, the Blink QC stations prompt you to enter a "when do you want the charge to stop?" value as some multiple of ten percent of ... something, but the Blink overestimates how charged the car is by about 20% (if you want to charge to 80% according to your LEAF's measures, tell the Blink to go to 100%). The Aerovironment stations are simpler: they just keep charging until the car finally hits 100% and shuts itself off, or the driver manually terminates the charge. There are probably other behaviors, too, like "charge for finite amounts of time or max charge reached".

Your expectation that the charge would stop at 80% may have come from the fact that the LEAF's charging system will ramp the charging rate down fairly quickly after the battery reaches 80% (Not too long after that, the charging rate drops down to the equivalent of L2 charging). So in order to be able to promise an attractively short recharging session, the QC performance is stated in terms of how long it takes to charge from empty to 80%. But, as I said, you can QC to a higher state of charge than that, if you don't mind the speed dropping like a rock.

MaximumOtter said:

On a hopefully unrelated note, my wife drove it today and while it said almost 80 mile range she only drove about 25 in traffic using B mode and econ and the Leaf now says it is down 20.....is this normal?

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Can't tell whether you mean that her trip appeared to reduce the "Guess-O-Meter" reading by 20 miles after driving an actual distance of 25 (no complaints in that case, though, right?), or the GOM reading reduced by 20 after driving an unspecified distance at 25MPH, or whether the GOM went from promising 80 to promising only 20 after driving either 25miles or some unknown distance at 25MPH. The "GOM display reduced by 60 miles over an actual 25 mile distance" scenario would be the most worrisome, of course. I'd have to say that was a poor showing even for a GOM. If that promise of 80 came after a prolonged period of regeneration, or the "in traffic" condition you mention means "in snail's-pace stop-and-go traffic, with the heater roaring at near max all the while", or both, it could happen, though.

Ok, I'm slowly learning thanks guys. Good to know I'm not wrecking the battery

The QC stations I am using are made by efacec (operated by nrg eVgo) and they take the No Charge to Charge plan. Unless I am missing something, no timer or any control besides start and stop. I took a picture while it was charging and besides time and battery percent( 21min and 73%), it read 8,53 kWh energy. I'm still unclear as to wether that's the amount of charge or rate of charge...........

In terms of range it dropped about 55 range after only driving about 25 which was alarming. Based on other things I am reading, it's not terribly surprising considering it was stop and go traffic on the highway and the wind chill is below zero. It wasn't full fully charged and it was saying about 3 bars left down from 10 I think.....at some point the math will make sense to me.

Big thing I am hearing is that I shouldn't trust the GOM but rely on the bars and the good news is that 90 percent of our driving will be within 3-4 miles of QC station. Wife and I will probably relax after a few trips of the normal routine. Bad news is, condo building and I'm not sure about getting our level 2 charger(free one coming from Nissan) put in. Any good Chicago vendors people might know of that do big buildings?

MaximumOtter said:

I took a picture while it was charging and besides time and battery percent( 21min and 73%), it read 8.53 kWh energy. I'm still unclear as to wether that's the amount of charge or rate of charge...........

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kWh is the total amount of charge that was put into the battery. We have access to 21-22 kWh of capacity in the Leaf battery, so 8.53 kWh means you charged about 40% more into it than when you started. kW is the rate of charge, which is 6.6kW when you use most Level2 chargers, but varies depending upon the type of L3 charger and the Leaf programming, but can approach 40-50 kw, if I recall.
As others will tell you, the Guess-o-meter makes (usually) over-optimistic guesses at your remaining range based on your recent consumption. If you start driving faster, crank up the heater, go up hills, or start driving through water or snow on the road, the miles will click off the GOM much faster.
Don't worry about over-charging the battery, it can't happen, especially when you are going to drive the car right away after a quick charge. Letting the battery sit for days at 100% or extremely discharged will though.

Older Leafs had a feature to stop at 80%. Nissan removed that feature on newer models. Some hypothesize that Nissan concluded that it didn't affect battery life. Others hypothesize that it was confusing owners, so Nissan simplified things. Again, we just don't know.

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Then there are most of us, who hypothesize that when the EPA lowered the rated range of the Leaf, based on the 80% charge option, Nissan decided it would rather have a higher range estimate, and eliminated the feature.