DCQC to 80% on 2011/12 Leafs

Here in New Zealand.we have started to see more DCQC being installed with the first in our capital city Wellington opened two days ago. We have an issue with the charge finish level, especially when the DCQC is set to 80% on the 2011-2012 Leafs (sourced via Japan) where the charger will report 80% SOC but Leaf Spy and the car range display indicates less. The 2013+ models don't seem to have this issue.

This effect has now been seen on two different makes of CHAdeMO DCQC. I have posted more details under a related topic which goes into this type of detail at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=456708#p456708. I have repeated the question here as that other post may not be very visible and we would appreciate any advice or references if others have been down this path before.

I'm only really familiar with two makes of DCQC station: Blink and Aerovironment. The Blink chargers ask the user to select some multiple of ten percent of their vehicle's full charge. Using them to charge both a 2011 and a 2012 LEAF, I found that after they believed they'd reached whatever the prearranged charging goal was, the car's instruments would show only about 80% of that goal had been met. So I just routinely asked for 20% more than I wanted. The Aerovironment stations along the "West Coast Electric Highway" had no such adjustable "automatically stop here" point other than the car's reporting that it was 100% full. You just manually stopped the charge when you'd gotten enough.

My 2011 also doesn't communicate with Blink. There was a user in this forum, who I believe used a moniker something like queenbee. She commented on a post of mine years ago saying that the two systems didn't talk to each other and she and her husband did some testing to check it out. I did a quick search for the thread, but didn't come up with anything right away. I'll come back and search a bit more in a day or two when I have time.

I agree that the only solution is to set the Blink for much more than you need. If you need 100%, plan on spending some time at L2 to top off.

Quick charging always stopped early on my 2011 even though it had all required/recommended software updates. Setting Blink DCQC to charge to 100% would yield actual charge of around 80% SOC (measured by GID Meter and/or Leaf Spy) with some variation when charging stopped. The Blink units display the car's SOC while charging--they generally displayed about 20% higher than actual with the 2011, but match the dash display on the 2015 (also match SOC displayed on GID Meter and Leaf Spy).

Gerry

Thanks very much for these replies and it seems common across different types of DCQC. The two types here where this has been seen are Tritium Veefil and Delta.

One confusing aspect is when the chargers are set to go to max the charge has already tapered off significantly at the 80% stage (as reported on charger and 2013+ dash) so it isn't clear if the problem is the 80% charge level reported by Leaf Spy and is the car actually more fully charged. I understand the data must be coming from the car so seems different data points are used on the 2011/12 by CHAdeMO than used by Leaf Spy.

I have found an older post at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=363321#p363321 which indicates that the problem was made worse with the Aug 2013 P3227 update which would be disappointing as there was hope there would be some remedy.

This is a fantastic resource. Hopefully our cars ex the Japan domestic market aren't too much different to the large numbers in the US so that we can continue to learn from that experience.

dwl said:

One confusing aspect is when the chargers are set to go to max the charge has already tapered off significantly at the 80% stage (as reported on charger and 2013+ dash) so it isn't clear if the problem is the 80% charge level reported by Leaf Spy and is the car actually more fully charged. I understand the data must be coming from the car so seems different data points are used on the 2011/12 by CHAdeMO than used by Leaf Spy.

Click to expand...

No problem here. The amount of charge the battery can accept drops off significantly as the charge gets to approx 80%. Its not a programming limit, but rather a battery chemistry limit.

Aussie said:

dwl said:

One confusing aspect is when the chargers are set to go to max the charge has already tapered off significantly at the 80% stage (as reported on charger and 2013+ dash) so it isn't clear if the problem is the 80% charge level reported by Leaf Spy and is the car actually more fully charged. I understand the data must be coming from the car so seems different data points are used on the 2011/12 by CHAdeMO than used by Leaf Spy.

Click to expand...

No problem here. The amount of charge the battery can accept drops off significantly as the charge gets to approx 80%. Its not a programming limit, but rather a battery chemistry limit.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. The issue about charge tapering is understood but this is about the 2011/12 models not correctly interacting with the DCQC while the 2013+ seem to report charge level correctly. There is an answer in another thread at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=13349&start=680#p456766