Used leaf, 12 bars, leafspy reports 16.8kwh

Hi all,

I'm slightly freaking out since I got leaf spy.
I recently bought an used leaf with 17k miles. It had all 12 bars reporting 85 miles on the dashboard.

However, leafspy reports that at full charge i have only 16.8kwh and 217 gids which is way too low.

How can a car show 12 bars with these abysmal leafspy values?

I hope this has an explanation

TheMarco said:

Hi all,

I'm slightly freaking out since I got leaf spy.
I recently bought an used leaf with 17k miles. It had all 12 bars reporting 85 miles on the dashboard.

However, leafspy reports that at full charge i have only 16.8kwh and 217 gids which is way too low.

How can a car show 12 bars with these abysmal leafspy values?

I hope this has an explanation

Click to expand...

There may be several:
1. You're not looking at the right bars - the bars that represent battery health (the capacity bars) are the thin band on the right, the wide bars is the "fuel" bars that go up and down as you charge-discharge, they are similar to the gas level gauge in a regular car.
2. The battery computer may have been reset before you bought it.
3. The car hasn't been driven for long time and sat while the battery was deteriorating.
4. One or several bad battery modules.

If not #1 and #4 it sounds like your battery is down to 75-80% capacity, you should really have 10-11 capacity bars or will have soon as the computer re-learns the true state of the pack.

Out of curiosity, what are the AHr, SOH and Hx values?

What model year was it? Where did it reside previously?

My '13 SV w/all 12 capacity bars at full charge is (IIRC) somewhere past 250 gids, I believe 259, at best.

Where did you buy the car? If from a dealer, you may have legal recourse, although it wouldn't be an easy case.

It's a 2013. Lease return. 17300 miles. It has all 12 bars, dashboard shows 100%, 85 miles range in eco.

102% SOC, 16.8KwH, 217 GIDS

I'm new to leaf spy. Where do I get the other values?

I bought the car based on all bars being available on the dashboard because I had learned that is a good indicator. Was I wrong?

I got it from a used car dealership who has a lot of lease return leafs and volts.

bottom left of leafspy there are 4 circles/dots (3 white / 1 black or 3 black / 1 white). As you tap on them the 1 moves among the other 3. The position of the unique dot is the screen number

Screen 1 has all the cell values (96 vertical lines) the top of that screen has AHr, SOH%, Hx% and that is all you need to know your battery health.

You don't have to have a full charge to look at those numbers.

Wait found some more:

SOH says 89% HX 0,00% Ahr 0.00%
0 QC's, 801 L1/L2's odo 17333miles

At 17K miles and 0 quick charges, I would expect there to be 12 "thin" bars on a 2013, but your GID reading does sound low.

I have a 2013 with 32K miles and 0 quick charges, and the gid reading at 100% charge ranges from 261 to 279 GIDs depending on temp and recent charging patter. But I live near Boston and the battery is 50 to 80 degrees year round, which makes a BIG difference.

Please answer these questions:

1. How many thick bars, and how many thin bars on the right side of the dash?

2. What state do you live in, and what state did the car live before you got it?

I have 12 thick bars and 12 thin bars. That's what made me pick this car. I'm in NorCal. Car came from CA as well as far as I know (old plates were CA as well)

This car has obviously been reset before resale.
When you can answer the question "how may Ahr?" in LeafSpy, you can then estimate how many capacity bars it should have.
Of course, eventually the car instrumentation will "fix" itself.

So after a while I'll start losing bars?
Since it's supposed to have 24KWh this means almost a third is gone!

Will it possibly get me into warranty battery replacement territory?

I'm seriously bummed out here.

TheMarco said:

So after a while I'll start losing bars?
Since it's supposed to have 24KWh this means almost a third is gone!

Will it possibly get me into warranty battery replacement territory?

I'm seriously bummed out here.

Click to expand...

Yes, Yes, and Yes.
I'd say you're about half-way to qualifying for a warranty replacement, but that all depends how hot it is in NoCal the next couple of years and how much you drive it. There are plenty of threads to read on the topic, but the first thing to do is get your LeafSpy tracking going.

TheMarco said:

So after a while I'll start losing bars?
Since it's supposed to have 24KWh this means almost a third is gone!

Will it possibly get me into warranty battery replacement territory?

I'm seriously bummed out here.

Click to expand...

Brand new only about 22.2-22.6 kWh would have been available to you.

You mentioned the Guess o meter says 85 miles. How far can you actually drive till you're down low?

My non expert opinion on how to get an idea of which numbers are right or wrong would be to reset the miles/kWh, drive it from 100% at as close to a holding a steady miles/kWh as possible till you get the VLBW, plan to be around a quick charger. See how many miles you traveled and your avg mile/kWh then see how many kWh go back into the battery.

I would still suspect a battery reset and the leaf spy numbers being accurate but doing the above also has the benefit of teaching you how efficient you can drive and how far that can take you.

I haven't driven it to empty yet. Emptiest I've had it is 29miles left on the GuessOMeter.

What I do know is that the amount of miles lost on the GuessOMeter matched up very well with the amount of miles I had driven (give or take a few miles but I remember it being quite close).

What is the smartest way to drive it to near dead without having to call a tow truck? Just circling around a charger spot or home near the end I guess?

TheMarco said:

Wait found some more:

SOH says 89% HX 0,00% Ahr 0.00%
0 QC's, 801 L1/L2's odo 17333miles

Click to expand...

The bolded values are invalid.

Please make sure you put the car in READY mode (green car w/arrows) and wait a least a few seconds for all those values to become valid.

TheMarco said:

What I do know is that the amount of miles lost on the GuessOMeter matched up very well with the amount of miles I had driven (give or take a few miles but I remember it being quite close).

Click to expand...

You will find they are not once your transition from say slow city driving to highway driving or start going up an incline. You'll find the GOM dropping multiple miles for each mile traveled.

TheMarco said:

What is the smartest way to drive it to near dead without having to call a tow truck? Just circling around a charger spot or home near the end I guess?

Click to expand...

Make sure that charging station actually works/is reliable (e.g. via Plugshare first). If you want to get guidance on when you're near dead, on Leaf Spy screen 4 (http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Leaf_Spy_Pro#Screen_4), in the lower right, cycle thru that until it says until 5% (not until LBW or VLBW). Then you can use the + and - buttons to dial in the miles/kWh.

Reset your car's miles/kWh display. If you need to make it say 30 miles, you'll want to use the +/- buttons to give you the miles/kWh you need to achieve to make it at least 30 miles and leave 5% reserve. Let's say it tells you 4.5 miles/kWh. Then, you need to drive in a a way that you are doing 4.5 miles/kWh or better.

Back to what I think you're asking.... you can keep driving near a charging station or home until you hit VLBW (2nd warning). Then, be careful not to get too far from home at that point. You could just go forward/back on your driveway or sit in your car w/the heater running full blast.

Ok things get weirder. Apparently i can't get reliable readings. I just went on a 4mile drive. It said 16.8kwh and 100% / 85 miles on guess o meter.

When i got home I unplugged the bt module, restarted my phone, put it back in. Boom, 18.1 remaining. Whut? Guess o meter now 83 / 95%.

Almost sounds like it would be close to 19kwh full?

Am I using these tools wrong?

The two numbers you need most from Leaf Spy are the State Of Health (Hx will also do) and AH. These can only be read if the app is used with the car Ready to Drive but in Park.

No point in saying "12 bars charged" as they all charge to 12 fuel bars, regardless of capacity - that's a relative measure.

SOH:89%
Ahr: 58.61
Hx: 87.13

You can see in my signature the Ahr reading when I lost my 2nd capacity bar. New, the battery would show ~66Ahr. The first capacity bar drops after a 15% capacity loss. The rest after 6.25% loss each. Unfortunately, we did not have access to Ahr when the my first bar dropped.

TheMarco said:

SOH:89%
Ahr: 58.61
Hx: 87.13

Click to expand...