Interpreting Leafspy results

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mikemn

New member
Joined
Aug 13, 2018
Messages
3
Location
Twin Cities, MN
I am confused about my Leafspy results from the past 4 months since purchasing my 2015 S. For the first 3 months, the SOH continually dropped. Then it jumped up by 4.5% in November/December. The only change was that we started L2 charging to 100% daily in early December vs. L1 charging to 80-90% typically in Aug/Sept/Oct/Nov.

Is it the change in charging habits or the much lower temp that is causing a significant boost in my SOH reading? I will be curious to see if it is a blip or remains at the end of January. Wished I didn't miss my November reading, but the wifi adapter I have had for years quit working with leaf spy so I got the LELink one and it is much more reliable.

Driving Habits same since purchased in August:
M/T/F - 28m commute me, W - 65m DW, Th - 75m DW/DD, S/Su - 40-60m around town.
Approx 1250m/mo

2015 S history:
Build date 9/2014 sold in ATL - unknown usage or charging.
Auctioned and moved to MN in 1/2017 with 19250m - L2 charged daily to 100% with 50m commute. Primary weekend vehicle when not traveling long distances. Parked in the garage.
Purchased from the second owner 8/25/2018 with 41408m - L1 charged for first 3 months, typically to 80-90%, simply because it wasn't fast enough to get to 100%. L2 charging to 100% daily for the past 3 weeks. Parked garage in winter, outside in summer.

Leaf spy results:

Date 8/31 - avg hi/lo outside temp 81/62 in August
Mileage 41572
SOC 0.745
AHr 56.27
SOH 0.9061
Hx 0.8346
QC 70
L1/L2 1528

Date 9/30 - avg outside temp 72/52 in september
Mileage 43129
SOC 0.726
AHr 54.27
SOH 0.8739
Hx 0.7943
QC 74
L1/L2 1573

Date 10/31 - avg outside temp 58/40 in October
Mileage 44416
SOC 0.598
AHr 55.16
SOH 0.8866
Hx 0.8118
QC 77
L1/L2 1616

Date 12/27 - avg outside temp 27/12 in december
Mileage 46543
SOC 0.744
AHr 57.75
SOH 0.93
Hx 0.8643
QC 86
L1/L2 1728
 
My experience with 2015 SL is that LEAF Spy numbers improve with high-rate L2 charging and aggressive driving and drop with gentle driving and low-rate L2 charging (have not used L1 except to try the EVSE with a portable generator). Also, DCQC always improves LEAF Spy numbers on my 2015 for a while. I suspect the high current in the reverse direction is beneficial as long as battery temperature is not excessively high. I have always charged to 100% and usually discharge to a few miles after VLBW (very low battery warning) each day.

Therefore, I believe your improved LEAF Spy numbers are due to several DCQC's and L2 charging.
 
GerryAZ said:
Therefore, I believe your improved LEAF Spy numbers are due to several DCQC's and L2 charging.

I agree.

LEAF Spy number changes less than 3% are probably not meaningful. Expect that sort of variability for no real reason.
 
Thanks for the responses. I will keep tracking. Hoping for 3% or less degradation per year, so whether it is at 87% or 93% SOH today I am satisfied with the battery health thus far.
 
Also remember, the numbers you see on LeafSpy are translations of data reported by the computer in the car. The translation has been done over several years of hard work by Turbo3 and others who have reverse engineered the data coming out of the computer. Nissan has not given ANY help to those trying to interpret the gazillions of 0's and 1's coming from the computer. So there are certain data that remain difficult to interpret.
 
Remember LEAFSpy is a reverse engineered hack, and is based on the best guesses of hobbyists in the community. About the only data that it provides that can be verified are the OBDII messages that are standardized across vehicles. The other data, like battery info, that is unique to the LEAF is IP that belongs to Nissan and they are not going to be providing any information about what it means. In fact they will be encrypting their data in future releases of the LEAF.

LEAFSpy is a good piece of SW but it is purely for entertainment. Using it to try in make meaningful interpretation or diagnostics of your LEAF is a fools errand.
 
Thanks for the heads-up. I think I just decided my Leaf is never going back to any Nissan dealership unless it needs warranty repair. The last thing I want is for some software 'update' to be done that would disable the capability of LeafSpy to give me data about what is going on in the car.

Personally, I'd like to see OBDII regulations that require EV's to conform to a minimum mandated command set to report various parameters to any OBDII compliant reader, as I believe ICE cars do today. Having a manufacturer try to hide that information behind encryption doesn't sit well with me.
 
The issue isn't keeping you from messing with stuff that may get you into trouble with, it is more to do with the security and performance of the car's network buss.

The systems of today's cars, especially those that have safety and autonomous systems woven together take an enormous amount of bandwidth to do what they do. As these systems become more integrated together to support higher levels of autonomous services the need for bandwidth is paramount. I have spoken with several systems engineers for Nissan and other manufactures, and their complaint is that enthusiast sniffer software is usually poorly written when it comes to network traffic optimization, and can slow the cars network significantly. This is bad especially if systems that manage AEC, DCC or lane keeping, cannot respond to a safety situation because of network congestion.

Further there is a huge amount of paranoia (justifiably) by all manufacturers of those that would infiltrate a cars systems to do harm.

If you look at this from the manufacturers point of view, then you can understand why they would not publish their vehicles API, and is the key issue in the move to both faster vehicle networks, and encryption. It's really got nothing to do with the desires of the enthusiast driver to satisfy their curiosity. Technically and legally they are under no obligation to provide the customer with anything more than a black box product.

As far as expanding the OBDII regulations, it is unlikely that it will happen because OBDII is targeted directly at emissions systems performance. This is why expanding the API for vehicles that do not emit any emissions is a non-starter.
 
OrientExpress said:
LEAFSpy is a good piece of SW but it is purely for entertainment. Using it to try in make meaningful interpretation or diagnostics of your LEAF is a fools errand.

I beg to differ.

LEAFSpy has both some instrumentation that the LEAF should have, and some worthwhile lower level controls. Major flaws in the LEAFs user level controls are:

Temperatures should be in degrees, at least C. How else can I know how fast to expect a QC?

GOM should allow user to set what consumption is expected, and give miles to something other than empty battery.

Nav system tell you if you will run out of battery before getting to the destination. What if I want to be at Low Battery Warning or above at the destination? Or VLBW? Or at some some percentage? Nav system should allow me to set these as goals

Tire pressure readout for all tires.


Lower level diagnostics and controls include:

Cell voltage/balance.

DTCs.

Door lock controls, sound controls, more...
 
Well, I've used LeafSpy for several years. One real world benefit for me is that I drive below VLBW fairly frequently. The GOM gives NO data for very low battery, which seems to me to be the opposite of what it should do. If I am 5 miles from home, knowing that I have only 4 miles of juice left is VERY important to me. Additionally, if I am 0.5 miles from home, I care a LOT if I only have 0.4 vs 0.6 miles of juice left.

Definitely not just "entertainment."
 
stjohnh said:
Also remember, the numbers you see on LeafSpy are translations of data reported by the computer in the car. The translation has been done over several years of hard work by Turbo3 and others who have reverse engineered the data coming out of the computer. Nissan has not given ANY help to those trying to interpret the gazillions of 0's and 1's coming from the computer. So there are certain data that remain difficult to interpret.
Yep.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=26713&p=539274&hilit=turbo3+soh#p539274 has a pointer from a post to Turbo3 (author of Leaf Spy) himself about SOH and Hx. It also includes some origins what is now rendered as SOH and Hx.

Here are my thoughts on the values that the tool can render:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=532929#p532929
http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=510091#p510091

BTW, regarding module voltages displayed by the app, I suspect they're reasonably accurate (within whatever the error is of the BMS) given the work that Turbo3 did at https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17470 and https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=380865#p380865.

I agree w/the other comments by stjohnh and WetEV. There is plenty of useful info (some can only be used for some rough comparisons such as AHr, SOH and Hx) and some really useful functionality in Leaf Spy that goes FAR beyond entertainment. There's probably only one person (well, no more than single digit # of people) here on MNL who chooses to dismiss it... Who knows if he/they "secretly" uses the app anyway?
 
mikemn said:
I am confused about my Leafspy results from the past 4 months since purchasing my 2015 S. For the first 3 months, the SOH continually dropped. Then it jumped up by 4.5% in November/December. The only change was that we started L2 charging to 100% daily in early December vs. L1 charging to 80-90% typically in Aug/Sept/Oct/Nov.

Is it the change in charging habits or the much lower temp that is causing a significant boost in my SOH reading? I will be curious to see if it is a blip or remains at the end of January. Wished I didn't miss my November reading, but the wifi adapter I have had for years quit working with leaf spy so I got the LELink one and it is much more reliable.

It's the anomaly of not knowing "how much there actually is" if you have not been at the borders (very full, very empty) for a long time.
Computer tries to estimate as well as it can but it doesn't actually know as there is a small measuring error allowed when energy enters and leaves the battery. So computer often estimates that it is worse than it actually might be. And when temperature gets to around 4-5 temp bars and some full charges or rapid charges are made, then there is some new data for computer to estimate actual battery life.
One of the health parameters is "how well does battery accept charge" at some specific temperature range. And that can be measured only when rapidly charging.
So what actually happened is that with full/rapid charges new data determined that actually, battery is not that bad.
Newer numbers will likely stay that way until next summer. It will drop again if no full charges / rapid charges are made for weeks and weeks.

Battery health doesn't fall as rapidly as computer estimates and battery health doesn't get better later on. It just.. is as it actually is :lol:

The newer number after full charges/rapid charges should be more precise to real condition of that battery.
 
Whoa, as it so happens my Leaf's battery capacity reading spiked up after a recent long distance trip across Florida (Jacksonville to St Petersburg). It had been hovering around 46.4 AHr for Nov/Dec. When I checked on Dec 26th it was back up to 47.7. Today is it 47.5.

Perhaps it knows my 8 bar battery capacity warranty expires in June and its pumping it up? hehe, j/k.

Just sharing my experience. I don't really have any explanation.
 
Battery health and capacity numbers in Leaf Spy are subject to variation, but the real value of Leaf Spy Pro is being able to read and clear DTCs (diagnostic trouble codes). It has saved me the hassle of having to call for a tow truck on several occasions with both 2011 and 2015. Communication errors between the car and DCQC or L1/L2 charging stations can set DTCs in the LEAF which will prevent it from charging at other stations until the codes are cleared. Being able to clear those codes has saved me the hassle of having the car towed to the dealer several times. As far as I know, Leaf Spy is the only realistic alternative to Nissan's Consult 3+ for communicating with the LEAF and clearing DTCs. I would consider purchasing Consult 3+ from Nissan if I could get the necessary hardware and software for a reasonable price.

Orient Express: What do you recommend for an independent repair shop or DIY to troubleshoot and repair issues with the LEAF besides Leaf Spy Pro?

We need regulations that require EV manufacturers to comply with OBDII standard protocols so that DIY drivers could purchase commercial scan tools to work on them.
 
You heard it here first, folks: Knowing the Ahr remaining in the battery is a national security risk !! Or something.
LeafSpy is excellent (within the constraints of the Nissan BMS); future NIssan encryption of OBDII is BS and an attempt to cover up crappy battery tech; and OE is a shill.

'nuff said
 
GerryAZ said:
We need regulations that require EV manufacturers to comply with OBDII standard protocols so that DIY drivers could purchase commercial scan tools to work on them.

+1. I would guess OBDII was introduced as part of the mandated emissions tech at the time. I still remember hearing how carburetors and points were somehow better than all the new-fangled computerized fuel-injection stuff but I can't believe anyone still thinks that now days. Having OBDII readouts makes working on modern ICE cars pretty straight-forward. IMHO, even more information could be provided but I'm sure the auto manufacturers are balancing price vs utility and what is there is pretty good. Fortunately, EV's require much less maintenance than ICE cars but some sort of OBDEV standard would be a good thing, IMHO.
 
GerryAZ said:
I would consider purchasing Consult 3+ from Nissan if I could get the necessary hardware and software for a reasonable price.

Here's one;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/ORIGINAL-USED-CONSULT-3-PLUS-DIAGNOSTIC-SCANNER-SCAN-TOOL-WITH-VI2-INTERFACE/332937185291?hash=item4d849a480b:g:OD8AAOSwbihaLKET

If Nissan would even sell one not being a Nissan dealer, it would most likely cost $10K+.
Most proprietary OEM automotive diagnostic tools cost $15K-$20K and require a logon to the OEM for major functions.
 
OrientExpress said:
... Technically and legally they are under no obligation to provide the customer with anything more than a black box product.....
Perhaps. Hopefully we'll eventually get some meaningful "Right to Repair" legislation. Protecting the car's internal network is one thing. Refusing to provide essential information to end-users thereby forcing them to use your overpriced proprietary repair facilities is another.
 
goldbrick said:
GerryAZ said:
We need regulations that require EV manufacturers to comply with OBDII standard protocols so that DIY drivers could purchase commercial scan tools to work on them.

+1. I would guess OBDII was introduced as part of the mandated emissions tech at the time. I still remember hearing how carburetors and points were somehow better than all the new-fangled computerized fuel-injection stuff but I can't believe anyone still thinks that now days. Having OBDII readouts makes working on modern ICE cars pretty straight-forward. IMHO, even more information could be provided but I'm sure the auto manufacturers are balancing price vs utility and what is there is pretty good. Fortunately, EV's require much less maintenance than ICE cars but some sort of OBDEV standard would be a good thing, IMHO.

Car manufacturers had their own proprietary diagnostic interfaces before the OBDII standard. Some would let DIYs read codes by turning ignition on/off/on/off/on and then counting flashes of the check engine light, others required inserting something like a paper clip into a connector to start the flashing, and others had no direct method for DIYs to get codes. My 30 (almost 31) year old Jeep is in the last category, but I have been able to troubleshoot and maintain it by testing individual sensors with a digital voltmeter and/or oscilloscope. American Motors and Chrysler designed and manufactured a good system back then because I have only had to replace throttle position sensors (1 warranty and 1 by me) and oxygen sensors (2 warranty and 1 by me) in almost 31 years and 200,000 miles. All that being said, the standard interface dictated by regulations (adopted by manufacturers only because they had no choice) really made things easier for DIYs and independent repair shops. As I said previously, we need regulations that require EV manufacturers to adhere to a suitable standard for commercially available scan tools. We may also need stronger regulations regarding replacement parts availability.
 
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