20,000 miles

Hit 20,000 miles on Monday, exactly 11 months since purchase. Not one issue to speak of, 20,000 miles of carefree driving. Anyone else close?

hobbyguy said:

Hit 20,000 miles on Monday, exactly 11 months since purchase. Not one issue to speak of, 20,000 miles of carefree driving. Anyone else close?

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Nope @ 10,000 miles myself. No issues except... I do have a cracked windshield to worry about. Not sure how much it will cost to fix or replace. Stupid flying rocks.

Any battery degradation yet?

That's going to happen right after the warranty expires. Murphy's Law...

Yes, I'm already over 22,000 at not quite 7 months. I agree the car has been pretty much trouble free so far.

It is difficult to tell if the change in battery is due to cold or miles. Wasn't going to say anything definitive until next summer when I can take the weather out of the equation. I'm running over 3K miles a month.

I just hit 10k and it runs perfect...The cold weather will lower your range down,it hit the 30s in Phx AZ and I see a 10% lost of charge from driving in it..

maybe a thread on most miles driven, any comments on differences in ranges experienced should be started. 20,000 miles is a great milestone and i would not expect to see any range degradation. Li batteries do degenerate with charge cycles but also by time. i am willing to bet high mileage drivers such as yourself probably wont see any differences until over 100,000 miles. slower drivers averaging less than 1000 miles a month will probably start seeing something in 50,000 miles.

with the change in weather, its impossible to tell anything other than the #'s on my Leaf still correlate the same. i rarely run the pack from full to near empty like you guys obviously do, but i do plan to run a few "max miles on a charge during winter" thingy for bragging rights (if good) or data collection (if bad).

i feel that if i stay off the freeway (which is 80% of my normal driving anyway) i should hit 100 or near it.

12,500 trouble free miles so far since May... I will also need to see warmer weather to make a guess on battery degradation...

TaylorSFGuy said:

Yes, I'm already over 22,000 at not quite 7 months. I agree the car has been pretty much trouble free so far.

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40K a year ?!

Anyway, definitely temperature has a big impact on range - even without the use of heater.

Congrats on the mileage! I just turned over 15,000 in Mikiko yesterday. Very exciting indeed (and no battery derogation per the bars so far).

Wow, awesome to hear! Doesn't sound like any range anxiety problems :lol:

Hobbyguy and TaylorSFGuy:

What are your daily charging patterns? Probably L2? Any quick charging yet?
When did you guys take your cars in for rotations/battery checks, etc?

Though surprised by the high miles (I'm looking at only 7K in 11 months), based on previous experience with other "limited production" vehicles, I've got to admit that I'm incredibly thankful for higher mileage folks such as yourselves as it gives me some indicator of how reliable the car's going to be in the long run. Based on your results to date, perhaps I might be able to pass on that extended warranty after all!

20,000 miles in six months verse two years will be dramatically different. But with low mileage I personally think wee won't see much effects for the first three years whether it be 100,000 or30,000.

So even if you don't rack up a lot of miles it its still important to relay you r observations

ILETRIC said:

That's going to happen right after the warranty expires. Murphy's Law...

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You mean the warranty that does not cover capacity :lol:

DaveinOlyWA said:

20,000 miles in six months verse two years will be dramatically different. But with low mileage I personally think wee won't see much effects for the first three years whether it be 100,000 or30,000.

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A lot depends on how much total capacity the battery has, is it 28kwh, 27kwh or 24kwh?.. if the maximum usable capacity is 21kwh then that works out to a conservative usage of only 75% of the batteries capacity... 200k miles total life should be doable.

all depends on individual needs. mine should last that long because i can do with as little a 50 mile range and still have it cover a significant amount of my transportation needs. in that situation i will charge every day instead of every other day. will charge to 100 % instead of the 80-90% i charge to now, etc.

but one of the degradation issues of Li is shelf life and from a study that i had a link to, that appears to be the greatest detriment as long as batteries are charged properly. Li simply gets old. the article just barely stopped short of saying "the more you use them the longer they last"

so i do predict we will have Leaf Owners reporting 250,000 to 300,000 miles on their Leaf but only because they got there in 5-7 years

Herm said:

A lot depends on how much total capacity the battery has, is it 28kwh, 27kwh or 24kwh?.. if the maximum usable capacity is 21kwh then that works out to a conservative usage of only 75% of the batteries capacity... 200k miles total life should be doable.

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Herm, I enjoy reading your posts and respect your opinion, but I'm surprised to see how persistent these rumors are. I've seen this on MNL many times, but there is not a shred of evidence in support of this. On the contrary, empirical data and the charts published by AESC, the cell manufacturer, hint that total battery capacity is 24kWh with about 21kWh usable. Personally, I think that rumors like this one might be adequate when the vehicle is in prototype stage, but we are past that stage now. I'm surprised to see how many folks insist on the 28-30kWh number.

You don't have to believe me, but please at least have a look at an article by Nick Chambers on plugincars.com. In the comments section, Nick states the following:

I know there's been some chatter out there about the LEAF having a larger battery pack than what Nissan has said, but I can tell you that in conversation with Nissan engineers they swear that the pack is indeed only 24 kWh and there is no funny business going on.

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I wish Kadota-san made a statement in this regard last Saturday, but alas that discussion was drowned out by the uproar stirred by a Nissan QA guy inquiring about the DTE indicator.

On the topic of capacity fade. I'm a convert and based on the research I have done and the opinions voiced here and elsewhere, I believe that the Leaf will perform much better than anticipated in this regard. While there will be individual variation between cars, I would be surprised if anyone saw a noticeable permanent range reduction before hitting 50,000 miles. This assumes that the Leaf is a daily driver, does not sit fully charged for very long, and it has an average usage cycle. Thanks to the slow infrastructure rollout, battery capacity fade due to frequent quick charging will continue to be a non-issue.

GoingGreener said:

Hobbyguy and TaylorSFGuy:

What are your daily charging patterns? Probably L2? Any quick charging yet?
When did you guys take your cars in for rotations/battery checks, etc?

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I charge to 100% using L2 after driving 62-65 miles to work and then again to 100% using L2 at home after the return. Sometimes during the day, I'll run out for lunch/appt. and plug back in when I return to the office. In those instances, I unplug provided I have enough range to do the run and don't wait for it to reach 100% mid-day. No quick charging at all.

Not sure what you mean by rotations so I'll go with tires - every 7500. Battery check was done at 15K even though it was supposed to be done at 1 year. All fine there too. If you look at some of my other posts, you'll get some comments along the way.

At a Seattle LEAF group meeting, I was called a canary in the mine and it looks like I'm not the only one. I too find it encouraging that there are others driving significant mileage.

Just hit 15,000 miles myself and had the 15k service done which includes checking the battery. So far, so good. Really enjoying this car.

12,000 miles here. The only issue I have had is the mediocre tires...

hobbyguy said:

Hit 20,000 miles on Monday, exactly 11 months since purchase. Not one issue to speak of, 20,000 miles of carefree driving. Anyone else close?

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