Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[Pipcecil]

55,773 on the odometer is about as good as it gets.
Did you have any inclination to go 59,000 before calling for replacement? No. 9 bars sucks the big one, I average 2,200 miles/month so I was suffering in the truck lane and QCing often.

Was that hot voucher lip service or actually in the warranty? I haven't heard a thing from Nissan about that yet.

Really nice to see that 12 bars again Now is time to join the 100 mile club if not already. - I never tried to get into the club, but I will now.

Will you charge or drive any differently with the new battery?

Nope, I'm back to my 'old ways' in the carpool lane baby!

You are right, 9 bars REALLY sucks. I can wait for my car to drop that last bar. I got almost 51k on mine so hopefully it will drop before I hit 60k.

 

[tombobcat]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

May I ask what dealer you have your battery replaced at? I'm a 2 CB loser and hopefully make it before 60000 miles. What's your GIDs reading at full charge?

 

[GotMyleaf]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

May I ask what dealer you have your battery replaced at? I'm a 2 CB loser and hopefully make it before 60000 miles. What's your GIDs reading at full charge?

I took it to Fontana Nissan. I was their first capacity warranty and the service tech and had to have Nissan call them but outside of that, things went well. I had 264 GIDS the last time I check full charge. Soooo nice!

 

[aqn]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

It's good to see that the work restores 12 capacity bars (though I don't know what "12 capacity bars" means exactly, at that point...) even though the warranty says "any repairs needed to return battery capacity to a level of nine remaining bars on the vehicle’s battery capacity level gauge".

 

[dhanson865]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

It's good to see that the work restores 12 capacity bars (though I don't know what "12 capacity bars" means exactly, at that point...) even though the warranty says "any repairs needed to return battery capacity to a level of nine remaining bars on the vehicle’s battery capacity level gauge".

Any time they swap batteries the car will say 12 bars, it takes weeks to get the first bar to disappear should they put a refurb battery in.

Odds are though, that they put a fresh "truly 12 bar" battery in. Several reasons why Nissan wouldn't want to bother with putting a worse battery in.


totally unrelated snippet to follow:

I was online in a game last night and someone in my group has a Leaf. He tried to say they have a 150,000 mile warranty on the battery including capacity not just outright failure and I had to post this quote in chat to him:

"Nissan standard battery warranty for LEAF – which includes industry-leading 5 years/60,000 mile coverage against battery capacity loss (below approximately 70%) and 8 years/100,000 miles against defects."

I think he is in / near San Fran, CA so he is thinking extended CARB rules on the defect warranty but he has no clue about the capacity issue. I asked if he went to this web site ever and he made it clear he hadn't read any of this thread or any of the other major battery replacement threads.

Just so many people out there that don't have any clue about capacity bars or what the warranty on them mean.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

May I ask what dealer you have your battery replaced at? I'm a 2 CB loser and hopefully make it before 60000 miles. What's your GIDs reading at full charge?

I took it to Fontana Nissan. I was their first capacity warranty and the service tech and had to have Nissan call them but outside of that, things went well. I had 264 GIDS the last time I check full charge. Soooo nice!

your GID count was 264 on the replacement pack? that sure does not sound like a new one to me

 

[aqn]

The suffering is over!! The car was back in my hands with a new battery on January 11th! Took the service department about three days to complete the work and Nissan corporate is VERY helpful after that fourth bar disappears. I'll be keeping this car after the lease is up and I'm hoping that the plan to provide certificates to get the new 'hot battery' to folks that fell under the warranty goes as planned.

It's good to see that the work restores 12 capacity bars (though I don't know what "12 capacity bars" means exactly, at that point...) even though the warranty says "any repairs needed to return battery capacity to a level of nine remaining bars on the vehicle’s battery capacity level gauge".

Any time they swap batteries the car will say 12 bars, it takes weeks to get the first bar to disappear should they put a refurb battery in.

Do we know for sure that they swap the entire battery? And not replacing only defective cells? (Firm references please, not deductions/theories/conjectures. [This is not directed at anyone in particular.])
Observation on range of the "new battery" will also be very helpful.

 

[DaveEV]

Anyone with LEAF Spy or a LeafDD and 10% capacity loss or more can easily confirm that it's impossible to recover more than a couple percent of capacity by simply swapping out the lowest capacity modules.

I wish it were that easy, I'd spend a couple hundred bucks on a few 60+Ah modules off eBay and get back more than half the capacity I've lost. Others with 3-4 bars would benefit even more.

(Yes, others have confirmed that they are getting complete replacement packs and they are not replacings modules)

 

[aqn]

Anyone with LEAF Spy or a LeafDD and 10% capacity loss or more can easily confirm that it's impossible to recover more than a couple percent of capacity by simply swapping out the lowest capacity modules.

How does one confirm it with LEAF Spy or LeafDD?

I wish it were that easy, I'd spend a couple hundred bucks on a few 60+Ah modules off eBay and get back more than half the capacity I've lost. Others with 3-4 bars would benefit even more.

(Yes, others have confirmed that they are getting complete replacement packs and they are not replacings modules)

I take your words for it, but I wouldn't put that in the wiki. I would like to put that in the wiki, but "drees said so" does not carry the same weight with people beyond the bounds of these forums. Hence, references.

 

[dhanson865]

3 bar loser found on a dealer lot

#25 sold in 9/2013 presumably after 3 bars lost
Fort Worth, TX
07/11
7897
JN1AZ0CP8BT007897 found for sale at Trophy Nissan in Mesquite, TX with 47,790 miles on the odometer, vehicle history shows one owner in Fort Worth, TX that owner sold at 44,361 on odometer. Marked as Nissan Certified Pre-Owned.

They only want $14,777 + taxes and fees.

The big question is if you bought it today could you use up the 4th bar in time to get a free battery replacement.

 

[EdmondLeaf]

It is a gamble, but it should work. There is another one, but with only 27KM and that makes a lot of sense.

 

[GregH]

Anyone with LEAF Spy or a LeafDD and 10% capacity loss or more can easily confirm that it's impossible to recover more than a couple percent of capacity by simply swapping out the lowest capacity modules.

How does one confirm it with LEAF Spy or LeafDD?

The Leaf balances the pack voltages on the top side so at full all the voltages should be similar. If you can see the cell voltages at a very low SOC (under VLBW) you can see about how much capacity you'd recover by replacing the lowest cells. For example, my pack starts diverging at around 15 Gids or about 3.6V and below. If I could restore my worst cells to the same capacity as my best cells I'd guess I could gain about 3-5 Gids. Not much in other words. I've seen screen shots from others with much more even packs than mine. I am however still 12CB... What kind of divergence do some of the 9 and 10CB drivers see in the low Gid range (between turtle and VLBW)?

 

[dhanson865]

How about our first 5 bar loser in California none the less.

| #1
| found for sale Jan 2014
| San Jose, CA
|
|
|
| 8/11
| 9040
|
|
|
|Found for sale at Capitol Chevrolet of San Jose Jan 2014 with 39,106 miles on odometer, single owner sold car Dec 2013. Unknown what dates bars were lost. Estimated length of ownership 2 years and 2 months.

I'd like to past the 5 bar photo here but if someone would like to host the file I'll be glad to email the file to you if they pull it from the web first.

until they pull it you can look at http://images.autotrader.com/scaler/544/408/images/2014/1/7/362/762/35748043376.362762359.IM1.20.565x421_A.562x421.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

any chance this picture was taken while the car was booting up? Is it really a 5 bar loser?

Anybody want to drive over to the dealership and get a look at the dash? Anybody willing to tell the dealer how bad it looks to take a pic with only 7 capacity bars lit up?

 

[smkettner]

With charge level and capacity at same level I suspect a boot-up photo.

 

[DaveEV]

2014 with 39,106 miles on odometer, single owner sold car Dec 2013. Unknown what dates bars were lost. Estimated length of ownership 2 years and 2 months.

They took that pic during startup. It has at least 10 bars and probably from what I can see.

http://www.capitolchevysj.com/used/Nissan/2011-Nissan-LEAF-San-Jose-3efc7d060a0a00492dcf16ab636c2bd5.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[dhanson865]

2014 with 39,106 miles on odometer, single owner sold car Dec 2013. Unknown what dates bars were lost. Estimated length of ownership 2 years and 2 months.

They took that pic during startup. It has at least 10 bars and probably from what I can see.

http://www.capitolchevysj.com/used/Nissan/2011-Nissan-LEAF-San-Jose-3efc7d060a0a00492dcf16ab636c2bd5.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

but, but, the "dgdg.com actual photo" showed 7 bars :lol: :roll:

OK, I've had my fun at their expense, I took that car out of the now empty 5 bar section.

We already have a 4 bar loser with 55,000 miles. I'm leaving the 5 bar section there because it's only a matter of time until we see a 60,001+ mile 5 bar loser.

 

[mwalsh]

I'm leaving the 5 bar section there because it's only a matter of time until we see a 60,001+ mile 5 bar loser.

Yep. A warranty designed to be of no use for most.

 

[Randy]

I'm leaving the 5 bar section there because it's only a matter of time until we see a 60,001+ mile 5 bar loser.

Yep. A warranty designed to be of no use for most.

For me it'll be more of a "five year and 1 day" out of warranty issue, since I won't hit the 60,000 warranty limit within 5 years...

 

[mwalsh]

For me it'll be more of a "five year and 1 day" out of warranty issue, so I won't hit the 60,000 warranty limit within 5 years...

A somewhat hot summer this year will probably do mine in, well below 5y/60k. On the other hand (and I've said this elsewhere, but probably not on here) I'd be just as happy if mine has bottomed out now and stayed just like it is (with a range of around 67 miles, driven carefully) until the commonly understood pack EOL.

 

[xtremeflyer]

I don't have any of the tools (Gidmeter, LeafApp, etc) to do any measurements in my 3-bar Socal loser, but I am going to be out of town next weekend (Feb 7-9) so if anyone is interested in doing any range tests or anything like that, I can make it available. I'm in Orange, CA. I have yet to do the P3227 update as it came out right as I hit 30k miles and had already been to the dealer. I need to take it in for 37,500, so I'm willing to wait if anyone wants to do before/after measurements.

If not interested, no biggie, just offering it up.