Herm said:
Adrian said:
I only turtled the car once. Never quick charged. Commute is 76 miles and I like to drive 80 MPH on the HOV lane. So that means I have to charge twice a day using L2 to 100%, once at home, once at work, in the Long Beach port area. My garage doesn't get that hot, and it it's typically 10 degrees cooler at work. Glad I leased. Will have to pay a few thousand for the extra miles above the allowed 15k per year, but if the car looses more than 2 bars by 50k miles I'm not keeping it.
So about 600 cycles?.. how many bars do you have left when you get to work and home?.. Perhaps you just used a significant number of the cycles alloted to the battery. This might not be a high temperature issue but just regular tear&wear
A "cycle" doesn't mean anything here unless you are taking it from 100% to turtle. Partial cycles just don't directly relate. It could take 4 50% cycles to equal the wear of 1 100% cycle. It could take 2 70% cycles to equal 1 100% cycle.
Either way - as we all know
TaylorSFGuy is close to 50k miles charging to 100% twice a day in Seattle and still hasn't lost a bar, though he thinks that he has lost about 10% capacity recently.
For sure, Adrian could consider using end timers for charging (though having to change timer settings would be a PITA and prone to error) and slowing down a bit (80 mph requires nearly 50% more energy per mile compared to 70 mph) and going with 80% charges to maximize battery life.
IMO - just about all the capacity loss we've seen is "normal". I simply think that either Nissan was a bit naive to think that losing 10-25% capacity after one year is acceptable to consumers when they are expecting 20% after 5 years worst case scenario.
The only way this would be acceptable for most LEAF owners would be to disclose expected range reduction up front in various climate/usage scenarios to give consumers the information they need to make an educated decision on what type of capacity loss is acceptable to them or not.
smkettner said:
Average just does not work. The cold does not help a nit compared to the damage from heat. Count the days above 95. OC might be 10 max and Phoenix must be well over 100. Easily a tenfold difference in hot days. Probably more. Just my WAG.
Definitely. Have to remember that heat has a non-linear effect on rate of capacity loss. 1 hour at 110F might be like 3 hours at 90F which might be like 9 hours at 70F (data made up, but very roughly fits calendar life studies I've seen).
If we compare Poway (which is fairly far inland San Diego County and thus one of the warmer parts of San Diego County in the summer) to Phoenix, the biggest difference is in the average low. From Nov-Feb the avg low is very similar, but in Jul/Aug Phoenix is close to 20F warmer.
Poway's avg max temp is actually higher from Nov-Feb by a couple degrees, but from May-Aug Phoenix's avg max is 10-15F higher.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/vacationplanner/compare/results?from=vac_compare&clocid1=USAZ0166&clocid2=USCA0900" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
As a completely random data-point - Phoenix is currently 100F compared to 70F here in San Diego. That's huge!
If I use something perhaps a bit more representative of San Diego,
Miramar MCAS's station and compare to
Phoenix, let's look at the last 12 months of mean temperature as recorded by wunderground.
Month / Phoenix / Miramar / Difference
Jul 2012 94 70 24
Jun 2012 94 65 29
May 2012 85 63 22
Apr 2012 75 59 17
Mar 2012 66 57 9
Feb 2012 61 56 5
Jan 2012 59 57 2
Dec 2012 53 54 -1
Nov 2011 64 59 5
Oct 2011 79 66 23
Sep 2011 92 69 23
Aug 2011 99 70 29
Wow - using this data it's rare that San Diego has a mean temperature lower than Phoenix - only happens in Dec. But for 6 months of the year the Phoenix mean temp is 20-30F higher than San Diego! I have no idea how weather.com gets it's average temperature, but saying on average 6F warmer is certainly very misleading.