SimonMatthews said:
Has the battery management changed?
I have a 2016 Leaf S and, it seems to me that the range has dropped by a small number of miles. I don't drive it so much since the carpool sticker expired (I drive another EV with current carpool stickers), but it seems to me that the range has declined a little since a service in February of this year.
In general, I try to stop charging before it is at 100%, but today, I forgot to unplug, so it charged to 100%.
On a short drive with the battery at 100%, I noted that the car was doing regenerative braking. If I recall correctly, after charging to 100%, earlier there was no regenerative braking for few miles. This leads me to suspect that the car is not really charging to 100%. I wonder if Nissan did a firmware update during the February service which limited the charging?
If you are using a 120 volt charger, then you have a lot of control on how much the battery can be charged. You get a 120v timer that you can set to start and stop when you want. you can get any charge level you want overnight by to doing the math. (1 hour of 120 volt charging = 5 miles of range. AND each mile of range is about 1% of charge on a 24 kwh battery. ) When I first go my car I would only charge to 80%.
Secondly, you should NOT be fearing that something is wrong when the battery begins to degrade... It is like age.. We all age at a different rate, and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. Stop thinking that battery degradation is Nissan's fault..
PS - If you do not drive a lot daily, you will get the best battery life over time by keeping the charge between 40 and 60% as much as you can.