2012 with replaced battery losing 1% SOH/500km (ish)

Hi all, longtime lurker and recent Leaf owner here, hoping to call on the familiarity and knowledge of others on here.

Roughly a month ago I privately purchased a 2012, Australian delivered Leaf. The battery had been replaced in early 2020 by Nissan. Since then, the car had completed about 20,000km and when I bought it, it had a SOH of 87.66%. This seemed a bit low compared to the age of the battery, but I accepted that it was probably due to consistent 100% charges and the frequent use the car had in that time.

Since then, I've been logging through LeafSpy for most trips and have been a bit concerned by the rate at which the SOH is reducing. The car is being babied and only charged to 80%. At first I thought maybe it would just be random fluctuations, but the trend seems very consistent.


https://ibb.co/sm89DpH


https://ibb.co/SXH1mVX


https://ibb.co/Qpd8mJQ

Are there any innocuous (and likely) ways to explain this? I have heard of BMS resets giving this kind of behaviour, but I would think 500km and a month is enough to level it off. Is it fair to rule out this explanation yet?
If a BMS reset is ruled out, should I be getting in touch with Nissan? Even then, am I likely to even be taken seriously for basing a concern on data from a third party app ("You've still got 12 bars, there's nothing wrong")?

Much appreciate your help. Just want to get this sorted, as otherwise, the car is fantastic. I just don't fancy a 50% SOH brick in 20,000km.

There are many factors involved in Gradual Capacity Loss, here is a bit of information from the FSM to illustrate some of them.
https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=30599&p=572836

Welcome, and congrats on your purchase.

The only thing you are doing wrong is checking LeafSpy so often. Try once a month *at most*.
The car notes your concern and is yanking your tail.

Joking aside, the SOH fluctuates a couple percent. It is just noise and says nothing about the long term trend.

Hot climates cause faster degradation, more than any other factor, so depending on where you live in Australia, this could be entirely normal and predictable degredation.

Charge in a cooler garage overnight, whenever possible - especially during really hot weather. If consistently high ambient temperatures in your area are the norm, then unfortunately you have picked the wrong EV.

Fortunately, thanks to that degradation, you typically don't pay much for a used LEAF.

Short version - a used LEAF pays for itself in gas savings, so celebrate that and accept that the battery is going to degrade faster than you would like

Thanks for the replies everyone. Amazing how much of a community has built up around this car.

In the time I've had it, we've had consistent 8-25C weather so I can't really blame the aussie winter!
Will just give it a few more weeks and hope this downward slope is part of longer fluctuations. I was looking to find someone else's log to see what's normal for regular SOH fluctuations and what's actually a long term trend - but didn't have much luck trawling the forums.

Thanks for the link nlspace. That's a great read.

I can appreciate the sentiment for cost savings, but I think Leaf owners can also appreciate the value of battery health. The amount I can expect to save on fuel each year (YMMV) isn't far off the value difference between an 85% and 75% SOH vehicle if 10% were lost in a year.
Anyway, that loss rate seems unlikely, just want to make I don't miss the chance to address an issue before it becomes a problem.

For LeafSpy screenshot searching, I do a Google search:

leafspy site:mynissanleaf.com

And the I switch to the Images tab to view all the LeafSpy screenshots that people have posted here.

alozzy said:

For LeafSpy screenshot searching, I do a Google search:

leafspy site:mynissanleaf.com

And the I switch to the Images tab to view all the LeafSpy screenshots that people have posted here.

Click to expand...

Great tip, although it did not work for me just now. I'll have to practice

This is a repost of a graph I posted in the forum. I cannot fault you for not finding it -- it also took me a while

SageBrush said:

This is a repost of a graph I posted in the forum. I cannot fault you for not finding it -- it also took me a while

Click to expand...

Great! Thank you and alozzy. That's a very helpful search trick and good data to see.

It's also great that some axes are labelled on this one :lol:

Will post an update in this thread with my own data once the car's had a bit more use in my hands.