LEAF Battery capacity loss and battery life

I doubt that it's much consolation to you, but the latest generation of Leaf batteries has been holding up well in all but the very hottest climates. They aren't good for long road trips requiring multiple DC Fast Charges, but between the longer ranges and the greatly improved resistance to degradation, they can still be a good choice for people wanting a car for local (within the car's range) use, in any but the hottest climates, like AZ and HI. And of the previous generation Leafs, the cars made after March of 2013 do hold up well in cool to moderate climates.

It sounds like Andy is not much of a manager and living in the past, letting his past technical failures cloud his vision and path for the future. He should let the young engineers do what they do best to solve any leak or failure issues to make a robust pack, rather than to sit on his hands with a worthless and outdated product.

In a first generation product it might be okay to forego cooling in a proof of concept or first to market environment, but there is no excuse for later versions after 10 years experience with lack of cooling.

i'm in the market for an EV but am also steering away from a Leaf due to the lack of thermal management in the pack.

CarmeloLabadie said:

Nissan is one of the only plugin automakers with no Thermal management. This has caused thousands of battery pack in the Southern USA to lose too much capacity to be usable by most people. Even in cooler areas the batteries lose capacity much faster than any other electric vehicles. In fact a few hybrid companies learned that they at least needed to add fans to blow air over the packs for much longer life. (The Prius added fans in the 2004 model and got 10x longer battery life).

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Thousands of the really old packs of the first generation and the Prius battery packs would not be a good comparison since they only do light duty driving at low speeds and they were Nickel–metal hydride batteries that last longer by nature than Lithium but at less capacity. To get the context correct at least.

Why hasn't Nissan learned this ? A group of LEAF owners (including me) meet with Andy Palmer when he was a head of the LEAF program at Nissan. Many owners explained that they loved their LEAF but the batteries were losing 10-20% of their capacity each Summer. He said they will never have cooling. He used to work in Air Conditioning and it would be too prone to leaks and failure.

Until this has been corrected I will never own or lease another Nissan.

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There was nothing to learn, it was a business decision and still is today. You trade out the added maintenance and complexity of a TMS for less cost. Nissan has gone the route of trying to get batteries that don't need TMS for daily driving or as close as they can and offer up an EV that cost less, right now, a lot less that other EV with said systems. The problem is "dealerships" don't share this information to potential buyers, but tell them any pie in the sky story to get them to buy it. Then they (the buyer) come here and learn the truth, get mad, post up some complaints, etc. If they stick around and talk with us, they learn how to get over these limitations pretty quick and can enjoy the Leaf for many years. They also learn how to take care of the battery to extend the life of it.

I don't remember how long ago it was here, but someone had a good post up about how much a TMS system is actually used in an EV and it's surprisingly little during daily driving. It comes into focus more when doing back to back high-speed charging and the heat generated from it. That's where the TMS shines best. Otherwise, you will find just as many people that complain about the TMS already in a Tesla or Bolt not doing what they think it should do.

So while we can share your rant about "why no TMS", we have learned to adapt to it and learn. Some of us even see it as a benefit because while everyone wants one, they don't want to talk about the maintenance for it.

It should be noted that the meeting with Andy Palmer took place quite a few years ago, if I understand correctly.

One thing to take inconsideration the P is referring to the first generation LEAFs 2011-2017. The second generation LEAFs long go solved their issues with premature degradation , but have been completely redesigned with a passively managed battery. In fact there is yet to be any viable report of the 2nd generation batteries displaying the same characteristics as the first generation cars.

Here is an older report about the second generation battery when they were stop mew: https://insideevs.com/reviews/354688/2019-nissan-leaf-40-kwh-test-drive/

OrientExpress said:

Here is an older report about the second generation battery when they were stop mew: https://insideevs.com/reviews/354688/2019-nissan-leaf-40-kwh-test-drive/

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As the article points out, the chemistry was changed to handle higher temperatures. That seems to be working in the long run, if my wife's Leaf is any indicator (early 2018 Model, so it has the very first of the 2nd gen batteries). We have seen some people find the limits of that increased temperature tolerance, but you have cook and deeply discharge the battery a lot to get it to lose the first bar. So it's not invincible to the heat, just a lot better at handling it than the Gen 1 batteries did. For a typical "non-abusive" owner, that works out well.

The OP is a spammer whose post should not have been approved. The first post is stolen from https://www.insideevsforum.com/community/index.php?threads/leaf-battery-capacity-loss-and-battery-life.326/

I'm locking this thread and will likely delete it later.