Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

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JPVLeaf said:
surfingslovak said:
I did my best to track all the reports, and we seem to have several cars in Phoenix at about 20% projected capacity loss, two in Texas at 10%, two in SoCal at 8%, and everyone else is at 5% or better. We should get a larger data collection and tabulate online, it would remove some of the speculation, guesswork and uncertainty.
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To add to the data pool, I took my Gid-meter this past week to three other Leafs after completing a '100%' charge and got the following:

1. 7.5 mos, 8600 mi., 269 Gids (95.7%), 5x charges/wk from 60% to 100% overnight, Orange Cty.
2. 7 mos, 7500 mi., 269 (95.7%), 4-5x charges/week from ~25% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).
3. 10.5 mos, 10000 mi., 265 (94.3%), 4-5x charges/week from ~40% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).

My charging pattern is closer to #2. Considering my higher mileage, I'm not feeling too bad about my recent 260-265's. But, if a later dip into the 250's doesn't correspond to a rise in the day's temp, .... ;)
Click to expand...
 
EdmondLeaf said:
JPVLeaf said:
To add to the data pool, I took my Gid-meter this past week to three other Leafs after completing a '100%' charge and got the following:

1. 7.5 mos, 8600 mi., 269 Gids (95.7%), 5x charges/wk from 60% to 100% overnight, Orange Cty.
2. 7 mos, 7500 mi., 269 (95.7%), 4-5x charges/week from ~25% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).
3. 10.5 mos, 10000 mi., 265 (94.3%), 4-5x charges/week from ~40% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).

My charging pattern is closer to #2. Considering my higher mileage, I'm not feeling too bad about my recent 260-265's. But, if a later dip into the 250's doesn't correspond to a rise in the day's temp, .... ;)
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Thank you, Richard! JP, any additional details you could share? These folks are not on MNL, correct? Would you remember the color of each vehicle? Did they mention turtle mode? Is it fair to assume that these cars spend the majority of the time in San Bernardino Valley? I hope you don't mind me asking, but if we could get the last five digits of their VIN and CarWings nickname for tracking, that would be good.
 
Having this data in a thread is marginally useful.. How about a spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHMyRTVOcGRfWUFkc1A0WUtmbUd6UEE6MQ#gid=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
surfingslovak said:
Steve Marsh has recently put Gary's meter to use, and has confirmed that his battery is within 3% of nominal capacity.
I did my best to track all the reports, and we seem to have several cars in Phoenix at about 20% projected capacity loss, two in Texas at 10%, two in SoCal at 8%, and everyone else is at 5% or better. We should get a larger data collection and tabulate it online, it would remove some of the speculation, guesswork and uncertainty.
Click to expand...

As I said, he doesn't live in Phoenix or he would have a bigger loss. I believe it just gets accelerated here. He's an outlier with that many miles, not the norm.
And there aren't "several" with 20% losses, maybe one. Please don't exaggerate to help make your point. I know of six with 15% losses because they just lost a bar. The seventh one may have a 20% loss. If so, they will lose another bar soon and then we'll know. Also, your battery %s are incorrect. Right out of the manual, other than number 11, three of the bars are 7% and the rest are 6%. These are the true figures rounded to the nearest per cent.
 
Just to make it official, I lost my 12th bar tonight. 1 year and 6 days into ownership, with only 9550 miles. I heard this great quote recently that seems appropriate: Will tears short out my laptop?
 
turbo2ltr said:
Having this data in a thread is marginally useful.. How about a spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHMyRTVOcGRfWUFkc1A0WUtmbUd6UEE6MQ#gid=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Click to expand...

Good idea. Can you post the link to the actual spreadsheet (above takes me to the form). Also maybe add Average driving efficiency...
 
leafkabob said:
Just to make it official, I lost my 12th bar tonight. 1 year and 6 days into ownership, with only 9550 miles. I heard this great quote recently that seems appropriate: Will tears short out my laptop?
Click to expand...

Oh no. That is discouraging. Sorry to hear that. I'm sure I'm not far behind.
 
I think we have enough data points at this juncture to declare this a real problem... The big question is, will this continue at this rate or is it an initial issue that will taper off... The answer to that speaks volumes about the real magnitude of the issue.

shrink said:
leafkabob said:
Just to make it official, I lost my 12th bar tonight. 1 year and 6 days into ownership, with only 9550 miles. I heard this great quote recently that seems appropriate: Will tears short out my laptop?
Click to expand...
Oh no. That is discouraging. Sorry to hear that. I'm sure I'm not far behind.
Click to expand...
 
Phx AZ Leaf, 16000 miles...Life time 6M/KWH.. Loss one bar this week,2 days after getting a perfect score on the one year battery check ...I thought maybe the software upgrade had something to do with it,but the dealer said no..

One year charging routine..
First 6 months were all 100% charges,I was attempting on every 60 mile work trips to break previous M/kwh records ..I think I did well but Leaffan did better :)
The following 6 months I charged 60% of the time to 80% ,those were day trips and 40% were 100% charges where I drove at night..

I think i may do 95% of my charges to 80% doing the hot summer and 5% when I need the extra miles..
Doing the winter Im going to do 80%/100% charges and 20%/80% charges..

Im really not seeing a big difference between my 100% charges and the other AZ cars that were doing 80% charges,that could change tho as the cars get older..

If i were Nissan for 2013 ..The Leaf / Eco mode with option to go to (Drive). 80% charges with the option to go to 100% charges..
 
leafkabob sorry about bad news and I believe what shrink said he is not that far behind. shrink I did not expect big loss for you because your car experienced only half or the summer heat (delivered in Aug). Here in OK 90+ already with bad part that is not going much down at night, therefore I am trying to figure out what will be the best to protect my battery. What I done put car in storage mode with 5 bars and using my Ninja. Of course last is not going to work for my main 65 commute because I am carpooling. Question to both of you how you did you try to protect car from sun during day and where was during day and night, What was most battery temp and if that was during drive or charging?
 
EdmondLeaf said:
leafkabob sorry about bad news and I believe what shrink said he is not that far behind. shrink I did not expect big loss for you because your car experienced only half or the summer heat (delivered in Aug). Here in OK 90+ already with bad part that is not going much down at night, therefore I am trying to figure out what will be the best to protect my battery. What I done put car in storage mode with 5 bars and using my Ninja. Of course last is not going to work for my main 65 commute because I am carpooling. Question to both of you how you did you try to protect car from sun during day and where was during day and night, What was most battery temp and if that was during drive or charging?
Click to expand...
Mon-Fri my car is parked in a large parking structure that is very open to breezes and airflow. I'm not sure what the temperature difference would be from being in the full sun on hot pavement, but I would think it would be significant. In the evenings and weekends my car is parked in my detached garage (uninsulated, but gets partial shade from large trees).

I also cleverly (I thought) timed my 80% charges to begin at 3 am. In hindsight I'm not sure that made any difference.
 
shrink said:
leafkabob said:
Just to make it official, I lost my 12th bar tonight. 1 year and 6 days into ownership, with only 9550 miles. I heard this great quote recently that seems appropriate: Will tears short out my laptop?
Click to expand...

Oh no. That is discouraging. Sorry to hear that. I'm sure I'm not far behind.
Click to expand...
Thanks for feeling my pain Shrink (got any open appointments? ;) .)
 
leafkabob said:
Mon-Fri my car is parked in a large parking structure that is very open to breezes and airflow. I'm not sure what the temperature difference would be from being in the full sun on hot pavement, but I would think it would be significant. In the evenings and weekends my car is parked in my detached garage (uninsulated, but gets partial shade from large trees).

I also cleverly (I thought) timed my 80% charges to begin at 3 am. In hindsight I'm not sure that made any difference.
Click to expand...

I really feel for you:
charging to 80%, late at night did not protect you
parking in perfect condition did not protect you
low mileage did not protect you
 
EdmondLeaf said:
I really feel for you:
charging to 80%, late at night did not protect you
parking in perfect condition did not protect you
low mileage did not protect you
Click to expand...

Which makes one wonder if time plus average pack temperature are the leading factors in degradation.

In the summertime here in Tennessee it can get hot as well, I think I will keep the garage doors open at night to keep the overnight temp as low as I can get it. During the work week I have no option but park in direct sunlight during the daytime hours.

I can hardly wait for the LEafScan to come out and start documenting key metrics. I wonder if we can pull off a crowd source central database for LeafScan users whereby we can track battery and environmental statistics to see a pattern for ourselves.
 
so what do you guys conclude when you put all this data together with the two basic things Nissan told us and/or did about charging and usage shortly after the first cars were sold:

Long life for battery = charge to 80%
Recalibrating the software so that there was more "invisible" capacity at the bottom of the gauge.

Seems that they knew and/or deduced something about battery life in terms of charging to full and draining to empty.

There was, however, no information about ambient heat.
 
The information in the manual states not to leave the car in 120 degrees ambient for more than 24 hours as it will void the warranty.
shrink's is about an 8 to 9 percent loss so we'll see how summer heat affects it.

Sent with speech to text
 
surfingslovak said:
EdmondLeaf said:
JPVLeaf said:
To add to the data pool, I took my Gid-meter this past week to three other Leafs after completing a '100%' charge and got the following:

1. 7.5 mos, 8600 mi., 269 Gids (95.7%), 5x charges/wk from 60% to 100% overnight, Orange Cty.
2. 7 mos, 7500 mi., 269 (95.7%), 4-5x charges/week from ~25% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).
3. 10.5 mos, 10000 mi., 265 (94.3%), 4-5x charges/week from ~40% to 100% thru mid-day, San Bern Cty (inland So Cal).

My charging pattern is closer to #2. Considering my higher mileage, I'm not feeling too bad about my recent 260-265's. But, if a later dip into the 250's doesn't correspond to a rise in the day's temp, .... ;)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Thank you, Richard! JP, any additional details you could share?
Click to expand...
1. silver, never turtled, only charges/rides in central/south OC, #90xx
2. black, turtled/died once, mainly inland, SB Cty, #39xx
3. black, never turtled, mainly inland, SB Cty, #11xx

As most here know, it's not really appropriate to conclude a remaining battery capacity based on single readings, as for the above three Leafs. For example, Leaf no. 1 above, has since reached 272. At a minimum, you'll need a history of readings to 100%. Conclusions about battery capacity losses should probably be based on no less than the recent highest readings. For example, based on the recent 272, I'd say that no. 1 has more likely lost no more than 3%. And even then, there's still some uncertainty related to that's battery pack's cell balancing status .... So, the above are just snap shots after those particular charging events. It's not enough information to draw conclusions about permanent battery capacity losses.

As a result, I feel more comfortable drawing conclusions about my own car, not others' when there is only one, two or even an handful of data points. Having said that, no. 1 is my husband's car so I can continue to monitor his Gids. My co-workers (no. 2 and 3) have asked to do the same, which I will do from time to time.
 
I have found the following article to be of interest regarding temperature and battery degradation. It's aimed at laptop and cell phone batteries, I'm sure the formulation of the LEAF pack is of superior quality, but the numbers in chart 3 look very familiar to me.

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries

Apparently anything above 86F is considered to be detrimental to the long life of a Lithium-Ion battery. Some of the losses to be expected at 40c/104F lines up quite nicely with what the AZ drivers are experiencing. So if Nissan say these losses are 'normal' they maybe telling the truth. They just were not very upfront about what to expect.

Currently it is 101F outside with 91F in my garage where my car is aging. Not good according to the article, but not as bad as what AZ drivers have to put up with. Last years August average of 109f is 42c.

I also found the following quote
Life Span reflects cycle count and longevity. Most EV batteries are guaranteed for 8–10 years or 160,000 km (100,000 miles). Capacity loss through aging is a challenge, especially in hot climates. Auto manufacturers lack information as to how batteries age under different user conditions and climates. To compensate for capacity loss, EV manufacturers increase the size of the batteries to allow for some degradation within the guaranteed service life.
Click to expand...

The quote above comes from another article at the same site http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/is_li_ion_the_solution_for_the_electric_vehicle

Auto manufacturers may lack information on different user conditions and climates now, but Nissan will have plenty of data in a few years. I hope they reward the hot climate guinea pigs for taking on this hitherto unknown risk.
 
Thanks for the reference, and all the posts on this and related threads.

It's interesting that last summer when we had an extended stretch of 100°F and over temps in the Inland Empire (So Cal), and I wondered out loud here on MNL if that might be of concern for the battery as I would go to 100% and sit for several hours, several here said "not a problem" since it was still <120°F and I would 'only' reach 7 battery temp bars. Maybe? Maybe not? Safe to say, no one knew the answer for sure at that time.

As they say, "When you know better, you do better". :cool:
 

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