Lizard Pack Holding Up

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'm looking at a used 14 with a build date of January 2014. Are we fairly confident that would not have a lizard pack?

too early. there was "some" evidence that Lizard packs were installed in current builds before the official announcement but you probably missed that by at least 3-5 months
 
dhanson865 said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'm looking at a used 14 with a build date of January 2014. Are we fairly confident that would not have a lizard pack?

Not a lizard unless it had a replacement pack put in after initial build.

Lizard packs annouced here http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17168 on Jun 27, 2014 meaning you'd have to have a July 2014 build date to have any reasonable hope of getting one.

You might hope for an outlier if you got a tail end 2014 Model made right at the end of the 2014 MY run but the odds are they put out 2014s with the leftover 2013 packs and started the 2015 MY with the lizard pack when it came out.

Besides the "lizard pack" is only barely better than a 2013 pack which is only barely better than a 2012 pack. It really isn't worth much of any difference in money to me.

The 30 kWh pack is a different story. We can measure it's worth easily.

Just want to clarify and correct the above statement that the announcement of the "Lizard" stated that it was the pack used in all 2015 cars. The 2015 cars started production in 4/14, so any 2015 car produced in that month would have a lizard. Other than contacting Nissan and confirming your S/N, the only way you would know you have a lizard is to know that your pack read 292 max Gids when new. My 2015 (mfg 4/14) read 292 Gids until about 6K miles. I'm not aware of any other Leaf pack prior to the 2015 lizard that read that high.

The above post is correct though that the lizard isn't much better than the late 2013 MY packs. The early 2013 MY packs were identical to the 11/12 cars.
 
tkdbrusco said:
dhanson865 said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
I'm looking at a used 14 with a build date of January 2014. Are we fairly confident that would not have a lizard pack?

Not a lizard unless it had a replacement pack put in after initial build.

Lizard packs annouced here http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=17168 on Jun 27, 2014 meaning you'd have to have a July 2014 build date to have any reasonable hope of getting one.

You might hope for an outlier if you got a tail end 2014 Model made right at the end of the 2014 MY run but the odds are they put out 2014s with the leftover 2013 packs and started the 2015 MY with the lizard pack when it came out.

Besides the "lizard pack" is only barely better than a 2013 pack which is only barely better than a 2012 pack. It really isn't worth much of any difference in money to me.

The 30 kWh pack is a different story. We can measure it's worth easily.

Just want to clarify and correct the above statement that the announcement of the "Lizard" stated that it was the pack used in all 2015 cars. The 2015 cars started production in 4/14, so any 2015 car produced in that month would have a lizard. Other than contacting Nissan and confirming your S/N, the only way you would know you have a lizard is to know that your pack read 292 max Gids when new. My 2015 (mfg 4/14) read 292 Gids until about 6K miles. I'm not aware of any other Leaf pack prior to the 2015 lizard that read that high.

The above post is correct though that the lizard isn't much better than the late 2013 MY packs. The early 2013 MY packs were identical to the 11/12 cars.

Kind of goofy but a Leaf made in Feb 2014 is a 2014 model and a Leaf made in April 2014 is a 2015 model with only two months difference in build date.

I'd love to know how tight that gap was. When did 2014 MY stop rolling off the line?
 
From what I understand, 2014 was a very short model year and production run. I have a friend who has a 7/13 produced 2013 model Leaf, so it looks like they only made the 2014 from 8/13-3/14 give or take. I'd be willing to bet that there's a few late 2014 production models that got lizard batteries but I think there's really no way to know for sure if your has one unless you ran some readings when it was new and noticed a 292 GID reading.
 
(Leaf 2) with December 2014 new battery install (Lizard), has regained to 91% SOH in June 21st 2016 from a low of 87% SOH in Feb 2016. More detailed stats are on page 14 of this thread.

All of the stats for this month are showing lower than last month with the exception of SOH, AHr, and Hx which read higher. Battery temps are reading at 104 degrees and it is 4 a.m. and it was not on the charger or driven. This car also parks over grass and not garaged.

I am surprised that Leaf 2 is reading higher in SOH. GIDs are not reading higher though... With the better SOH stats, maybe this battery will make it to 3 years! The next one is on my dime.

c4Lvin, thanks for pointing that out! I corrected it to read June instead of July.
 
Evoforce said:
(Leaf 2) with December 2014 new battery install (Lizard), has regained to 91% SOH in June 21st 2016 from a low of 87% SOH in Feb 2016. More detailed stats are on page 14 of this thread.

All of the stats for this month are showing lower than last month with the exception of SOH, AHr, and Hx which read higher. Battery temps are reading at 104 degrees and it is 4 a.m. and it was not on the charger or driven. This car also parks over grass and not garaged.

I am surprised that Leaf 2 is reading higher in SOH. GIDs are not reading higher though... With the better SOH stats, maybe this battery will make it to 3 years! The next one is on my dime.

c4Lvin, thanks for pointing that out! I corrected it to read June instead of July.


higher GIDs means more storage capability or a better balanced pack at the top end. Higher SOH is supposed to mean the battery pack is happier. keep in mind; higher top end balancing is not necessarily a good thing especially if you are not needing maximum range. for maximum life its best to keep SOC in the 20 to 80% range. Of course, the range being so limited makes this an undoable challenge for some so you have to weigh your options. Fully charging is supposed to be bad but as long as time at high voltage is limited, I am seeing a small drawback if any but without a side by side car to compare, its impossible to say. the only real option we have is to do what we are doing; report our experiences with details of how we charge, drive, etc.
 
ahagge said:
As I've now had my battery for just over a year, so here's another update:

Battery%2BDegradation%2B2016-05-05.png


Comments:
With the colder weather of winter and spring, the battery has been holding pretty steady. I'm currently at about 258-260 GIDs, 60.25 AHr, 94% SOH and 90.4 Hx. We'll see what happens during the next 6 months...

Update: We're now well into the heat of summer, I'm happy (ecstatic, really!) to report that my battery capacity has remained stable even over weeks of 90°+ F temperatures (and multiple days well over 100° F). Here's my latest chart:
pubchart


In short, the AHr reading have been holding steady between about 59 and 61 since the beginning of the year. I'm crossing my fingers that it'll stay that way! ;)
 
ahagge - How many miles per month are you driving? From the charts, it looks around 4,000 to 6,000 per month.

I think the high mileage is what is keeping the stats up. Once you start driving very little, they seem to drop quite rapidly, then level out.
 
The original battery on my 2011 SL was replaced at the start of March this year. The replacement Lizard stats have recently been dropping like a stone. Capacity is now at 61.66AHr, SOH = 96% and Hx = 92.48. As others have mentioned, capacity was glued at 66.141 for almost 5 months (until mid July) and then has dropped far too quickly for my liking. Since battery replacement I have done just over 5000 miles of mostly day-to-day commuting.

I live in Dallas, TX, so we do get long, hot summers. The car is always parked in a garage. During the week I park on an upper level in the morning (to get the breeze whilst the temp is <90F), then move to the basement at lunchtime (where it tends to be a little cooler). Overnight it is parked in a basement and charged to 80% most days, and rarely to 100%. Observed pack temps only exceeded 100F a few times over summer, even with the hot weather we had.

Are these values consistent with those seen by others on the forum? It all seems a little concerning and isn't boding well for pack longevity.
 
Aussie said:
Are these values consistent with those seen by others on the forum? It all seems a little concerning and isn't boding well for pack longevity.

Almost exactly...and I live in Dallas as well!
The only difference is my (new) lizard pack is a few months older (with a few more miles).
The summer obviously had a big impact (no surprise). What remains to be seen is if we re-gain any of those lost AHr over the winter (with some 100% charges); I have been charging to 80% more than usual (since we now have more range), and the theory is some top-end balancing (and driving?) will restore some capacity.
 
LeafMuranoDriver said:
ahagge - How many miles per month are you driving? From the charts, it looks around 4,000 to 6,000 per month.

I think the high mileage is what is keeping the stats up. Once you start driving very little, they seem to drop quite rapidly, then level out.
Sorry for the delayed response, I'm not on as frequently these days.

To answer your question, I'm putting about 16,000 miles/year on the vehicle. At least 1,000 miles per month, every month (but no more than about 1,500 and certainly not in the 4k-6k range!).

FYI, here's the graph, updated through 10/28/16:

pubchart


What I find interesting (and disheartening) now is that even though the weather has cooled significantly, the battery is losing capacity at an increased rate.

Sigh.
 
^ Another set of data showing zero degradation for the first few months, more evidence that the "Lizard Pack" is actually more than 24 KWh. My guess is that these are 30 KWh packs that didn't pass QC with enough capacity, hence sold as 24 KWh.
 
Reddy said:
My guess is that these are 30 KWh packs that didn't pass QC with enough capacity, hence sold as 24 KWh.

Highly unlikely, especially for this particular graph. There were no 30 kWh packs in April 2015, at least not in production.
 
Reddy said:
^ Another set of data showing zero degradation for the first few months, more evidence that the "Lizard Pack" is actually more than 24 KWh. My guess is that these are 30 KWh packs that didn't pass QC with enough capacity, hence sold as 24 KWh.

cant be done. completely different in size, configuration, hookups, etc. Nissan told us that the battery pack was in a constant state of improvement (or at least that is their goal) looking for a balance between robustness, power and durability. So the thought that a 2015 pack would be the same as the original 2015 is not even in the ballpark. All the packs 2013 and up have been constantly tweaked due to the obvious issues the 2011 pack had.

the tweaking includes the charge profiles, power profiles, regen, etc. everything was looked at.

Just looking at the GID progression of 281 or 2011's and 12's to 284 for 2013's and 14's to 292 for 15's should be enough of a clue. Now does this mean the pack is larger?

that is part of it but other changes also contributed
 
^^^ Hmmm, I forgot about that. Would it be possible that "cells" that didn't have enough capacity for the 30 KWh pack could have been combined together into 24 KWh "packs" thereby having just a bit extra? Well, I guess this proves that I don't know much about how these things are put together.
 
Reddy said:
^^^ Hmmm, I forgot about that. Would it be possible that "cells" that didn't have enough capacity for the 30 KWh pack could have been combined together into 24 KWh "packs" thereby having just a bit extra? Well, I guess this proves that I don't know much about how these things are put together.

no. they are not like processors that are built for tier 1 speed then tested and rated after completion.

Cells are built in layers. they have basically a sandwich consisting of the "positive side, electrolyte and a negative side. there are SEVERAL layers put together to make a cell. So each battery pack is very much a custom job.

contrast this to Tesla who uses "flashlight" cells where they vary the pack by changing the number of cells. they only need to maintain a multiple of the cell numbers to match voltage and power guidelines.

now don't rail me on the Tesla comment. they used to use those types of cells. I don't know what they use anymore...
 
Back
Top