Sudden Turtle Mode in Very Cold Weather

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jotunheim

Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
20
Location
Milwaukee, WI
On the way to work this morning, I had the car go into turtle mode rather suddenly while accelerating up a moderate incline. Ambient temperature was about -7°F. At the time that this occurred, the percentage of charge was about 40% and was nowhere near a LBW or VLBW. It did recover partially after bouncing around in the teens and then back up to about 28% in the span of a few minutes. I typically use about 25-40% of the battery to get to work, depending on the time of year, and it was on par with the 40% worth of winter battery consumption when I did finally arrive at work. I also did reduce speed and turn off the heat after this happened, as I was not sure what was going on and really did not want to be stranded in the cold weather.

I don't have LeafSpy, so I am limited on the information I can provide, but I started with about 57% at the beginning of the drive, and have a 20 mile drive to work with about 80% of it on freeway. Battery was at 15% when I arrived. The battery temp meter was at 2 bars, and did rise to 3 right around the time this happened. Power was limited on the car early in the drive, as the top 2 and bottom 3 circles on the power meter were not illuminated. Car was not left plugged in overnight.

I have had the range adjust on me when the battery has warmed up for me in cold weather drives, but this is the first time I have seen it drop like this. I have leased my 2016 Leaf for exactly a year and has about 15,400 miles with no noticeable battery loss yet (12/12 bars), and had a 2013 prior to this. Did the car try to protect the battery when I was trying to accelerate up the hill or is there something more serious going on? If just a battery protection measure, why would the battery percentage drop so suddenly? Anyone else have this happen as well?

Thanks,

Jason
 
get the leafspy plugged in, a dead or dying cell has similar symptoms where the battery pack would all of the sudden show way lower charge than reality. i would put my money on that from the small amount of diagnostics info that is available so far.
 
Thanks - yes, probably a good idea and have the OBDII adapter on order.

I really hope that it is not a cell issue, and the car has not had any issues until this very cold morning.

I don't know if this helps, but when I used the Nissan app the previous evening, it showed the SOC at 57%. When I ran it again in the morning (to see if the battery heater had come on or any other draw on the battery), it showed the battery at 63%. The car was unplugged the entire time. I don't know if this is just a random cold weather thing, or like you said, indicative of a probable cell issue.

My 2013 Leaf would do sudden range drops in very cold weather as well, but never went into turtle and ways always fine once the weather warmed up a bit. I will post back in a few days once the port scanner arrives.

Jason
 
individual battery cells would get replaced under warranty at least, so not much risk to you besides the inconvenience. though maybe it is just the very cold weather playing games, i have not had to deal with much below 30F here in the NW.
 
jotunheim said:
...

I don't have LeafSpy, so I am limited on the information I can provide, but I started with about 57% at the beginning of the drive, and have a 20 mile drive to work with about 80% of it on freeway. Battery was at 15% when I arrived. The battery temp meter was at 2 bars, and did rise to 3 right around the time this happened. Power was limited on the car early in the drive, as the top 2 and bottom 3 circles on the power meter were not illuminated. Car was not left plugged in overnight.

....

The batteries don't perform optimally in cold weather. If you are driving under these conditions to work, especially in cold weather, why are you not starting out with 100% charge? You should have it plugged in and charging overnight.
 
baustin said:
The batteries don't perform optimally in cold weather. If you are driving under these conditions to work, especially in cold weather, why are you not starting out with 100% charge? You should have it plugged in and charging overnight.
That has nothing to do with his problem. If the battery monitoring system is not being reasonable and consistent, then there is a severe problem with the battery pack. He should be able to have it fixed under warranty.
 
garsh said:
baustin said:
The batteries don't perform optimally in cold weather. If you are driving under these conditions to work, especially in cold weather, why are you not starting out with 100% charge? You should have it plugged in and charging overnight.
That has nothing to do with his problem. If the battery monitoring system is not being reasonable and consistent, then there is a severe problem with the battery pack. He should be able to have it fixed under warranty.

It may or may not have anything to do with his problem, but it is a very legitimate question. From his description, it is possible he is not regularly charging to 100%, and the cells could be way out of balance. And it could be that he just has a defective battery pack.
 
I have an appointment will the dealer tomorrow morning, so I will update this thread once I have more information.

Not wanting a repeat performance of yesterday's erratic battery performance, I did leave the car plugged in overnight with similar temperatures of around -8°F. It seemed fine on the drive to work, however, I did notice that it took 4-5 miles before the SOC moved from 100%. This is not right, as most any other time, it starts going down within 1/4 mile or 1/2 mile of driving. The SOC was at 67% when I arrived at work, which is a little high for this time of year as well. I would see this more typically with ambient temperatures above freezing. On a positive note, the drop was mostly linear though.

To answer a few questions, the Leaf is typically charged to 100% once a day at work. Usually there is more than enough charge to do a round trip, which is why the Leaf was not fully charged at the house overnight. Thanks for your replies!

Jason
 
Charging to 100% may be serving as a bandaid for the problem. If the issue is one bad cell dropping below the BMS's allowed voltage threshold, thus causing Turtling, then starting with the highest cell voltage possible may mask the problem - for a while - until a much lower SOC is reached.
 
I was able to run Leaf Spy this morning right when I got to the dealer this morning. Attached is the battery test and summary screen. Is it fair to assume there is a problem with the first cell with it's color a dark red?

IMG_1550.png

IMG_1551.png
 
I'm not a LeafSpy expert, but I'd say yes, and that there are about 6 other cells that are much lower than the rest.

Just to be clear: you have charged the car to 100%, and until it shuts off charging, right?
 
LeftieBiker said:
I'm not a LeafSpy expert, but I'd say yes, and that there are about 6 other cells that are much lower than the rest.

Just to be clear: you have charged the car to 100%, and until it shuts off charging, right?

Yes, the car was charged to 100% last night and was then unplugged. Leaf Spy reading was taken when I dropped it off at the dealer this morning with approximately 65% showing on the dash meter.
 
I had a similar thing happen last night. Driving home after the car sat outside all day right about at 0F. The battery temp was just one bar (although I have seen no bars in previous winters). I had driven about 15 miles and was at about 24% leaving a stop light, not quickly or anything, I got the ding and turtle, I was about 1/2 mile from home. I slowed down to 25 (a 35 zone) and made it home and charged it. I totally didn't think to check Leaf Spy at the time, to worried about making it home, but I am guessing this is the same sort of thing, one cell lower that kicks the car in to turtle? I do charge to 100% daily, often more than once driving about 100 miles a day, with a lot of 15 mile trips. I have to think the cold must mess with the cells, some more than others? This morning I had a 12 mv spread. I will check it tonight and see if any are out of whack.
 
When my housemate plugged my car in for me a while ago, she got the three light plus beeping charging error. I have no idea what that's about yet, but it went below Zero here last night, and is about 8F now...
 
Got the Leaf back from the dealer this afternoon. In short, they could not find anything wrong with the car. Each of the individual cell voltages checked out fine and there were no codes stored. They offered to keep the car overnight to see if they could replicate the problem, but I declined as it was unlikely to occur with the slightly warmer temperatures now.

For now, I will just keep an eye on it and run Leaf Spy if it occurs again, and forward any information I find to the dealer at that time. I would be curious if anyone else that has had this happen finds something that may be causing this to happen, or if it was just a fluke with the rapid swing in temperature we have had in the upper Midwest.
 
@jotunheim You hit turtle mode with enough battery that turtle mode was not expected... a year later, can you provide any information about battery issues you ran into after this?

I also hit turtle mode with a near full charge and 31 miles when it was near zero degrees Fahrenheit, 1.7 miles after starting out in my 2012 Leaf (it's now Feb 2019). I have 69K miles, 8/12 bars of battery "health". No bars on the battery temperature gauge. I'd like to call it a cold weather fluke rather than a predictor of problems. Your experience since your issue would help a lot!
 
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