battery life?

[that1deadguy]

Just wondering at what point do I take my car to the dealer? All of the bars still illuminate, but the driving range has diminished quite a bit over the 27 months of ownership. The miles seem to click off like a 100 yard run. My 54 mile commute use to end with 15 miles or so left. Now, I get home with next to nothing left....and that's altering my habits. I don't operate any accessories that aren't necessary... so I can get home!
So far, I've only experienced the turtle mode once. Luckily, I was able to reach a friend's home to charge.
Jim

 

[mwalsh]

Just wondering at what point do I take my car to the dealer?

The short and less-than-charitable answer? When you've lost 4 capacity bars.

I take it you don't have the LEAF Spy setup? This is a must for monitoring battery health:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14285" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[that1deadguy]

Thanks. .. I'll try that.

 

[Yogi62]

Just wondering at what point do I take my car to the dealer? All of the bars still illuminate, but the driving range has diminished quite a bit over the 27 months of ownership. The miles seem to click off like a 100 yard run. My 54 mile commute use to end with 15 miles or so left. Now, I get home with next to nothing left....and that's altering my habits. I don't operate any accessories that aren't necessary... so I can get home!
So far, I've only experienced the turtle mode once. Luckily, I was able to reach a friend's home to charge.
Jim

All of the big wide bars, or the little 1/4 inch bars on the right?

 

[that1deadguy]

I have 12 bars lit on the right,
after a complete charge..... but doesn't take long for them to disappear. I'm getting about 55 miles on a full charge.

 

[wsbca]

I have 12 bars lit on the right,
after a complete charge..... but doesn't take long for them to disappear. I'm getting about 55 miles on a full charge.

The bars that disappear while driving and reappear when you charge are the state of charge bars, there will always be 12 at full charge. The capacity bars are the little short ones to the right of those, and are the ones relevant to the battery degradation warranty. How many of those segments do you have? (They don't change due to charging, just "permanently" when you lose capacity.) Do your 12 bars at full charge extend beyond the top of the capacity bars? When new, they line up. Again, count the small segments at the extreme right.

 

[keydiver]

There are TWO sets of bars on the right, the larger charge bars and the smaller capacity bars. The capacity bars are the ones we are asking about:

 

[that1deadguy]

They are fully lit......The large bars on the left also light up, with 1 additional on top of the small row. I believe there are 12.
When I first got the Leaf, the approx. mileage left would read as much as 135 miles......the most I've seen recently is 109 miles.

 

[keydiver]

If you see one additional charge bar above the last capacity bar when 100% charged, you are MISSING ONE CAPACITY BAR! That means your battery is down at least 15% in capacity.

 

[that1deadguy]

I'll check again. Thanks!

 

[keydiver]

There is a 714 page thread on the battery capacity issue:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8802" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Short version: Nissan knows their original chemistry has issues with losing capacity in hotter climates. The result of a class action suit has been a new battery capacity warranty, which should have been mailed to you in June 2013. Although the settlement of the suit is still not final, it basically states that if you lose 4 capacity bars within 5 years/60,000 miles, Nissan will replace the battery with the 2015 pack which has an improved chemistry (hopefully). Until then, there is nothing Nissan will do, so try driving slower and try to charge at work or somewhere along your route.
Well, actually, there is one thing you *can* do: you can pay Nissan ~$6000 to install a new battery pack now. :roll:

 

[that1deadguy]

I just ordered the ELM 327 from Amazon. .. $10

 

[mwalsh]

I just ordered the ELM 327 from Amazon. .. $10

Good move. This will give you way more confidence in what you have left in your car once you get down to lower charge over the instrumentation in the LEAF. What Android device do you have/are you going to get? Quite a few of us have the Kyocera Event from Virgin Mobile...it usually ends up on sale for not much more than $25 and remember that you don't need to register it as a phone and take out a contract with Virgin just to use it as an Android device.

Quite a bit here, you will here us talk about "The Gid". The Gid is a measurement of charge, named after our very own Gary Giddings, which is used in LEAF Spy (and the other devices that came before it) to figure out how much energy is left in your battery. You can actually drive the LEAF down all the way to just before Turtle at full highway speeds, so long as you know when Turtle is going to hit. The instrumentation in the 2011 and 2012 LEAF does not offer you this information in anywhere near enough granularity.

3.3 Gids is roughly worth about a mile of careful driving. Your mileage may vary with driving style, terrain, weather conditions, etc... A new 2011/2012 LEAF would have ideally had 281 Gids, or about 85 miles worth of careful driving. My car currently has anywhere from 190-210 Gids (it's not a constant), so anywhere from 57-63 miles with careful driving. When I was in the same position as you with my car - around 30 months in with a capacity bar lost - I was at around 222 Gids, which is around 67 miles with careful driving.

Careful driving for me is ECO mode exclusively, not exceeding 65mph; with weather and terrain conditions that are favorable (good weather, flat ground), and I can drive down to about 13 Gids and feel pretty comfortable, knowing that Turtle occurs at 6 Gids and 13 Gids gives me a 2 mile cushion. By then, I really want my pre-trip planning to have me a stone's throw away from the next charging opportunity.

I am certain that once you see that as you reach --- on your available miles display, you will actually see that you have quite a few miles of driving available to you. :mrgreen:

 

[that1deadguy]

I'll be using my smart phone....a Samsung Galaxy note2.
I've hit 0 miles on a few occasions. Fortunately, the remaining 3 1/2 miles to home were down hill. By the way, I drive in eco mode all the time.