[help] Rapid battery discharge, "limited motor power", and sporadic power output at temp. < 30F and > 40% motor power.

[Tekija78]

Yep.

Unfortunately, it can be a real chore to get dealerships to understand and acknowledge weak cells. And Nissan in the past has told customers to pound sand until DTC's are logged that are related to the weak cell. So I think the right approach is to do two things:

1. Take a dealership rep on a test drive with SoC below 30% and demonstrate turtle mode with acceleration
2. Keep pushing the SoC down with the same driving behavior until DTCs are logged

Alrightythen! I was, and still am, a bit slow due to lack of sleep last night but DTC refers to data logging? LeafSpy seems like to be commonly used among Leaf users so that's why was babbling about. Don't know if it's even official tool which used by the Nissan service also but I guess tool's name doesn't matter as long as the job gets done, eh.

I threw the ball forward to the local Nissan dealership - now I'll have to wait and see what they reply. Keeping my fingers crossed here meanwhile!

 

[LeftieBiker]

Alrightythen! I was, and still am, a bit slow due to lack of sleep last night but DTC refers to data logging?

It refers to error codes that the car generates and then stores. Dealerships require them to be present for them to take action in cases like this. LeafSpy Pro can read them and also clear them. (Be careful to NOT do that in this case!) LeafSpy Pro will also show a graph ("histogram") of the voltages of all the cells, and note the maximum variance between them. That should show any bad r marginal cells. The differences between bad cells and normal ones become more apparent at lower states of charge - below 30% especially.

 

[Tekija78]

Still no answer from the Nissan dealership (they are pretty busy) and the car's original seller company hasn't been replying to any emails. But meanwhile waiting for their reply I encountered the same problem which has become a bit worse: now the problem popped up at -10 Celsius degrees / 14 Fahrenheit degrees but luckily no turtle mode this time nor error messages / lights on the dashboard. Meaning that this happens now even in warmer temperatures but less severe.

What troubles me a bit is that this tends to happen when the SoC goes below 30 % and if the car is shutdown and started again i.e. on 23 % SoC, there are no problems: no error messages and the SoC value stays constantly at right value even if I pump the gas pedal like a "maniac". I have absolutely no idea how batteries work in general but... if there's a bad cell in the battery pack, then why the problem happens quite often / always on that 30 % SoC and why isn't it happening on 23 % SoC. :| More I think about this, more I'm starting to believe that Nissan's reply to local Nissan dealership is right and the problem is in the dashboard after all. :roll:

 

[Tekija78]

An update:

Today the problem occurred in -12 Celsius / 10 Fahrenheit degrees, SoC was 32 %.

The strange thing is that after driving the car approx. 3-4 minutes, the turtle mode vanished in the middle of driving so no restart was needed this time. I arrived to a traffic light intersection with red lights so I decided to restart car there quickly. After that there was nothing abnormal except that the car was pretty lazy even with no turtle mode on. And yes, I checked at least five times that ECO mode hadn't been activated by the car or the clumsy owner. :roll: After that I drove few miles to a grocery store to buy some coffee bread for my mother, spent 10 minutes doing the shopping and after that the car wasn't lazy anymore and was accelerating quickly again. At that point SoC was 16 %.

If my case ever finds a solution, I will inform it here in case there are some other Leaf users seeking information about this kind of behavior. Meanwhile I love driving my Leaf - especially when it isn't trying to turtle-bash my mental health.

 

[LeftieBiker]

It's the battery pack, NOT the 'dashboard'.

 

[Tekija78]

It's the battery pack, NOT the 'dashboard'.

I'm thinking same about that, too, and that's why I used that rolling eyes' smiley after that sentence. It's funny though that Nissan's official reply was that the dashboard is the problem and they are working on a fix. :idea:

After the holidays I'll give the local Nissan dealership a call or even a visit if Covid-19 situation allows me to.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Sorry to be short - I was typing with my left arm, with a cat on my right one. We have never, AFAIK, seen a problem with the actual state of charge/capacity bar display, other than with a BMS reset (which this is also not) causing it to display false capacity information.

 

[Tekija78]

Sorry to be short - I was typing with my left arm, with a cat on my right one. We have never, AFAIK, seen a problem with the actual state of charge/capacity bar display, other than with a BMS reset (which this is also not) causing it to display false capacity information.

No worries, the reasons are almost the best possible ones. And I'm grateful for all the answers, even if they are short! *nods*

I just finished sending them a suggestion via email about their technician joining the car ride with tools attached into my car when the conditions are right (really cold outside temp + SoC near to 30 %). They really have been friendly and helpful at the local Nissan dealership with my Nissan Leaf along the way during these 1,5 years so I'm quite confident that they are willing to give this one a shot. Driving daily with this kind of problem is a bit depressing so to speak.

Meanwhile, happy Christmas Holidays to everyone!!

 

[mn4az]

Did the OP ever get the car to throw a DTC such that Nissan had to act?

Asking because my wife had this exact problem in our '16 Leaf today with very similar conditions (freeway speeds and/or uphill) but in much colder weather (9F). Charge to 100% every day and her trip today was the first the car took. Oh... she sets the heat at 72F and has a lead foot as well.

Took a quick look at LeafSpy when she got back and no cells showing bad. Read DTCs while car was in garage and charging. Appears to me that nothing is 'off': https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmMHBcyzLWAx8K54OP13IXCPGU3rkQ?e=6Mz4Je

Did a complete L2 charge and the min/avg/max voltages are: 4.093, 4.099 and 4.110 (17mV)

Everything seems normal to me. I figure it's just the cold plus everything that's been talked about in this thread and the solution is to baby the thing going uphill and avoid freeways until spring. We are on track to a battery replacement via degradation warranty. SOH has been as low as 68.44% this month but is currently at 68.75%.

Any differing opinions?

 

[Goodbar]

Did the OP ever get the car to throw a DTC such that Nissan had to act?

Asking because my wife had this exact problem in our '16 Leaf today with very similar conditions (freeway speeds and/or uphill) but in much colder weather (9F). Charge to 100% every day and her trip today was the first the car took. Oh... she sets the heat at 72F and has a lead foot as well.

Took a quick look at LeafSpy when she got back and no cells showing bad. Read DTCs while car was in garage and charging. Appears to me that nothing is 'off': https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmMHBcyzLWAx8K54OP13IXCPGU3rkQ?e=6Mz4Je

Did a complete L2 charge and the min/avg/max voltages are: 4.093, 4.099 and 4.110 (17mV)

Everything seems normal to me. I figure it's just the cold plus everything that's been talked about in this thread and the solution is to baby the thing going uphill and avoid freeways until spring. We are on track to a battery replacement via degradation warranty. SOH has been as low as 68.44% this month but is currently at 68.75%.

Any differing opinions?

Another similar situation here with a 2017. My wife called me from the DC Beltway yesterday morning, saying she got a "Motor power is limited" dash warning. Fortunately it went away by the time the car slowed to 45 mph so she didn't end up on the side of the road. It didn't happen initially when merging onto the highway and didn't recur. The overnight low was 23ºF and the ambient temp was around 30. The battery SoC was around 60%. This is for a 30 kWh battery at 72% SoH, recently lost the 3rd bar. There were no DTCs when I scanned with LeafSpy.

This is potentially scary stuff. Hoping we lose the next bar and get a warranty replacement without more of these events.