What were your capacity loss expectations for your LEAF?

[RegGuheert]

From reading various comments regarding capacity loss, it seems clear that we all have different expectations. So I am wondering if the other LEAF owners here could post their answers to the following two questions:

Q1: When you purchased your LEAF, what was your GOAL for how much capacity (or range) loss you would experience from your LEAF over time?

Q2: When you purchased your LEAF, what was your EXPECTATION of how much capacity (or range) loss you would experience from your LEAF beyond which you would feel that Nissan had done a poor job or had somehow misled you?

I'll start:

Q1: My GOAL for our LEAF was to achieve a capacity loss of less than 2% per year, on average. (FWIW, that goal is still intact, even if it is not a realistic one.)

Q2: My EXPECTATION for our LEAF was that capacity loss beyond about 5% per year would be excessive.

 

[adric22]

I guess my goal and expectations are one in the same.

I expected to have 70% of capacity remaining after the end of the battery warranty. I believe Nissan stated something like this at one point and it stuck with me. Of course at the time they were still touting the car heavily as a 100 mile range. So I expected 70 miles range at the end of that period. However, I'm pretty comfortable with the range it has now so I think even 50 miles range will still be a great car in 7 years or so.

I leased my car and I've had it 14 months. I did that mostly so I could afford the payments and get the tax credit quickly. However, I fully expect to re-finance and purchase my car at the end of the least, which is less than 2 years away.

 

[surfingslovak]

Q1: My GOAL for our LEAF was to achieve a capacity loss of less than 2% per year, on average. (FWIW, that goal is still intact, even if it is not a realistic one.)

Q2: My EXPECTATION for our LEAF was that capacity loss beyond about 5% per year would be excessive.

I think my expectations are in line with yours, but as has been pointed out several times before, we should expect a larger decline in the first year. Presumably, this will level off after the initial 'break-in' period. Be that as it may, I'm tracking all the numbers posted in recent threads, and if you exclude AZ and TX for the moment, the average projected capacity across about 20 vehicles is a notch above 97% of nominal. That's not that far from the numbers you posted above. While I appreciate your efforts and energy, you seem to be jumping to conclusions a bit too fast? Quote: "FWIW, that goal is still intact, even if it is not a realistic one."

 

[RegGuheert]

While I appreciate your efforts and energy, you seem to be jumping to conclusions a bit too fast? Quote: "FWIW, that goal is still intact, even if it is not a realistic one."

Sorry, I worded that poorly. I have not concluded that I won't make my goal. In fact, I'm encouraged that I may exceed it! Our driving needs are much lighter than most of the other LEAF owners here.

 

[surfingslovak]

Sorry, I worded that poorly. I have not concluded that I won't make my goal. In fact, I'm encouraged that I may exceed it! Our driving needs are much lighter than most of the other LEAF owners here.

Ah, got it! For what it's worth, if my data is right, I'm seeing a pronounced clustering of locales south of the 34th parallel. Virginia is close, and can get hot during the summer, but you could be fine. I mentioned Tom Moloughney several times before. His MINI-E did spectacularly well considering that he literally drove it into the ground, and there was no battery temperature management. I believe that the cells were some special Molicel concoction, very likely lithium manganese like in the Leaf. New Jersey, where Tom lives, is not known for moderate weather, and there are Leafs there now too.

 

[mwalsh]

My commute is 61 miles daily. I've been able to do it on a fully charged battery with roughly 25-30% remaining when I got home. I felt this gave me a bit of flexibility to run out for lunch, or do a few errands when arriving home, without needing to obligate my bosses to let me charge while at work. I was rather expecting (hoping?) that I would be able to do this for at least the first 5 years of ownership, after which I'd need to think about charging some at work, or consider rebuilding the pack (which, of course, I rather hope will be a quite inexpensive proposition by then). Of course, I could also consider the purchase of new BEV, but it is not uncommon for me to keep my cars up to 10 years, particularly the ones I develop a(n irrational) fondness for.

 

[caffeinekid]

After exhaustive research before ever making the purchase, I fully expected to have at least 80% capacity remaining by the end of the battery warranty. And I say "at least" because of our driving habits. My wife and I average 4.7 miles per kWH if that is any indication of how we treat it. Plus the car is charged overnight in a garage using the trickle charger with only an occasional fill up at local Blink stations. I am not sure where this idea of a "breaking in period" of the battery pack came from, but I did not interpret ANYTHING in all of my research as indicating that the 20% degradation would occur in the first year. That is/would be a major omission of facts for obvious reasons on the part of Nissan. I don't really care what other EV enthusiasts' stance is on accepting a car that only has a 60 mile range, that is not enough for us. We fully expected to have a 70-80 mile range.....and more if we drove it REALLY nicely, which we do. That is how the car was marketed and that is what we expected.

Frankly, I have not been paying attention to the bar segment of the cluster, mostly because we charge to 80% 4 days of the week. And I doubt most other Leaf drivers are diligently following its reading after every charge either, but I will now. The fact that only an alleged handful of relatively hot climate drivers have brought it up does not mean that it is exclusive to them or their environment. We live in Houston and the temps are starting out stupid again at an average of 90+ degrees with steady strong winds each and every day. I am going to start logging the status when we do a full 100% charge and see whether or not there are 12 bars. If there are not after 10 charges or so, I will post about it.

 

[adric22]

I am going to start logging the status when we do a full 100% charge and see whether or not there are 12 bars. If there are not after 10 charges or so, I will post about it.

There will always be 12 bars after a full charge. If you have lost a capacity bar, you'd already see it by now whether you charge to 80% or not. I wish somebody would get a graphic or something we could post to explain where these little capacity bars are. I think a lot of people still don't realize the difference. I didn't until somebody explained it to me.

 

[TomT]

My expectation was that, at the end of my four year lease, I would still have a minimum of 85 percent capacity.

 

[surfingslovak]

There will always be 12 bars after a full charge. If you have lost a capacity bar, you'd already see it by now whether you charge to 80% or not. I wish somebody would get a graphic or something we could post to explain where these little capacity bars are. I think a lot of people still don't realize the difference. I didn't until somebody explained it to me.

Here you go. Capacity bars are number 14. And the battery bars we all love and count, are number 13. Distance-to-empty (DTE) gauge or guessometer (GOM) is number 12.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I'm loathe to respond here, as if capacity loss was the only thing we can talk about. Nissan has nothing but wiggle room in their comments about the losses we would experience.

So, 70-80% was what I thought I would have at 100,000 miles. Nissan uses those numbers frequently. I also thought that they would wisely err on the conservative side.

So, that was my expectation. I assumed it would be somewhat linear, but then Tesla data suggested that it would stay level for about 500 cycles, and then start dropping to hit that 70-80%.

I assumed high heat would kill these batteries, like any battery. That wouldn't affect me, unless I did a lot of quick charging. My batteries are definitely taking a larger hit than I would expect at 24,000 miles, but then I haven't been kind to them on depth of cycles. It's hard to say what the future holds now. I need all the range available, plus some.

 

[dgpcolorado]

My expectations were pretty modest: I wasn't sure even a new LEAF would be able to make my 65-75 mile grocery runs—with major elevation changes—in winter. Instead I was considering trying to persuade someone in the destination city to install L2 charging, preferably at a supermarket.

I found out that a new LEAF will make that distance easily in sub freezing weather. Now I am hoping that if the range decreases in three or four years public charging may have come to my area. (When people knock L2 public charging they forget that if one needs just an additional ten miles to complete a trip it will work fine.)

However, the reports from LEAF owners in mild climates with GID meters seem to show rather little degradation after a year. Since my climate is very cool I am hoping that my battery may still be at 90% capacity after five years or so, which would be great. Although I only drive it about 6000 miles a year, my use involves very steep hills so the discharge/regen rates are much higher than many others experience on a regular basis.

At 90% the car will do all my routine errands fine, even in winter. At 80% I would need some enroute charging to make the long grocery run in winter but the majority of trips would still be fine. At 70% I wonder if the power would be affected for hill climbing; might be time for a battery replacement, assuming that Nissan still makes them.

My usual plan is to keep a car for 20+ years. But I have considered trading in my current LEAF in a couple of years for a newer model, given the structure of tax credits (as some may have heard, Colorado has a very generous state tax credit for the next few years).

 

[vegastar]

I expected 3% per annum degradation. More than 5% would be the most I could accept. My mileage is 30000km / 17000miles per annum.

At 10.5 months of ownership and 15300 miles I have around 1% degradation (278 gids on full charge).

 

[kovalb]

Generally knowing how Li-Ion batteries energy capacity deteriorates very rapidly at first I expected to lose about 10% in the first year, to a year and a half. Then, living in Phoenix, I expected to hit 20% loss in maybe four to five years. The loss curves are usually very non-linear for any Li-Ion.

I've had the LEAF for about 9 mos. and 12,000 miles so far and have seen no noticeable loss. I'm not saying there isn't any, just that I haven't noticed any. I can still do a 70 mile round trip, including freeway (65mph) with A/C on, without ever getting a low battery warning. So far the LEAF has exceeded my expectations regarding battery energy capacity deterioration.

 

[abasile]

Goal: 20% capacity loss after 10 years

Expectation: 20% loss after 5 years

Currently: At 15,000+ miles and 13 months, basically zero measurable loss (280 gids)

Risk factors:
1. High charge/discharge rates due to frequent drives down/up a large mountain.
2. Time spent parked in the valley below where it is much hotter during the summer.

Mitigation:
1. Gentle, slow driving up the mountain, with frequent use of turnouts.
2. In warm weather, make use of shaded parking spots, and/or in safe areas, crack the windows open.

Time will tell...

 

[Weatherman]

I don't have a GID meter (at least not until the LEAFSCAN starts to ship), but my best estimate is that I have about 20.5 kWh of usable battery capacity (given a nearly continuous 4.0 mile/kWh burn rate). Since my normal commute is 39 miles, I have plenty of room to spare, right now.

What I'd like to see is the ability to keep my routine of charging to 80% for the next five years and never hit LBW before my 39 mile commute ends. I believe that allows for about a 24% capacity loss over five years.

I don't believe Nissan owes me anything if my battery doesn't meet my expectations by the five-year mark, since I did sign a document when I bought the car that basically says I accept any, undefined amount of gradual capacity loss.

However, my main concern is the attitude of my Nissan dealer's service shops. It's not like I can take the car anywhere for diagnostics and service on the battery. If I start seeing my usable capacity drop to 19, then 18, then 17, and I always get five stars and "everything’s normal" whenever I get the battery checked, that's when I'll start to get unhappy.

My first, annual battery check is about six months from now.

 

[planet4ever]

My expectation was that the battery would be somewhere between 70% and 90% by the end of my three year lease. If it was at the high end of that I might keep the car, but if it was at the low end I would turn it in and get another one. Based on my previous casual experience with (small) rechargeable batteries I was pretty pessimistic about the possibility of a long lifetime.

I'm not sure how to interpret "goal". In one sense, my goal was to treat the battery as gently as possible, and try for close to zero loss. In another sense, my requirement for the car was that it be able to take me at least 40 to 50 miles, which I thought of as less than 50% loss in three years.

Ray

 

[GlennD]

I have no experience with the Leaf's battery chemistry. I work with Motorola XTS5000's. These are a high end Police radios. We changed out our system 1n 2007. All of the 2007 and most of the 2008 date coded lithium batteries fail to make Motorola's 80% good specification.

I would not be surprised to see 2-5% per year loss. This is what my batteries experience. Again, Nissan uses a different chemistry.

I leased my Leaf expecting that there would be gradual battery loss of capacity. Nissan warranties the battery for 8 years but they exclude battery capacity.

 

[Stoaty]

Hoping for 2% loss per year for 10 years, expecting 3.0-3.5% loss per year for 10 years. Not necessarily expecting the drop to be linear, but more than 8-10% in first year would be much worse than expectation. Haven't charged to 100% for several months (and rarely do), only lost 3 gids on my 80% charge over the last 8-9 months. I am satisfied, but plan to charge to 100% soon with time for balancing so I can see where my battery stands after a full charge.

 

[Herm]

I have no experience with the Leaf's battery chemistry. I work with Motorola XTS5000's. These are a high end Police radios. We changed out our system 1n 2007. All of the 2007 and most of the 2008 date coded lithium batteries fail to make Motorola's 80% good specification.

Glenn, what is the end voltage that these get charged to?