Leaf Vampire Drain?

LeftieBiker said:

The automatic trickle charging on older Leafs, at least USA Leafs, is not "totally fine" as many have discovered. It is often inadequate.

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I left my 2011 parked numerous times at my office or the airport (up to 3 weeks at a time) and the only time I had a problem was once when I forgot to unplug the Bluetooth device from the OBDII port and left Leaf Spy running on the Android device sitting on the passenger seat. The 12-volt battery was completely dead when I returned to the office after only 5 days. I suspect the Bluetooth module and Leaf Spy running on the Android device kept the CAN bus active and prevented the car's modules from going into low power (sleep) mode so the 12-volt battery was drained before the first scheduled automatic charge (every 5 days on 2011). In this case, I jump-started the LEAF from my office vehicle and drove home. The 12-volt battery was fully charged after driving home and charging the traction battery overnight.

I don't recall all or even most of the people with dead 12 volt batteries having OBDII devices. It does seem that 2013 was the worst year for this issue, but it's also happened with other years. We've speculated before that driving patterns play a part in how well the little battery stays charged, with some people like you having no issues and others having it happen multiple times.

LeftieBiker said:

I don't recall all or even most of the people with dead 12 volt batteries having OBDII devices.

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I have had a 12V battery problem once with my 2014. Left the car in the garage for about 10 days with the ODBII dongle for LeafSpy plugged in. Battery was dead. Put on 1A charger for a few hours, then started car. Almost a year ago.

Other than that, no problem. Left the 2012 and the 2014 at the airport for 4 weeks, no problem on return. Of course, remembered to remember the OBDII dongle.

LeftieBiker said:

I don't recall all or even most of the people with dead 12 volt batteries having OBDII devices. It does seem that 2013 was the worst year for this issue, but it's also happened with other years. We've speculated before that driving patterns play a part in how well the little battery stays charged, with some people like you having no issues and others having it happen multiple times.

Click to expand...

It was probably a 50/50 mix. As long as you exit the LEAF Spy program you will be fine. Unplugging OBD, not needed. My old one had no lights or anything else on it so had to trust it and it never failed me. My new one does have lights and you can see it turns off after 5-10 seconds.

The only correlation I could see with dying batteries was CARWINGS and timers and occasionally just cold weather which is detrimental to lead acid batteries in any car

DaveinOlyWA said:

LeftieBiker said:

I don't recall all or even most of the people with dead 12 volt batteries having OBDII devices. It does seem that 2013 was the worst year for this issue, but it's also happened with other years. We've speculated before that driving patterns play a part in how well the little battery stays charged, with some people like you having no issues and others having it happen multiple times.

Click to expand...

It was probably a 50/50 mix. As long as you exit the LEAF Spy program you will be fine. Unplugging OBD, not needed. My old one had no lights or anything else on it so had to trust it and it never failed me. My new one does have lights and you can see it turns off after 5-10 seconds.

The only correlation I could see with dying batteries was CARWINGS and timers and occasionally just cold weather which is detrimental to lead acid batteries in any car

Click to expand...

I've verified that even with closed app car might be not asleep.
One evening I returned to my Leaf and just before I got in I stopped walking to do some unexpected things.
After that I heard clicking (1-2 clicks per second) under the hood.
I listened for like a minute and the noise came from drivers side of hood (sounded pure relay clicking).
Anyway, I got an idea to switch off my phone Bluetooth and indeed, clicking stopped.
Therefore if there is any possibility phone will be in range OBD might definitely wake up a car (without app running).

Anybody worried with drain. After returning to vehicle with no preconditioning and not lately charged vehicle as soon as you
start the vehicle notice amps running into 12V battery at the bottom of LeafSpy. If the number is high (10+A) for long (3+ minutes)
consider excessive discharge during 1-3 nights is likely.