Leaf Vampire Drain?

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lilly

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 25, 2017
Messages
48
Hi,

How much kwh of vampire drain is on the Nissan Leaf? Vampire drain is when you have the car parked in your garage, the battery will lose capacity a little every day. How much does it lose every day?

I'm going away on vacation and I want to know how to program my charger so that it will recharge for the correct amount of time once a week in order to keep the car from going to zero before I return from vacation.

Thanks.
 
What will be temperature range in your garage while you will be gone? How long will you be gone? I will post recommendations after I see answers to these questions.

I routinely leave my car at either my office or the airport for up to 3 weeks at a time without being plugged in and with the battery about 60% SOC (state of charge). The SOC is nearly the same when I return as when I park.
 
The later Leafs don't have as much of a problem with this as the earlier cars. If you make sure the 12 volt battery is topped off with an external charger before leaving it, and don't leave anything like a diagnostic port reader or hardwired 12 volt accessory active in the car, you shouldn't have to worry.
 
My concern (why I did not give recommendations) is that the battery heaters could drain the battery over time if the temperatures are really cold. If the temperatures are cold enough to need battery heating, it may be necessary to keep the car plugged in with a timer set to charge a few minutes each day.
 
Good point about the battery warmer. Happily, you need sustained ambient temps in the single digits (F) day and night for that to be an issue, and just charging the car to 80 or 90% before parking it should be enough - unless the location really is frigid, or the vacation really long.
 
Temp is 32 deg F to 52 deg F. Time gone is 31 days. 2018 Nissan Leaf. How much vampire drain per day? Thanks.

GerryAZ said:
What will be temperature range in your garage while you will be gone? How long will you be gone? I will post recommendations after I see answers to these questions.

I routinely leave my car at either my office or the airport for up to 3 weeks at a time without being plugged in and with the battery about 60% SOC (state of charge). The SOC is nearly the same when I return as when I park.
 
When everything is functioning properly and the temps are that warm, there is no problem with that length of time. The car will charge the 12 volt battery itself about once every 5 days, so if there is no unusual drain you will not see more than a 5% drop in the car's state of charge. Maybe less. I'd still suggest topping off the 12 volt battery with an external charger before you leave for the airport, but if you can't, try to run the climate control, on Low if you don't really need it. This will raise the 12 volt system voltage a bit and hopefully top off that little 12 volt battery.
 
lilly said:
Temp is 32 deg F to 52 deg F. Time gone is 31 days. 2018 Nissan Leaf. How much vampire drain per day? Thanks.

With those temperatures, the car will be fine. I suggest having the traction battery at 50% to 60% SOC when you park it in your garage before you leave. The SOC will be nearly the same when you return (loss of no more than a few percent) because there is minimal vampire drain. Remove anything from the OBDII port (such as insurance monitors, utility monitors, or diagnostic wireless interfaces) because they can draw power from the 12-volt battery and may interfere with automatic charging of the 12-volt battery. Make sure the car is turned off and do not plug in the charging cable. The car will automatically charge the 12-volt battery periodically from the traction battery. EV Connect (formerly called CarWings) equipment in the car, if equipped, will go dormant after 14 days so you will not be able to check status of the car remotely (assuming 2018 is similar to older models). The EV Connect equipment will wake up when you turn the car on the first time after you get back. Enjoy your vacation!
 
@GerryAZ speaks the truth!

For me, the unknowns of long-term "storage" are...
The biggest phallacy: keep the car "plugged-in" for periodic charges/top-offs. The truth is that will drain the 12v battery faster than almost anything else.
The biggest surprise: the fact that CarWings/NissanConnect will go dormant after a couple of weeks. I take comfort in being able to retrieve the battery status of my car when I'm away....so long as it's not for multiple weeks.
The fact is I've almost never been able to detect range loss when leaving my Leaf at the airport (for the record I live in a moderate climate).
 
GerryAZ said:
do not plug in the charging cable. !

why not plug in the charging cable? i was going to plug it in and use nissan connect to check up on my car. if it loses some charge, i was going to hit "charge" on my phone app.

i was going to have my neighbor turn on and turn off the car to wake up nissan connect after 2 weeks since you said that nissan connect will turn off after 2 weeks unless the car is reactivated.

thanks.

p.s. nevermind, stanton answered my question. I will leave it unplugged and i will drive it without radio and heat for the next couple of days to make sure that the 12v battery is topped off. i will leave the car at 80% soc. i will have my neighbor check up on the state of charge at week 2 of the 4 week trip, just to be sure. thanks.
 
I never worry about using accessories like the radio, steering wheel heater, or seat heaters before parking. I only worry about using the heat if range may be an issue (since cabin heat can draw significant energy from the traction battery). Also, I rarely check the status via EV Connect while parked long term so I don't worry about the system going dormant. I wanted you to be aware that EV Connect would likely stop responding after two weeks so that you would not worry if you were checking periodically and it stopped responding. The two most important things for long term parking are to make sure the car is turned off and to not plug in. Enjoy your vacation.
 
lilly said:
Hi,

How much kwh of vampire drain is on the Nissan Leaf? Vampire drain is when you have the car parked in your garage, the battery will lose capacity a little every day. How much does it lose every day?

I'm going away on vacation and I want to know how to program my charger so that it will recharge for the correct amount of time once a week in order to keep the car from going to zero before I return from vacation.

Thanks.

Do you have Carwings? or Nissan Connect? If you do, the drain is higher but hardly significant. I lost 9 GIDs (less than a kwh) in 3½ weeks on my 2011 SL with Carwings but nearly nothing on my 2016 and 2018; neither of which have Connect, Carwings or anything else, during 3 week and 2 week stints. Just parked unplugged. Have SOC around 50% and you should be fine.
 
lilly said:
GerryAZ said:
do not plug in the charging cable. !

why not plug in the charging cable? i was going to plug it in and use nissan connect to check up on my car. if it loses some charge, i was going to hit "charge" on my phone app.

i was going to have my neighbor turn on and turn off the car to wake up nissan connect after 2 weeks since you said that nissan connect will turn off after 2 weeks unless the car is reactivated.

thanks.

p.s. nevermind, stanton answered my question. I will leave it unplugged and i will drive it without radio and heat for the next couple of days to make sure that the 12v battery is topped off. i will leave the car at 80% soc. i will have my neighbor check up on the state of charge at week 2 of the 4 week trip, just to be sure. thanks.

No need. the car does not use the 12 volt battery when driving around. the 12 VDC takes care of that stuff.
 
lilly said:
GerryAZ said:
do not plug in the charging cable. !

why not plug in the charging cable? i was going to plug it in and use nissan connect to check up on my car. if it loses some charge, i was going to hit "charge" on my phone app.
I can't speak to '18 and '19, but on ones prior to '18, if you leave the car plugged in to an EVSE while away for an extended period of time, you will come back to a dead 12 volt. Due to some bizarre design decisions, leaving it plugged in prevents the car from periodically topping off the 12 volt from the big HV battery. The manual used to say every 5 days (something like that) but then newer manuals went to a more vague, unspecified time period.
 
In the Leaf owners' manual, CH-4 of the 2015 and older manual addresses long-term storage:

If the vehicle will not be used for an extended period of time, charge the Li-ion battery once every 3 months [to 80%, per the 2012 manual]. Do not operate the charging timer repeatedly while the charge connector is connected to the vehicle after the Li-ion battery charging is completed. Doing so may discharge the 12-volt battery.
and on page EV-5 regarding winter:
the Li-ion battery warmer automatically turns on when the Li-ion battery temperature [falls to] -1°F... turns off when the Li-ion battery temperature [rises to] 14°F

I think that the takeaway is, unless the car is stored where temps will dip down to -1F, the battery heater will not turn-on; and if there is any vampire drain without the heater going, then it is not enough to discharge the battery from 80% in under 3 months. This is a huge difference from some other EVs (-Tesla- -cough- -cough-)

I parked my 2017 Leaf S last January outside in the driveway for 5 days:
- low -15F, high -5F
- low -14F, high -6F
- low -13F, high 1F
- low -10F, high 1F
- low 0F, high 6F (heat wave!! you can see why I go on vacation :) )

...so I figured there would be some drain. When I returned, I was surprised to find only 2% drop in the SOC. At that rate, the car could sit at -10F for about 3 months and only lose 36% ! My conclusion is that even month-long sub-zero cold weather vampire drain is not much of an issue if you charge the car first. In winter, I'd follow the 2012 manual and charge to 80%, just to be safe. If it were summer, I'd probably only charge to 60%, to be nicer to the battery.

However, one recurring theme in these forums is the "mysterious dead 12v battery." Many owners have found that their 12v accessory battery has gone from happy to completely dead overnight (especially before Nissan fixed some Telematics bugs). I have the S model (no Telematics), and even I have found my battery completely dead for no reason I could discern (one time in 19 months). While this problem is unlikely, I don't think that there would be any harm done by hooking-up a "Battery Minder" or "Battery Tender Junior" trickle charger to the 12v battery while the car is parked. In fact, that's the perfect time to use a desulfating trickle charger, to help restore the 12v battery from the abuse it suffers under the Leaf's charging program.
 
I think the key point here is " once every 3 months". That would be a hell of a vacation. I went away for two weeks and left it at the airport and had no problem when I returned. 2015 Leaf S. If you have carwings i would hope/assume you can disable it if you suspect an issue, but it sounds like it would shut down after 2 weeks anyway, so those crafty engineers have planned for it.
 
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