Battery Capacity bars increasing while driving -anyone else?

I have 33,000 miles on my 2011 Leaf and the battery capacity bars were down to 10 since last summer - but recently they start at 10 bars when fully charged and increase to 12 bars within about 6 miles regardless of speed or temperature. Now they routinely go to 12 bars every day after starting at 10. Nissan's 'technical support ' so far has not been able to supply an answer.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Never noticed anything like this on mine but I only have one bar down and it's only been a few weeks. If I had to make a guess, I'd say something's causing one of the ECU to reset and having to "recalculate" the battery state during the next full charge. Maybe a drop in the 12V battery power. When I unplugged the 12V battery to work on the car, it seemed to have reset the battery gauge (I had 12 bars at the time but I noticed the change in when the SOC bars would behave) and it took a couple of days to get back to "normal".

The BSM is non-volatile and disconnecting or losing the 12 volt supply should not make any significant difference. I've disconnected my 12 volts battery numerous times and have never had any meaningful change.

ericsf said:

If I had to make a guess, I'd say something's causing one of the ECU to reset and having to "recalculate" the battery state during the next full charge. Maybe a drop in the 12V battery power.

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TomT said:

The BSM is non-volatile and disconnecting or losing the 12 volt supply should not make any significant difference. I've disconnected my 12 volts battery numerous times and have never had any meaningful change.

ericsf said:

If I had to make a guess, I'd say something's causing one of the ECU to reset and having to "recalculate" the battery state during the next full charge. Maybe a drop in the 12V battery power.

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0v is manageable, no new data comes in
12+v is manageable good data comes in
<12v can be an issue because garbage data can be submitted or garbage data can end up in the volatile memory if systems aren't initializing properly and any of these can trigger bugs by using out of bounds data, causing memory overflows, etcetera.

I wouldn't bet too much that a low battery can't confuse a system in the car no matter how important the system is or how non volatile the memory it uses.

weighing in very late on this... because of the leaf settlement that just came through, i have been looking at my capacity bars.... and mine does the exact same thing!! so that may mean that the gauge is broken.... which would mean that it can't be trusted as far as the new settlement battery warranty. very odd. hmmmm..... more thoughts??

kawh said:

weighing in very late on this... because of the leaf settlement that just came through, i have been looking at my capacity bars.... and mine does the exact same thing!! so that may mean that the gauge is broken.... which would mean that it can't be trusted as far as the new settlement battery warranty. very odd. hmmmm..... more thoughts??

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Given the typical lifespan of a Leaf 12 volt battery, and the odd behaviors recorded here as they fail, I'd check that out first. My second guess would be a bad cell in the pack that starts operating properly some time after startup.

kawh said:

weighing in very late on this... because of the leaf settlement that just came through, i have been looking at my capacity bars.... and mine does the exact same thing!! so that may mean that the gauge is broken.... which would mean that it can't be trusted as far as the new settlement battery warranty. very odd. hmmmm..... more thoughts??

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Do you have leaf spy, any cell voltage readings?