Nissan "Out-of-Warranty" support for battery pack degradation

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abasile said:
That said, with four or five temperature bars, our LEAF's regen is now poor even at relatively low SOCs. On a long downgrade, the LEAF also tends to limit sustained regen. So even if I were to start the 4,900' descent with 15 kW of regen available on a good day, there'd be practically no regen available after maybe 2000' of elevation loss.
Are you sure about that ?
4900 feet is about 6 - 7 kWh of potential energy
 
SageBrush said:
abasile said:
That said, with four or five temperature bars, our LEAF's regen is now poor even at relatively low SOCs. On a long downgrade, the LEAF also tends to limit sustained regen. So even if I were to start the 4,900' descent with 15 kW of regen available on a good day, there'd be practically no regen available after maybe 2000' of elevation loss.
Are you sure about that ?
4900 feet is about 6 - 7 kWh of potential energy
I know, it shouldn't be that way, as there ought to be plenty of room for a few kWh or so if the LEAF is charged to about 50%. (Remember that some of that potential energy is lost to friction, aero drag, and drivetrain losses.) But that's been my experience. At least it was my experience until last year when we got another EV which we use for all of our trips off the mountain, and I have no reason to believe the LEAF gets better with age!

Basically, to leave the mountain with the LEAF last year, we were having to make multiple stops on the way down. Not only did these stops allow the friction brakes to cool, they gave the BMS time to "recover" and give some regen back.

Again, the LEAF seems to limit regen power much more than it limits DC fast charging. This is certainly not what I would have expected when we bought the LEAF. In fact, one of the selling points was that we'd be able to recapture a significant amount of energy when descending the mountain.

It's also strange to me that, on a cold or mostly full battery, the LEAF seems to completely shut down regen even if the resistive heater is running full blast and consuming 6 kW. Believe me, in years past, I drove the LEAF down and up our mountain literally hundreds of times (who's the fool here - me I guess), and I'm all too familiar with the regen issues!
 
Interesting. That is unexpected.
What sustained charge rates during QC can the LEAF accept ?

Is your traction battery actually hitting such high temperatures that it goes into a turtle-ish mode ?
If so, you definitely have a defect issue, and not simply a side-effect of degradation.

Nissan will probably try to tell you it is a matter of expected degradation, but they will be wrong.
Get your case documented before the 8/80 defect warranty lapses, and fight until you get the defect resolved.
 
SageBrush said:
Interesting. That is unexpected.
What sustained charge rates during QC can the LEAF accept ?
Our MY2011 LEAF has lost three capacity bars and can charge at a rate of 25 kW up to about 70% SOC, yet the regen operates just as abasile describes. This evening I saw the regen put out about 10 kW when the car was traveling at about 40 MPH at the top of the mountain, but the power level dropped to about 5 kW after the car had sped up to 65 MPH. (On this mountain, about 20 kW is required to maintain a constant speed. Our 15.5-year-old Honda Civic Hybrid with its original battery (that has a BMS which has also been reprogrammed after a lawsuit) does a better job holding its speed on this mountain than the LEAF.
SageBrush said:
Is your traction battery actually hitting such high temperatures that it goes into a turtle-ish mode ?
No, the issues abasile describes are more significant when the battery is cold.
SageBrush said:
Nissan will probably try to tell you it is a matter of expected degradation, but they will be wrong.
Get your case documented before the 8/80 defect warranty lapses, and fight until you get the defect resolved.
Nah. They ALL work this way after the P3227 reprogramming. They are not likely to replace a battery that is working just like all other degraded batteries.

FWIW, the regen situation is much better in summertime. Not like when it was new (and before the reprogramming), but still much better than when it is cold.
 
The original 2011 and 2012 batteries from Japan have higher internal resistance after some degradation than the 2015 lizard batteries. The internal resistance also increases as battery temperature decreases. I saw the regeneration drop significantly on my 2011 as the ambient temperatures cooled off in the fall of 2012 (long before the P3227 software update was issued) when it had 10 capacity bars. I saw no change to regeneation when the P3227 software update was performed as part of the testing after the car was down to 8 capacity bars in the summer of 2013. Regeneration was restored when the battery was replaced in October of 2013, but available regeneration was already dropping by the time the car met its demise in January 2015. Those who claim the P3227 software update significantly reduced regeneration probably did not have enough degradation to notice the reduced regeneration as the weather cooled in the fall of 2012. The software update on most cars was done during the spring and summer of 2013. The loss of regeneration was heavily discussed on the forum during fall and winter of 2013 after cars in mild climates had enough battery deterioration to make it noticeable.

In contrast, my 2015 has significant regeneration available within a mile or two after leaving the house with a full charge (even with over 50,000 miles on the original battery).
 
My experience has matched that of RegGuheert. Also, I'm personally not sure if the P3227 update affected our LEAF's regen, as our battery pack was still in relatively good shape then.

I'll admit to feeling torn right now. If getting "relief" could be as simple as initiating a warranty claim with Nissan, then escalating to BBB if Nissan denies the claim, then maybe it'd be worthwhile. On the other hand, it's hard to be interested in investing a significant number of hours and emotional energy on what appears to be an uphill battle, when I could be spending that energy (or less) on earning (or gaining from good investment choices) more than the $5k value of a new battery pack.

Arguably it could be worth taking action out of principle, but Nissan has already proven itself to be a heartless corporation on this matter, as they should have simply given every early LEAF owner a coupon for a new battery pack. The world has mostly forgotten about the 2011-2012 LEAF, Nissan has gotten its black eye and resale values have been terrible, and most of us have moved on (the LEAF is no longer our primary car like it was for years).

One might also argue that the issue of having insufficient regen on a mountain descent could prove fatal to a hapless LEAF driver, and others on the road, one day. If I could truly help prevent that, then that would justify my taking action. At the same time, there are probably very few people who'll be (a) driving degraded LEAFs up and down big mountains, and (b) have no awareness of the need for engine braking, regen, or keeping the friction brakes from overheating, so this seems unlikely.

More than anything, this is Nissan's loss for not making things right with owners like us, as I cannot in good conscience recommend that anyone buy a new Nissan vehicle without first making them aware of our experience. Still, we'll continue to get whatever use we can out of our 2011 LEAF, and we do hope for the best for new LEAF owners and applaud their decision to drive electric.
 
GerryAZ said:
Those who claim the P3227 software update significantly reduced regeneration probably did not have enough degradation to notice the reduced regeneration as the weather cooled in the fall of 2012.
No, I noticed this immediately after the P3227 update, my car was flashed in July '13. TomT and DaveinOlyWA also noticed, too. P3227 definitely reduced the amount of available regen.
 
GerryAZ said:
The original 2011 and 2012 batteries from Japan have higher internal resistance after some degradation than the 2015 lizard batteries. The internal resistance also increases as battery temperature decreases. I saw the regeneration drop significantly on my 2011 as the ambient temperatures cooled off in the fall of 2012 (long before the P3227 software update was issued) when it had 10 capacity bars. I saw no change to regeneation when the P3227 software update was performed as part of the testing after the car was down to 8 capacity bars in the summer of 2013. Regeneration was restored when the battery was replaced in October of 2013, but available regeneration was already dropping by the time the car met its demise in January 2015. Those who claim the P3227 software update significantly reduced regeneration probably did not have enough degradation to notice the reduced regeneration as the weather cooled in the fall of 2012. The software update on most cars was done during the spring and summer of 2013. The loss of regeneration was heavily discussed on the forum during fall and winter of 2013 after cars in mild climates had enough battery deterioration to make it noticeable.

In contrast, my 2015 has significant regeneration available within a mile or two after leaving the house with a full charge (even with over 50,000 miles on the original battery).

this is not my experience. I have several hills where I would coast in neutral to 70+ mph then shift to drive and regen down the hill. before the update, I would easily light up all 4 regen circles for more than 30 seconds. After the flash, I would be lucky if I could light up all 4 circles for 10 seconds. The SOC or temps seemed to have no effect. I have a video of my car at about 50% SOC and only 2 regen circles available and no it wasn't that cold. In fact, its almost never that cold where I live.

It continued for all situations. before i could vary the regen from full to any number of circles quite easily. afterwards, my ability to manipulate the circles was greatly reduced.
 
drees said:
GerryAZ said:
Those who claim the P3227 software update significantly reduced regeneration probably did not have enough degradation to notice the reduced regeneration as the weather cooled in the fall of 2012.
No, I noticed this immediately after the P3227 update, my car was flashed in July '13. TomT and DaveinOlyWA also noticed, too. P3227 definitely reduced the amount of available regen.

OK, I stand corrected. Since my battery was down to 8 capacity bars before the software update and I had already lost most regeneration, I did not see a change. I seemed to have normal regeneration with the replacement battery (installed in October 2013) until it started to deteriorate and temperatures dropped in the fall of 2014. One thing the software update did was greatly improve the accuracy of the dashboard instrumentation and data on the CAN bus available through LEAF Spy. I would sometimes see the battery charge bars drop much faster than normal on my way to work (slightly downhill) and see commensurately low SOC (and low "GID" numbers) with LEAF Spy. When that happened, I would get to work with only 3 charge bars left and still make it home without stopping to charge (9 bars going downhill to work and remaining 3 bars to return home). The Gids and SOC would drop to some point and then stay steady for a while and then start dropping again. This instrumentation behavior never happened after the software update.
 
Abasile;

I have to side with the masses here. I think you have a very valid claim and not so much on Poor programing causing lack of regen, excessive degradation, etc.


Simply a car designed with insufficient braking power. You should not have to stop several times going down the mountain. I used to live in Riverside, so have a pretty good idea of your location and have been up and down that mountain many times and yeah, its hell on brakes for sure but its not that bad.

You have a serious performance issue that borders on a major safety violation.
 
I've just read some of the accounts of 30 kWh LEAF batteries experiencing rapid degradation. Wow! My guess is that they'll run into the same problem with regen. Nissan really has a continuing, serious battery degradation problem on their hands. Limiting regen is just a Band-Aid to stem the flow of capacity warranty claims, in my opinion.

I haven't decided what to do yet, and I'm thankful for your input as a former member of the LEAF Advisory Board.
DaveinOlyWA said:
I have to side with the masses here. I think you have a very valid claim and not so much on Poor programing causing lack of regen, excessive degradation, etc.

Simply a car designed with insufficient braking power. You should not have to stop several times going down the mountain. I used to live in Riverside, so have a pretty good idea of your location and have been up and down that mountain many times and yeah, its hell on brakes for sure but its not that bad.

You have a serious performance issue that borders on a major safety violation.
 
Abasile,

I think you should raise the issue with Nissan. Even though the LEAF has large brakes, it sounds like you have serious brake fade that would be mitigated by normal regeneration with a new battery. A replacement battery should be a lizard battery. My experience is that the lizard battery in the 2015 has much lower internal resistance so the LBC (lithium battery controller) can allow much higher regeneration rates (or quick charge rates) without reaching maximum cell voltage. It appears to me that the LBC limits charging current to keep the highest cell voltage below a certain threshold. The maximum cell voltage threshold seems to be higher on the 2015 battery than on the 2011 and the internal resistance of the 2015 battery is significantly lower so the net effect is much stronger regeneration even at nearly full charge on the 2015 compared to the 2011.
 
I don't notice much of a difference in the internal resistance of my replacement pack and my original pack when new. LeafDD reports 75-85 mOhm depending on pack temperature. I recall only slightly higher values by the time I had LeafDD on my original pack.

The '13+ LEAFs just seem to have much more aggressive regenerative braking profiles than the '11-13, especially after the P3227 update.
 
drees said:
I don't notice much of a difference in the internal resistance of my replacement pack and my original pack when new. LeafDD reports 75-85 mOhm depending on pack temperature. I recall only slightly higher values by the time I had LeafDD on my original pack.

The '13+ LEAFs just seem to have much more aggressive regenerative braking profiles than the '11-13, especially after the P3227 update.

Not sure about that either. without checking, it seems like neither my 2013 or 2016 had as much as my "unaltered" 2011 did.
 
GerryAZ said:
My experience is that the lizard battery in the 2015 has much lower internal resistance so the LBC (lithium battery controller) can allow much higher regeneration rates (or quick charge rates) without reaching maximum cell voltage.
I'm sure that the pack's internal resistance sets a ceiling on available regen or QC. The problem is that this ceiling seems to then be subject to other non-sensical factors like vehicle speed and amount of recent regen. I think that Nissan has intentionally crippled the regen performance.

DaveinOlyWA said:
Not sure about that either. without checking, it seems like neither my 2013 or 2016 had as much as my "unaltered" 2011 did.
Has anyone found a way to hack the LEAF and install an earlier firmware version? This is probably not a good idea for anyone desiring to file a claim with Nissan or reach a settlement. Otherwise, if we end up having to keep the original battery (and I'm almost certainly not paying $5K for a new, puny 24 kWh battery in a car that's barely worth $5K), then I'd love to try un-doing P3227 if it's feasible without spending tons of hours.

I'll add that it's my opinion that we should not be forced to think of our EVs as throwaway objects. Rather than selling an older EV, the customer should feel free to keep it as a second or third car as we have; I'm not generally one to change cars frequently. The more I think about this, the more I'm inclined to file a claim with Nissan sooner rather than later.

It'd be nice if they could have a dealer send a brake technician up here to come and get our LEAF and drive it down to the dealer! :lol:
 
well thinking of your EV as throwaway is on you. It has value to someone but not to you. Now evaluating low resale as throwaway is a good argument but the reality is low resale applies to everything that is 7 years old.

I couldn't even give away my 7 year old TV. It was a flatscreen, 40" and had it for sale for close to a year and finally when it still wouldn't sell for $50, I took it to Goodwill.

But your elevation challenges makes it a safety hazard imm. Range is not good but a lot of people less on a regular basis.
 
I don't think this is a difficult argument:

A battery defect interferes with car braking. End of story
 
Absile: I'm willing to join you on this topic. Even though I live on the flats, my original 2011 battery has nearly zero regen when cold (it's just starting for this winter, essentially anything under 50 F) unless I'm driving less than 35 mph and have less than 50% SOC. Range is not a problem since my commute is 8 mi RT and our community is pretty small. However, the lack of regen (especially for the unobservant masses) make it difficult to gauge stopping distances without using the friction brakes. My hypermileing skills are suffering greatly. :x
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
well thinking of your EV as throwaway is on you. It has value to someone but not to you. Now evaluating low resale as throwaway is a good argument but the reality is low resale applies to everything that is 7 years old.
Okay, it's true that practically every used car has at least some value, even if it's just for the scrap metal. However, unless it's been in a wreck, a six or seven year old vehicle should still have plenty of functional value. Our 2011 LEAF still has functional value to us, but it is severely compromised relative to what I'd consider pretty reasonable expectations. I'm only mentioning the low resale value in making the point that I cannot justify spending $5k out of my own pocket on a replacement "24 kWh" battery.

Others have sidestepped the problem of rapid battery degradation by leasing and/or by trading their LEAFs for newer models. That's fine for them, but we're good with holding onto cars for ten years or longer, and it's perfectly reasonable for us to expect some minimal standard of safety performance, particularly during the 8 year / 100k mile battery warranty period.

To initiate a claim, I'm thinking I'll start with Nissan's (877) NO-GAS-EV number. Taking the car to the dealer (a real pain due to the car's condition) seems sort of pointless unless they're willing to try reproducing our driving conditions. Down in the flatlands, they'll probably say that the car behaves within spec (that is, for a car missing three capacity bars).

DaveinOlyWA said:
But your elevation challenges makes it a safety hazard imm. Range is not good but a lot of people less on a regular basis.
When we purchased the LEAF in April 2011, Nissan did warn us in writing that the battery might lose plus or minus 20% of its capacity in five years. Given our cool microclimate and the benefits of cool temperatures for battery longevity, I was expecting that we'd be on the low end of this, and we instead exceeded 20% loss. (Our LEAF is still on the low end of capacity loss relative to other cars in California, of course.)

But my primary concern at this time isn't the range loss, it's the unsafe braking performance on long descents, which itself represents a defect in the battery system.

Reddy said:
Abasile: I'm willing to join you on this topic. Even though I live on the flats, my original 2011 battery has nearly zero regen when cold (it's just starting for this winter, essentially anything under 50 F) unless I'm driving less than 35 mph and have less than 50% SOC. Range is not a problem since my commute is 8 mi RT and our community is pretty small. However, the lack of regen (especially for the unobservant masses) make it difficult to gauge stopping distances without using the friction brakes. My hypermileing skills are suffering greatly. :x
With an especially cold battery and/or high state of charge, any BEV will have limits on regenerative braking. This is characteristic of the technology, at least as it exists today for all known BEVs, and should not itself be considered a "defect". Just as ICE cars have their particular quirks and limitations, this is a BEV-specific behavior pattern that drivers need to be prepared for.

The issue for my family is that, with the LEAF, it's no longer feasible for us to mitigate the issue of limited regen as necessary to drive a well-traveled California state highway. When our LEAF was much newer, it was sufficient for me to avoid charging it to a high SOC; I'd simply unplug it an hour or so before reaching 80%. To help raise the battery temperature during the winter, I'd also charge the LEAF shortly prior to departure. Now, we find regen seriously limited even at low SOCs and even at moderate (like 50F) battery temperatures.

With our 2012 Tesla Model S, we can mitigate the problem of limited regen by doing the same things, but there's also a thermal management system for the battery pack. When I pre-heat the Model S during the winter, the battery pack heater also comes on. Plenty of Tesla owners live in mountainous areas (including in our mountain range), yet regen doesn't generally seem to be a problem.
 
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