New 2012 owner - what do i have?!

I'm very happy to have found this excellent and very active community!

I bought a used 2012 Leaf, and am very excited to drive it this first week. It has 50,000 km (31,000 miles) on it, and 11/12 bars.

Before purchase it went through a Nissan Dealer "battery check" which cost me about a hundred dollars. I got a sheet back with 4 rows of stars, and a battery rating of 11/12 bars. All excellent. The dash shows 11 bars capacity, and I have seen range numbers from 119 to 136 km ( 74 to 85 miles) on the meter at full charge in the driveway.

It looks like I have the LED headlights, judging by photos I have seen - and I have investigated under the hood and seen the 3 orange cables, as well as the second plug on the left, which shows me I have a DC Quick Charge option, although I am currently only using the Level 1 charge cable that came with the car, as my electrician has not yet been able to assess my panel. I'm told that the car has the cold weather package, but I have no idea how to confirm this. It also has the Navigation option. The car was listed as an SV when I bought it, but it seems, as I have noted, that it has some SL features?

I've done 2 commutes to work so far (82 km / 51 mile round-trip) and this has left me with 20-30 km (15 miles) left over when I get home.

But here's the thing - Charging.

With the included 120v cable on a 15 amp circuit, the Car charged to 100% in about 12 hours, from a starting point of 2 bars / 24 km (15 miles). Is that normal behavior? It seems like it should take a LOT longer to get to full charge.. Is there any way to see or identify the charger capacity?

I don't have the leaf spy app, unfortunately, or very much experience with the technology.

Any thoughts welcome! I should note that this is a Canadian Car, and perhaps (?) might not be the same as a U.S. one - also the service records show only a bumper scrape and some first-year service checks. No other services or upgrades.

Jamie

jthomson1 said:

But here's the thing - Charging.

With the included 120v cable on a 15 amp circuit, the Car charged to 100% in about 12 hours, from a starting point of 2 bars / 24 km (15 miles). Is that normal behavior? It seems like it should take a LOT longer to get to full charge.. Is there any way to see or identify the charger capacity?

Click to expand...

L1 charging will put around 1.1 kWh into the battery every hour, so your 12 hours of charge is 13 kWh. Your question then is whether 13 kWh is used during your commute.

Reset the trip meter and note the kWh/mile for the trip.
Trip_distance / kWh_per_mile gives you kWh consumed.

It already sounds about right for a 51 mile trip -- 4 miles per kWh -- but you can run through the calc for fun and confidence.

Jamie,

Welcome to Leaf ownership.

To answer some of your questions:
1. All 2011/2012 models have LED headlights (with adjustment control to lower them when carrying heavy loads) and the navigation system.
2. All 2012s have the cold weather package (it was introduced in late 2011 so many 2011s do not). Look for a switch for steering wheel heater in the panel at the lower left side of the dash, heated front seat switches in the console by the cup holders, and rear seat heat switch on the driver side of the front passenger seat back to confirm.
3. If it has fog lights, rear view mirror with Home Link buttons (to control garage door openers, etc.), and a little solar panel on the top of the spoiler above the rear window, then it is an SL. The QC port was only available on SL in 2011, but that may have changed for 2012.
4. The charging time you noted is normal. The dash instrumentation is different on 2011/2012 models depending upon software updates to the car. You probably had at least 1/4 of available charge left based upon reported km or miles and 2 SOC bars. The charge rate on 2011/2012 models does not taper until the battery is nearly charged so actual 12 hours for complete charge after your round trip commute is reasonable. The later Leafs will charge at a low rate for nearly an hour to try to top off the battery so don't compare your car to charging times for newer ones.

Enjoy your new ride.

Here is another way to think about your question:

Approximate numbers ...
New battery capacity is 24 kWh
The top and bottom bars are 15% of new battery capacity
Intermediate bars are 6.5% of new bar capacity

Your car has lost it's top bar of capacity and some fraction of it's second bar, so
battery capacity at full is in the range of 18.84 - 20.4 kwh

When you return home the bottom bar and some fraction of bar #2 remains, so
3.6 -- 5.16 kWh remain

Then a charge to full at home will take somewhere in the range of
18.84 - 5.16 = 13.68 kWh to as much as
20.4 - 3.6 = 16.8 kWh

GerryAZ said:

The QC port was only available on SL in 2011, but that may have changed for 2012..

Click to expand...

Nope. SL still required to get QC in 2012.

Signed, former 2012 Leaf Lessee

Wow - thanks for the math explanations! I'll try it out tomorrow and take note of my trip.

I was thinking that it was charging too fast for a 3.3 charger.... but I guess I was just not fully understanding how much capacity was available, or how to properly measure it. I had understood that a "from empty" charge might take a 20 hour trickle charge, but it seems like it is in reality both not empty, and also not charging to full.

Thanks again. I will report back with my own empirical numbers, according to your instructions.

As an aside, my daily commute trip starts with a huge hill, which I ran again today while showing off the car... capacity goes from 136 km to 106 km in the three minutes it takes to climb the hill, and then sits at about 104 for a while on the flat road at the top. I happen to have a public Level 2 charger (x10!) about 5 km from the top of my hill - so I might just go in and see how long it takes to charge back to full afterwards... just to see,

Jamie