Just got leaf spy, I have a question

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Philipr144

Member
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Messages
22
Location
Bakersfield Ca
I just installed leaf spy and I have a cell, number 75 that is far more discharged then the others. I have 11 capacity bars on my leaf and almost 67k miles. I'm pretty fortunate. I was hoping some one can help explain if my 11 bars is because of this low cell pack. 4.075 is my low and 4.105 is my highest cell. It seems like I may have alot more energy if my cells were balanced. Is it possible to balance this pack? Is it even a cause for concern? It's my understanding that vlbw will trigger when your lowest cell hits a certain threshold. If I balanced my pack wouldn't that bring up my overall capacity since your only as strong as your weakest link? Thanks in advance.
 
Unless the pack was manufactured with one or more bad cells, the Leaf packs tend to lose capacity among the cells fairly evenly. The most likely reason for that low cell is simple imbalance. Charge the pack fully, until all the charging lights shut off, then drive it to bring it back below 90% before you let it sit again. repeat a few times, preferably with L-1 (longer charge/balance times) and hopefully the low cell will equalize.
 
Hello, thanks for your reply. I have done that a few times attempting to balance the cells. Yesterday i drove it till 2kw was left in the pack hoping that would help balance it, i lost another bar while charging. lol That did not work! Now its a 10 bar leaf.

Warranty doesn't cover defects on the 2011 does it?
 
Philipr144 said:
Warranty doesn't cover defects on the 2011 does it?

my understanding is that the increase in warranty was applied to the older 2011-12 models as well, so 8 years/100k mi in the US. if you get to 8 bars before then, you should be good for a replacement
 
Well either way life goes on and I'm going to keep driving the car like normal. I just hope if that one low cell fails me that it's covered but I guess if it's not I could figure out which one cell 74 and 75 are and just replace that part of the pack. I wish I could balance the pack some way my self. I was attempting to bottom balance when I ran it low but that back tired and those cells are still low. I suspect there is something wrong with them.
 
mnl said:
Philipr144 said:
Warranty doesn't cover defects on the 2011 does it?

my understanding is that the increase in warranty was applied to the older 2011-12 models as well, so 8 years/100k mi in the US. if you get to 8 bars before then, you should be good for a replacement
mnl: I don't know what you're talking about.

Leaf, including the 2011 model year has ALWAYS had an 8 year/100K mile defects warranty on the HV battery but it has NEVER covered "gradual capacity loss". This is listed in https://owners.nissanusa.com/content/techpub/ManualsAndGuides/LEAF/2011/2011-LEAF-warranty-booklet.pdf.

'11 and '12 Leaf did not come with ANY (gradual) capacity loss warranty. It wasn't until the Klee class action suit settlement reared its head did all '11 thru '15 Leafs receive a 5 year/60K capacity warranty: if you're down to 8 bars within 5 years/60K miles, the battery will be "repaired" or replaced: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=13192.

To tell any '11 or '12 (or any '11 thru '15) Leaf owner that they have 8 years/100K miles to get down to 8 bars is flat out wrong.

(30 kWh pack Leafs (e.g. '16 SV and SL, '16 "S 30" but NOT the original 24 kWh '16; all '17 Leafs) have an 8 year/100K capacity warranty.)

OP, if you have a weak cell, sometimes they have been replaced for free as part of the 8 year/100K defects warranty. Example: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=457964#p457964 then http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=458180#p458180. Google for site:mynissanleaf.com cvli for more threads along these lines.
 
cwerdna said:
mnl: I don't know what you're talking about.

thanks for that clarification and please accept my apologies, didn't mean to mislead anyone. as you can tell from my post count, i'm new here as well and will hopefully be picking up a Japanese 2011 Leaf tomorrow. it has been overwhelming to sort through all of this information and obviously i was mistaken. the warranty for the battery here is 5 years/100,000km which i thought was a bummer until you sorted out for us that it is actually basically the same in the US as well.
 
cwerdna said:
mnl said:
Philipr144 said:
Warranty doesn't cover defects on the 2011 does it?

my understanding is that the increase in warranty was applied to the older 2011-12 models as well, so 8 years/100k mi in the US. if you get to 8 bars before then, you should be good for a replacement
mnl: I don't know what you're talking about.

Leaf, including the 2011 model year has ALWAYS had an 8 year/100K mile defects warranty on the HV battery but it has NEVER covered "gradual capacity loss". This is listed in https://owners.nissanusa.com/content/techpub/ManualsAndGuides/LEAF/2011/2011-LEAF-warranty-booklet.pdf.

'11 and '12 Leaf did not come with ANY (gradual) capacity loss warranty. It wasn't until the Klee class action suit settlement reared its head did all '11 thru '15 Leafs receive a 5 year/60K capacity warranty: if you're down to 8 bars within 5 years/60K miles, the battery will be "repaired" or replaced: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=13192.

To tell any '11 or '12 (or any '11 thru '15) Leaf owner that they have 8 years/100K miles to get down to 8 bars is flat out wrong.

(30 kWh pack Leafs (e.g. '16 SV and SL, '16 "S 30" but NOT the original 24 kWh '16; all '17 Leafs) have an 8 year/100K capacity warranty.)

OP, if you have a weak cell, sometimes they have been replaced for free as part of the 8 year/100K defects warranty. Example: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=457964#p457964 then http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=458180#p458180. Google for site:mynissanleaf.com cvli for more threads along these lines.


I found this information tonight actually. Thank you though. I will check it all out tomorrow since going to church is usuallu a long enough trip to deplete my battery.

From what I had read it seems my cells are far out of balance but maybe not defective. I will make another attempt at bottom balancing them. I will try to run it to .5kw-ish and may be by then when I charge up those weaker cells will come up in voltage as well. Not sure if this will work but I might as well try it. At the very least I can take reading from the depleted cells to see how far the min and max voltages are.

I noticed at low SOC the battery gets hot. Is that normal?
 
Re: imbalance, I'm told by Turbo3, author of Leaf Spy (in person) that he looks at the imbalance to tell how close the battery is to dead. IIRC, he said when you're really low, the imbalance can go into the hundreds of milliVolts. He lives just a few miles from me and has borrowed my '13 Leaf do to '13+ specific some development/testing work once. I've sometimes talked to him at local Leaf meetings/EVents.

I haven't personally taken my current or former Leaf to nearly dead w/Leaf Spy so I can't comment. I did have a scare on my former leased '13 Leaf but I didn't have Leaf Spy yet.

But again, if you have a bad cell, see the CVLI discussion for how to determine that.
 
cwerdna said:
Re: imbalance, I'm told by Turbo3, author of Leaf Spy (in person) that he looks at the imbalance to tell how close the battery is to dead. IIRC, he said when you're really low, the imbalance can go into the hundreds of milliVolts.

I haven't personally taken my current or former Leaf to nearly dead w/Leaf Spy so I can't comment. I did have a scare on my former leased '13 Leaf but I didn't have Leaf Spy yet.

But again, if you have a bad cell, see the CVLI discussion for how to determine that.

Tomorrow I will check the cell differances at low voltage using leafspy to see if there is a cause for concern. I read about cvli but am not sure how that works with leafspy. Perhaps I need to do some more searching.
 
Philipr144 said:
I noticed at low SOC the battery gets hot. Is that normal?

Yes, that is normal the battery is working harder to produce power.

Have you recently purchased this Leaf? If your SOH is 76% and your car just dropped the second bar, I would think your car had a BMS reset before you bought it. It takes it a while for the display to show the proper health bars on the dash, but Leafspy tells the truth.

I purchased a 2012 model that had the BMS reset and in the first few months I lost two bars. It was a while before I found Leafspy and started using it.

My 2012 had/has a cell that was considerably lower than the rest. Leaf Spy runs a battery test when the cell voltages are very low and the car is placed in park. It would show cell # 24 bad often and months later show three cells bad. However with quick charging and some hard use mine actually got better. I haven't seen a bad cell in quite a while.
 
Darryl said:
Philipr144 said:
I noticed at low SOC the battery gets hot. Is that normal?

Yes, that is normal the battery is working harder to produce power.

Have you recently purchased this Leaf? If your SOH is 76% and your car just dropped the second bar, I would think your car had a BMS reset before you bought it. It takes it a while for the display to show the proper health bars on the dash, but Leafspy tells the truth.

I purchased a 2012 model that had the BMS reset and in the first few months I lost two bars. It was a while before I found Leafspy and started using it.

My 2012 had/has a cell that was considerably lower than the rest. Leaf Spy runs a battery test when the cell voltages are very low and the car is placed in park. It would show cell # 24 bad often and months later show three cells bad. However with quick charging and some hard use mine actually got better. I haven't seen a bad cell in quite a while.


It's funny you mention that. I did a quick charge from empty to 100% last night and got about another kWh out of the battery.
Yes I recently purchased it and I think your right. I'm close to losing my third bar from what leaf spy says (if I understand it correctly) yet when I got the car it had 11 bars. Seemed to me like some thing fishy was going on.
I ran the car low and looked for something on leaf spy to do the test and couldn't find it. I was at low battery warning but just barely. GoM said 8 miles to empty.

After installing leafspy I suspect foul play with this dealership. It's one of those in house financing gigs. I still don't have plates and it's been 4 months. So you can imagine.. at this point I can't do any thing about it but drive it and hope for the best.

Battery stats say 50ah but it only charged to about 45ah. I think it's the bms playing catch up from a reset. As a consumer I don't think I can do to much about it. But if any one has advise let me know!
 
Philipr144 said:
I ran the car low and looked for something on leaf spy to do the test and couldn't find it. I was at low battery warning but just barely. GoM said 8 miles to empty.


It happens automatically (at least with LeafSpy on iOS) but the voltage needs to be much lower. Slightly below VLBW. Seems like when the voltage is below 3.7 per cell and the car must be in Park.

If you read in the forums it seems Nissan is beginning to help some owners with a partial payment on battery replacement. But if it is meeting your daily needs. I would just drive it. Our battery is now down to 64%.
 
I finally checked the cells with leafspy. It said all cells ok. I had about 70mv difference in leafspy while at lbw. I am looking into possibly getting a new battery through a campaign with Nissan. I'm awaiting a phone call from Nissan of Visalia to verify what Nissan hq told me. Hopefully it goes through. New battery would be nice.
 
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