Battery Charge of 74% was 13kwh on 24kwh battery

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Smiddylad

New member
Joined
Dec 1, 2017
Messages
2
Hi All
I'm a bit of a newbie here and I have had my leaf around 6 weeks now. I'm finding a few inconsistencies (if that is the right word) with my battery. I have a 2015 model with a 24kwh battery. A couple of days ago my battery was at 26% and I charged it fully to 100% however it only took 13kwh to fully charge my battery. Correct me if I'm wrong but 74% of 24 is 17.76, so it should have taken nearly 18kwh to fully charge my leaf, not 13. So what has happened to the other 5 kwh? It's currently winter here in the UK with temperatures ranging from 1 to 5 degrees Celsius. My battery temp is usually around 4 bars. I know when it is fully charged it usually says I have around 90 miles but 50-60 is the actual miles which is much lower than expected. I am averaging around 4.6 kwh per mile. I don't have leaf spy or anything similar so I don't know what my SOH is? Am I missing something? Is this normal behavior for a Nissan Leaf or do I have a problem with my battery? I'm still learning about my leaf and overall I love it but any help or advice would be helpful.

Many thanks

Neil
 
Smiddylad said:
Hi All
I'm a bit of a newbie here and I have had my leaf around 6 weeks now. I'm finding a few inconsistencies (if that is the right word) with my battery. I have a 2015 model with a 24kwh battery. A couple of days ago my battery was at 26% and I charged it fully to 100% however it only took 13kwh to fully charge my battery. Correct me if I'm wrong but 74% of 24 is 17.76, so it should have taken nearly 18kwh to fully charge my leaf, not 13. So what has happened to the other 5 kwh? It's currently winter here in the UK with temperatures ranging from 1 to 5 degrees Celsius. My battery temp is usually around 4 bars. I know when it is fully charged it usually says I have around 90 miles but 50-60 is the actual miles which is much lower than expected. I am averaging around 4.6 kwh per mile. I don't have leaf spy or anything similar so I don't know what my SOH is? Am I missing something? Is this normal behavior for a Nissan Leaf or do I have a problem with my battery? I'm still learning about my leaf and overall I love it but any help or advice would be helpful.

Many thanks

Neil

The battery is about 21kWh usable when new, as some capacity is blocked off to protect the battery at both top and bottom.

Batteries do lose capacity with time and cycles, faster at higher temperatures. What is the history of your Leaf? Did it come to you locally or from a hotter climate? Even in the UK, you are likely down 5% at minimum, so another 1 kWh.

A cold battery stores less energy than a warm battery. That is enough.

Some other factors include denser air so more wind drag, stiffer tires so more rolling loss, charging losses, and so on.

The "No Worries Range" is the distance you can travel without thinking about weather, how old the car is, and staying above low battery warning, etc. This is roughly half of the EPA range of 140 km, less in very cold places, more in warmer places. On a warm day, with modest speeds and careful driving, you can do rather more.
 
Do you still have all 12 capacity bars? Based on your stated charging of 13 kWh to add 74% charge, it sounds like your SOH is around 85%

I would expect you'll drop to 11 bars very soon
 
Thanks for getting back to me. It’s interesting to know that you lose 3kwh straight way. I was aware that you lose battery efficiency during the winter months but I wasn’t sure if it was a battery issue or the increased use of the climate control, or a factor of the two. In regards to the SOH of my battery I’ve decided to buy a ODM2 so I can use leaf spy that should help me get a better understanding of the state of my battery.

You mention that a cold battery stores less energy than a warm one. Do you know why that is and how many bars on the temperature gauge constitutes a cold battery.

Thanks

Neil
 
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