What the heck?

Found this car for sale and battery is WEIRD.
It is a 2013 made 3/13 but it has 2012 Alu rims. It has only 14k miles on it, no fast charge port, and the battery is missing one bar and a full overnight 220 charge results in only 57 miles on the estimeter!!!!

I know this has 13 months at least left on warranty, but what is going on with this car?!?! Worried something may have been done to damage battery hat might void warranty.

That car has the same chemistry as the 2011 - 2012 Leaf and is rapidly losing capacity. The change in chemistry that improved pack longevity didn't occur until the April 2013 builds. You haven't posted enough info, but it could be a SV with no QC, or an S with SV wheels.

My question is how can a full charge with only one bar missing show 57 miles as a full charge, especially on a car with only 14k miles?
My 2012 would show 60+ Miles with 4 bars gone before battery was replaced.

It is definitely a 2013 based on the D in the VIN, and it is an SV based on the FSDALD9-BUA.

The US - S edition is FSDALB9-BUA, and the SL is FSDALG9-BUA

Location? If Maui like your name, then potentially the battery has been reset and is really a 5-bar loser. Also, the car could have been driven fast and hard uphill prior to fully charging.

Car is at sea level and had been sitting before a number of weeks before charging. Can you explain the battery reset? I have never heard of this before.

The Battery Management System, which controls both charging and discharging of the battery pack, can be rebooted by a dealer or unscrupulous mechanic with a special piece of diagnostic equipment. When this happens the bars are reset to 12, for a while. They go away again, though, over the course of a few weeks or at most months, if any were originally missing, as the BMS "re-learns" the actual capacity of the pack. One symptom of a reset is a range estimate much lower than it should be, going by the capacity bars. That car was either driven hard right before shutoff and hasn't been reset, or the BMS was reset and the car has "re-lost" one of the missing bars.

Maui314 said:

It is a 2013 made 3/13 but it has 2012 Alu rims

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The wheels on the '11, '12 and '13 SV are all the same.

In http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/presskits/us-2013-nissan-leaf-press-kit Specs tab, they're referred to as 16-inch aluminum-alloy, 5-spoke.

The GOM is crap. And, I believe the GOM algorithm may have changed between '13+ Leafs vs. before '13. We're going to need more info such as condition from Leaf Spy and where the vehicle resided before.

I've sometimes had pretty low GOM readings at full charge on my 12 CB '13 Leaf.

Since the OP's vehicle was built 3/2013, it almost certainly has inferior batteries from a degradation point of view.

Yep on what Leftie said. The reset is done via Consult III Plus (https://www.nissan-techinfo.com/ecm07.aspx). There's something that needs to be reset when the dealer replaces the HV battery pack. Unfortunately, it seems like some unscrupulous folks are doing this w/o replacing the pack.

http://daveinolywa.blogspot.com/2014/11/buyers-beware-this-is-must-read.html points out a victim of such a reset. They're not the first nor only victim.

Maui314 said:

My question is how can a full charge with only one bar missing show 57 miles as a full charge, especially on a car with only 14k miles?
My 2012 would show 60+ Miles with 4 bars gone before battery was replaced.

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Because as mentioned NUMEROUS times in this forum, the range estimator, more accurately called the "Guess-O-Meter" or "GOM", bases its calculations on very recent driving conditions. If this car was driven on a steady uphill and then recharged, it is using the most recent "fuel" economy calculations to come up with that figure. Since you already have a Leaf you should have known of this behavior by the GOM even if you are a recent member of this forum.

I live about a 1000 foot elevation higher than where I work, so if I plug in after I get home and charge to 100%, it often would only show about a 60 mile range especially if I used the freeway instead of city streets. But if I use city streets to get to work, when I arrive it's now showing 100 miles because it's all been downhill.

The only way to know the battery's true state of health is to use an app like LeafSpy or LeafStat and the appropriate OBDII dongle for your smartphone.

LeftieBiker said:

The Battery Management System, which controls both charging and discharging of the battery pack, can be rebooted by a dealer or unscrupulous mechanic with a special piece of diagnostic equipment. When this happens the bars are reset to 12, for a while. They go away again, though, over the course of a few weeks or at most months, if any were originally missing, as the BMS "re-learns" the actual capacity of the pack. One symptom of a reset is a range estimate much lower than it should be, going by the capacity bars. That car was either driven hard right before shutoff and hasn't been reset, or the BMS was reset and the car has "re-lost" one of the missing bars.

Click to expand...

Thanks, helpful.