Poll : Number of miles before losing the first bar

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# of miles before losing the first battery capacity bar

  • 0-10,000

    Votes: 29 6.8%
  • 10,001-20,000

    Votes: 83 19.3%
  • 20,001-30,000

    Votes: 117 27.3%
  • 30,001-40,000

    Votes: 103 24.0%
  • 40,001-50,000

    Votes: 51 11.9%
  • 50,001-60,000

    Votes: 18 4.2%
  • 60,001+

    Votes: 28 6.5%

  • Total voters
    429
Lost the first bar at 45441 miles and almost 40 months. Car was mostly garaged and rarely exposed to outside temp over 80F. I would say 80% of the time the car was at 80% charge. QC 70 times. In dry 75F wheater we can still make a 70 miles RT with 50 miles on the freeway at 55-60mph, reaching VLBW closer to turtle.
 
Well I can't say I've lost any bars yet... just turned 30K on my 2013 picked up 3/15/2013. I thought it would have happened already....not that I'm complaining :)
 
25,400 miles @ 2 years 10 months. Was hoping not to see it before I turned in the 3-year lease, but oh well.
 
MarvGordon said:
Well I can't say I've lost any bars yet... just turned 30K on my 2013 picked up 3/15/2013. I thought it would have happened already....not that I'm complaining :)
In Minnesota? I'd have been mighty surprised if you lost a bar in just a year and a half that far north.
 
Lost my first bar at 27,400 miles... After driving it for 3.5 years in SF bay area.
 
dgpcolorado said:
MarvGordon said:
Well I can't say I've lost any bars yet... just turned 30K on my 2013 picked up 3/15/2013. I thought it would have happened already....not that I'm complaining :)
In Minnesota? I'd have been mighty surprised if you lost a bar in just a year and a half that far north.

Note mileage. I drive a 73M RT 5x week (probably not more than 25miles on an average for a whole weekend) and charge 2x daily to at least 80% in weather above 20F. Ideal climate but I'm probably on the high end of charging frequency.. not sure how that factors in to the equation.

Last winter most of my drives home were on 100% charging. Car parked in city ramp and temps were brutal...we had a MANY sub-zero days. Battery obviously tolerates that rather than the extreme heat.

Next question... is battery loss fairly linear? Is there accelerated loss ????

[EDIT]
Forgot to add my 73M RT is 95% 55-60mph...slightly slower during the winter.
 
MarvGordon said:
dgpcolorado said:
MarvGordon said:
Well I can't say I've lost any bars yet... just turned 30K on my 2013 picked up 3/15/2013. I thought it would have happened already....not that I'm complaining :)
In Minnesota? I'd have been mighty surprised if you lost a bar in just a year and a half that far north.

Note mileage. I drive a 73M RT 5x week (probably not more than 25miles on an average for a whole weekend) and charge 2x daily to at least 80% in weather above 20F. Ideal climate but I'm probably on the high end of charging frequency.. not sure how that factors in to the equation.

Last winter most of my drives home were on 100% charging. Car parked in city ramp and temps were brutal...we had a MANY sub-zero days. Battery obviously tolerates that rather than the extreme heat.

Next question... is battery loss fairly linear? Is there accelerated loss ????

[EDIT]
Forgot to add my 73M RT is 95% 55-60mph...slightly slower during the winter.

For the first model years, 2011 and 2012, the biggest predictor by far of battery loss was exposure to excessive heat. This was first noticed by LEAFers in Phoenix, who lost as many as 3 bars in a year. By "excessive heat" the limited data suggests that starting with battery temps about 80F the excess wear on the battery kicks in and increases exponentially. Based on model year 2011 and 2012 data, cool climates like Minnesota saw much slower degradation. I'm at 7400 foot elevation in Colorado so rarely see days of even 90F and the battery temp gauge has rarely topped 6 bars, so my 2012 LEAF has all its bars and a 90% SOH after 31k miles. By contrast, my 2011, with fewer miles (22k), has all bars but only 86% SOH because it spent the first 18 months of its battery life roasting on the lot of a dealership in the Houston area, usually with a nearly full charge.

For 2013 and later model years we don't know if the heat has the same effect on the LEAF batteries. Lots of speculation, very little real life data. Nissan announced a "lizard" battery that is supposed to tolerate heat for the 2015 model year, but most of us think that this was actually rolled out earlier, possibly to some or all 2013s, but not announced because Nissan wanted to collect real life data before concluding the problem was solved.

In term of linearity of battery loss there is also a lot of interest and speculation on that topic but still very limited data, since the first LEAFs aren't yet 4 years old. Early suggestions were that the degradation would "flatten out" over time but the limited data doesn't seem to support that.
 
dgpcolorado said:
MarvGordon said:
Well I can't say I've lost any bars yet... just turned 30K on my 2013 picked up 3/15/2013. I thought it would have happened already....not that I'm complaining :)
In Minnesota? I'd have been mighty surprised if you lost a bar in just a year and a half that far north.

In my 2011 i didnt lose a bar in 3 years and 45,000 miles and you have a newer and likelier better (and bigger but not starting any rumors ;) ) pack so pretty sure you have a long way to go
 
Lost my first bar today at 47,840 miles, ahr = 55.53. My 2012 was manufactured in January, 2012 and I purchased it in April. Not 1 QC even though I have the port - just no QC chargers around. I have a 60 mile round trip commute and am located in Upstate NY south of Rochester. Losing the bar wasn't unexpected - I knew I was getting very close. I record my battery values everyday and had read that others lost their first bar at about 55.5 ahr. I was hoping to make it to 50,000 before it happened, though.
 
Hello,
Looks like I joined the club. Charged to 100% this AM and found only 11 capacity bars showing.
37,514 miles & 45 months. Car always outside.
#16 no longer my lowest cell
Showing 226 GID's





 
My '12 (will be 3 years old next month; a little over 26K miles) still has all bars showing at 100% charge at times with a high of 118 miles available on the GOM; typical is 100 miles, 83 at 80%; was trying to understand what exactly people are seeing so the photos help a lot.

I do 'lose' the first bar after only a few miles when charged at 80% (I see a GOM range drop suddenly from an 81 to 77 miles) but losing that first bar when charging to 100% seems to last much longer --- go figure? I charge at 80% all week but 100% on weekends taking a lot of the same routes for errands so this is easy to monitor. We're having an early cold snap (down to 4 battery temp bars) in the 30's F as well as need to run defrost and heat so fully expect range to drop --- last month averaged 5.0 miles/kWh.

I'm sure the first bar to lose won't be too much longer but my 'moderate' use in a non-tropical/desert climate helps I'm sure ... wonder how much longer. Losing some range will only be a factor on weekends as commute trips max out at 40 miles at the most and we have a 2nd ICE trip car anyway ... I guess the question is once this starts does it accelerate to a 2nd bar after X more miles, etc.
 
I do 'lose' the first bar after only a few miles when charged at 80% (I see a GOM range drop suddenly from an 81 to 77 miles) but losing that first bar when charging to 100% seems to last much longer --- go figure?

Those are 'fuel' bars, not capacity bars. The capacity bars are on the other side of the display, and don't change until one is lost. Then it stays at 11 bars. A car with one or more capacity bars lost will still show twelve fuel bars when fully charged.
 
I lost my first bar on December 24, 2014. I have had my LEAF for 43 months. ODO=23,390. AHr=55.314. SOH=84%. 232 gids at full charge. Bay Area climate. Only 16QC. I have charged to 80% almost exclusively.
 
Our 2011 LEAF lost its first bar on December 20 at 24,316 miles.

It spent its first 17 months as a demo at a Houston-area dealership from October 2011 through February 2013 logging only 1,624 miles. We didn't have LeafSpy when it arrived but the range then was noticeably degraded relative to our then-4 month-old 2012 LEAF. (Which I expected - the low price more than made up for this.) Since then it has been in high altitude Colorado (about 10 degrees cooler, on average, than Denver) and very rarely seen the battery temp hit 7 bars. We charge to 80% then top off to 100% when the full range is needed. About 40 quick charge sessions.

A rough analysis of the rate of SOH reduction suggests this battery is losing about 6% per year. The in-service date is February 28, 2013 (nice of the dealer to do that given that it started as a demo in 2011) which means there is a slight chance this car could actually qualify for the warranty before the 5 year warranty period ends.

The 2012 LEAF just hit 34k miles with full bars an no hints of an impending bar loss (such as charging only to 9 bars at 80%).
 
cgaydos said:
A rough analysis of the rate of SOH reduction suggests this battery is losing about 6% per year.
That is pretty close to what I am seeing on my 2012 SL. 3 years old this month and down 17%.

Lets hope that the 2015 batteries hold up better than the early versions.
 
cgaydos said:
Our 2011 LEAF lost its first bar on December 20 at 24,316 miles.

It spent its first 17 months as a demo at a Houston-area dealership from October 2011 through February 2013 logging only 1,624 miles. We didn't have LeafSpy when it arrived but the range then was noticeably degraded relative to our then-4 month-old 2012 LEAF. (Which I expected - the low price more than made up for this.) Since then it has been in high altitude Colorado (about 10 degrees cooler, on average, than Denver) and very rarely seen the battery temp hit 7 bars. We charge to 80% then top off to 100% when the full range is needed. About 40 quick charge sessions.

A rough analysis of the rate of SOH reduction suggests this battery is losing about 6% per year. The in-service date is February 28, 2013 (nice of the dealer to do that given that it started as a demo in 2011) which means there is a slight chance this car could actually qualify for the warranty before the 5 year warranty period ends.

The 2012 LEAF just hit 34k miles with full bars an no hints of an impending bar loss (such as charging only to 9 bars at 80%).

look at the post just above yours. its time degradation at work. theirs nearly same age and mileage... its almost as if it was destiny for u 2 to post consecutively :shock:
 
look at the post just above yours. its time degradation at work. theirs nearly same age and mileage... its almost as if it was destiny for u 2 to post consecutively :shock:

A clearer statement would have stated; Both time & mileage are factors of the Leaf battery degradation
but the contribution of each, given the present data, is unknown.
 
lorenfb said:
look at the post just above yours. its time degradation at work. theirs nearly same age and mileage... its almost as if it was destiny for u 2 to post consecutively :shock:

A clearer statement would have stated; Both time & mileage are factors of the Leaf battery degradation
but the contribution of each, given the present data, is unknown.
Thanks for the EV 101 lesson. No doubt someone here needs it
 
lorenfb said:
look at the post just above yours. its time degradation at work. theirs nearly same age and mileage... its almost as if it was destiny for u 2 to post consecutively :shock:

A clearer statement would have stated; Both time & mileage are factors of the Leaf battery degradation
but the contribution of each, given the present data, is unknown.

Well, we also know that for the early model year LEAFs heat is also a huge factor. My LEAF spent 17 months in the Houston area - granted only one summer and two winters - but that summer had to have helped along degradation. However, since that time it's been in a cool climate (with fewer days over 85F than even the Pacific Northwest, given our higher altitude). The other LEAF has spent its time in a climate between those two extremes.
 
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