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
Hi. Lost my first bar today.

Birth: March 28, 2013
Odo: 12,145 miles
SOH: 83%
Geo: 1st life: Georgia, 2nd life: South Florida

I can still drive 100 miles on a single charge. Here's hoping the rest of the bars go quickly enough so the warranty covers the replacement. But if it doesn't, I will replace the battery anyway since this is such a great car.

JR
 
I've not lost a single bar. Just verified I have exactly 5% of capacity loss. First bar should go at around 15%.
I've done 50 000km (30 000 miles). So most likely the answer for me would be the last one.
 
I must be really close..
Thought I was going to be there today..
42k and this morning, the 1st bar was gone... I was bummed, because I was wondering if I'd make it to 50k.. ;-)
But then I noticed a bit into my drive that it was back? Hmmm..
Anyway, should be soon, I'd guess....

desiv
 
The time has come to post to this thread.
I first noticed the loss of my 12th capacity bar yesterday, though it could have disappeared sometime within the last couple of weeks.
It's a little disappointing because I've only put 1200 miles on the car (odometer 14700,) bought last December, so to me it's nearly new.
I don't have, or have access to, Leafspy or equivalent, so the usual caveats/complaints about not having true charge parameter values apply.
But...
I've been keeping the state of charge around 50-60% calculated by either: GOM reading divided by GOM reading at 100% charge (which I've only done once in order to get a nominal reading at "full" charge) or; by using the 'number of hours to 80% charge' subtracted from 17, divided by 17 and multiplied by 0.8 (formula adapted from http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=7079)
The average daily change in state of charge is only 17% because the car is driven so little, 10 to 15 miles per day.
I'm trying to limit capacity loss by keeping the SOC as low as practical to control calendar loss and by keeping the daily change in SOC low to control cycling loss.
However, it is a model year 2012 which was put in service November of 2011 so calendar aging really does apply.
Using our local time of day pricing for off peak power ($0.0896/kWh), my average energy cost is $0.0194 per mile. This compares to (is 28% of) our other car (2008 Nissan Altima 2.4L ICE getting 33mpg at $2.30/gal) at $0.07 per mile. Quite acceptable, ignoring eventual battery replacement and assuming the government doesn't claw my savings back to replace, or more than replace the gas/road maintenance taxes I'm not paying.
I used a Killawatt meter initially to gauge actual power draw from the house mains (pretty constant at 1.34kWh per hour) for the first couple of weeks before reading horror stories about overheated outlets. Subsequently I've been using an assumed draw of 1.34kWh per hour to compare my average mi/kWh (3.6) to that reported by the car (4.9). If the car is accurately reporting energy out of the battery, this means my charging efficiency is about 70% (calculates to 73% but I don't believe that last significant digit can be justified, so I round.) The method for keeping the SOC lower than 80% is to take the number of miles to add to the GOM to get to about 50% SOC, divide it by my empirical miles added per hour of charge (about 6) to get the number of hours to charge. This takes less than a minute while shutting down in the garage.

I haz sad.
But I'm going to concentrate on things that aren't there:
Lack of maintenance.
Lack of concern for gas prices or stops at gas stations.
Lack of noise, vibration and harshness.
Lack of oil leaks and the accumulation of dirt and dust on leaked oil.
 
Hi Dave,

Interesting post. Thanks for the great write-up.

You are clearly technical and dedicated to careful measurements and managing your battery pack. It's a pretty small investment to get LeafSpy going. I'm an iPhone user, but bought a cheap Android just so I could use LeafSpy. Now there's an iPhone version. It requires a specific BlueTooth LE dongle which is more expensive than the ones the Android can use, but either way the cost of hardware and software is still a bargain for what you get.

It would be helpful to add your experience to the Plug In America Leaf Owner Survey.

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/

Early results from the survey show no measurable impact between charging to 80% vs. charging to 100% (see the survey paper). Not many people manage their SOC as carefully as you are, so it would be great to add a record of your experience over time to the survey.
 
Hi Tom

tomsax said:
Hi Dave,

Interesting post. Thanks for the great write-up.

You are clearly technical and dedicated to careful measurements and managing your battery pack. It's a pretty small investment to get LeafSpy going. I'm an iPhone user, but bought a cheap Android just so I could use LeafSpy. Now there's an iPhone version. It requires a specific BlueTooth LE dongle which is more expensive than the ones the Android can use, but either way the cost of hardware and software is still a bargain for what you get.

Yeah, I was surprised and pretty disappointed at losing a bar at 15000 miles while thinking I was being nice to the battery and when others are going twice or triple that....Drat. I hope the previous owner was mean to it and brought it to the edge of the 15% capacity loss just before I got it and I just nudged it over.
I know that LeafSpy is a useful tool in monitoring SOH of the Leaf. But I've been through so many obsolescence cycles of consumer electronics and software... It's not the money, I'm just not keen on dedicating the time to getting an Android device, learning enough about installing and using software on it for just scanning the Leaf battery. Generally I find the "you just type 'setup' and you're done" claim to be false frequently enough to make a smooth install & use less than a 50/50 proposition. Been there with more than one OBD laptop scanner package, Palm, Blackberry, going all the way back to a Radio Shack Model I pocket computer.
And I don't want to get too obsessive/compulsive on the battery. Knowing that cell pair #17 is a little undercharged compared to #18 and #16 isn't going to change how I treat the car and I don't have any control over the battery management system.
If there is a LeafSpy rental service, I'd be interested.

It would be helpful to add your experience to the Plug In America Leaf Owner Survey.

http://www.pluginamerica.org/surveys/batteries/leaf/

I'll do that. Modern BEVs have so little history compared to more than a century of ICE refinement that it's a good time to be an observer/participant. Things are changing fast.

Early results from the survey show no measurable impact between charging to 80% vs. charging to 100% (see the survey paper). Not many people manage their SOC as carefully as you are, so it would be great to add a record of your experience over time to the survey.

My strategy came from reading about failure modes of lithium battery technology. In a nutshell, it appears that you kill capacity with a high state of charge and elevated temperature. These conditions break down electrolyte and form a solid electrolyte interface that essentially plugs up the anode. I understand that there are other mechanisms including thermal & physical damage stemming from high current draw (maintaining constant power output) at low cell voltages (low SOC) and I'm trying to not go there by staying in the 30-60% SOC. I think the battery management system also protects the last 15% or so. It just doesn't let you use that part of the battery.
One thing I haven't found in my reading is anybody trying to remove the SEI once it forms. Lots of additive brews to try to keep it from forming but nobody trying to wash it off or dissolve it once it forms. Maybe I just wasn't reading in the right papers.
Nissan may have goofed by gambling that they didn't need active (expensive) pack temperature management. That's just one of a bazillion engineering decisions and it only came to the surface because they might have been just a little wrong. I have lots of sympathy for that team. It's a lot easier to be wrong than right.
I hope I can compensate some by keeping my SOC in the middle. Too high kills capacity, too low makes the car useless. We'll see how long it takes to lose the next (6.25%) bar. That'll at least give me 2 data points on my capacity loss curve.
 
31k miles after a few weeks of hovering between 85 and 84 % SOH.

It's been hot here in central NC so I assume that had something to do with bar finally dropping.

This is an early 2013 build SV.
 
'13 SL with a build date 2/13. Lost it's first bar at 19k miles. 4 bars gone now at 38k. Just got the warranty replacement battery installed TODAY!. Its a new car again.
 
Just lost my first bar today. :eek:

Leafspy Stats:
AHr 56.34
SOH: 86%
GIDs 245
Hx: 84.04%
odo: 44,698 mi
QC: 29
L1/L2: 1,129
 
Lost 1st bar today on my 2014 SV after 25 months and 24730 miles. For the DC area, I don't think that this rate of degradation is acceptable. Nissan better pay closer attention to the durability of the battery in the next-gen LEAF or else I will be spending my money elsewhere for my next car.
 
Whether you've lost any bars or not, it would be great to get everyone's experience into the Plug In America Leaf Battery Survey.

http://survey.pluginamerica.org/leaf/survey.php

There's more data captured there than in this poll, so we can see not only bars but model year, build month, and geographic region. The data is especially helpful if you can enter Gids or pack Ah. If you do reports periodically, you can see your car's history.

There are charts that show miles vs. capacity bars and capacity percent (from Gids or pack Ah), and you can overlay any vehicle's report history on top of the most recent data from all the other cars in the survey.

http://survey.pluginamerica.org/leaf/charts.php

All of the data (excluding personal info: name, email, VIN sequence number) is available for download so anyone can look at the data for any sort of analysis.
 
I purchased a new 2016 SL in December last year. I have 19,700 miles on the car and just noticed that I have already lost one bar. It was a hot summer here in Phoenix. I'm thinking that is part of it. Not happy that I'm already down a bar and I haven't had the car a year yet. I commute 70 miles round trip to work each day, all freeway. Hoping to do so without a midday charge for at least another couple of years but not looking good.
 
Ouch - first known 30 kWh LEAF with a lost bar? That does not bode well for the 30 kWh batteries. At least you have an 8-year 100k mile capacity warranty...
 
drees said:
Ouch - first known 30 kWh LEAF with a lost bar? That does not bode well for the 30 kWh batteries. At least you have an 8-year 100k mile capacity warranty...
Indeed. Seems like we need a new thread for lizard battery and/or 30 kWh pack battery capacity bar losers.
 
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