2016-2017 model year 30 kWh bar losers and capacity losses

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johnlocke said:
As an owner of a 2016 4 bar loser, I can tell you that my experience is that the Leaf spy numbers matched the actual usable mileage fairly closely. For the last year I've been routinely driving the car to LBW or less fairly regularly. LBW is a fixed number of GID's (50) so I've watched the LBW creep up from 13% to 21% of power left when the nice lady announces LBW. Range has steadily dropped over time,
I agree 50 GIDs is LBW but the issue is where on the voltage curve it is occuring as the GIDs are based on measurement and calculations. It is my understand that as the capacity of a battery declines, the knee tends to stay around the same voltage but occurs at a lower Ah value. The portion of the battery capacity after the knee may hold a relatively constant amount of energy.

If the 50 GID point occurs at an increasing voltage as the battery degrades, or even just as BMS recalculates and places it higher, then the effective capacity as seen by the driver degrades. The only way to confirm this is to do a full discharge under controlled conditions to explore usable kWh remaining below LBW and indications are there is more than the 4kWh suggested by LBW.

At least you are getting a new pack so will have range fully restored. Thanks for the feedback.
 
Back in October I got mine down to 4 GIDs. Pack voltage 282.56. The voltages min/avg/max were 2.83/2.943/3.065 My SOH at the time was 71% Hx 70.24% AHr 56.92 odo 12168. What are others voltages at turtle??
 
dwl said:
LeftieBiker said:
There are indications in tests here in New Zealand that some 2016 cars are under reporting capacity as presented in SOH and lost bars.
All of the available evidence shows that the batteries are losing capacity rapidly, not under-reporting it. This is an important distinction, as it means a real physical deterioration of the packs, as opposed to a software glitch in the BMS.
The amount of charge accepted from flat by several cars seems to be significantly more than would be expected from the AHr/SoH and kWh reports from Leaf Spy (simply relaying car BMS). If drivers only go down to LBW or VLBW they may experience the reduced capacity as these indications seem to be triggering at higher than expected voltages on some cars.

If there is evidence that confirms the total holding capacity is reduced, not just capacity down to the warning levels, references would be appreciated. I accept there will be cars that have lost more capacity and there will be variability across the whole fleet.

If we use the value from Nissan of 31.78kWh from empty, would we expect to only be able to put in SoH * 31.78kWh at 240V and 15A ? There might be calibration errors in the EVSE kWh reporting but the example I gave was the car accepted a lot more than would be expected for the SoH (87% vs 76% reported SoH). Unfortunately only using down to LBW and VLBW can show reported loss of capacity which might not be actual.
One of the effects of a degraded battery is increased resistance. So while 27.7 kWh may have been pulled from the meter, the charging losses are uncertain, as is the fraction of energy stored in the battery from the charging event.
 
SageBrush said:
One of the effects of a degraded battery is increased resistance. So while 27.7 kWh may have been pulled from the meter, the charging losses are uncertain, as is the fraction of energy stored in the battery from the charging event.
This is definitely a consideration during rapid charging. For 16A I put the following words in our local forum post: "if we use 0.1 ohm as 100% ESR (conservative, I think the 30kWh are less), the approximate charge current at 360V is 9A so that loss would 9*9*0.1=8.1W * 7.7h = 0.06kWh. If we assume 72% Hx is now 0.139 ohm, the extra loss might be 9*9*0.04=3.2W * 7.7h = 0.025kWh extra - i.e. very little and probably much bigger instrumentation errors." and got a response "100mR would be about right for a 24kWh car, I believe the newer batteries might be a bit better and the 30kWh car should be better linearly with capacity"

A further response was: "Given that loss is current squared times resistance, it's linear with resistance. Hx is 1/resistance so 72% Hx is 1.39* the original ESR. Assuming the time doesn't change (which it won't unless the ESR gets REALLY bad) then the difference will be 39% more for the 72% Hx car. Where it plays more of a role is total round-trip efficiency. It's not such a big deal when charging at 10A, but is a bit worse when discharging at 50A (current squared and all that jazz) and much much worse when charging at 120-140A. It will add nonlinearities depending on the type of charging/discharging. At a 50kW charge rate, you're looking at 1.9kW of loss (~96% efficient) for the 100% Hx and 2.7kW of loss (94.5% efficient) for the 72% Hx."
 
Lost my 4th bar today :( 26K miles. Leased it new 1 year and 11 months back. Contacted a local Nissan dealer and made a service appointment for this Friday. I do have LeafSpy but not sure what to look for. Can someone please point out? Thanks!
 
vishvik said:
Lost my 4th bar today :( 26K miles. Leased it new 1 year and 11 months back. Contacted a local Nissan dealer and made a service appointment for this Friday. I do have LeafSpy but not sure what to look for. Can someone please point out? Thanks!
Swipe right to the cells page and record the AHr SOH Hx and cell difference in mV at full charge.
 
dwl said:
An interesting post on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/nissan.leaf.owners.group/permalink/1982145841856247/. He was down two bars and a Nissan dealer did "Recall PC630 LEAF 30KW BATTERY, NTB18 NISSAN RECALL PROGRAMMED HV BATTERY AS PER RECALL.". Now back to 12 bars. While it could be a simple reset it sounds like more.
Great, now we have Nissan reprogramming 2016-7 batteries (not that we shouldn't expect it since they did the same to the 2011-2 batteries). :(
 
Reddy said:
dwl said:
An interesting post on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/nissan.leaf.owners.group/permalink/1982145841856247/. He was down two bars and a Nissan dealer did "Recall PC630 LEAF 30KW BATTERY, NTB18 NISSAN RECALL PROGRAMMED HV BATTERY AS PER RECALL.". Now back to 12 bars. While it could be a simple reset it sounds like more.
Great, now we have Nissan reprogramming 2016-7 batteries (not that we shouldn't expect it since they did the same to the 2011-2 batteries). :(

Yes. Soon followed by releasing a new battery chemistry (the "lizard") with more acceptable life. I'm interested, as I might want to buy a used Leaf in a few months or so. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
 
WetEV said:
Yes. Soon followed by releasing a new battery chemistry (the "lizard") with more acceptable life. I'm interested, as I might want to buy a used Leaf in a few months or so. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.
I'm still waiting. My 2011 still works fine in town. Finally, were seeing some DCQCs being added over here in Eastern WA (Kennewick and Ellensburg now, and soon to have Cle Elum, George, Yakima, Prosser, Richland, Pasco, Connell). These will expand my range, but might speed degradation. I'll reassess in another 6-7 years.
 
Just got the car back from the dealer today. Turns out that they didn't start work on it until yesterday. It's only supposed to be 4 hr job. 4 days seems a little excessive. Anyway the old battery stats were 49.55 AH, SOH = 62.84%, and Hx = 55.33%. New battery IS 82.34 AH, SOH = 103.60%, and Hx = 97.07%. Interestingly enough, When I picked it up the SOH and AH were slightly lower (97% and 79.34 AH) then it was when I got it home (numbers above). I'll be checking it again after several battery cycles to see if it changes some more. I was told by the dealer that batteries are shipped with very low charge, just enough to power on the electronics and move the car to a charger. That could be why the numbers changed as the battery warmed up and I exercised it on the way home.

For those who are interested, the SN for the battery is 230SM1185H000875. According to the service adviser replacement cost of the battery was almost $10,000. I assume this was including labor. This sounds like a "Go to Hell" price to me although the dealer would normally make a profit on both the battery and labor and could discount it somewhat. Unless the battery is still under warranty I won't be replacing it at that price. I'm expecting this one to fail at about 90.000 miles and about 3 years from now while still under the original warranty. That will give me a 10,000 mi buffer on the expected failure. Still have over five years left time-wise so mileage is the limiting factor.
 
johnlocke said:
For those who are interested, the SN for the battery is 230SM1185H000875.
Great news that replacements are flowing through and that looks like a brand new pack. It would be interesting if you could share the controller version number (on same HV BATTERY line in Read ECUs) and note the voltage at 100% charge.
 
jbuntz said:
vishvik said:
Lost my 4th bar today :( 26K miles. Leased it new 1 year and 11 months back. Contacted a local Nissan dealer and made a service appointment for this Friday. I do have LeafSpy but not sure what to look for. Can someone please point out? Thanks!
Swipe right to the cells page and record the AHr SOH Hx and cell difference in mV at full charge.

I looked up this on a full charge and this is what I saw:
AHr=49.86 SOH=62.73% 395.09v Hx=57.70%
min/ave/max = 4.108 4.116 4.123 (15mv)

At the dealership now where a leaf tech is looking over this issue. I also found a recall notice show up when booking my appointment (related to 30KW battery!). Fingers crossed.
 
vishvik said:
jbuntz said:
vishvik said:
Lost my 4th bar today :( 26K miles. Leased it new 1 year and 11 months back. Contacted a local Nissan dealer and made a service appointment for this Friday. I do have LeafSpy but not sure what to look for. Can someone please point out? Thanks!
Swipe right to the cells page and record the AHr SOH Hx and cell difference in mV at full charge.

I looked up this on a full charge and this is what I saw:
AHr=49.86 SOH=62.73% 395.09v Hx=57.70%
min/ave/max = 4.108 4.116 4.123 (15mv)

At the dealership now where a leaf tech is looking over this issue. I also found a recall notice show up when booking my appointment (related to 30KW battery!). Fingers crossed.

They are ordering a battery for my car!! 2-6 weeks is what my service advisor told me but hinted it could be close to 2 weeks.
 
SageBrush said:
^^
That looks pretty convincing. Thanks

Still its death by a thousand tiny cuts. Charging, regen; its all the same. Even a tiny loss in efficiency adds up since the car is essentially going thru hundreds of regen periods on short drives.
 
It's great news that the BMS reprogramming fix has finally hit the streets. Nissan has been testing this fix since last year when it was first observed. In some cases they are still replacing the entire pack, but now most cars presenting with the phantom accelerated capacity loss can be fixed.
 
OrientExpress said:
It's great news that the BMS reprogramming fix has finally hit the streets. Nissan has been testing this fix since last year when it was first observed. In some cases they are still replacing the entire pack, but now most cars presenting with the phantom accelerated capacity loss can be fixed.


That's not a good thing will mean many won't be getting a new battery. If you're down 2 bars like the guy on FB was, they reprogram the BMS now it shows 12 bars isn't Nissan just hiding the capacity loss to avoid so many battery replacements? Sure sounds like it to me! After all when has Nissan ever had the consumer's best interest in mind?
 
OrientExpress said:
It's great news that the BMS reprogramming fix has finally hit the streets. Nissan has been testing this fix since last year when it was first observed. In some cases they are still replacing the entire pack, but now most cars presenting with the phantom accelerated capacity loss can be fixed.

Do you have any data to support the 'phantom' part of the accelerated capacity loss?

My 2017S is supposedly down to SOH of 92% or so but I still regularly go > 100 miles on a 90% charge but I live at 5400 ft elevation and my dash shows my efficiency at 4.5 mi/kWh so maybe that's expected. I suppose it's possible that the 30kWh BMS has faulty firmware but this is the first I've heard of it.
 
rcm4453 said:
That's not a good thing will mean many won't be getting a new battery. If you're down 2 bars like the guy on FB was, they reprogram the BMS now it shows 12 bars isn't Nissan just hiding the capacity loss to avoid so many battery replacements? Sure sounds like it to me! After all when has Nissan ever had the consumer's best interest in mind?

After reprogramming the BMS it will be reset and will show all 12 bars. It will settle quickly down to the real capacity within a few weeks of driving as the BMS determines the batteries characteristics. This is normal after a BMS reprogram and not fancy finger-work by Nissan.
 
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