Long Term Reliability of the 30kWh Battery Pack

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coupedncal

Active member
Joined
Nov 14, 2017
Messages
25
It has been couple of years since the 30kWh battery packs were released. I was wondering what the consensus on battery degradation is of these battery packs. I have seen various references to this 30 kWh packs being less durable than the lizard packs. My friend has a 50K miles lizard pack on his '15 and he is running with 12 bars and he charges to 100% every single time. Sometimes twice a day due to his commute needs. Any ideas how the '16 and '17 will behave over the next 5-10 years? Is there empirical data to suggest these newer packs are prone to early degradation?
 
coupedncal said:
Any ideas how the '16 and '17 will behave over the next 5-10 years? Is there empirical data to suggest these newer packs are prone to early degradation?
LTLFTcomposite's sig says it all:
"2016 SV-adjacent May 2016 lost 4th bar March 2018"
 
a graph from a new zealand study here also:
https://flipthefleet.org/2018/30-kwh-leafs-soh-loss/

30kwh appear to degrade a lot quicker than 24kwh battery packs.
 
I've only got a sample of one on my '16 S30. Having said, I have had it for almost 2 years now and it's performance in terms of reliability and degradation has been comparable to the '13 SV24 it replaced. Yes, I live in an EV friendly place, and I seldom QC - so the car lives an easy life. My single data point does not support the rapid degradation claim, but long term reliability will obviously require a longer time line of data than exists right now.
 
estomax said:
a graph from a new zealand study here also:
https://flipthefleet.org/2018/30-kwh-leafs-soh-loss/
If the above relationship is correct, all 30kWh batteries will be replaced by Nissan inside of their warranty period.
 
On June 6, 2018 Nissan began conducting a customer service campaign in North America to reprogram the lithium-ion battery controller in 2016 and 2017 model-year LEAF vehicles equipped with a 30 kWh battery, to correct the calculation used for the battery capacity level gauge and distance remaining of the vehicle.

The displayed vehicle range and battery capacity level gauge on these vehicles is displaying range and capacity that is lower than the actual amount. Reprogramming the controller will result in an accurate display of the LEAFs battery capacity and trip range.

In most cases the 30 kWh battery has been just fine, but in other cases the battery controller was providing inaccurate calculated data that falsely indicated that the battery was degrading at an accelerated rate. Some cars were reporting losing as much as 25% of their capacity and range at 15,000 miles. Nissan has been replacing those batteries with new ones while they investigated the issue to find the root cause.

Since everything from the display of range and SOC is based on these faulty calculations, everything indicated that the battery was going bad fast. Nissan indicated that they knew something was wrong, that these batteries should not be going south as fast as they indicated, and analysis showed that indeed that in some situations the BMC was providing incorrect data.

Every owner of a 2016 or 2017 LEAF should contact their local dealer to get this fix applied to their vehicles, even if they have had their battery already replaced.
 
OrientExpress said:
On June 6, 2018 Nissan began conducting a customer service campaign in North America to reprogram the lithium-ion battery controller in 2016 and 2017 model-year LEAF vehicles equipped with a 30 kWh battery, to correct the calculation used for the battery capacity level gauge and distance remaining of the vehicle...
No official notice from Nissan?

Why not?
 
The official notice is going out to all owners as we speak. The dealers are aware of it, and you can make an appointment to get it done today.
 
Here is the dealer communication:

leafbatterycampaign-1.jpg


leafbatterycampaign-2.jpg


leafbatterycampaign-3.jpg
 
^^^
Thank you.

The above pages were also posted at https://www.facebook.com/groups/NissanLeafOwners/permalink/1899697456794901/?comment_id=1906268619471118&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R2%22%7D. Interesting.
 
So, nissan says that after the update, the capacity bar display will now be "accurate".

Forgive me, but has Nissan ever stated what "accurate" capacity each bar represents?

All Nissan was ever willing to say about the "24 kWh" pack capacity, was that four bars lost represented approximately 30% of new capacity.
 
edatoakrun said:
So, nissan says that after the update, the capacity bar display will now be "accurate".

Forgive me, but has Nissan ever stated what "accurate" capacity each bar represents?

All Nissan was ever willing to say about the "24 kWh" pack capacity, was that four bars lost represented approximately 30% of new capacity.

The bars will not change. They are simply a representation of the state of the car. They are NOT to be considered as digital representations of anything as they all have deltas in which the appear or disappear making them only guidelines at best.

The general state of Nissan instrumentation will not help either. But at least they show "something"

Most other EV manufacturers don't have the guts.
 
This is all very interesting and I guess even though it is voluntary I probably don't have much say over how my warranty gets handled since the firmware that controls the bars is entirely under Nissan's control.

That said, I just went 80.5 miles in the last few days since my last charge to 91% (per the dash) and now the dash shows SOC = 37% so something doesn't add up...

SOH per LeafSpyPro was 94.5% yesterday after being consistently down around 92% for most of the Spring.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
edatoakrun said:
So, nissan says that after the update, the capacity bar display will now be "accurate".

Forgive me, but has Nissan ever stated what "accurate" capacity each bar represents?

All Nissan was ever willing to say about the "24 kWh" pack capacity, was that four bars lost represented approximately 30% of new capacity.

The bars will not change. They are simply a representation of the state of the car. They are NOT to be considered as digital representations of anything ...
Yes, and the same can be said for the grossly inaccurate LBC estimates of battery capacity, which are used to inform the bar displays.

Unfortunately, most "30 kWh" pack LEAF owners seem to have been just as willing to make fools of themselves, as most "24 kWh" pack owners have over the years, when they took LBC data seriously as accurate data on pack capacity.

So, with is campaign, Nissan will now change the LBC readings on "30 kWh" packs, allegedly to make them less inaccurate, just like it claimed it was trying to do for our "24 kWh" LEAFs.

That effort was a failure, as the higher-capacity LBC readings soon drifted back to ~the same level of extreme inaccuracy, as confirmed by recharge and range tests on my LEAF and others' at the time.

But, maybe this time it will be different?

If any of you "30 kWh" pack owners want to find out, I suggest you try to learn what you have neglected to learn to date, how to monitor your pack capacity accurately, using objective methods, and entirely ignoring the garbage data from your LBC, and that you do so before you accept Nissans "corrective" campaign.
 
edatoakrun said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
edatoakrun said:
So, nissan says that after the update, the capacity bar display will now be "accurate".

If any of you "30 kWh" pack owners want to find out, I suggest you try to learn what you have neglected to learn to date, how to monitor your pack capacity accurately, using objective methods, and entirely ignoring the garbage data from your LBC, and that you do so before you accept Nissans "corrective" campaign.

How do we propose we do this? Use LeafSpy type tool?

I am confused by this apparent fix from Nissan as even the LeafSpy tool was reporting lower values and thereby implying the battery storage capacity was dropping rapidly on these 30 kWh models. Am I correct with this statement? This fix will resolve the dashboard inaccuracies but wasn't LeafSpy tapping the batteries directly and LeafSpy did not use the input from the dash?
 
I believe he's referring to controlled, repeated range testing and careful measurements of charge and discharge energy. LeafSpy reads its data from the "LBC" so it may not be reliable if the info from the BMS is incorrect.
 
What a mess! If I owned a 2016/2017 with a 30 kWh pack, I'd be worried that this software "fix" is simply an effort by Nissan to ensure that they don't end up with having to replace a bunch of degraded 30 kWh packs under warranty. I guess owners are just supposed to take it on faith that Nissan is actually fixing a software bug, rather than pulling a Volkswagen con job.

This industry is just screaming for standardized, independent measuring and assessment of battery pack health so that consumers can have assurance that they aren't getting scammed.

This sounds like another class action law suit on the boil...
 
alozzy said:
...This industry is just screaming for standardized, independent measuring and assessment of battery pack health so that consumers can have assurance that they aren't getting scammed...
We did have just such a program, until it was abruptly cancelled by the present administration, in one of the less-reported actions in its war on science.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=499817#p499817

INL's AVTA EV testing terminated

Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:19 pm

edatoakrun said:
I've been wondering why this page has not been updated in many months:

https://avt.inl.gov/vehicle-type/all-powertrain-architecture

In response to my inquiry:

INL spokesperson:

Thanks again for your interest in INL's work producing the AVTA reports. As you probably know, INL is part of the Department of Energy's national laboratory system and receives much of its research funding and direction from DOE.

To answer your question about the light-duty vehicle testing, federal funding for the project has ended because the EV industry is maturing, which lessens the need for taxpayer-funded testing and data collection.
It is extremely disappointing that the only program that has been independently monitoring manufacturer's claims of BEV/PHEV/BEVx initial battery capacity (total and available) and battery capacity loss over time has been terminated.

This will leave EV owners with few sources of battery capacity data, apart from the inaccurate (and easily manipulated) BMS reports provided by manufacturer's.

The much-more reliable data on charge accepted can only be collected (with some effort) allowing calculation of available battery capacity by owners of EV's for which charge/discharge efficiency reports were previously collected by the AVTA, and published at the site above.

Main threads discussing AVTA testing of initial battery capacity and capacity loss over time for 2011-13 LEAFs below:

2011 LEAF discussion:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=13265

2012 LEAF discussion:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=14271

2013 LEAF discussion:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=18555
 
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