Nissan issues software update to solve 30 kwh battery issues

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coldstorage5 said:
Hi, There seems to be a lot on Nissan Haters on this board. Surprising because this is a Nissan Leaf Board.
With that said. I have 2017 SL with 8200K. No issues. I was surprised how fast it is and happy with the quality so far. Very Pleased so far after with a $7500 Tax Credit. $1900 Off sticker price New York State Incentive and another $10000 Off MSRP in the great state of New York last August.
I've been following the 30 KW Battery degradation issue since day 1. All the Graphs and Histeria.
I'm happy Nissan has realized there is a software issue. ( if this was Tesla some of you would be Swooning how great it was that they discovered a problem and fixed it. Also, the Telsa 3's are still coming in at twice the price. Those 35K are still not happening.)

Nissan would not offer a fix if it wasn't legit. Come On people. You think Nissan would open themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by rebooting software after their batteries weren't lasting long. Really?
I m100% confident this will show the batteries are good. Remember Only a handful have failed over the warranty time period. Do the research as I have.
After I get the Reboot I will wait the 7 years and another 91000 to see how the battery hangs in there.
All The best,
CS
As one of the disgruntled owners who just had his battery replaced at 45K mi. Yes I do believe that Nissan would try to pull a fast one. They did it before and it did take a class action lawsuit to resolve it. When I bought this car Nissan offered a 100,000 mi warranty on the battery and said that typically the battery would still retain 80% of it's capacity after 8 years or 100,000 miles. For those in hot climates like SoCal, AZ, Texas and Florida these batteries perform abysmally losing 30-40% of the initial capacity within a couple of years. Even owners in northern tier states are reporting 20% losses already. Keep in mind the Nissan has fiddled around with the capacity gauge already to give the illusion that the battery is still in great shape with all 12 bars when in reality many cars are down 15% or more already. If Nissan was playing it straight the first bar would drop at 92% not 80% The software fix may be legitimate and fix a programming error but I doubt that is going to increase the number miles you can get on a charge or fix a degraded battery. At best it will slow the degradation of the battery somewhat. At the worst, it could be a bandaid to try get more cars to limp over the warranty limits or fool some owners into not applying for warranty repairs soon enough.

You're right that there are no 35K Teslas but there are $44K Teslas. A Full Boat model 3 is about 58K and a Full Boat Leaf is over 40K. Tesla batteries are good for at least 200K miles and maybe up to 500K miles. And Tesla is known for fixing problems both on older models and new ones. The State and Federal incentives apply to all EV's.

By the way, I love the car, just hate the battery. I bought this car for a particular purpose and it works fine for that. Even with the degraded battery, it could do what I wanted ( if just barely). In a couple more years there's going to be a much bigger selection of BEV's to choose from and Nissan's reputation about how they treated their BEV customers could bite them in the ass. I've driven Nissan's for almost 30 years but this could be my last. Other than battery, I've had zero issues with the car.
 
coldstorage5 said:
Hi, There seems to be a lot on Nissan Haters on this board. Surprising because this is a Nissan Leaf Board.
With that said. I have 2017 SL with 8200K. No issues. I was surprised how fast it is and happy with the quality so far. Very Pleased so far after with a $7500 Tax Credit. $1900 Off sticker price New York State Incentive and another $10000 Off MSRP in the great state of New York last August.
I've been following the 30 KW Battery degradation issue since day 1. All the Graphs and Histeria.
I'm happy Nissan has realized there is a software issue. ( if this was Tesla some of you would be Swooning how great it was that they discovered a problem and fixed it. Also, the Telsa 3's are still coming in at twice the price. Those 35K are still not happening.)

Nissan would not offer a fix if it wasn't legit. Come On people. You think Nissan would open themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by rebooting software after their batteries weren't lasting long. Really?
I m100% confident this will show the batteries are good. Remember Only a handful have failed over the warranty time period. Do the research as I have.
After I get the Reboot I will wait the 7 years and another 91000 to see how the battery hangs in there.
All The best,
CS

I’d swoon if the fix was OTA.
 
coldstorage5 said:
Hi, There seems to be a lot on Nissan Haters on this board. Surprising because this is a Nissan Leaf Board...

CS

I don't think there are many Nissan haters on this board. I think most of the people who speak negatively about Nissan here like (mostly love), the Leaf, but are just frustrated about battery degradation. Many of the critics here have been personally burned by it. My whole family loves the Leaf. Most of us prefer to drive it over our other cars. But I generally keep my cars for a long time. My 2004 Acura TL runs great. At 180,000 miles it's starting to get to the point where I'm looking to replace it. I won't consider the 2018 Leaf. I think 150 miles of range would be the lower limit for a second EV in the family. The problem comes 6 years into owning it. By past measures, I should expect maybe 70-80% of original capacity by then. If I get a good one, it could be slightly higher, if I get a bad one, it could be lower. That turns 150 miles of range into 120. That starts being too low for me.

On the other hand, based on history with GM or Tesla batteries, the degradation with those seems to be much lower. Volt owners report almost no degradation, and Tesla owners very low. I have heard the same for BMW. Nissan has been making electric cars for 8 years, and I see no indication that they are improving their batteries. If they do, I will reconsider.

I just hope my 2014's battery holds up well to get many years out of it, since I really like the car.
 
Count me among the Nissan haters. Corporate support of the LEAF has been deplorable. They say the battery will have 80% capacity after 8-10 years and when it is below 65% after 5 years and a day they tell customers to pound sound. Oh yes, and then raise the price of a battery replacement to remove any doubt of their desire to keep LEAF owners in the Nissan family.

As for the LEAF ... that is a more nuanced question due to battery degradation issues and it simply depends on the climate, use case, and purchase price. My household does very well with 1.5 cars, and the LEAF can be a wonderful 0.5 car at the right price, say < $10k
 
OrientExpress said:
LeftieBiker said:
So then why has actual range been affected just as if the batteries were degrading rapidly? Are you saying that these cars have plenty of range left when the VLBW appears - say another 30+ miles?

The issue that the SW fix is addressing is the generation of incorrect data by the BMC that is used to determine battery health, and range. This source is used by several other systems and is assumed by those systems to be valid.

Everything that the car presents regarding the parameters is based on the calculations that are faulty. LEAF spy uses the faulty data, as does the battery health gauge, SOC, and range displays.

During the investigation stage of the 2016/17 cars that were presenting with accelerated degradation, Nissan took the batteries from those cars and bench tested them to see if they were actually degraded, and found that the batteries were in excellent health. This led Nissan to look to see why they were presenting with accelerated degradation in the car. This is when it was discovered that the calculations that the BMC was doing were faulty.

For your reading pleasure, here is a link that includes all of the dealer service center backgrounder info, as well as the customer communications.
From the release note it states that the fix does not change the actual capacity. Yesterday I drove from 100% to turtle at mostly highway speed for a grand total of 77miles. I averaged 59mph. How does this compare to your 24kWh model? Or others 30kWh with an excellent battery?
 
coldstorage5 said:
Nissan would not offer a fix if it wasn't legit. Come On people. You think Nissan would open themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by rebooting software after their batteries weren't lasting long. Really?
CS
I don't know what Nissan is doing or what they are promising.
Clearly, neither do you.

One thing is for sure: Nissan has every legal right to futz with capacity bars as they please. You have NO legal right to demand that 8 capacity bars represent any specific battery capacity.
 
jbuntz said:
From the release note it states that the fix does not change the actual capacity. Yesterday I drove from 100% to turtle at mostly highway speed for a grand total of 77miles. I averaged 59mph. How does this compare to your 24kWh model? Or others 30kWh with an excellent battery?

That is true, the traction battery will continue to have 30 kWh of capacity. What the update does is fix an error in the BMS that can show less capacity for the battery than there really is. So for example if your car was showing 10 bars of capacity, chances are it really still has 12, and this fix corrects that discrepancy.
 
OrientExpress said:
jbuntz said:
From the release note it states that the fix does not change the actual capacity. Yesterday I drove from 100% to turtle at mostly highway speed for a grand total of 77miles. I averaged 59mph. How does this compare to your 24kWh model? Or others 30kWh with an excellent battery?
That is true, the traction battery will continue to have 30 kWh of capacity. What the update does is fix an error in the BMS that can show less capacity for the battery than there really is. So for example if your car was showing 10 bars of capacity, chances are it really still has 12, and this fix corrects that discrepancy.
I think it is misleading to suggest the battery will have 30kWh of capacity. For a 2016 car there is probably some underlying degradation due to calendar and cycle ageing which may be greater in the hotter climates. The fix is reportedly adding SOH but the reports so far are to some value between previously seen and 100% so even the BMS is not claiming 100%. In terms of capacity bars, restoring 12 bars may well be accurate but this doesn't mean as new capacity. Time will tell the actual capacity degradation curve but it is good news the under-reporting errors have been corrected.
 
dwl said:
For a 2016 car there is probably some underlying degradation due to calendar and cycle ageing which may be greater in the hotter climates. The fix is reportedly adding SOH but the reports so far are to some value between previously seen and 100% so even the BMS is not claiming 100%.

Of course the corrected reading will not report 100% capacity because of normal aging, but the update is not adding any SOC, it is simply going be providing accurate reporting. So far all of the cars whose owners have had the update done, say that all 12 bars have been restored, whereas they had lost on average 2 bars in less than 15k miles before the update.
 
OrientExpress said:
So far all of the cars whose owners have had the update done, say that all 12 bars have been restored, whereas they had lost on average 2 bars in less than 15k miles before the update.
That's meaningless information. ANYTIME the BMS is reset the capacity display returns to 12 bars for a time, regardless of the actual capacity of the battery. New software almost certainly means the BMS is reset, so we will have to wait for some time (weeks, at a minimum) to find out what changes have ACTUALLY occurred.
 
RegGuheert said:
That's meaningless information. ANYTIME the BMS is reset the capacity display returns to 12 bars for a time, regardless of the actual capacity of the battery. New software almost certainly means the BMS is reset, so we will have to wait for some time (weeks, at a minimum) to find out what changes have ACTUALLY occurred.

Your statement tells me that you still don't understand the root problem that this update resolves.
 
OrientExpress said:
RegGuheert said:
That's meaningless information. ANYTIME the BMS is reset the capacity display returns to 12 bars for a time, regardless of the actual capacity of the battery. New software almost certainly means the BMS is reset, so we will have to wait for some time (weeks, at a minimum) to find out what changes have ACTUALLY occurred.

Your statement tells me that you still don't understand the root problem that this update resolves.

Everything that you have written seems to indicate that you want to deflect attention from the root cause of the problem at hand: the substantial loss of capacity and range being experienced by the majority of 2016-2017 Leaf drivers. Who in Hell cares if the capacity bars go back to 12 if the car can no longer go 100 miles on a full charge?
 
LeftieBiker said:
Everything that you have written seems to indicate that you want to deflect attention from the root cause of the problem at hand: the substantial loss of capacity and range being experienced by the majority of 2016-2017 Leaf drivers. Who in Hell cares if the capacity bars go back to 12 if the car can no longer go 100 miles on a full charge?

Here is someone else that does not understand the root issue that the update resolves.
 
OrientExpress said:
Your statement tells me that you still don't understand the root problem that this update resolves.
It doesn't matter what the root cause is. Immediately after the BMS is reset, you will read 12 bars.

I will repeat: There is nothing learned by hearing that customers see 12 bars immediately after the update.
 
RegGuheert said:
OrientExpress said:
Your statement tells me that you still don't understand the root problem that this update resolves.
It doesn't matter what the root cause is. Immediately after the BMS is reset, you will read 12 bars.

I will repeat: There is nothing learned by hearing that customers see 12 bars immediately after the update.
I suspect the update could be giving an accurate capacity but it is not very useful to look only at 12 bars rather than SoH. I assume the threshold from 12 to 11 bars is still around 80%.

If the updates have taken SoH from say 73% to 85% that could be recovering 2 bars but capacity still down. Remember that Nissan states in the owners manual there is an expectation of 80% at 5 years but obviously with caveats. We now need to wait for some more cycles on these updated cars to see how they are tracking.
 
dwl said:
I suspect the update could be giving an accurate capacity but it is not very useful to look only at 12 bars rather than SoH.
There is a large amount of averaging in the software. As such, no one will know what they new software is reading for at least a couple of weeks.
 
Got this update today.

Before update was down 2 bars

SOH: 75.45%
AHr: 56.97
Hx: 68.83%

After update all 12 bars restored

SOH: 87.71%
AHr: 69.71
Hx: 68.57%

GOM is overestimating range by a lot more now. I don't pay attention to it anyway all I care about is SOC.

I'm still getting the same range as before, arrived to work with the same ~85% SOC remaining even after update. I know it will take weeks for more accurate readings. Even if the 87% SOH turns out to be fairly accurate that's still way too much degradation for a 2 year old car with 27k miles, glad I leased!
 
coldstorage5 said:
Hi, There seems to be a lot on Nissan Haters on this board. Surprising because this is a Nissan Leaf Board.
With that said. I have 2017 SL with 8200K. No issues. I was surprised how fast it is and happy with the quality so far. Very Pleased so far after with a $7500 Tax Credit. $1900 Off sticker price New York State Incentive and another $10000 Off MSRP in the great state of New York last August.
I've been following the 30 KW Battery degradation issue since day 1. All the Graphs and Histeria.
I'm happy Nissan has realized there is a software issue. ( if this was Tesla some of you would be Swooning how great it was that they discovered a problem and fixed it. Also, the Telsa 3's are still coming in at twice the price. Those 35K are still not happening.)

Nissan would not offer a fix if it wasn't legit. Come On people. You think Nissan would open themselves up to a class-action lawsuit by rebooting software after their batteries weren't lasting long. Really?
I m100% confident this will show the batteries are good. Remember Only a handful have failed over the warranty time period. Do the research as I have.
After I get the Reboot I will wait the 7 years and another 91000 to see how the battery hangs in there.
All The best,
CS

:lol:
 
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