We are in southern BC where although it can get quite hot in summer (July and August) it is otherwise a fairly mild climate.
How warm does it stay at night when the days are hot?
We are in southern BC where although it can get quite hot in summer (July and August) it is otherwise a fairly mild climate.
dwl said:What seems to be widely accepted is high SoC AND high temperatures AND time cause degradation. If SoC is kept lower then more chance of better battery life. Those in a cool climate don't need to worry so much but we now have a really bad situation here in New Zealand where many of the imports, now including some from the UK which have been driven harder, are dropping a bar for 2016 cars and there is zero support currently from Nissan - no warranty, not even ability to buy replacement packs.SageBrush said:My hero !DaveinOlyWA said:TBH; I don't give a rats ass whether you chose to follow my advice or not but NOTHING will stop me from saying it.
Stand on a crate in Hyde park and scream at the trees for all I care. Just do not offer your opinion as if it is fact or widely accepted.
I concur it is good advice to maintain lower SoC if you don't need the range. When it comes to facts, if only Nissan would give some reasons why these cars aren't holding up in some areas it would avoid the need for people to give their best guess as to what is happening.
LeftieBiker said:We are in southern BC where although it can get quite hot in summer (July and August) it is otherwise a fairly mild climate.
How warm does it stay at night when the days are hot?
It's a lovely chart but has little bearing on Leaf batteries. That chart shows that the batteries last for 5000 cycles or more. Leaf batteries crap out at less than 1000 cycles. It may make some difference to have a shallower discharge cycle but Leaf batteries are poorly designed and fail mostly due to heat problems. Leafs in cooler climates last longer than Leafs in hot climates. Putting a bandaid on a broken arm doesn't fix the problem.lorenfb said:
johnlocke said:It's a lovely chart but has little bearing on Leaf batteries. That chart shows that the batteries last for 5000 cycles or more. Leaf batteries crap out at less than 1000 cycles. It may make some difference to have a shallower discharge cycle but Leaf batteries are poorly designed and fail mostly due to heat problems. Leafs in cooler climates last longer than Leafs in hot climates. Putting a bandaid on a broken arm doesn't fix the problem.lorenfb said:
If you can produce a chart like that specifically for Leaf batteries, I'd be happy to look at it.
joeriv said:Have you noticed if the 2016 runs hotter (ie more temp bars) compared to the 2013?
joeriv said:Do you have any information on the material used in the battery frame to hold battery cells? My supposition is that it’s made of steel; if so, it will retain heat compared to aluminum.
LeftieBiker said:That really does suck. I think you'll find, though, that few people argue that SOC is the primary factor in degradation. A 100% SOC, combined with high ambient temps is often mentioned, but the SOC is still secondary.
Some would further quantify the contribution of a high SOC to degradation by adding a time factor to it.
LeftieBiker said:Some would further quantify the contribution of a high SOC to degradation by adding a time factor to it.
Yes, we pretty much all tell people that charging to 100% indicated SOC is fine if the car is driven soon afterwards. And the length of time between reaching full charge and driving can safely be increased a lot in Winter. This Winter I often charged my 2013 to 90% or even higher, and left it that way for up to several days.
irwinr said:Our 2016 LEAF w/30kWh battery has now lost 3 bars after only 21k miles and less than 2 years of ownership (Brand new lease).
Since we knew the 2016 model did away with the 80% charge limit feature we purchased a fancy Wifi controlled JuiceBox and I have it controlled by a custom program I wrote which: When the car is plugged in it automatically queries the NissanConnect EV web services to find out the current battery charge level and then schedules the JuiceBox to charge overnight and limits it to only adding the required amount of kWh to the battery to bring it to 60% SOC before shutting off the charger.
That's right: We only ever charge to 60% overnight.
My same program has a website front end that we can use to schedule the car to charge to higher states of charge when needed for longer trips. So if we know we need to leave at 9am for an extended distance trip we can schedule it to charge to whatever percentage we need (Say 90%) by 9am and it does the math to figure out exactly when it needs to start charging to have the car hit 90% right at 9am. So the car is always driven immediately after charging and never sits at high states of charge. We do occasionally do a full 100% charge (Including time needed to top balance) maybe once or twice a month to keep the pack top balanced.
It would be virtually impossible for anyone to baby their battery more than we've babied this thing.
So for those arguing SOC is the most important factor: This car never sits at states of charger greater than 60% for more than maybe an hour or two (Time needed to charge to above 60% for longer trips) before being driven. And yet we've lost 30% of our battery capacity in less than 2 years and after only 21k miles. We also very very rarely use QC.
We live in Austin, TX and the car stays in a garage except when it's being driven.
So you might want to blame the hot Texas weather but.... We previously had a 2013 LEAF with the 24kWh battery and it had only lost a single capacity bar after nearly 40k miles before we sold it. That car had to endure the same warm climate and it's battery was fine. The difference in degradation between the 24 and 30 kWh batteries is staggering. Our 2013 LEAF was always charged to 80% (Using the cars 80% limit feature, which the 2016 does not have) and sat at 80% for extended periods of time since we didn't have the Wifi controlled JuiceBox at the time.
So the 2016 is degrading 3-4 times faster even though it's sitting at a lower SOC than the 2013 model. So that really rules out SOC as the primary factor. Both the 2013 and 2016 cars were in the same climate so that would suggest the heat shouldn't have been that much of a factor either.
To add insult to injury the 2016 is far less energy efficient. We can barely achieve 3.1 miles/kWh at highway speeds (70 mph) vs around 3.6 for the 2013. So our new 2016/30 kWh LEAF currently has a lower usable range than our 2013/24 kWh model did when we sold it.
I avoid putting our LEAF in the garage outside of winter. Since the battery does not like heat, it most certainly does not like being in an oven.irwinr said:Our 2016 LEAF w/30kWh battery has now lost 3 bars after only 21k miles and less than 2 years of ownership (Brand new lease).
We live in Austin, TX and the car stays in a garage except when it's being driven.
These are very valuable insights and indicate that temperature (on this chemistry) may be more of a dominant factor than expected. Have you noted temperature of the battery, either temperature bars or from Leaf Spy, during the hotter months?irwinr said:Our 2016 LEAF w/30kWh battery has now lost 3 bars after only 21k miles and less than 2 years of ownership (Brand new lease).
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We live in Austin, TX and the car stays in a garage except when it's being driven.
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