2018 Leaf SOH after 1-year and RapidGate software update

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markb1

Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2019
Messages
6
After 1 year from purchase and a little over 10,200 miles, SOH is 94.67%. I recorded this from mid-July (1-year anniversary of purchase date) so I'm late posting this.
Approx 30 QCs. Most of the rest is split between 240v charging and trickle charge.
Note that manufacture date is early March, 2018 and I didn't start measuring SOH until last December, so about 16 months since purchase.
Mild northwest climate

SOH:

At Mfr date, presumably 100%?

Purchase date, mid-July: ???, odometer less than 100

Jan 22, 2019: 96.90%, odometer 5200

Jan 30, 2019: 95.49%, odometer 5400, See my previous comment about this weird drop from LeafSpy. It will often go months with little to no change then a series of big drops. I'm only confident in the reading over longer periods of time.

https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=27650&p=546875#p546875

Mid-July, 2010: 94.67%

So the drop since January has been less than the initial drop. Since I have no SOH data on purchase date, it's hard to tell how much it dropped between mfr date and purchase date, maybe sitting on the lot at high state of charge for a few months.

Related to mfr date, I took advantage of the free software update 2 weeks ago that is intended to reduce the RapidGate problem, referencing the NTB number here. Dealer service department didn't seem to be aware initially this was a free update and wanted to charge like $200 for diagnosis. It is free so don't let them do that. It's also not advertised so you probably won't get any notifications and have to request it. Have your VIN number ready. They can determine based on mfr date if your car already has the update. I believe it's around April, 2018.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/23/nissan-quietly-releases-rapidgate-software-update-for-north-american-leaf-owners/

A few months ago I contact Nissan service and added my complaint on RapidGate. Also took some time to explain the problem. In the end, service person said he would file a formal request for the fix to be available to US customers. That's also where I confirmed the mfr date was relevant.

As for results, I haven't tested multiple QCs in succession since the update so I can't report results yet. Will check back after making a long trip. For the record, typically, subsequent QCs were about twice as slow. Going from 20 to 80 percent would take about an hour instead of the 30 minutes initially. I never did more than 2 QCs in a day so hard to tell what a really long trip would have been like, but presumably it would be even slower after the 2nd one. I've also found that going from low state of charge to high will heat up the battery more and worsen the problem, as others have reported. Going from 50 to 80 percent keeps battery heating limited. Of course, hard to hold to that on a long trip, as it means more stops and once NCTC program expires, more expensive using those flat rate chargers (which I'll still have to do more frequently as battery degrades). So I find that "many short QCs" approach to be fairly impractical.
 
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