Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[DaveinOlyWA]

Lost the first capacity bar last week.

City: Arrowbear Lake, CA
Miles/kWh: 4.1
Days/Week in Sun: 2.0
Manufacture Date: ~Feb. 2011
Date of Delivery: 4/20/11
Date of Bar Loss and Reading: 10/22/13
Actual Capacity (Ah): 55.47
Total Mileage: 41,933

Interestingly, the LeafSpy app indicates that the car has been plugged in for charging about 3,000 times!

2900 charges? hmmm? that is more than 3X a day

 

[abasile]

Lost the first capacity bar last week...
Date of Bar Loss and Reading: 10/22/13
Actual Capacity (Ah): 55.47

What is the full or 80% charge Gid reading ?

Do you have the P3227 firmware update?

If your firmware was updated, was in done within the past 30 days?

194 gids at 80%, 233 gids at 100%. Had the P3227 update in July.

 

[abasile]

2900 charges? hmmm? that is more than 3X a day

Yep. Many of those charges are only for a few percent, though. One multi-charge scenario would be to arrive home from a long drive or from work with low charge, plug in the car for a short time while doing something in the house, then drive somewhere close by. Upon returning home, maybe charge for another hour. Then leave it plugged in on the timer for the next day.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

2900 charges? hmmm? that is more than 3X a day

Yep. Many of those charges are only for a few percent, though. One multi-charge scenario would be to arrive home from a long drive or from work with low charge, plug in the car for a short time while doing something in the house, then drive somewhere close by. Upon returning home, maybe charge for another hour. Then leave it plugged in on the timer for the next day.

ya that is my charging pattern as well but I barely have half that many charges. I cant help but wonder if your LEAF is mistaking your long descents as a charging session??

 

[palmermd]

ya that is my charging pattern as well but I barely have half that many charges. I cant help but wonder if your LEAF is mistaking your long descents as a charging session??

Someone in the LeafSpy beta group said they were seeing the number advance by 2 every time they plugged in. Perhaps there is a bug that effects some vehicles and causes a double count in certain circumstances. Mine was definitely one at a time.

Wow, 53 qc sessions. I still have zero. Never had a DCQC charger within range of my home until just recently, and now it is too close...I just go home to charge.

 

[ColumbiaRiverGorge]

I am up to 3477 L2/L1 charging events, it seems like to many but I do charge three times a day sometimes.

 

[vegastar]

ya that is my charging pattern as well but I barely have half that many charges. I cant help but wonder if your LEAF is mistaking your long descents as a charging session??

Someone in the LeafSpy beta group said they were seeing the number advance by 2 every time they plugged in. Perhaps there is a bug that effects some vehicles and causes a double count in certain circumstances. Mine was definitely one at a time.

.

I think the problem with the double charge count happens when there is a charge timer and at the time of pluging in it does not start to charge immediatly. Then it counts the pluging in (where a charge test is performed for some seconds) and the actual charge when the programmed time arrives, so 2 charges counts.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

ya that is my charging pattern as well but I barely have half that many charges. I cant help but wonder if your LEAF is mistaking your long descents as a charging session??

Someone in the LeafSpy beta group said they were seeing the number advance by 2 every time they plugged in. Perhaps there is a bug that effects some vehicles and causes a double count in certain circumstances. Mine was definitely one at a time.

Wow, 53 qc sessions. I still have zero. Never had a DCQC charger within range of my home until just recently, and now it is too close...I just go home to charge.

oh oh... i have like 120 QCs or so?? but I am still better than the Sloaty model by about half a percent!

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

I am up to 3477 L2/L1 charging events, it seems like to many but I do charge three times a day sometimes.

are u using a timer? I am guessing my charging events are more reasonable because I have never used the timer

 

[abasile]

I use an end timer most nights, to keep the SOC relatively low until morning. Maybe that explains the high L1/L2 count; I'll have to test this next time I borrow the Android tablet. I knew it would be high, but didn't quite expect 2900+.

 

[ColumbiaRiverGorge]

I use a timer in the AM to charge to 80%, then I charge to 90-95% right before I leave for work. I charge to between 80-95% at work that may be two more charging sessions. I also use a timer when I get home if I need to charge back up to 30-40% where it sits until the morning to do it all over again Mon-Friday. I also opportunity charge public L2 & L3 whenever I want. We don't have much demand yet for our L2s & L3s yet around here.

 

[dhanson865]

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

I guess now that we are in November we'll have to wait 5 to 6 months for the warm weather to come back enough for heat to trigger a bar loss.

The wildcard would be if aging/number of charge cycles could take someone down a bar during the cool months. I suppose the odds are against it but it could happen.

 

[mwalsh]

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

I guess now that we are in November we'll have to wait 5 to 6 months for the warm weather to come back enough for heat to trigger a bar loss.

The wildcard would be if aging/number of charge cycles could take someone down a bar during the cool months. I suppose the odds are against it but it could happen.

I'm hoping to loose 2 more bars next summer, just as I did this year - one in early summer and one in late summer. If things hold as they are until then, I'm fine with that, I guess. Just so long as the downward trend is nil to minimal over the cooler months and only comes on strong again once the heat is on.

 

[TomT]

Based on my current capacity and projected rate of loss, I will definitely loose another bar before May...

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

 

[Weatherman]

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

I think a Florida resident lost a bar in December, last year.

It's summer, all year long, down here, so it's not surprising. My battery temps were in the upper 80s after last night's charge. My guess is that I'll lose bar #11 sometime in February or March.

 

[tokenride]

For those of you wanting a speedy bar reduction, I wish you the best..once you qualify for the warranty I can assure you they will be prompt and professional in swapping out the battery..well in my case that's how I saw it.

Good luck!

 

[ColumbiaRiverGorge]

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

I guess now that we are in November we'll have to wait 5 to 6 months for the warm weather to come back enough for heat to trigger a bar loss.

The wildcard would be if aging/number of charge cycles could take someone down a bar during the cool months. I suppose the odds are against it but it could happen.

09/26/13 I appear to be the first Oregon LEAF owner to report losing a battery capacity bar. What is interesting is that my AHr dropped all the way to 54.44 in the heat of August and has rebounded to 54.84 with the cooler temperatures, and then I lost a bar. I was at AHr 54.76, Cap 82.70% & Hlth 68.26%.
I lost my bar sometime overnight on 09/25/13, with my battery temps. the lowest since last spring, 4 temp. bars, between 53-57 degrees. It was 41 degrees outside this morning. It took 26.5 months of driving the car and 41,124 miles. I also quick charged 189 times (25 to 100%, 89 to 80% or 80+, & 78 20-75% range).

 

[abasile]

09/26/13 I appear to be the first Oregon LEAF owner to report losing a battery capacity bar. What is interesting is that my AHr dropped all the way to 54.44 in the heat of August and has rebounded to 54.84 with the cooler temperatures, and then I lost a bar. I was at AHr 54.76, Cap 82.70% & Hlth 68.26%.
I lost my bar sometime overnight on 09/25/13, with my battery temps. the lowest since last spring, 4 temp. bars, between 53-57 degrees. It was 41 degrees outside this morning. It took 26.5 months of driving the car and 41,124 miles. I also quick charged 189 times (25 to 100%, 89 to 80% or 80+, & 78 20-75% range).

In our case, the LEAF reported its first bar loss after a good cold soak. Since then it's been at four temperature bars every night and five temperature bars after significant driving. Meanwhile, the AHr measurement rebounded from 55.45 to 55.75. Of course, our range is down noticeably, especially compared to 2011.

I'm starting to wonder how much faster the battery would degrade if I started driving "normally" up our 4900' mountain climb, at the speed limit of 55 mph like many of our neighbors, rather than poking along at 30-40 mph like the trucks and beater cars. The problem is, I might come pretty close to running out of charge. Maybe next summer, with a warmer battery. Might as well enjoy the car...

 

[dhanson865]

Looking at the wiki and no one there has reported a lost bar outside of the May to Oct time frame.

I think a Florida resident lost a bar in December, last year.

It's summer, all year long, down here, so it's not surprising. My battery temps were in the upper 80s after last night's charge. My guess is that I'll lose bar #11 sometime in February or March.

#113 Dec 24, 2012 Lake Worth, FL

yeah, I missed that one as I was manually scanning the dates (something like 250 entries now). So the months where losses were observed is May to December with no losses currently reported during January to April.

Maybe a better text visualization would be to list the 12 months with the number of reported bar losses that occurred next to each month like

September 37
October 9
November 0
December 1
Jan 0
Feb 0
March 0
April 0
May 28

June tons
July even more
Aug something like that

Too much work to manually count the hot months but you can see how the December one was unusual and you wonder when April will join the party.

 

[smkettner]

wonder when April will join the party.

I fully expect to lose my next bar before May.