Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[surfingslovak]

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[DesertDenizen]

Stoaty puts me to shame, I just manage 5.6 m/kwh. Yesterday was my one year mark. I have 12 bars but the telltale signs do not bode well. My 80% charge will sometimes fill only 9 bars, my GOM shows 75 miles after always showing 83 miles after a 80% charge. And on my computer when the charging ended it always showed an 80% SOC, now it stops charging and shows 75% charged.

 

[NOC8H18]

Nissan picked up my Leaf yesterday and it is now down in Casa Grande.

My service advisor said that they took 6 cars for testing. They are expecting to keep the car for a few weeks.
HE also told me that Nissan is flying out engineers from the TN plant and Japan.

Hopefully they figure this thing out.

 

[Gonewild]

I hope they find out that the cars in the lower 48 need a battery cooler like they have in the Leaf in the Middle East Countrys.

They do not have to invent it just install or retro fit to are cars.

 

[TLeaf]

Progress!!
So did they give you a loaner LEAF while you wait?

 

[padamson1]

I hope they find out that the cars in the lower 48 need a battery cooler like they have in the Leaf in the Middle East Countrys.

They do not have to invent it just install or retro fit to are cars.

Huh? They have a battery cooler in MidEast countries?!? If that is true then there really is a serious management issue at Nissan.

They could've handled this sooooo much better, but if they already had something in their back pocket they certainly should've mentioned or hinted something in that open letter and there certainly wasn't any reason to wait so long before commenting. Again get out ahead of things, be proactive instead of reactive as soon as dealers reported issues.

 

[cwerdna]

I hope they find out that the cars in the lower 48 need a battery cooler like they have in the Leaf in the Middle East Countrys.

Source?

Agreed about the news from NOC8H18. Yay!

 

[grommet]

Nissan hasn't launched the LEAF in the Middle East, nor do they have any short term plans to do so last I heard. I'm sure if they ever did, they'd definitely consider engineering an active cooling solution... especially with the recent AZ data. (Well, unless battery technology improves to the point that heat has minimal impact; give it a few years.) Saudi Arabia has some seriously extreme weather, possibly worse than Phoenix.

 

[LEAFguy]

Ernie Hernandez is making the gargantuan effort of trying to extract some pertinent information from the thousands of posts on this subject, and posting a summary at his blog:

http://livingleaf.info/2012/07/nissan-leaf-battery-capacity-loss-first-in-a-series" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

edatoakrun, thank you for the acknowledgement. I've had my LEAF for over a year now, but we live in mild San Diego and have only accumulated less than 8,000 miles on our car in that time. This topic, however, is important to all LEAF owners (and potential LEAF owners) as it likely will impact ones' decision regarding the possible purchase or continued ownership of the LEAF. I have personally influenced the purchase of three LEAFs that I know of, and possibly others through my blog. Look for additional posts as I make my way through this thread.

 

[derkraut]

Ernie Hernandez is making the gargantuan effort of trying to extract some pertinent information from the thousands of posts on this subject, and posting a summary at his blog:

http://livingleaf.info/2012/07/nissan-leaf-battery-capacity-loss-first-in-a-series" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

edatoakrun, thank you for the acknowledgement. I've had my LEAF for over a year now, but we live in mild San Diego and have only accumulated less than 8,000 miles on our car in that time. This topic, however, is important to all LEAF owners (and potential LEAF owners) as it likely will impact ones' decision regarding the possible purchase or continued ownership of the LEAF. I have personally influenced the purchase of three LEAFs that I know of, and possibly others through my blog. Look for additional posts as I make my way through this thread.

I've been following LEAFguy's blog ever since he started it. It contains lots of objective, non-biased information. And, I've met Ernie. He was gracious enough to let me drive his Leaf when he first got it, and allowed me to inspect his EVSE installation @ his residence. (He lives just a few miles from me). I gotta tell ya---imho, Ernie is one of those rare "quality individuals". They are a dying breed, ya know. So, God Bless you, Ernie, for being so nice to a little old man.

 

[Stoaty]

I admit to not being totally honest about how I am getting 5.7 miles/kwh on my Leaf. Didn't mention that part of my commute is not on land. Here is the actual picture of my "Clipper Leaf" during a routine commute to work:

 

[LEAFguy]

I've been following LEAFguy's blog ever since he started it. It contains lots of objective, non-biased information. And, I've met Ernie. He was gracious enough to let me drive his Leaf when he first got it, and allowed me to inspect his EVSE installation @ his residence. (He lives just a few miles from me). I gotta tell ya---imho, Ernie is one of those rare "quality individuals". They are a dying breed, ya know. So, God Bless you, Ernie, for being so nice to a little old man.

(Blushing)

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[planet4ever]

I have 12 bars but the telltale signs do not bode well. My 80% charge will sometimes fill only 9 bars, my GOM shows 75 miles after always showing 83 miles after a 80% charge. And on my computer when the charging ended it always showed an 80% SOC, now it stops charging and shows 75% charged.

That's two signs, not three. The owners website always and only reports #bars/12, expressed as a percentage. I'm quite positive you used to see "83%", not 80%, because 10/12 = 0.8333...

Not saying that two signs is good , just that the "percentage" reported by the website is content-free and misleading. It tells you nothing more than what the bars there show, and it is not "SOC" by any stretch of the imagination.

Ray

 

[surfingslovak]

Picked this up on the Volt forum, the quote links directly to the source.

I was just at a trade show where a Nissan Corporate Vice President promised to take care of the Leaf drivers with batteries affected by the heat. Let's hope so.

Click to open

 

[Randy]

I was there and heard him say it....Plug-in 2012

 

[mark1313]

Does turning your Leaf into a sailing vessel have any warratny issues :lol:

I admit to not being totally honest about how I am getting 5.7 miles/kwh on my Leaf. Didn't mention that part of my commute is not on land. Here is the actual picture of my "Clipper Leaf" during a routine commute to work:

 

[Stoaty]

Well, the main thing is that I don't know if the warranty covers salt water corrosion (although it isn't listed as an item that is NOT covered, like battery capacity ). On the other hand, tire wear is dramatically less. A separate issue that effects the economics is that I have to add in port fees when figuring the cost of my daily commute. :lol:

Does turning your Leaf into a sailing vessel have any warranty issues :lol:

I admit to not being totally honest about how I am getting 5.7 miles/kwh on my Leaf. Didn't mention that part of my commute is not on land. Here is the actual picture of my "Clipper Leaf" during a routine commute to work:

 

[Valdemar]

Nissan hasn't launched the LEAF in the Middle East, nor do they have any short term plans to do so last I heard. I'm sure if they ever did, they'd definitely consider engineering an active cooling solution... especially with the recent AZ data. (Well, unless battery technology improves to the point that heat has minimal impact; give it a few years.) Saudi Arabia has some seriously extreme weather, possibly worse than Phoenix.

There has been a lot of talk of active cooling lately, curious how this works in say FFE. Is this just heat exchange with ambient air or there is a truly active system using a compressor refrigeration or Peltier Effect? I'd imagine that the former won't help much when it's 120F outside, if anything it will help to heat up the battery faster.

 

[cwerdna]

Nissan hasn't launched the LEAF in the Middle East, nor do they have any short term plans to do so last I heard. I'm sure if they ever did, they'd definitely consider engineering an active cooling solution... especially with the recent AZ data. (Well, unless battery technology improves to the point that heat has minimal impact; give it a few years.) Saudi Arabia has some seriously extreme weather, possibly worse than Phoenix.

There has been a lot of talk of active cooling lately, curious how this works in say FFE. Is this just heat exchange with ambient air or there is a truly active system using a compressor refrigeration or Peltier Effect? I'd imagine that the former won't help much when it's 120F outside, if anything it will help to heat up the battery faster.

Maybe there should be a separate thread to discuss cooling (active or not) used on other EVs/PHEVs? This thread's getting long enough as it is.

 

[DaveEV]

To do this, we'd need to collect battery voltage at known points at the opposite end - at least LBW and preferably VLBW and even turtle.

The turtle cutoff seems to be 3.2 V on the cell level or about 308 V on the pack level. I watched it several times, but don't have any recordings.

To do this, we'd need to collect battery voltage at known points at the opposite end - at least LBW and preferably VLBW and even turtle. Ideally, you'd stop the car as soon as possible after one of these warnings, let the battery rest some time and record the voltage, ambient temperature, number of battery temp bars and GID count.

To my knowledge we don't have any data like this, but this would identify if the BMS is hiding any additional capacity at the bottom of the pack

Agreed, it would be nice to have all this data. Is it safe to assume that you have seen the voltage plot TickTock did last October?


Click to open

Yeah, that's a great chart that really highlights how close to truly empty the pack is once you get to VLBW. But this is just one point that happened a long time ago and at one temperature.

We really need similar plots for cars at different temps to confirm/deny the theory - would also be interesting to compare cars with 1+ capacity bar loss.

Also of note - with how fast the pack voltage drops below VLBW, one could confirm that they have one or more weak cells if the voltage drop below VLBW is not as steep and turtle triggers at a higher pack voltage (assuming the pack is top-balanced well).