How much to charge my 2016 Leaf for battery life

[css28]

Or you can just let the car do the calculating for you by setting the charge stop time 2 hours (6 kW) or 3 hours (3 kW) after you plan to leave in the morning, and not setting a start time.

I tried this approach the first few weeks after I got the car (in August) but the resulting charge percentage seemed to vary more (probably depending on the starting level) than if I did the quick calculation method I described above (which, admittedly, is more work).

 

[GaleHawkins]

Yes in theory using the 10% to 80% range is best but that limits a 100 mile battery range to 70 miles on a nice clear 65F day and maybe 50 miles if the weather was like yesterday morning at my house. My battery has been recharged about 750 times. I saw a 2011 that had been recharged 7000 times mentioned the other day and still had 50% of its new range.

Our car is for butt moving so it will not see much butt pampering. I am not into abuse of people, animals or machines but the Leaf is a low end EV range wise. Using the middle 70% of a 300 mile battery is very doable for most people but not so much for a battery with a solid 50 to 80 mile range on a charge when you are doing 60 miles daily. Nissan states it is good for 8 years or 100K miles so I am going to take them at their word since they are backing it up with their money.

 

[johnlocke]

Yes in theory using the 10% to 80% range is best but that limits a 100 mile battery range to 70 miles on a nice clear 65F day and maybe 50 miles if the weather was like yesterday morning at my house. My battery has been recharged about 750 times. I saw a 2011 that had been recharged 7000 times mentioned the other day and still had 50% of its new range.

Our car is for butt moving so it will not see much butt pampering. I am not into abuse of people, animals or machines but the Leaf is a low end EV range wise. Using the middle 70% of a 300 mile battery is very doable for most people but not so much for a battery with a solid 50 to 80 mile range on a charge when you are doing 60 miles daily. Nissan states it is good for 8 years or 100K miles so I am going to take them at their word since they are backing it up with their money.

Your best bet is to charge it to 100% every day and just drive it. That battery doesn't like heat but where you are that's only 3-4 months out of the year. You ought to be able to get 1500 charge cycles out of the battery. That will put you close to the warranty limit. With some management on your part, you ought to be eligible for a replacement battery before the warranty expires. I will warn you that range gets hard to manage below 75%. On the plus side, there are going to be a lot more DCFC chargers available for a boost if the battery is running low.

I wouldn't advise driving down to turtle. Discharging the battery that low doesn't help either the battery or the software. It's good to know where turtle is but you really don't want to go there unless you have to. Charging to 100% occasionally is necessary to keep the BMS honest. Keeping the battery below 90% in the summer is a good idea if you want to extend battery life. If your objective is to have the battery replaced just before the warranty ends adjust your habits accordingly. Keep in mind that Nissan is looking for the loss of 4 bars only. Nothing else matters to them. That will occur somewhere around an SOH of 64%. Use Leafspy to check the value. If you don't have Leafspy, get it! it's invaluable for monitoring the battery.

 

[LeftieBiker]

One caveat: Nissan will void the battery warranty if the pack is at 120F or higher for 24 hours, IIRC. So don't go to extremes.

 

[GaleHawkins]

Yes in theory using the 10% to 80% range is best but that limits a 100 mile battery range to 70 miles on a nice clear 65F day and maybe 50 miles if the weather was like yesterday morning at my house. My battery has been recharged about 750 times. I saw a 2011 that had been recharged 7000 times mentioned the other day and still had 50% of its new range.

Our car is for butt moving so it will not see much butt pampering. I am not into abuse of people, animals or machines but the Leaf is a low end EV range wise. Using the middle 70% of a 300 mile battery is very doable for most people but not so much for a battery with a solid 50 to 80 mile range on a charge when you are doing 60 miles daily. Nissan states it is good for 8 years or 100K miles so I am going to take them at their word since they are backing it up with their money.

Your best bet is to charge it to 100% every day and just drive it. That battery doesn't like heat but where you are that's only 3-4 months out of the year. You ought to be able to get 1500 charge cycles out of the battery. That will put you close to the warranty limit. With some management on your part, you ought to be eligible for a replacement battery before the warranty expires. I will warn you that range gets hard to manage below 75%. On the plus side, there are going to be a lot more DCFC chargers available for a boost if the battery is running low.

I wouldn't advise driving down to turtle. Discharging the battery that low doesn't help either the battery or the software. It's good to know where turtle is but you really don't want to go there unless you have to. Charging to 100% occasionally is necessary to keep the BMS honest. Keeping the battery below 90% in the summer is a good idea if you want to extend battery life. If your objective is to have the battery replaced just before the warranty ends adjust your habits accordingly. Keep in mind that Nissan is looking for the loss of 4 bars only. Nothing else matters to them. That will occur somewhere around an SOH of 64%. Use Leafspy to check the value. If you don't have Leafspy, get it! it's invaluable for monitoring the battery.

Thanks for the info. As of 2 days ago SOH= 64.85 and I only hit Turtle mode once when I was 300 feet from the charger. Another time I was at the charger. Turtle happens at around 6 Gids so I try to make sure not to go below 8 when testing for max miles which is around 60 miles in winter driving and some at 70 MPH. The hot seat and steering wheel feels good to my old bones and joints.

In B mode it is really hard to deplete the battery I have found because at that point the Regen can really make Leaf Spy Pro show a bump in SOC.

I do not think the software update has been done so I need to get that done so Nissan can look at it if the 4th bar is lost. The salesman did not get me with the shop but he talked with him and that they said there was no way that battery going not drop the 4th bar sooner than later.

 

[johnlocke]

Yes in theory using the 10% to 80% range is best but that limits a 100 mile battery range to 70 miles on a nice clear 65F day and maybe 50 miles if the weather was like yesterday morning at my house. My battery has been recharged about 750 times. I saw a 2011 that had been recharged 7000 times mentioned the other day and still had 50% of its new range.

Our car is for butt moving so it will not see much butt pampering. I am not into abuse of people, animals or machines but the Leaf is a low end EV range wise. Using the middle 70% of a 300 mile battery is very doable for most people but not so much for a battery with a solid 50 to 80 mile range on a charge when you are doing 60 miles daily. Nissan states it is good for 8 years or 100K miles so I am going to take them at their word since they are backing it up with their money.

Your best bet is to charge it to 100% every day and just drive it. That battery doesn't like heat but where you are that's only 3-4 months out of the year. You ought to be able to get 1500 charge cycles out of the battery. That will put you close to the warranty limit. With some management on your part, you ought to be eligible for a replacement battery before the warranty expires. I will warn you that range gets hard to manage below 75%. On the plus side, there are going to be a lot more DCFC chargers available for a boost if the battery is running low.

I wouldn't advise driving down to turtle. Discharging the battery that low doesn't help either the battery or the software. It's good to know where turtle is but you really don't want to go there unless you have to. Charging to 100% occasionally is necessary to keep the BMS honest. Keeping the battery below 90% in the summer is a good idea if you want to extend battery life. If your objective is to have the battery replaced just before the warranty ends adjust your habits accordingly. Keep in mind that Nissan is looking for the loss of 4 bars only. Nothing else matters to them. That will occur somewhere around an SOH of 64%. Use Leafspy to check the value. If you don't have Leafspy, get it! it's invaluable for monitoring the battery.

Thanks for the info. As of 2 days ago SOH= 64.85 and I only hit Turtle mode once when I was 300 feet from the charger. Another time I was at the charger. Turtle happens at around 6 Gids so I try to make sure not to go below 8 when testing for max miles which is around 60 miles in winter driving and some at 70 MPH. The hot seat and steering wheel feels good to my old bones and joints.

In B mode it is really hard to deplete the battery I have found because at that point the Regen can really make Leaf Spy Pro show a bump in SOC.

I do not think the software update has been done so I need to get that done so Nissan can look at it if the 4th bar is lost. The salesman did not get me with the shop but he talked with him and that they said there was no way that battery going not drop the 4th bar sooner than later.

Just out of curiosity, how many miles do you have on the car? By all means get the software update. It will likely bump you up a bar on the capacity gauge but if you're at 64% SOH now, I doubt it will get much better than 75%. I got 900 charges out of my first battery before it qualified for replacement, but the second one is holding up a bit better.

 

[GaleHawkins]

2016 Leaf SL with 23K miles. Average miles per charge is 30 and expect charged with OEM L1.

 

[johnlocke]

2016 Leaf SL with 23K miles. Average miles per charge is 30 and expect charged with OEM L1.

Sounds like the previous owner charged it after every drive. Probably left it sitting for days at full charge as well. On the bright side, with 77,000 miles and 5 years left on the warranty you can be pretty sure of getting a free replacement battery. Just drive it and enjoy. You can always baby the replacement battery after you get it.

 

[GerryAZ]

One caveat: Nissan will void the battery warranty if the pack is at 120F or higher for 24 hours, IIRC. So don't go to extremes.

The battery warranty void disclaimer is for having car in ambient temperature of 120 F or higher for 24 hours continuous--not actual battery temperature.

 

[LeftieBiker]

One caveat: Nissan will void the battery warranty if the pack is at 120F or higher for 24 hours, IIRC. So don't go to extremes.

The battery warranty void disclaimer is for having car in ambient temperature of 120 F or higher for 24 hours continuous--not actual battery temperature.

Yes, that sounds right. Thanks for the correction.

 

[SimonMatthews]

Has the battery management changed?

I have a 2016 Leaf S and, it seems to me that the range has dropped by a small number of miles. I don't drive it so much since the carpool sticker expired (I drive another EV with current carpool stickers), but it seems to me that the range has declined a little since a service in February of this year.

In general, I try to stop charging before it is at 100%, but today, I forgot to unplug, so it charged to 100%.

On a short drive with the battery at 100%, I noted that the car was doing regenerative braking. If I recall correctly, after charging to 100%, earlier there was no regenerative braking for few miles. This leads me to suspect that the car is not really charging to 100%. I wonder if Nissan did a firmware update during the February service which limited the charging?

 

[SimonMatthews]

Posting for a second time, because my first post seems to have disappeared into the ether .....

I have a 2016 Leaf S (24kWh) that has done 30,000 miles. This year, I see a slightly reduced mile range estimate (GOM) after a full charge and I am wondering if there was the dealer installed a firmware update that limits maximum charging at its last service.

Obviously, it's possible that I am just seeing slight battery degradation, but I have a reason to believe something else is going on.

Since my carpool stickers expired at the beginning of the year, I don't drive the car as much as I used to (I normally use another EV to commute), so it wasn't very obvious that anything has changed.

When I charged overnight (which resulted in 100% charge, because I have no way to limit it with overnight charging), the GOM would show over 100 miles (and up to 113 miles). I no longer see this -- instead it's usually less than 100 miles. However, I seem to be able to do similar distances to last year.

While driving today after charging to 100%, I realized that something has changed: there was regenerative braking available while the battery was at 100%. If I recall correctly, regenerative braking was not previously available until after a few miles of driving.

If regenerative braking is available, this would indicate that the battery is not actually at 100%, so I wonder if this is a change, which could have been brought about by a firmware update at the last service.

 

[anthony177]

i had a question about battery use/ warranty and this looks like the closest thread...
so here is my question do we need to have our batteries serviced/ checked for the battery warranty to be in effect ?

 

[GerryAZ]

i had a question about battery use/ warranty and this looks like the closest thread...
so here is my question do we need to have our batteries serviced/ checked for the battery warranty to be in effect ?

The warranty and maintenance guides that are part of the owner manual packages of all USA LEAFs from 2011 through 2019 have requirements for annual battery tests. I suggest that you read the actual warranty terms for yourself and decide whether or not you want to have the annual tests performed on your car.

 

[powersurge]

Has the battery management changed?

I have a 2016 Leaf S and, it seems to me that the range has dropped by a small number of miles. I don't drive it so much since the carpool sticker expired (I drive another EV with current carpool stickers), but it seems to me that the range has declined a little since a service in February of this year.

In general, I try to stop charging before it is at 100%, but today, I forgot to unplug, so it charged to 100%.

On a short drive with the battery at 100%, I noted that the car was doing regenerative braking. If I recall correctly, after charging to 100%, earlier there was no regenerative braking for few miles. This leads me to suspect that the car is not really charging to 100%. I wonder if Nissan did a firmware update during the February service which limited the charging?

If you are using a 120 volt charger, then you have a lot of control on how much the battery can be charged. You get a 120v timer that you can set to start and stop when you want. you can get any charge level you want overnight by to doing the math. (1 hour of 120 volt charging = 5 miles of range. AND each mile of range is about 1% of charge on a 24 kwh battery. ) When I first go my car I would only charge to 80%.

Secondly, you should NOT be fearing that something is wrong when the battery begins to degrade... It is like age.. We all age at a different rate, and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. Stop thinking that battery degradation is Nissan's fault..

 

[powersurge]

Has the battery management changed?

I have a 2016 Leaf S and, it seems to me that the range has dropped by a small number of miles. I don't drive it so much since the carpool sticker expired (I drive another EV with current carpool stickers), but it seems to me that the range has declined a little since a service in February of this year.

In general, I try to stop charging before it is at 100%, but today, I forgot to unplug, so it charged to 100%.

On a short drive with the battery at 100%, I noted that the car was doing regenerative braking. If I recall correctly, after charging to 100%, earlier there was no regenerative braking for few miles. This leads me to suspect that the car is not really charging to 100%. I wonder if Nissan did a firmware update during the February service which limited the charging?

If you are using a 120 volt charger, then you have a lot of control on how much the battery can be charged. You get a 120v timer that you can set to start and stop when you want. you can get any charge level you want overnight by to doing the math. (1 hour of 120 volt charging = 5 miles of range. AND each mile of range is about 1% of charge on a 24 kwh battery. ) When I first go my car I would only charge to 80%.

Secondly, you should NOT be fearing that something is wrong when the battery begins to degrade... It is like age.. We all age at a different rate, and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. Stop thinking that battery degradation is Nissan's fault..

PS - If you do not drive a lot daily, you will get the best battery life over time by keeping the charge between 40 and 60% as much as you can.

 

[johnlocke]

Has the battery management changed?

I have a 2016 Leaf S and, it seems to me that the range has dropped by a small number of miles. I don't drive it so much since the carpool sticker expired (I drive another EV with current carpool stickers), but it seems to me that the range has declined a little since a service in February of this year.

In general, I try to stop charging before it is at 100%, but today, I forgot to unplug, so it charged to 100%.

On a short drive with the battery at 100%, I noted that the car was doing regenerative braking. If I recall correctly, after charging to 100%, earlier there was no regenerative braking for few miles. This leads me to suspect that the car is not really charging to 100%. I wonder if Nissan did a firmware update during the February service which limited the charging?

If you are using a 120 volt charger, then you have a lot of control on how much the battery can be charged. You get a 120v timer that you can set to start and stop when you want. you can get any charge level you want overnight by to doing the math. (1 hour of 120 volt charging = 5 miles of range. AND each mile of range is about 1% of charge on a 24 kwh battery. ) When I first go my car I would only charge to 80%.

Secondly, you should be fearing that something is wrong when the battery begins to degrade... It is like age.. We all age at a different rate, and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. Stop thinking that battery degradation is Nissan's fault..

PS - If you do not drive a lot daily, you will get the best battery life over time by keeping the charge between 40 and 60% as much as you can.

Excessive battery degradation is Nissan's fault! They made choices about how to cool the battery that proved detrimental to battery life. There's not a lot you can do about it. It appears that where you live is the determining factor. How you charge and when you charge have minor effects at best. If you can keep the max charge to 90% or less, it will help a bit.

As far as regenerative braking goes, the battery firmware update did improve regenerative braking. It didn't change the charging but does allow regen at higher battery percentage's. A warm battery will have a higher regen level than a cold one as well.

 

[GaleHawkins]

If you are using a 120 volt charger, then you have a lot of control on how much the battery can be charged. You get a 120v timer that you can set to start and stop when you want. you can get any charge level you want overnight by to doing the math. (1 hour of 120 volt charging = 5 miles of range. AND each mile of range is about 1% of charge on a 24 kwh battery. ) When I first go my car I would only charge to 80%.

Secondly, you should be fearing that something is wrong when the battery begins to degrade... It is like age.. We all age at a different rate, and there isn't a darn thing we can do about it. Stop thinking that battery degradation is Nissan's fault..

PS - If you do not drive a lot daily, you will get the best battery life over time by keeping the charge between 40 and 60% as much as you can.

Excessive battery degradation is Nissan's fault! They made choices about how to cool the battery that proved detrimental to battery life. There's not a lot you can do about it. It appears that where you live is the determining factor. How you charge and when you charge have minor effects at best. If you can keep the max charge to 90% or less, it will help a bit.

As far as regenerative braking goes, the battery firmware update did improve regenerative braking. It didn't change the charging but does allow regen at higher battery percentage's. A warm battery will have a higher regen level than a cold one as well.

Temperature is a huge factor in battery charging. I have noticed I can leave a DC charger at 97% and get 4 green Regen dots at first stop with 8 temperature bars which is around 100 F.

 

[SimonMatthews]

Since my original post, my Leaf has now lost 1 battery bar. This seems to have happened either while or shortly after the car sat at about 50% battery for a couple of weeks in cold weather. Doing that should not impact the battery ... in fact, it's pretty much ideal for storage.