How should Nissan respond to dropping capacity?

[TickTock]

they expected the batteries to be leased only. All along, Nissan and Ghosn kept talking publicly about how you'll only be able to lease the battery, not buy it as part of the car.

They also expected 90% to be leased. Only 10% were in USA.

Once bitten.. twice shy.

 

[Herm]

How would Nissan make any money leasing cars or batteries if they are going to be worthless* in 3 years? .. the only reason they talked of battery leasing was to lower the entry cost barrier.. suddenly the car is much cheaper and you can directly compare the battery cost to buying gasoline.

I dont know what Nissan was thinking but perhaps they did not expect degradation in Arizona would be this high (if its truly high and not a squeaky wheel thing). Expect a software upgrade to deal with it.. perhaps a default to 80% charge with manual override to 100% or they may pull a Honda and actually restrict the SOC range of the battery. Perhaps an update to a ventilated case and active forced air cooling, like the PIP uses.

Perhaps Nissan rushed the Leaf to the market too soon, they were competing with GM if you guys recall.

*worthless = 70% remaining capacity, industry definition.

 

[RegGuheert]

How would Nissan make any money leasing cars or batteries if they are going to be worthless* in 3 years?

The same way that their customers can afford to purchase such a car.

I'm giving a snide response in order to make a point. I do not think they can make money if that level of capacity loss happens. So why would they think it is O.K. to sell such a car to their customers?

Personally, I think there are five possibilities here:

1) The problem is not as bad as it appears, so all will be fine.
2) The problem is as it appears and Nissan has a quick engineering fix close at hand. I seriously doubt this is the case, but it is possible. Is so, they are in decent shape, but they need to start communicating.
3) The problem is as it appears and Nissan chooses to not change anything they are doing. I think this is the case which would cost Nissan he most money (and good will).
4) The problem is as it appears and Nissan pulls back to only offer leases in the affected areas. As you say, they may not make money doing this, but I think it is the best compromise in a tough situation.
5) The problem is as it appears and Nissan pulls th LEAF completely out of the affected areas. This would largely eliminate the financial losses, but it also has side effects. Specifically, people in Phoenix who want a LEAF will not have access to it, which would essentially create a black market there. This would also limit Nissan's ability to build their expertise in these markets. I do not consider this a viable approach, long-term.

The bottom line is that IF this problem is real, there will simply be no way for Nissan to make money on the LEAF in Phoenix. They will just need to manage through it. But since the hot areas are likely only a small portion of the market, they should be able to overcome this and still make money on the LEAF. If one assumes the LEAF is under-engineered for climates such as is found in Phoenix, you could equally say that the Volt or the FFE are over-engineered for the other markets where the LEAF is just right.

 

[surfingslovak]

4 mo ago I asked same question @ official nissan leaf blog and I am still waiting for answer in fact I suggested that 50% probably the best for the battery. As of garage I can open door as well window on opposite side, garage is fully insulated as well have fan and unfortunately separate furnace. If will be very bad I can put window AC unit. Good and bad part about OK is wind never stop which will be/is + for a car battery I may also park outside at night.
Just to make sure 5 bars is THE sweet spot(confusing hidden bars)?
George soon you will get GID measurements from DFW people so we will see how it goes around here.

Richard, I forgot to respond to your question about five bars for storage. Here is an older thread, where I referenced the SOC check sheet TomT found in his Leaf after delivery. Tony independently confirmed that Leafs are routinely stored and shipped at six bars. For short-term storage, when you are not concerned about discharge, and I would go with five bars, perhaps even four, if your commute allows it.

 

[surfingslovak]

I'm sorry you have lost a bar, Mark. By my count, you are the seventh report we have here in the past month.

I have six so far: TickTock, turbo2ltr, Azdre, mark13, Volusiano and bturner. Are you counting the ECOtality tech LEAFfan has mentioned as well? His loss was only temporary, for now anyway.

 

[Herm]

If one assumes the LEAF is under-engineered for climates such as is found in Phoenix, you could equally say that the Volt or the FFE are over-engineered for the other markets where the LEAF is just right.

I'm not convinced that using the AC to keep the batteries cool will do much of anything in some cases.. IIRC Volt can run the battery conditioning system for about 2 days, once the battery is down to 50% it shuts down and the battery temp will start to go up.. so you are golden for a couple of days unless you keep it plugged in. Dont complain next time you see a Volt plugged in at the airport. Per GM, high temperatures are not (as) detrimental at 50% SOC.

Nissan could do a similar thing, bolt a freon cold plate to the bottom of the battery pack and insulate the whole thing, probably not that expensive to do.. The Leafs battery cools by conduction thru metal.

 

[surfingslovak]

I'm not convinced that using the AC to keep the batteries cool will do much of anything in some cases.. IIRC Volt can run the battery conditioning system for about 2 days, once the battery is down to 50% it shuts down and the battery temp will start to go up.. so you are golden for a couple of days unless you keep it plugged in. Dont complain next time you see a Volt plugged in at the airport. Per GM, high temperatures are not (as) detrimental at 50% SOC.

Interesting, where did you get the 50% SOC reference? I posted the details on Volt's TMS on the forum earlier. If you are not plugged in, it only runs A/C until your SOC declines to 75%. You are out of luck after that. I could be wrong, but I think Nissan underestimated the implications of storage. These cars spend the majority of the time just sitting, and not charging or driving. In hotter climates, it might have been beneficial to have a storage mode, which would keep the battery in the optimal SOC range. Until it needs to begin charging. What do you think?

 

[EdmondLeaf]

As 50% seems to be optimal for many Li batteries, still open question is, can we go lower and if so how low. Ticket say recharge when 3 bars or less but that I believe old bars

 

[Herm]

Interesting, where did you get the 50% SOC reference? I posted the details on Volt's TMS on the forum earlier. If you are not plugged in, it only runs A/C until your SOC declines to 75%. You are out of luck after that.

Thanks for the correction, thats a great link.. I was relying on something I read in the Volt forum a couple of years ago when GM first disclosed the details on the system.

Take a look at this NREL report from last November, they compare life for a 10 or 40 mile Volt style BEV and different cooling strategies, by using aggressive force cooling to 20° they predict battery life will be extended 1-3 years vs forced air cooling with 28° C air. NMC/graphite chemistry. So is the added complexity worth the life extension?

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53470.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Note that they use 28° C as the the set temp that simulates (from the viewpoint of a battery) an average temperature in Phoenix during a year.

 

[edatoakrun]

As 50% seems to be optimal for many Li batteries, still open question is, can we go lower and if so how low. Ticket say recharge when 3 bars or less but that I believe old bars

If I''m interpreting this chart correctly, the fact that there doesn't seem to be a "red zone" for max charge on this chart, indicates Nissan may have been relatively unconcerned about shipping LEAFs at higher SOC levels.

I see lots of LEAF owners taking elaborate efforts to keep their LEAFs at below the "80%"/10 bar (Nissan's battery long life) level.

Any hard evidence that keeping your LEAF at 4 or 5 bars, Rather than 10, provides significant benefits, in reducing calendar degradation?

Do studies of other battery types, necessarily apply to LEAF batteries?

I do remember being horrified!!! when my LEAF was delivered, and my Dealer told me the Nissan-specified procedure was to immediately charge to 100%, and leave it there till customer pickup.

I was more than 200 miles away, but arranged to come in to get my LEAF, ASAP...

 

[surfingslovak]

Any hard evidence that keeping your LEAF at 4 or 5 bars, Rather than 10, provides significant benefits, in reducing calendar degradation?

Please look closely at the SOC check sheet. It says "Japan Shipment SOC Standard: 35%". I don't think that this value was picked randomly. Do you?

All the reports I looked at indicate that something around 40% is good for long-term storage. Why wouldn't be Nissan concerned about the top of the SOC range? I don't know, that's beyond me, and I don't infer that from the SOC check sheet. Battery degradation concerns aside for the moment, I would assume that they want to charge the car up if it had three (old) bars or less before shipment, because they would like to avoid dealing with a dead vehicle on the receiving end.

 

[edatoakrun]

="surfingslovak"

Please look closely at the SOC check sheet. It says "Japan Shipment SOC Standard: 35%". I don't think that this value was picked randomly. Do you? ...

I did miss that, thanks.

Picked randomly? No.

It could be that this is just very slightly better than anywhere between about 20% and 80%, but worth the trouble when storing for weeks or months, rather than days or hours, at 10 bars.

Or it could be, that is just the standard level the battery packs have, after whatever testing cycles they go through, prior to shipment.

In any case, doesn't look like anyone bothered to enter the % results, if charge was checked, prior to shipment (unless that mark at 11 bars is a check) , and somewhere it was charged up to 6 bars or more, before receiving.

 

[TomT]

Yes, I got mine long before the software upgrades were in place so it was definitely old bars... I'll bet they have never updated the sheet to represent new bars though since it makes no practical difference for their purposes...

The mark at 11 was a smudge on the sheet, not an actual mark. It's much more obvious on the original than in the scan.

As 50% seems to be optimal for many Li batteries, still open question is, can we go lower and if so how low. Ticket say recharge when 3 bars or less but that I believe old bars

 

[EdmondLeaf]

Tom, than is it possible that car was shipped with 6 bars from Japan and arrived here with 6? My car was not charged by the dealer, because no evse as well knowledge that there was L1 in the trunk. It was also stored for 3 wk at dealer location, when I got was 50% charged. I guess dealer charging to 100% is "full tank of gas fully charged" deal and not necessarily Nissan recommendation.

 

[surfingslovak]

I did miss that, thanks.

Picked randomly? No.

It could be that this is just very slightly better than anywhere between about 20% and 80%, but worth the trouble when storing for weeks or months, rather than days or hours, at 10 bars.

Or it could be, that is just the standard level the battery packs have, after whatever testing cycles they go through, prior to shipment.

In any case, doesn't look like anyone bothered to enter the % results, if charge was checked, prior to shipment (unless that mark at 11 bars is a check) , and somewhere it was charged up to 6 bars or more, before receiving.

Agreed, that check sheet was filled out very sloppily. I'm sorry, but I cannot answer your question authoritatively, and I hope that I made that clear before. Perhaps Nissan engineers could do that. That said, I would also expect that the data we will see from the field will hold a surprise or two, and I consider this to be an interesting engineering challenge.

Be that as it may, if you look at the precautions GM is taking with the Volt and if you look at the underlying chemistry of the battery, I would be surprised if heat and prolonged storage at high SOC did not make a difference.

We don't know how these cells were exactly enhanced, improved and manufactured. But if you look at some of the related reports, they predict that EV batteries will degrade twice as fast in environments like Phoenix. If the anecdotal data we have so far can be believed, this seems to hold true for the Leaf. Similarly, we would expect to see half of the degradation or less if the storage SOC is around or slightly below 50%.

So to answer your question, I do think that there will be a measurable difference. Whether it will be significant for you or someone else depends on their particular situation. If you lived in a temperate climate, and didn't stretch the range of the vehicle, perhaps it wouldn't matter to you if you saw a few percentage points larger decline over the years. Someone who lives in hotter climate or needed the maximum range from the vehicle might be more concerned about the speed of the decline.

 

[GRA]

Interesting, where did you get the 50% SOC reference? I posted the details on Volt's TMS on the forum earlier. If you are not plugged in, it only runs A/C until your SOC declines to 75%. You are out of luck after that.

Thanks for the correction, thats a great link.. I was relying on something I read in the Volt forum a couple of years ago when GM first disclosed the details on the system.

Take a look at this NREL report from last November, they compare life for a 10 or 40 mile Volt style BEV and different cooling strategies, by using aggressive force cooling to 20° they predict battery life will be extended 1-3 years vs forced air cooling with 28° C air. NMC/graphite chemistry. So is the added complexity worth the life extension?

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/53470.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Note that they use 28° C as the the set temp that simulates (from the viewpoint of a battery) an average temperature in Phoenix during a year.

I think that link should be included in the "Reference Documents" thread, it's excellent.

 

[RegGuheert]

I'm sorry you have lost a bar, Mark. By my count, you are the seventh report we have here in the past month.

I have six so far: TickTock, turbo2ltr, Azdre, mark13, Volusiano and bturner. Are you counting the ECOtality tech LEAFfan has mentioned as well? His loss was only temporary, for now anyway.

No, you are correct. I was counting mark13 twice. Thanks for catching that!

 

[Herm]

Any hard evidence that keeping your LEAF at 4 or 5 bars, Rather than 10, provides significant benefits, in reducing calendar degradation?

It has been standard industry practice for a long time, perhaps the Nissan chemistry is different but I doubt it.

 

[edatoakrun]

Any hard evidence that keeping your LEAF at 4 or 5 bars, Rather than 10, provides significant benefits, in reducing calendar degradation?

It has been standard industry practice for a long time, perhaps the Nissan chemistry is different but I doubt it.

Key word-significant.

The reports of battery studies I've seen posted on this forum, also show only small, or negligible, increases in battery life, by maintaining a 50% charge, rather than anywhere from 20% to 80%. I find it unlikely, that Nissan would have omitted the simple expedient of allowing a 50% "extra long life" option to the charge timer, if this would significantly extend battery life.

I try not to leave my LEAF below LBW for long, even adding a few peak kWh (PG&E E-9) if necessary.

And I charge to 80% overnight after each of my drives, which are about 50 miles and 12 kWh at minimum.
And If I know I will need more than 80%, try to charge to 90%-100% off-peak as well, often hours before I begin a trip.

It would be a considerable inconvenience, and, over time, expense, for me to charge to 50%, and wait over an hour for the greater range, whenever I decide to take a (50-60 mile) trip to town.

Every LEAF owner has their own individual circumstances leading to the same question.

Is it worth the effort to limit charging below 80%, only above some very high ambient temperature, or not at all?

 

[EdmondLeaf]

looking what leafkabob did to protect his car I am not sure if keeping low SOC will help, unfortunately keeping battery, car, at recommended by GM 71F is not really an option here