DaveinOlyWA
Well-known member
LeftieBiker said:DaveinOlyWA said:after 29 months, my battery is perpetually low (12.25-12.4) but it has never failed to start. If you drive frequently, I think you have little to worry about. My LEAF has probably sit more than 24 hours half a dozen times including one stint of 6 days last Summer and another stint of 5 days last Spring. So hopefully the battery will squeak by for the remaining 7 months on my lease...
Not to read like a broken record (?) but... how do you charge? My theory is that the Leaf was originally developed to spend hours a day on a charger, and that the software that keeps the accessory battery charged still 'assumes' that this is the case. Driving the car should also charge it, but does anyone know what the proportions are? In any event, batteries that *could* last for five years easily are being abused by being kept chronically below 90% SOC, for no good reason that I can see. I'm sure mine will easily last two years the way I'm charging and driving, but I think I'll top that battery off every week or two - out of pity if nothing else.
At home, I charge to 100% (this morning was first time in recent memory that I did not fully charge overnight) 95% of the time with EVSE upgrade 1.0 (charges at 12 amps, 240 volts) I also use public charging 80% fast charge, 20% 240 charging. 240 charging is generally to 100% or near it and happens 3-4 times a month. Fast charging only to 65% or less generally and done 1-4 times a week.
Rarely does the car sit more than 14 hours at the most without being driven which is probably the main contributing reason I am not having battery issues. Everyone I am aware of that had issues, it always happened during periods when the car was parked but for relatively short periods of time. One guy in the Seattle area who drives a lot (he has over 40,000 miles on his LEAF) had his car idle over New Years Eve weekend, just short of 4 days and that was enough to kill his battery. One thing that probably contributed to his issues is that he travels a lot for work and has family in Alaska so its common for his LEAF to sit 1-3 days at the airport. probably allows it to cycle just deep enough and with the parking structure of multi-story reinforced concrete, Carwings would be working twice as hard looking for a signal there and so on...
So question, when you guys are measuring the voltage of the battery resting if you are leaving the battery connected to the car will that bit in fact be a resting voltage and this will be lower than if it was resting and disconnected? So maybe the low SOCs being measured are not accurate and the real SOC is much higher?
yes, the battery should read lower when connected because there is always a call for power. Now that call for power can vary widely depending on whether or not Carwings is active or not. It is conceivable that you could be checking it when Carwings is using power to transmit or receive a signal but to minimize that option, i don't have my car locked and i "try" to go out and check the voltage without bringing the Fob near the car which could cause the car to wake up.
now, i have also had random measurements when the battery was 13.2 volts (fairly common) and when it was 12.8ish which is where a normally healthy battery should be but on the cases when i got readings under 12.4, i would recheck it in hourly intervals at least twice and the voltage did not change significantly so pretty sure it was just a normal voltage reading.
I actually took measurements diligently for a while trying to put together some sort theory on when and why the 12 volt battery would charge from the traction battery but simply did not get enough consistent readings to see a pattern.