GaslessInSeattle said:
LEAFfan said:
GaslessInSeattle said:
3. The best battery longevity I've gotten out of cell phones, shavers and lap tops is to charge them frequently, leaving them plugged in nearly all the time, relying on the upper end of the charge capacity and very infrequently draining them all the way down (once a month or so) and immediately charging them back up and leaving them charging for prolonged periods (not sure if there is any true trickle charging going on with the leaf charging system options after max charge is reached). Is it worth using this with my Leaf?
What you are describing is true for Nicads, but not lithium batteries. I used to do the same thing with nicads and had them last a long time, even ten years with a Panasonic phone without ever draining them once.
The manufacturer recommends you remove the charger on lithium cell phone batteries as soon as it is done charging.
Whoever said NiCad works best by being topped off all the times no matter what their charge level is at is wrong. NiCads don't like to be topped off before they get discharged first because otherwise they'd have a memory problem (the ability to fully recharge to 100% is diminished). That's why NiCads need to be reconditioned frequently (get a deep discharge on purpose, even if there's still some juice left) before they should receive a full charge again.
NiMH don't have as a severe memory problem as NiCad, but it still does have a mild memory problem, and therefore occasionally can still benefit from a deep discharge/full recharge cycle (reconditioning).
The biggest problem that plague NiCad and NiMH is that if they don't get used frequently every day, they lose their charge gradually over time, and within a month or so they can be so self-discharged that they'd be rendered unusable.
They work best if you exercise them everyday and use up most of their capacity by the end of the day before recharging. From this perspective, it may look like they like to be topped off all the times. But in reality, they only like to be topped off after they've had a heavy discharge.
LEAFfan said:
What I'm describing is my experience with NMH and Lithium ion. I gave up on Nicads a long time ago. I guess my experience with my iphone is a bit different and it has really held up well over the last 3.5 years, the longest of any cell phone I've owned. I've never put so many cycles on any battery and had it still have good capacity... apparently not all batteries are created equal or maybe I just got lucky. I use it quite a bit every day, charge it to full capacity each night. I just don't know if my experience with my iphone is in any way comparable to the beast of a battery system in my Leaf but my use pattern may match up better than say with my lap top, which I tend to use like a desk top, plugged in mostly.
Maybe i'm talking myself into the choice of fully charging to 100% each night, accepting that the battery will degrade some (10%-15% over 10 years) no matter what but that it will hold up pretty well while giving me maximum range for convenience. agree/disagree?
G
True that Lithium Ion batteries in cell phones and laptops like to be topped off. But they're of the Lithium Colbalt Oxide chemistry while the Leaf has the Lithium Manganese Oxide chemistry. So it's not exactly apple to apple comparison either.
I agree that while it's good to keep the Leaf battery topped off, if Nissan made it clear that topping it off to 80% is better than 100%, why would you want to top it off to 100% every night if you don't need to?
You're just assuming that your iPhone is topped off to its real 100% capacity every night, but this can easily be a wrong assumption. Apple could have easily built their charger to only top off at 80% of the real capacity every night and not tell you, therefore leading you to believe that you're topping off to 100% real capacity while maybe you're only topping off to 80% and never truly have a choice given by Apple to top it off to the real 100%.
You only know about the 80% vs 100% because Nissan chooses to tell you about it, and give you an option to charge at either level. If Nissan hasn't told you about it and decided to allow you to charge up to 80% only, and let you believe that it's 100%, you'd never know anyway.
The reason Nissan came clean about the 80% vs 100% and gave you a choice between these 2 is because they need to advertise the longest range possible for marketing purposes. After all, it's better to advertise the Leaf can go 100 miles than to advertise that it should only go up to 80 miles most of the times for longevity reason.