Update on Nissan LEAF Battery Replacement

[Valdemar]

That, my friends, will be the excuse on my car. What do you bet me?

I'll bet on the LED shifter :lol:

 

[brettcgb]

I've been capturing LeafSpy data since January. I can draw a couple conclusions:

HX and AHr always decline, but they decline faster if you're nice to your car (ie hypermiling). For about the last three weeks, I've been doing a lot more freeway driving that I used to, and about 75 rather than 65.There was a strong leveling in Hx and AHr when I started doing that.

This is counter-intuitive to me; can you elaborate? I would think driving the car "harder" would accelerate the Hx/AHr decline??

I'd post the graphs if I could...

Investigating this property was inspired by an article that describes the way LiIon nanoparticles charge and discharge unevenly within a cell.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2683012/want-lithiumion-batteries-to-last-slow-charging-may-not-be-the-answer.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Digging down through the rabbit hole eventually leads to the original paper published by Nature Materials:

https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2014-09-14-study-sheds-new-light-why-batteries-go-bad.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4084.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Title: Current-induced transition from particle-by-particle to concurrent intercalation in phase-separating battery electrodes
Author: Yiyang Li, Farid El Gabaly, Todd R. Ferguson, Raymond B. Smith, Norman C. Bartelt, Joshua D. Sugar
Publication: Nature Materials
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date: Sep 14, 2014

You don't have to go all the way to the Nature Materials paper to get the idea.

I theorized that by driving the car hard, I could improve how "evenly" nanoparticles within cells charged and discharged. For the month of hard driving I could perform on a battery near its warranty replacement point, I could see an effect on reducing the rate of decline on Hx, AHr, and GIDs (after 100% charge). I don't know what Hx really indicates (does anyone?), but I understand AHr very well. I have an 8.3MB spreadsheet of the last 8 months driving data to share, and I retained the original raw data files. The data reduction was mostly counting the number of active shunts in each record. I also compared CP voltage to the Judgement value to identify "bad cells" as identified by LeafSpy (good match).

 

[brettcgb]

Sorted by AHr (new working copy - edited 10/9/2014)

SOH    Hx      AHr     Mi     L1/2   QC
 66   45.43    43.63                       TomT (June 13, 2014 still at 3 bars)
 66   59.71    43.56   52600   44xx   35   jpvleaf (OC, CA), 4th bar lost, 8/7/14
     45.12    43.42                       myleaf (June 11, 2014 Chandler, AZ)
 66   44.95    43.32   58078   3535  109   Pipcecil (June 21, 2014 Midlothian, TX)
 65   58.45    42.75   39801   1919   17   sksingh (July 30, 2014 La Mirada, CA)
 64   43.60    42.48                       TickTock (Queen Creek, Arizona) - still at 3 bars
 63   42.39    41.77   34046   2632   94   Brett_cgb (Gilbert, AZ), 4th bar lost 10/5/2014

100 104.50    66.14   54400   45xx   36   jpvleaf, new batt +8 days, 9/20/14
100 101.43    65.92   58950   3580  110   Pipcecil (Midlothian, TX) new Batt

 

[Reddy]

I've been capturing LeafSpy data since January. I can draw a couple conclusions:

HX and AHr always decline, but they decline faster if you're nice to your car (ie hypermiling). For about the last three weeks, I've been doing a lot more freeway driving that I used to, and about 75 rather than 65.There was a strong leveling in Hx and AHr when I started doing that.

This is counter-intuitive to me; can you elaborate? I would think driving the car "harder" would accelerate the Hx/AHr decline??

..snip..I theorized that by driving the car hard, I could improve how "evenly" nanoparticles within cells charged and discharged. For the month of hard driving I could perform on a battery near its warranty replacement point, I could see an effect on reducing the rate of decline on Hx, AHr, and GIDs (after 100% charge).....

Oh, great! Now everything I ever thought I knew about babying my battery has been turned on it's head!

 

[brettcgb]

I've been capturing LeafSpy data since January. I can draw a couple conclusions:

HX and AHr always decline, but they decline faster if you're nice to your car (ie hypermiling). For about the last three weeks, I've been doing a lot more freeway driving that I used to, and about 75 rather than 65.There was a strong leveling in Hx and AHr when I started doing that.

This is counter-intuitive to me; can you elaborate? I would think driving the car "harder" would accelerate the Hx/AHr decline??

..snip..I theorized that by driving the car hard, I could improve how "evenly" nanoparticles within cells charged and discharged. For the month of hard driving I could perform on a battery near its warranty replacement point, I could see an effect on reducing the rate of decline on Hx, AHr, and GIDs (after 100% charge).....

Oh, great! Now everything I ever thought I knew about babying my battery has been turned on it's head!

Sorry 'bout that... but I'm not really sorry.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

interesting to hear the end results here and the reasoning at each phase of the claim. without knowing any real details (i reread about 12 pages looking) on how the car was treated a few "valid" reasons to deny

too many Turtle events

too many DOH (dead on highway) events

both incidents would likely be considered abuse and understandably if used to deny the claim. it is disturbing that the owner was not given concrete info but I guess that its Nissan's general policy to give less as opposed to more info at first

 

[nerys]

Does the warranty paperwork say anything about turtle or dead on highway?

If not then I do not see how they would have any lawful grounds to deny a claim for what is a normal designed function of the car.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Does the warranty paperwork say anything about turtle or dead on highway?

If not then I do not see how they would have any lawful grounds to deny a claim for what is a normal designed function of the car.

Nissan warranty has the typical out clause which means it does not have to spell out every instance of abuse.

 

[nerys]

I am not asking for every instance of "abuse"

we are talking about a "normal designed in function" of the car being "declared" abuse

such clauses are not usually enforceable in such a manner.

its one thing to do something with the car "unexpected" and for them to go ok that is abusive we obviously can not predict all abuses.

and another to say These are the headlights this is how the headlights work and ten wham you abuse the car because you used your headlights.

that does not fly legally.

charging the car is an obvious mentioned design function.

using "all" the fuel at your disposal is an obvious mentioned function of this car and any car.

the manual even describes the different warning levels and turtle mode.

so unless it says "use of this offered feature will void your warranty" such out clauses usually do not apply lawfully.

that is why I ask if its mentioned specifically.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

since when is running a car out of power or gas or whatever its running on "normal?"

get a grip dude

 

[nerys]

I guess you dont live in reality "dude"

It is so common they sell these little red plastic ckntajners for ferrying a gallon back to youe car and local highway assistance trucks are rigged to pump via their injectors gas into to get you to a station.

And lest we forget my leaf has a gas tank equivalent of a bit less than 2 gallons.

Point is it is not a valid catch all clause reason to void a warranty.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

I guess you dont live in reality "dude"

It is so common they sell these little red plastic ckntajners for ferrying a gallon back to youe car and local highway assistance trucks are rigged to pump via their injectors gas into to get you to a station.

And lest we forget my leaf has a gas tank equivalent of a bit less than 2 gallons.

Point is it is not a valid catch all clause reason to void a warranty.

ok, well i guess we just look at stuff differently. MUCH differently. already knew nothing I say is going to change anyone's mind and until we get details its all conjecture but I think the question was what possible reason Nissan had to invalidate the claim or did I miss that too?

 

[nerys]

Which is why I asked about warranty wording. In the beginning its eady not to drain it down low. But once your range has lost 20 miles. Well your going to be in vlbw territory an awful lot.

 

[TimLee]

since when is running a car out of power or gas or whatever its running on "normal?"
...

It isn't.
If you do that much with a modern ICE or even go using it a lot with less than a gallon or two of gasoline in the tank you will fail the fuel pump.
It is in the tank and has high output pressure but fairly limited suction capability. Running at very low fuel levels is detrimental.

Not sure Nissan has been clear that they would consider multiple VLBW or Turtle or Dead on the Road as abuse.
But I can see they might try.
This is the company that did B1033 with no notice or warning :shock:

 

[nerys]

Where did you get that fiction?

Submergence is "not" what cools the furl pump. The fuel passing through it does.

Have you ever fixed your own car? Ever changed a fuel pump?

I have changed many (thanks to ethanol grrrr) most fuel pump are abpve the half way mark in the tank many above the 3/4 mark!

So after using 10 gallons of your 20 gallon tank your pump is already out of the fuel bath.

Never ceases to amaze me how people spread that myth.

 

[TimLee]

Where did you get that fiction?

Submergence is "not" what cools the furl pump. The fuel passing through it does.
...

You are correct that submergence of the pump is not the issue. I edited my post to correct that inaccuracy in the original post.

But all pumps have a net positive suction pressure requirement.
Operating them below that will substantially shorten the pump life.
Multiple reputable sources advise that gasoline tank levels should be kept above 1/4.

 

[nerys]

This may be so. Again though. Consider how high in the tank many pump sit.

Also. In my well over a million driven miles I have never once killed a fuel pump outside of the ethanol switch.

497,000 miles on my cherokee. Original fuel pump. Multiple vehicles in excess of 250,000 and 300,000 on the original furl pump and I regulary ran then below a gallon (twice weekly)

While anecdotal it is a huge amount of anecdotal

I can tell you with high confidence you will never likely damage a fuel pump by running the tank low and empty. Now past 500,000 miles? Who knows. How many of you keep cars that long?

 

[JPWhite]

This used to be an electronic car forum. Did I blink? :roll:

 

[jlatl]

Any update on replacement battery costs? Is it still over $5K, or have we seen any drop in price?

 

[dgpcolorado]

Any update on replacement battery costs? Is it still over $5K, or have we seen any drop in price?

No changes reported here. There has been some discussion that even at $5500 Nissan is selling the batteries below current cost.

I don't think there have been many (any?) replacements thus far, save for the ones under the capacity warranty. Unless one is over 60k miles, the car is still under the capacity warranty, so unless one needed the extra range of a new battery before the old one got down to 66%, there isn't much point in paying for a replacement if it is still under warranty.