Lizard Pack Holding Up

[TickTock]

So I've had my new Lizard pack installed for 8 months now and it has seen one full Phoenix summer (from February to now) and am happy to say that it is definitely holding up better than the original. I received my Leaf on May 31, 2011. By October 1st of the same year my gids dropped from the new reading of 281 to the 240's. It recovered a little over the winter but that was just the start of a long downward trend (and much drama). In February this year, I finally broke down and had the battery replaced under warranty. Today, despite being twice as old, the new pack is still reading higher than the original did at the same time of year. Graph below. Blue is original; Red is the new pack. (Note, the first marker at 281 gids on 5/31/2011 is not a real measurement as I did not own a Gid-o-meter. However based on the 100+ mile GOM readings I was getting when the car was new I think it was close to this). It is still degrading (naturally) but at a noticeably slower rate. Maybe there was something to the hype after-all..

[JimSouCal]

Congrats and thanks for sharing... Numbers are helpful even if it's a sample of one...

I've been waiting for the 2nd bar to drop on my 2011 (which is fairly imminent based on LeafSpy)... My battery is holding due to me being Coastal Los Angeles...

That said, I'd expect that sometime, perhaps, I may end up getting a salvage leave lizard battery.... Keep a car long enough and totaled cars become available to part out...[EDIT: MWalsh points out that any "Lizard" salvage pack would require updating of controller ID, so, alas, not simple.]

I wonder if anyone else with a Lizard Traction Pack in extreme conditions can corroborate.... ?

[GerryAZ]

I was waiting until I had a full year on the 2015 before publishing data comparing the 2015 to the original and replacement batteries in my 2011. I am seeing a little reduction in capacity of the lizard battery, but it is significantly less than what I saw with both batteries in the 2011 even though I am averaging more miles per month on the 2015 (12,600 miles in 8 months).

Gerry

[DaveEV]

Good stuff! Have you done any turtle to 100% charges and measured energy from the wall on the new pack?

IIRC you had that kind of data with your old pack...

[mwalsh]

That said, I'd expect that sometime, perhaps, I may end up getting a salvage leave lizard battery....

That's not going to happen in a 2011/2012 without someone figuring out a way to retrieve the pack (controller) ID from the salvage car and figure out how to program it into the receiving car. Remember the controller is different from 2013 on, so you can't swap the controller from your existing car to the new pack to get around that issue.

Excellent data from Tick Tock. Thanks!

[Stanton]

Thanks for sharing! It's great to see real data. Hoping to get my Lizard pack soon...

[TickTock]

Good stuff! Have you done any turtle to 100% charges and measured energy from the wall on the new pack?

IIRC you had that kind of data with your old pack...

Yeah. Gathering much more data but didn't want to clutter the graph. My new pack was reading 66.14Ah, 100%SOH, about 102Hx (this bounced around a bit) and it took 25kWh from the wall to bring it from turtle to full charge (94%, 284 gids). i don't have this data on the old pack unfortunately. Last measurment on 10/1/2015, I read 62.77Ah, 98%SOH, 94Hx and it took 23.7kWh to bring it to full charge (92%, 273 gids). So depending on how you measure, it has degraded either 2% (SOH), 5% (AH), 4% (gids) or 3% (from the wall). Compare to 11% (gids) of the original pack on October 2011 (since they updated the algorithm to reduce the seasonal variation in the gids, I did not use the low value recorded in October, but rather fit a trend line and used the value from that (250 gids)).

[GetOffYourGas]

Thanks for sharing the data. It's impossible to tell much from a single point (one car over one summer - was it a hotter or cooler summer than 2011?), but I look forward to following the trend. I hope you continue to update us!

[TomT]

My Lizard is not doing as well but certainly better than the original...

[fooljoe]

Some recent reports of "new" 2015 Leafs starting out with 5-10% degradation have me a little concerned that the lizard pack won't be all it's cracked up to be.