Wed Mar 13, 2019 9:09 am
Here is the "problem" with my 2015 car. We purchased it "new" from a dealer in the inland East Bay, Walnut Creek specifically, in September of 2015.
The car had been traded from another dealer, most likely from Dublin or Tracy. I am not sure of the actual original delivery of the car to the dealer by Nissan, but the build date was in 10/2014 - so the car was almost a year old when we purchased it, and it most likely was parked all that summer - probably at near 100% charge - in one of the hotter areas of California.
Once it was brought to our location it took me a while to do a battery check, as I didn't learn about Leaf Spy and battery values until a few months later. When I did that check the battery was already around SOH 92% - it bounced around that area for 2 years. It even bounced up to 96%-97% a few times after heavy use. So I had hope it was a good battery.
So in summary I bought a car with potentially 8% reduction right at the start, and over my 3+ years of ownership I then lost about 7% more to lose the first bar.
We very rarely charged to 100% at home - and did lots and lots of short trips - probably adding to the battery degradation more than someone who drives more miles than we do. We only have driven it 12,000 miles in 3-1/2 years!
The car was garaged in an insulated garage - and it is always cool here at night, which is when we scheduled the car to recharge. Most out of the home charging would have been local Santa Cruz and Monterey charging spots - with a few trips sprinkled in to San Jose, Gilroy etc...L2 only.
The car never even saw turtle mode until last summer when we finally decided to see how long that would take and drove it around the neighborhood to get to turtle. Once at turtle mode we charged it back up right away. After that recharge cycle for the first time I saw the battery voltage levels all nicely balanced.
I think IF I had bought the car with more knowledge, and started with a better battery, I would still have 12 bars.
Buying a local car would have cost me over $6,000 more - so I guess that is the price for getting a car already degraded a bit more than it could have been.
We are looking at selling this car at some point. It is still in great condition, and has low miles so it will sell for something.
We are toying with the idea of leasing our next Nissan Leaf - not purchasing.
2015 SV Leaf - 1 bar lost as of 1/2019