Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[johndoe74]

My wife's Leaf of 9 months, 13500 miles also lost one battery bar, about two weeks ago. We live in Chandler, AZ.

how is the car parked during the day, covered or open parking?

95% covered, at work it is under a covered parking garage.

[johndoe74]

The daily commute is about 30 miles (sometimes 45 miles with errands) each way, charge again to 80% at work, then another 30 miles going home.

I'm wondering if charging in the heat of the day is the reason your wife's LEAF lost a capacity bar earlier than other LEAFs in Phoenix.

The charging station is installed in the covered parking garage, which should be 10 to 15 degrees cooler than ambient temperature?

Although since we hit at least 105F daily lately, my garage is at least 100F until late night. And I charge at 9PM nightly. Looks like I need to change it to 3AM or something.

[palmermd]

The latest article:

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/107 ... esnt-blink" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks. I did not catch that new article yet. We now know that it is current. But interesting that it is still an un-named source. Not very official but telling none the less.

[JPWhite]

For Nissan to claim this is normal seems more potentially damaging to them financially in terms of low future sales than discretely handling these cases in a more generous manner. For me, the trust gap with Nissan over battery capacity is growing. Consumer confidence is key if they really want this technology to grow; my confidence in the product is declining with seeing how they handle each of these extreme cases.

+1

[RegGuheert]

Although since we hit at least 105F daily lately, my garage is at least 100F until late night. And I charge at 9PM nightly. Looks like I need to change it to 3AM or something.

Yes, I would think charging at the coolest possible temperature would be best.

Please note that if you set an end timer with no start timer the LEAF will delay the charge as long as possible to allow it to finish before your wife is ready to leave in the morning.

[Volusiano]

17 cars out of a population of 25000 is .00068. That is more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, or in layman's terms, an edge case.

You need to compare apple to apple here.

It shouldn't be 17/25000, nor should it be 17/500 because I'm sure there are more capacity losses not reported than the 17 reported.

The only meaningful sampling ratio at all should be

# of reported loss / (# of reported loss + # of reported NO loss) in Phoenix.

So far I've only heard of maybe a few from Phoenix who reported that they haven't lost a bar yet. Some of them who said they hadn't lost a bar have come back later and said they finally lost a bar.

The real ratio that's meaningful to me is more like 17/20 at this point. If you're going to sample, you have to pick samples from the same pool.

[Volusiano]

For Nissan to claim this is normal seems more potentially damaging to them financially in terms of low future sales than discretely handling these cases in a more generous manner. For me, the trust gap with Nissan over battery capacity is growing. Consumer confidence is key if they really want this technology to grow; my confidence in the product is declining with seeing how they handle each of these extreme cases.

+1

+2

Battery capacity degradation has always been the single biggest concern any potential buyer would want to know before making their purchase decision. Nissan might have been able to fool early adopters with vague assurances about capacity degradation before. But now that the cat is out of the bag, Nissan is going to have to sell this issue to a much tougher crowd than the early adopters.

If Nissan is not going to handle this right, nobody is going to trust Nissan anymore, and even people in cooler climate would now think twice about buying a product from a company that can't be trusted. So the bigger issue now all of a sudden is not just about capacity degradation, but is about TRUST.

Which issue would Nissan rather deal with in order to meet their ambitious future sale projection? Without TRUST, you can't win any business.

[GaslessInSeattle]

tap, tap tap... is this thing on? Carlos Ghosn are you listening???

from the comment section http://insideevs.com/leaf-sales-to-doub ... -december/ here we are beginning to see the issue bleed into the public domain:

"No, they need to fix the capacity loss problem first. Nissan screwed up royally by not giving the batteries any sort of temperature control and customers are paying for it. Nissan isn’t standing beside those customers, the warranty states that as long as the battery still charges it’s good. So, it may only get 20-30 miles per charge in a few years but that’s totally fine. Unless you’re a LEAF owner who’s stuck with a car with half it’s range from 5 yrs ago.

2 owners already lost 2 bars on their LEAF’s and that could about 25% range lost. 2 owners, out of 13,000 but it’s only been a year."

For Nissan to claim this is normal seems more potentially damaging to them financially in terms of low future sales than discretely handling these cases in a more generous manner. For me, the trust gap with Nissan over battery capacity is growing. Consumer confidence is key if they really want this technology to grow; my confidence in the product is declining with seeing how they handle each of these extreme cases.

+1

+2

Battery capacity degradation has always been the single biggest concern any potential buyer would want to know before making their purchase decision. Nissan might have been able to fool early adopters with vague assurances about capacity degradation before. But now that the cat is out of the bag, Nissan is going to have to sell this issue to a much tougher crowd than the early adopters.

If Nissan is not going to handle this right, nobody is going to trust Nissan anymore, and even people in cooler climate would now think twice about buying a product from a company that can't be trusted. So the bigger issue now all of a sudden is not just about capacity degradation, but is about TRUST.

Which issue would Nissan rather deal with in order to meet their ambitious future sale projection? Without TRUST, you can't win any business.

[OrientExpress]

17 cars out of a population of 25000 is .00068. That is more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, or in layman's terms, an edge case.

You need to compare apple to apple here.

It shouldn't be 17/25000, nor should it be 17/500 because I'm sure there are more capacity losses not reported than the 17 reported.

The only meaningful sampling ratio at all should be

# of reported loss / (# of reported loss + # of reported NO loss) in Phoenix.

So far I've only heard of maybe a few from Phoenix who reported that they haven't lost a bar yet. Some of them who said they hadn't lost a bar have come back later and said they finally lost a bar.

The real ratio that's meaningful to me is more like 17/20 at this point. If you're going to sample, you have to pick samples from the same pool.

I have it right. The comparison are the know outliers vs. the total universe. Cherry picking the total universe from just Phoenix or even the southwest is not valid because one cannot say with certainly that similar condition do not exist outside of your suggested sample universe. Also we cannot say for certain what the total number nor location of all of the outliers are, so by default the entire universe must be considered in the sample.

[leafkabob]

Although since we hit at least 105F daily lately, my garage is at least 100F until late night. And I charge at 9PM nightly. Looks like I need to change it to 3AM or something.

Yes, I would think charging at the coolest possible temperature would be best.

Please note that if you set an end timer with no start timer the LEAF will delay the charge as long as possible to allow it to finish before your wife is ready to leave in the morning.

I don't think it is going to make much difference. From day one I charged beginning at 3 am (to 80%) and I lost a bar after 12 mos and 9500 miles. Opossum reported that a car that was kept in an air conditioned garage lost a bar. I think the high ambient temperature is the problem.