Regeneration strategy

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
T

ttoshi

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2011
Messages
15
I've had my Leaf for a couple of weeks now and I'm figuring out how to best optimize regeneration, since I live on a hill and go downhill to start. It is well known that regeneration is much more effective ECO mode.

1. OK, if the charge is 100%, it doesn't regenerate because the battery is full. OK, makes sense.

2. Unfortunately, if you charge to 80%, it sets 80% as the battery full point, and it still won't regenerate. (EDIT: This is incorrect. What apparently happened is that there was an untimed charge, and when it is untimed it goes to 100%. At 80% charge, 2 bars are gone)

3. OK, now I set it on a timer and leave some portion of the battery uncharged.
3a. 1 bar of battery depletion seems to give 1-2 dots of regeneration when the gas is let up in Eco mode
3b. 2 bars depletion seems to give 2-3 dots of regeneration
3c. 3 bars of depletion seems to give 3-4 dots of regeneration

--I wish regeneration didn't ramp up so slowly. I live on a hill and can use maximal regeneration from the get go...

The Leaf needs a brake mode like the Prius so you can maximally regenerate when you want to slow down...

Toshi
 
ttoshi said:
2. Unfortunately, if you charge to 80%, it sets 80% as the battery full point, and it still won't regenerate.
Click to expand...
That's the first I've heard that and I find it hard to swallow. Have you tried it?
 
Yes, that is my own experience. When it is charged to 80%, the battery level is displayed as full bars and regeneration does not occur.

Toshi


davewill said:
ttoshi said:
2. Unfortunately, if you charge to 80%, it sets 80% as the battery full point, and it still won't regenerate.
Click to expand...
That's the first I've heard that and I find it hard to swallow. Have you tried it?
Click to expand...
 
Mike, all my regeneration is done in eco mode.

"Eco mode" ramps up very slowly and increases braking power as the battery gets increasingly depleted. I want maximum regeneration on my demand.

The strange thing is that I can have 2 bars depleted and it won't go over 3 dots of regeneration, even if I apply the brake pedal. However, if the battery is 3 bars depleted, it will give 4 bars of regeneration. With higher depletion, regeneration will go all 5 dots.

It's almost as if the regeneration would put too much strain on a minimally-depleted battery, which doesn't really make sense to me. Does the charge you apply to the battery when plugged in slow down when you near a full battery?

Cheers,
Toshi


mwalsh said:
ttoshi said:
The Leaf needs a brake mode like the Prius so you can maximally regenerate when you want to slow down...

Toshi
Click to expand...


It does Toshi, it's called ECO mode. And you can select it only for use on downhill grades or slowing, if you wish.
Click to expand...
 
Charge to 50% SOC, load your car with sand bags at the top of a hill and dump them at the bottom, repeat.
 
ttoshi, my experience with 80% charging is different from what you describe. I always use an ending timer to charge to 80%. If I check SOC with Carwings, it says 84%. The top two bars of the battery gauge are NOT lit. Are you sure that you are only charging to 80%?

I did notice this morning that two of the regeneration 'bubbles' were disabled (single circle instead of two) for a time after I started up. One of them was enabled almost immediately, but I had to drive several miles before the second 'bubble' was enabled. I didn't expect to see that on an 80% charge.

-karl
 
I wonder if you could charge to 100% for five minutes before you leave
Then cut the charging off early having the Leaf thinking 100% instead of 80%
Definately a software issue that should be changed IMO.
 
I understand the desire for full regeneration. But trying to cram 20-30kw of power into a battery that is mostly topped off (ie 83%) is not the proper way to to do it, the reason it is different then your Prius is that the Prius only uses the middle band of the battery not the full top and bottom capacity of the pack. As you get closer to the top of the battery the amount you charge should / will decrease to prevent overcharging, this is why L3 charges don't go to 100% full bore, the charge tapers off towards to the top 20% of battery capacity to not overcharge individual cells....

-Matt
PS: He is saying at 80% charge you can only get 3 bars of regen, which is true, but that 3bars is still 15kw of regen... which is about 10times what the L1 charger can put out?
 
I wonder if this has anything to do with the software "rev" level of the car, perhaps like the A/C won't start issue? My LEAF is "rev" A and my "regen" at 80% allows full regeneration.
What I would like to know is if one dot of regeneration is equal to one dot of power consumed. I'm trying to find out if I climb a hill and then regenerate to the bottom what percentage of energy am I reclaiming, 30%, 50%, 70%?
 
Careful, there, you don't "consume" power. You consume energy, and power is the rate at which you are consuming it. So it doesn't really make any sense to talk about how much is "recovered" by one dot of regen compared to how much is "spent" by one dot of power. You would have to figure in how many seconds that dot stayed there.

But expressed in terms of power, you could ask whether one dot of regen is charging the battery as fast as one dot of draw is draining it. My suspicion is that it isn't. With four dots to the left, and nine to the right, and an 80 kW motor, wouldn't that imply that four dots of regen would be about 35 kW?

Ray
 
I don't know about the revision, but I just got the latest update last week. My dealer had 2 Leafs on the same day (me and another) and the other person's leaf broke down due to some charging issue. Anyhow, they updated my system right away. My system said Time to 80% charge 0:00, so I know I charged it to 80%, and I'm almost 100% sure the charge level was full because I was wondering why it's full when it's 80% charged. I'm also sure that it wasn't regenerating because I'm going downhill from the start. The thing I am not sure is if somehow it charged to 100% when I set it to 80%, but again when I started up it said Time to 80% charge 0:00.


ERG4ALL said:
I wonder if this has anything to do with the software "rev" level of the car, perhaps like the A/C won't start issue? My LEAF is "rev" A and my "regen" at 80% allows full regeneration.
What I would like to know is if one dot of regeneration is equal to one dot of power consumed. I'm trying to find out if I climb a hill and then regenerate to the bottom what percentage of energy am I reclaiming, 30%, 50%, 70%?
Click to expand...
 
mwalsh said:
It's called ECO mode. And you can select it only for use on downhill grades or slowing, if you wish.
Click to expand...

I've entered ECO mode by shifting twice (toggle) into D while parked. Can you shift into drive while moving to toggle ECO on/off? I've been afraid to try...
 
ttoshi said:
I don't know about the revision, but I just got the latest update last week. My dealer had 2 Leafs on the same day (me and another) and the other person's leaf broke down due to some charging issue. Anyhow, they updated my system right away. My system said Time to 80% charge 0:00, so I know I charged it to 80%, and I'm almost 100% sure the charge level was full because I was wondering why it's full when it's 80% charged. I'm also sure that it wasn't regenerating because I'm going downhill from the start. The thing I am not sure is if somehow it charged to 100% when I set it to 80%, but again when I started up it said Time to 80% charge 0:00.
Click to expand...
Doesn't an immediate (untimed) charge always go till 100%? I bet the service guys charged you up while they had it.
 
You could just look at the SOC bars. If there are 12 of them lit, it is ~100%. If there are 10 of them lit, it is ~80%. If you get email notification, it tells you when the charging stopped and how many bars you have. I have been charging to 80%, email aways say charget to 10 out of 12 bars, and I can regen right from the start. I did notice looking closer that at first, the max regen is four dots (counting the neutral dot) and the last circle is a single circle. After a few miles, the last circle becomes a double circle and can regen to all five dots.
 
I too live at the top of a hill and usually charge to 80 percent. I most definitely get significant regeneration on my run down the hill. At 80 percent I am also only at 10 of 12 bars...

ttoshi said:
Yes, that is my own experience. When it is charged to 80%, the battery level is displayed as full bars and regeneration does not occur.
Toshi
Click to expand...
 
mogur said:
I too live at the top of a hill and usually charge to 80 percent. I most definitely get significant regeneration on my run down the hill. At 80 percent I am also only at 10 of 12 bars...

OK, I'll try it again. Someone said that an immediate untimed charge goes to 100%. I must have not used the timer and it went to 100% even though I said charge to 80%. If that is the case, I apologize for the confusion!

Toshi
Click to expand...
 
The easiest way to see is to call up the energy screen on the nav and then watch the motor display. This will show you the amount of power consumed or regenerated in Kw and you can then correlate that to the number of dots.

ERG4ALL said:
What I would like to know is if one dot of regeneration is equal to one dot of power consumed. I'm trying to find out if I climb a hill and then regenerate to the bottom what percentage of energy am I reclaiming, 30%, 50%, 70%?
Click to expand...
 

Similar threads

C
Battery Leaf 40Kwh from 3/2022
Replies
6
Views
732
Steve52
S
G
2015 Leaf with 21k miles should range be greater than 90 miles?
2
Replies
20
Views
2K
Drew21
D
A
New owner, mountain driving range
Replies
8
Views
2K
Aspenspryte
A
majbthrd
lowest mileage LEAF battery fail ever?
Replies
6
Views
1K
thew
thew
Jnovoseljr
My EV Battery Life and Leaf observations.
Replies
10
Views
2K
GerryAZ
G

Latest posts

Back
Top