We’ve had the Leaf for a week, and it seems mechanically fine.
SageBrush wrote:^^ Losing ~ 10% of battery capacity a year is harsh. It may be that actual loss is less and the car is misreporting but you will not know that until the car has been 'fixed' and a couple months elapse. If the loss is real and continues, the car will not meet your requirements 2 years from now.
Your other choice to figure this out now (which I would do in your shoes) is to drive the car down to a lowish SoC and then charge up to 90+ percent on an EVSE that reports metered kWh. This is the definitive way to measure usable battery capacity.
LeftieBiker wrote:Yes, that's a big loss. Hopefully the BMS update will do more than get the BMS to misrepresent the SOH for a few months. Do you know if the owner let the car sit at 100% for long periods? That would be my guess, and my advice is, of course, don't do that. Charge in the morning if possible, and time the charges to stop at 60-80%, if that's all you need.
Both owners seem to have driven the car only once or twice per week and recharged the battery to 100% every time, no matter how little they discharged it. This week I managed to discharge the battery to 14% and actually got the warning, then recharged it to 100%. (13 hours on the L1 charger.) We’ll keep discharging it down below 40% (or further) before recharging it above 90%, and we’ll see if that helps its capacity.
I’m searching for at least one new key fob (and preferably a second for a spare).
The second owner had the Leaf for six months, and he only decided to sell it because abrupt life changes convinced him to leave the island. In retrospect, the only thing he did with the car was losing the second fob. While we were signing over the title we searched the car and found not only his sunglasses (that he’d “lost” months ago under the driver’s seat) but also the reading glasses of the first owner. We even found the key number plate (for the car’s key ID), which the second owner didn’t know about.
I found the first owner’s e-mail address among the dealer’s paperwork. (He said he'd also left the island and didn’t want his reading glasses back.) He claims he turned over two fobs to the second owner, but we didn’t find the missing one anywhere in the car. I sat in the car (without a fob) and tried to turn it on, and it can’t sense a fob in the car. I crawled through & under everything while vacuuming it, and it looks like the second fob really is gone. That means we’re searching for a replacement second fob, and perhaps a third for a spare.
Other details:
- I used LeafSpy to shut off the backup beep and to disable the door auto-lock.
- Next week I’m getting Leaf feet for my Thule roof racks (which currently have Prius feet). Our local surf shop says they have that kit.
- We added another 420 watts of photovoltaic panels to our rooftop array. (Used panels at $1 per watt.) We’ll watch that for a few months to get a handle on our use, and then we’ll buy more panels if we’re not at net zero. We used to spend about $500/year on gas.
What’s the best way to get two more fobs and have all three programmed to the Leaf? Do I buy a specific type of fob (new or used?) from eBay or a dealer? Can I program the fobs myself (using the car’s electronics or LeafSpy) or do I need to give my fobs (wherever I bought them) to the dealer for their special equipment?