Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

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yeah, well, the 3 and 4 bar losers have totally blown that theory out of the water, which makes me uneasy. it appears that whatever loss one is seeing, that it's going to be linear or even worse, it may accelerate rather than level off. I suppose that what is happening in Phoenix is so catastrophic that it's causing a atypical degradation curve. It's tempting to want to try and learn something about these batteries by what is happening in Phoenix but what we are seeing may simply not relate to the rest of the country... time will tell, bottom line though, uncertainty is bad for marketing!

gbarry42 said:
Interesting from the standpoint of Nissan being surprised by all this. I have read lots of lectures here about how Nissan tested batteries in Arizona long before the car was delivered.

I am also a bit uneasy about how the deterioration is supposed to "slow down after the initial loss". It's a great way to put off the owners, telling them "wait another year and see what happens".
Click to expand...
 
DesertDenizen said:
TonyWilliams said:
Seems like normal corporate speak to head off hysteria (which could cost Nissan sales and money).
Click to expand...

I am with Tony, it is a bunch of blah blah blah. Of and if it is only 0.3% of owners, why not make us whole?
Click to expand...

So, what exactly, in your opinion, would "make us whole" entail?

If a driver has already put 25,000 miles on their LEAF, used QC frequently on hot afternoons, regularly charged to 100% as soon as getting home during the hottest part of the day, and has left the battery charged at 100% for long periods of time, during the hottest weather, and now has lost one or more bars, Does Nissan now owe them a new battery?

And should Nissan replace that battery, when they lose another bar, in 12 or 18 months?

The more responsibility you shift to the BEV manufacturer, for driver behavior, the greater the total cost of the battery per mile driven, for the entire And these costs will have to be paid by other BEV owners.

It certainly sounds to me that many of the bar loss LEAFs have, or probably will have in the future, legitimate complaints about their batteries not meeting their reasonable expectations, and I do expect Nissan, following the investigation, to offer to "make (you) whole".

But satisfying all LEAF drivers may not be an easy (or cheap) thing for Nissan to do, given some of the statements made on this and other threads.

Do you expect Nissan to essentially guarantee the same capacity life for batteries in Phoenix, and other extreme climates, as experienced by LEAFs driven in regions, where average annual temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees F lower?
 
edatoakrun said:
DesertDenizen said:
TonyWilliams said:
Seems like normal corporate speak to head off hysteria (which could cost Nissan sales and money).
Click to expand...

I am with Tony, it is a bunch of blah blah blah. Of and if it is only 0.3% of owners, why not make us whole?
Click to expand...

So, what exactly, in your opinion, would "make us whole" entail?

If a driver has already put 25,000 miles on their LEAF, used QC frequently on hot afternoons, regularly charged to 100% as soon as getting home during the hottest part of the day, and has left the battery charged at 100% for long periods of time, during the hottest weather, and now has lost one or more bars, Does Nissan now owe them a new battery?

And should Nissan replace that battery, when they lose another bar, in 12 or 18 months?

The more responsibility you shift to the BEV manufacturer, for driver behavior, the greater the total cost of the battery per mile driven, for the entire And these costs will have to be paid by other BEV owners.

It certainly sounds to me that many of the bar loss LEAFs have, or probably will have in the future, legitimate complaints about their batteries not meeting their reasonable expectations, and I do expect Nissan, following the investigation, to offer to "make (you) whole".

But satisfying all LEAF drivers may not be an easy (or cheap) thing for Nissan to do, given some of the statements made on this and other threads.

Do you expect Nissan to essentially guarantee the same capacity life for batteries in Phoenix, and other extreme climates, as experienced by LEAFs driven in regions, where average annual temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees F lower?
Click to expand...

I will only speak for myself. I have never quick charged. I charge to 80%, and do so just before leaving in the morning so my Leaf does not sit even at the 80% level. The early morning is the coolest part of the day. My long term average of 5.6 m/kwh tells you how I drive. Is there anything more an owner could do? As for making whole, one suggestion made on this forum was to allow purchased Leafs to be converted to a lease. I would have leased if I knew of this phenomenon here in Arizona so that seems a reasonable resolution to me.
 
Hmm, I am wondering if this isn't really cell capacity loss or maybe a bug in the GID-Counter/BMS. I know my Ranger EV with it's NiMH pack and BMS has a bug in it, that if you charge frequently with 50% the BMS starts to reduce/leak the Ah capacity over time. Every 6 months or so I have to drain my pack down until the point at which the contactors open, disconnect the 12V battery for 10-15 minutes, then reconnect it and plug it in. This makes my range increase from 45 miles back to the 62 miles it normally starts with.

This could be something related to NiMH which are not supposed to have a battery memory but I bet certainly do. Lithium batteries however should not be fully cycled often as it can really take a toll on the cycle life.

However that being said, my guess is that Nissan will remove the packs from these 2-3 bar loss vehicles and individually cycle them on a cell cycler/recorder to see what the actual capacity is. Then use that data to compare to what the actual BMS thinks is in each cell/module.

It would be fantastic if a combination of heat is causing the BMS to be off on it's capacity guess and just an updated firmware to the BMS that better compensates for temps is what is really needed.
 
edatoakrun said:
Do you expect Nissan to essentially guarantee the same capacity life for batteries in Phoenix, and other extreme climates, as experienced by LEAFs driven in regions, where average annual temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees F lower?
Click to expand...

For the LEAF (or any other electric vehicle) to be a true viable alternative to a regular ICE vehicle, they need to have the same warranty/guarantee across the nation, just as ICE vehicles have. It's not like Nissan/Ford/Audi/etc have different warranties on their cars depending on where they are sold.
 
edatoakrun said:
So, what exactly, in your opinion, would "make us whole" entail?

If a driver has already put 25,000 miles on their LEAF, used QC frequently on hot afternoons, regularly charged to 100% as soon as getting home during the hottest part of the day, and has left the battery charged at 100% for long periods of time, during the hottest weather, and now has lost one or more bars, Does Nissan now owe them a new battery?

And should Nissan replace that battery, when they lose another bar, in 12 or 18 months?

The more responsibility you shift to the BEV manufacturer, for driver behavior, the greater the total cost of the battery per mile driven, for the entire And these costs will have to be paid by other BEV owners.
Click to expand...
If these are all the causes, and they were known, then Nissan should have stopped it from being possible. An electronic limit on "QC", a electronic temperature limit on charging, and not allowing "100%" (everyone knows it's not a true 100%, right?).

Of course they couldn't do that, they would have sold even less Leaf's. So, they did this instead and now have to fix the consequences.
 
gbarry42 said:
Interesting from the standpoint of Nissan being surprised by all this. I have read lots of lectures here about how Nissan tested batteries in Arizona long before the car was delivered.
Click to expand...

Just because Nissan tested the cars does not mean the tests found any and all problems with their product.

When testing software, it almost never fails that once released to a large community of users, bugs are found that testing did not reveal, but were there all along. You can blame the level, quantity or quality of testing until you are blue in the face, Quality Assurance is not an exact science. The fact that **** happens is a fact of life.

I am sure Nissan are as surprised as we are, maybe more so, since they may have thought they had tested all reasonable use cases prior to releasing their product on the unwashed masses.

At the end of the day it might not be the batteries, but the charging system or software doing crazy stuff in hot weather and inadvertently frying the batteries (increasing charge rate erroneously rather than backing off). It's also possible that recent changes to firmware (long after Nissan's initial tests in Arizona) have introduced a problem.

Who knows the true root cause? We don't. Hopefully Nissan will before we long.
 
DANandNAN said:
edatoakrun said:
So, what exactly, in your opinion, would "make us whole" entail?

If a driver has already put 25,000 miles on their LEAF, used QC frequently on hot afternoons, regularly charged to 100% as soon as getting home during the hottest part of the day, and has left the battery charged at 100% for long periods of time, during the hottest weather, and now has lost one or more bars, Does Nissan now owe them a new battery?

And should Nissan replace that battery, when they lose another bar, in 12 or 18 months?

The more responsibility you shift to the BEV manufacturer, for driver behavior, the greater the total cost of the battery per mile driven, for the entire And these costs will have to be paid by other BEV owners.
Click to expand...
If these are all the causes, and they were known, then Nissan should have stopped it from being possible. An electronic limit on "QC", a electronic temperature limit on charging, and not allowing "100%" (everyone knows it's not a true 100%, right?).

Of course they couldn't do that, they would have sold even less Leaf's. So, they did this instead and now have to fix the consequences.
Click to expand...
I think that's exactly right. Nissan took a car which in its original design is essentially only suited to early adopters. There's nothing wrong with that, but Nissan then made two mistakes:

First, they neglected to give those early adopters the info they need (and crave) to operate it for maximum efficiency and longevity, leaving it to the owners to piece this info together for themselves instead of providing the data that Nissan's own engineers (who aren't incompetent) undoubtedly have.

Second, despite the above they tried to sell the car in a mainstream fashion as if it were a mainstream car.

I think someone had a quote from a GM guy in the marketing thread that GM and Nissan didn't know how to market and sell the car, and I think that's correct. A mainstream car has to be usable anywhere in the U.S, without requiring the owner to learn a great deal of specific info to operate it reasonably efficiently in a particular climate. IMO among EV manufacturers GM has done the best job of this currently, with Ford second. Barring use of a battery chemistry that has its capacity and longevity essentially unaffected by temperature, to be mainstream an EV needs an active TMS and high efficiency HVAC system, so that temperature effects on range/longevity will be insignificant.
 
DesertDenizen said:
I will only speak for myself.... As for making whole, one suggestion made on this forum was to allow purchased Leafs to be converted to a lease. I would have leased if I knew of this phenomenon here in Arizona so that seems a reasonable resolution to me.
Click to expand...

I agree, and that Nissan should probably also give owners whose use is documented to be similar to yours, an early lease termination option, since some will find shorter range a real impediment to use, even before the lease expiration date.

Relatively cheap and equitable policy, IMO.

But...

Does that mean every LEAF owner who loses a bar during the lease period, in the future, should have that same option?

Not so cheap, and possibly, quite a bit more expensive.
 
TurboFroggy said:
Hmm, I am wondering if this isn't really cell capacity loss or maybe a bug in the GID-Counter/BMS. I know my Ranger EV with it's NiMH pack and BMS has a bug in it, that if you charge frequently with 50% the BMS starts to reduce/leak the Ah capacity over time. Every 6 months or so I have to drain my pack down until the point at which the contactors open, disconnect the 12V battery for 10-15 minutes, then reconnect it and plug it in. This makes my range increase from 45 miles back to the 62 miles it normally starts with.

This could be something related to NiMH which are not supposed to have a battery memory but I bet certainly do. Lithium batteries however should not be fully cycled often as it can really take a toll on the cycle life.

However that being said, my guess is that Nissan will remove the packs from these 2-3 bar loss vehicles and individually cycle them on a cell cycler/recorder to see what the actual capacity is. Then use that data to compare to what the actual BMS thinks is in each cell/module.

It would be fantastic if a combination of heat is causing the BMS to be off on it's capacity guess and just an updated firmware to the BMS that better compensates for temps is what is really needed.
Click to expand...
I wish you are right on that, despite I look like a fool not driving my car during time when I should really use it because AC is really efficient on it.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
At the moment however, we know very little about the 2013 Leaf, other than a few updates Nissan’s Mark Perry has already detailed.

Nissan is updating the Leaf’s heater with a more efficient one, which Nissan has said will improve the winter range of the Leaf by 20 to 25 miles.
Click to expand...

there is simply no way that can happen unless the pack is bigger or its thermally controlled...
Click to expand...

Well, the devil's in the details. A statement of "miles of range", as we are all well aware, is dependent on circumstances. So sure, in heavy stop-and-go traffic in the winter, the percent of power consumed by the heater can rise to just about any value imaginable. If you're stuck in gridlock for 2 hours, the majority of your consumption will indeed be from the heater. So it's not that Nissan's statement is false, it's just meaningless without context. They aren't learning yet.
 
HXGuy said:
edatoakrun said:
Do you expect Nissan to essentially guarantee the same capacity life for batteries in Phoenix, and other extreme climates, as experienced by LEAFs driven in regions, where average annual temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees F lower?
Click to expand...

For the LEAF (or any other electric vehicle) to be a true viable alternative to a regular ICE vehicle, they need to have the same warranty/guarantee across the nation, just as ICE vehicles have. It's not like Nissan/Ford/Audi/etc have different warranties on their cars depending on where they are sold.
Click to expand...

Don't you think that might provide a perverse incentive to promote BEV sales in hot climates, where battery life is shorter, over cold climates, where driving range is restricted?

Should BEV manufactures also be required to guarantee one range and efficiency, nationwide?
 
edatoakrun said:
Do you expect Nissan to essentially guarantee the same capacity life for batteries in Phoenix, and other extreme climates, as experienced by LEAFs driven in regions, where average annual temperatures are 20 to 30 degrees F lower?
Click to expand...

Yes for very simple reason, even if this is limited range car only, nothing should restrict me to drive this car whenever I want to, drive it in Phoenix or Portland. This is mass produced car so I should be able to sell it whenever I want to, but not in certain area because for car limitation (TMS or not).
 
I will bet my last dollar that there are many more than 39 drivers that have lost at least one bar in the Phoenix area. And Nissan knows (but aren't telling) how many they actually know of from the one year battery pack checks. Some drivers that aren't EV enthusiasts may not have even noticed that they've lost a capacity bar. And to say it could be from charging, driving habits, etc., is just a lame excuse because I know several people that 'babied' their LEAFs, and still lost one or two bars. One person I know lost a bar in only 7 months/12K miles! Her letter, in my opinion, just made the situation worse. I was hoping for some real facts, not the same old excuses and run arounds.
 
While I appreciate Ms. Bailo's initiative in reaching out, I'm disappointed by the weakness of the message. We are all aware that Lithium batteries age over time and that that environmental factors are involved.

Unfortunately, the message still seems to be leaning heavily on the idea that the reported drops in AZ may be "normal".

I would suggest that if, in fact, these results are "normal" for the LEAF pack, then the pack needs to change soon. Otherwise it's "Game Over" for the Nissan LEAF in the USA.

The public perception of EVs is tenuous at best and needs to be won over with fabulous results. People aren't going to buy in to a car that might be OK as long as it doesn't get hot. That would suggest the vehicle is feeble, not fabulous.
 
It was only within the last week that the car started showing ~80 available miles after an overnight charge. This was a significant and sudden change since, for the last year, the car consistently showed ~100+ after an overnight charge.

Of note:
Put in service 05Jul11 in Bakersfield California.
The car will soon have 12K miles on the odometer.
We typically use the car daily ~60 miles.
We charge nightly, on a timer that activates charging around 2am.
Previously, the car would "use" miles rather quickly - seemingly more than actually being driven - for the first 20-30 miles. Now, the car drives a number of miles before it seems to "use" any. Yesterday, I left the house with 83 on the meter (ECO), drove about 15 miles, and had 85 on the meter (ECO) when I got home. I believe the actual difference in "available miles" is insignificant but, for some reason, my car has suddenly started evaluating battery condition differently.
 
I think the figure of 0.3% is actually pretty insulting...I mean there are around 39 reported cases here on the forum of at least 1 bar lost, is Nissan telling us that somehow, all affected owners also happen to be on this forum? Anyone not on this forum has not lost any capacity bars? Hell, maybe that's the problem! It's not the battery/Nissan...it's this forum that is causing the lost capacity bars! :shock: :lol:
 
Nubo said:
While I appreciate Ms. Bailo's initiative in reaching out, I'm disappointed by the weakness of the message. We are all aware that Lithium batteries age over time and that that environmental factors are involved.

Unfortunately, the message still seems to be leaning heavily on the idea that the reported drops in AZ may be "normal".

I would suggest that if, in fact, these results are "normal" for the LEAF pack, then the pack needs to change soon. Otherwise it's "Game Over" for the Nissan LEAF in the USA.

The public perception of EVs is tenuous at best and needs to be won over with fabulous results. People aren't going to buy in to a car that might be OK as long as it doesn't get hot. That would suggest the vehicle is feeble, not fabulous.
Click to expand...

Normal, expect fabulous = miracle
 
Before, Nissan had a huge vacuum. No official comments by senior staff on this at all. Now, they are saying that they don’t know what’s going on, but they are looking into it. Sure, it could be new excuses and runarounds, but I take these two comments as encouraging:

we pledge to provide an update to our customers as soon as possible.
Click to expand...


we will ensure that owners experience many years of enjoyable driving as EV pioneers.
Click to expand...
 
FairwoodRed said:
Before, Nissan had a huge vacuum. No official comments by senior staff on this at all. Now, they are saying that they don’t know what’s going on, but they are looking into it. Sure, it could be new excuses and runarounds, but I take these two comments as encouraging:

we pledge to provide an update to our customers as soon as possible.
Click to expand...
we will ensure that owners experience many years of enjoyable driving as EV pioneers.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
+1

Indeed, hopefully it's a start of a constructive exchange. I haven't spent as much time on this forum as others, but I'm under the impression that everyone is well-intentioned.
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