Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[TonyWilliams]

TickTock, when that 12th capacity bar drops again (really soon), I would once again visit the Nissan dealer and complain that your diminished capacity battery was repaired last week (month), and now, just in that short time, it has once again lost 15% capacity, per the Nissan Service Manual.

Keep all the documentation. Then look up Lemon laws for your state.

[TickTock]

OK. Although I got my car back with all 12 capacity bars and am reading 10% higher gid counts for an 80% charge (6% higher for a 100% charge), I have established that there is no difference in my battery capacity. In the graph below, I plot the battery voltage versus energy from the wall for three turtle to 100% charge logs. One last November, one just before the service and one just after. You can see that both the before and after service plots are almost identical (despite the charge afterward ending with higher gid count). I actually did two turtle to 100 tests this week just to make sure the first wasn't an anomaly and they both had the same result. So, no cells got replaced - looks like they may have recalibrated what a gids is but the battery performance is the same. To try to avoid overloading this thread any more, I created a separate thread to discuss the implications of variable gid:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=9689

[edatoakrun]

OK. Although I got my car back with all 12 capacity bars and am reading 10% higher gid counts for an 80% charge (6% higher for a 100% charge), I have established that there is no difference in my battery capacity. In the graph below, I plot the battery voltage versus energy from the wall for three turtle to 100% charge logs. One last November, one just before the service and one just after. You can see that both the before and after service plots are almost identical (despite the charge afterward ending with higher gid count). I actually did two turtle to 100 tests this week just to make sure the first wasn't an anomaly and they both had the same result. So, no cells got replaced - looks like they may have recalibrated what a gids is but the battery performance is the same. To try to avoid overloading this thread any more, I created a separate thread to discuss the implications of variable gid:

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=9689

Well, in that case, never mind what I posted an hour ago...

edatoakrun

...And (assuming TickTock's LEAF still has the original battery) it looks like his capacity at "100%" charge may have only declined from 19.12 kWh to 18.48 kWh, or ~3.5%, since his first gid reading on 10/01/11...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ... li=1#gid=1

I assume your post "service" range to turtle was consistent with the lower capacity, you calculated "from the wall", TickTock?

[scottf200]

From the sales thread:

From a recent Plug-in 2012 conversation with Nissan reps, the Smyrna-produced batteries will be the same as what has come out of Japan. There will be some slight efficiency gains in the MY 2013 car so it uses slightly less energy, but the battery will be the same...

I'd predict Nissan dealers in these states will just *strongly* suggest to customers to lease then Nissan can manage what to do with the batteries when they resell them (2ndary use them and replace the battery from the new TN plant)

[Herm]

Battery degradation must be tapering off as Nissan predicted, if you go by the pace of new posts in this thread.. someone should graph it to what the correlation is.

[planet4ever]

Maybe everyone is afraid that the forum will crash when it first encounters a page number that won't fit in a uchar.

Ray

[cwerdna]

Maybe everyone is afraid that the forum will crash when it first encounters a page number that won't fit in a uchar.

Ray

Or when the # of views for a thread passes 65535.

[TomT]

So, one could conclude then, that their loss of capacity fix is simply a software change that hides it... Apparently they took a page from the Honda Hybrid playbook!

OK. Although I got my car back with all 12 capacity bars and am reading 10% higher gid counts for an 80% charge (6% higher for a 100% charge), I have established that there is no difference in my battery capacity.

[RegGuheert]

From the sales thread:

From a recent Plug-in 2012 conversation with Nissan reps, the Smyrna-produced batteries will be the same as what has come out of Japan. There will be some slight efficiency gains in the MY 2013 car so it uses slightly less energy, but the battery will be the same...

That's disappointing. It looks like Tony was correct.

I'd predict Nissan dealers in these states will just *strongly* suggest to customers to lease then Nissan can manage what to do with the batteries when they resell them (2ndary use them and replace the battery from the new TN plant)

I wish I believed that. Unless Nissan puts an end to LEAF sales in hot climates I think dealers will continue business as usual. In fact, I expect they will be stepping up sales efforts to try to keep LEAFs from piling up on their lots.

[Stoaty]

Battery degradation must be tapering off as Nissan predicted, if you go by the pace of new posts in this thread.. someone should graph it to what the correlation is.

An alternate explanation is that people aren't bothering to report loss of capacity bars, since it is a known issue.