Lizard Pack Holding Up

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TickTock

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
1,701
Location
Queen Creek, Arizona
So I've had my new Lizard pack installed for 8 months now and it has seen one full Phoenix summer (from February to now) and am happy to say that it is definitely holding up better than the original. I received my Leaf on May 31, 2011. By October 1st of the same year my gids dropped from the new reading of 281 to the 240's. It recovered a little over the winter but that was just the start of a long downward trend (and much drama). In February this year, I finally broke down and had the battery replaced under warranty. Today, despite being twice as old, the new pack is still reading higher than the original did at the same time of year. Graph below. Blue is original; Red is the new pack. (Note, the first marker at 281 gids on 5/31/2011 is not a real measurement as I did not own a Gid-o-meter. However based on the 100+ mile GOM readings I was getting when the car was new I think it was close to this). It is still degrading (naturally) but at a noticeably slower rate. Maybe there was something to the hype after-all..
 

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Congrats and thanks for sharing... Numbers are helpful even if it's a sample of one... :)

I've been waiting for the 2nd bar to drop on my 2011 (which is fairly imminent based on LeafSpy)... My battery is holding due to me being Coastal Los Angeles...

That said, I'd expect that sometime, perhaps, I may end up getting a salvage leave lizard battery.... Keep a car long enough and totaled cars become available to part out...[EDIT: MWalsh points out that any "Lizard" salvage pack would require updating of controller ID, so, alas, not simple.]

I wonder if anyone else with a Lizard Traction Pack in extreme conditions can corroborate.... ?
 
I was waiting until I had a full year on the 2015 before publishing data comparing the 2015 to the original and replacement batteries in my 2011. I am seeing a little reduction in capacity of the lizard battery, but it is significantly less than what I saw with both batteries in the 2011 even though I am averaging more miles per month on the 2015 (12,600 miles in 8 months).

Gerry
 
Good stuff! Have you done any turtle to 100% charges and measured energy from the wall on the new pack?

IIRC you had that kind of data with your old pack...
 
JimSouCal said:
That said, I'd expect that sometime, perhaps, I may end up getting a salvage leave lizard battery....


That's not going to happen in a 2011/2012 without someone figuring out a way to retrieve the pack (controller) ID from the salvage car and figure out how to program it into the receiving car. Remember the controller is different from 2013 on, so you can't swap the controller from your existing car to the new pack to get around that issue.

Excellent data from Tick Tock. Thanks!
 
drees said:
Good stuff! Have you done any turtle to 100% charges and measured energy from the wall on the new pack?

IIRC you had that kind of data with your old pack...
Yeah. Gathering much more data but didn't want to clutter the graph. My new pack was reading 66.14Ah, 100%SOH, about 102Hx (this bounced around a bit) and it took 25kWh from the wall to bring it from turtle to full charge (94%, 284 gids). i don't have this data on the old pack unfortunately. Last measurment on 10/1/2015, I read 62.77Ah, 98%SOH, 94Hx and it took 23.7kWh to bring it to full charge (92%, 273 gids). So depending on how you measure, it has degraded either 2% (SOH), 5% (AH), 4% (gids) or 3% (from the wall). Compare to 11% (gids) of the original pack on October 2011 (since they updated the algorithm to reduce the seasonal variation in the gids, I did not use the low value recorded in October, but rather fit a trend line and used the value from that (250 gids)).
 
Thanks for sharing the data. It's impossible to tell much from a single point (one car over one summer - was it a hotter or cooler summer than 2011?), but I look forward to following the trend. I hope you continue to update us!
 
I'm at 18,400mi on my 2015 S, and it was MFG in 4/14, so likely one of the first off the line. This also means that it has now been through two summers in the relatively warm San Jose, CA area. My most recent 100% reading was 283 Gids, 21.93 kWh, 97.14 SOC, 91.05 SOH, 93.07 HX, 60.32 AHR, and 78 degrees average temp. These show some degradation since new, about 3% based on Gids, although who knows how much capacity was hidden? none the less, I'm pretty happy with this. At this rate I'll likely still have all 12 bars at 45K miles (around the time I'll try and sell it).
 
TickTock said:
drees said:
Good stuff! Have you done any turtle to 100% charges and measured energy from the wall on the new pack?

IIRC you had that kind of data with your old pack...
Yeah. Gathering much more data but didn't want to clutter the graph. My new pack was reading 66.14Ah, 100%SOH, about 102Hx (this bounced around a bit) and it took 25kWh from the wall to bring it from turtle to full charge (94%, 284 gids). i don't have this data on the old pack unfortunately. Last measurment on 10/1/2015, I read 62.77Ah, 98%SOH, 94Hx and it took 23.7kWh to bring it to full charge (92%, 273 gids). So depending on how you measure, it has degraded either 2% (SOH), 5% (AH), 4% (gids) or 3% (from the wall). Compare to 11% (gids) of the original pack on October 2011 (since they updated the algorithm to reduce the seasonal variation in the gids, I did not use the low value recorded in October, but rather fit a trend line and used the value from that (250 gids)).
Tick Tock, are you doing anything differently this time around with regard to parking your car or charging your car? I recently purchased a used 2011 with a new lizard pack, and I'm afraid to put it in the garage at night until the garage cools down. I recall you talking about adding a swamp cooler to your garage. Did you have that the first summer of 2011?

I recently put a max/min thermometer in my garage and can read the temps from my kitchen. It is surprising that when the daytime highs were 105F, my detached, uninsulated garage didn't drop below 100 until 9 PM. Thankfully it has cooled off from a month ago, but I'm still very nervous about putting the car in the garage, as I am convinced doing so in the summers of 2011 and 2012 helped expedite my first battery's degradation. Perhaps I'm worrying needlessly, but I'm curious as to whether you are doing anything different now from 2011.
 
TickTock said:
So depending on how you measure, it has degraded either 2% (SOH), 5% (AH), 4% (gids) or 3% (from the wall).
I am inclined to believe the energy from the wall measurements more than any other. It's really the only independent tool we easily have access to as an end user. Unfortunately, there is a decent amount of variance as shown by your data and one hates to fully cycle the battery unless they need to, but a trend line ought to smooth it out enough to see what's going on.

Doesn't your data show more like 2 kWh loss from the wall or 8% (2 kWh / 25 kWh) rather than 3%? I ran a linear trend on your data and that fit.

fooljoe said:
Some recent reports of "new" 2015 Leafs starting out with 5-10% degradation have me a little concerned that the lizard pack won't be all it's cracked up to be.
Because of this high amount of variance, I don't have a lot of faith in BMS measurements in 2013+ LEAFs.

Nissan's long capacity warranty on the new 30 kWh packs shows just how well they trust the 30 kWh chemistry over the 24 kWh lizard chemistry. You probably can still expect the lizard pack to lose 30% capacity not too long after 5 years / 60 k miles in the hottest climates.
 
leafkabob said:
Tick Tock, are you doing anything differently this time around with regard to parking your car or charging your car? I recently purchased a used 2011 with a new lizard pack, and I'm afraid to put it in the garage at night until the garage cools down. I recall you talking about adding a swamp cooler to your garage. Did you have that the first summer of 2011?

I recently put a max/min thermometer in my garage and can read the temps from my kitchen. It is surprising that when the daytime highs were 105F, my detached, uninsulated garage didn't drop below 100 until 9 PM. Thankfully it has cooled off from a month ago, but I'm still very nervous about putting the car in the garage, as I am convinced doing so in the summers of 2011 and 2012 helped expedite my first battery's degradation. Perhaps I'm worrying needlessly, but I'm curious as to whether you are doing anything different now from 2011.
Quite right. I do have a swamp cooler now in my garage so not a perfect experiment. However, I really don't think that is a significant contributor since I had that cooler in last summer, too, and didn't really see any slow in the decay rate. Also, I always charged using an end timer to end in the morning so it never started before midnight (both the old and the new battery).
 
drees said:
I am inclined to believe the energy from the wall measurements more than any other. It's really the only independent tool we easily have access to as an end user. Unfortunately, there is a decent amount of variance as shown by your data and one hates to fully cycle the battery unless they need to, but a trend line ought to smooth it out enough to see what's going on.

Doesn't your data show more like 2 kWh loss from the wall or 8% (2 kWh / 25 kWh) rather than 3%? I ran a linear trend on your data and that fit.
I would agree on the wall measurement being most reliable except I don't know how much balancing impacts the draw. I see a fair amount of variation on that, too, and suspect balancing may be playing a role.
I got 3% by taking (23.7/.92)/(25/.94) but I think a linear trend is probably more accurate since there is a fair amount of variation so you may be right - certainly within any error bars I would choose to put on the numbers.
 
Lizard battery and original battery in second car are both degrading the same so far this year. Neither car is parked in a hot garage. 9 bar car is parked outside on concrete driveway or asphalt parking structure. Lizard is parked over grass yard or open parking lots. Lizard has gone a little less mileage. The rest of the year will be interesting to see if they still track the same. I hope not. Time will tell.
 
I recently put a max/min thermometer in my garage and can read the temps from my kitchen. It is surprising that when the daytime highs were 105F, my detached, uninsulated garage didn't drop below 100 until 9 PM. Thankfully it has cooled off from a month ago, but I'm still very nervous about putting the car in the garage, as I am convinced doing so in the summers of 2011 and 2012 helped expedite my first battery's degradation.

If you can just power-ventilate your garage, with hot air exiting at the top and cooler air entering low on the shaded side, that should by itself help a lot.
 
LeftieBiker said:
I recently put a max/min thermometer in my garage and can read the temps from my kitchen. It is surprising that when the daytime highs were 105F, my detached, uninsulated garage didn't drop below 100 until 9 PM. Thankfully it has cooled off from a month ago, but I'm still very nervous about putting the car in the garage, as I am convinced doing so in the summers of 2011 and 2012 helped expedite my first battery's degradation.

If you can just power-ventilate your garage, with hot air exiting at the top and cooler air entering low on the shaded side, that should by itself help a lot.
Yep. That's my plan. ;)
 
drees said:
TickTock said:
So depending on how you measure, it has degraded either 2% (SOH), 5% (AH), 4% (gids) or 3% (from the wall).
I am inclined to believe the energy from the wall measurements more than any other. It's really the only independent tool we easily have access to as an end user. Unfortunately, there is a decent amount of variance as shown by your data and one hates to fully cycle the battery unless they need to, but a trend line ought to smooth it out enough to see what's going on.

Doesn't your data show more like 2 kWh loss from the wall or 8% (2 kWh / 25 kWh) rather than 3%? I ran a linear trend on your data and that fit.

fooljoe said:
Some recent reports of "new" 2015 Leafs starting out with 5-10% degradation have me a little concerned that the lizard pack won't be all it's cracked up to be.
Because of this high amount of variance, I don't have a lot of faith in BMS measurements in 2013+ LEAFs.

Nissan's long capacity warranty on the new 30 kWh packs shows just how well they trust the 30 kWh chemistry over the 24 kWh lizard chemistry. You probably can still expect the lizard pack to lose 30% capacity not too long after 5 years / 60 k miles in the hottest climates.


I have had the same degradation on my 9 bar car as the lizard car. At this point, I have to agree that the chemistry improvement of the 2015 battery may not lead to much better results. My results, so far, are tracking that way.
 
I'm not the data-junkie that many of you are, but I do have LeafSpy. For giggles, I checked my car just now. It was purchased in September 2014 (it's a 2015 model) by someone and returned the following month. I purchased it "used" with 225 miles in October 2014, meaning the car is one year old now.

LeafSpy reports 278 GIDs (98.9% battery health) with a state of charge of 96.4%. 21.5kWh remain, and at 4.4 miles/kWh, it says I have 89.9 miles to reserve. I currently have ~7800 miles on the car. Given that my commute is 12 miles each way (24 miles total -- all city driving), this car will continue to serve my needs quite well for years to come.

I also recently broke my GOM record the other day. After a full charge, I set it on ECO (I drive exclusively in "B" mode), and the GOM reported 119 miles. I don't hypermile it and I accelerate at 3-4 (occasionally 5) dots, so I'm not holding up traffic.

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