150,000 Miles on my original battery 2011

600aweekLEAF said:

Bummer, day I post full bars, I dropped one on way home from work 63060.

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Sorry about the bar loss.
But that is amazingly good for Georgia.
But as many have pointed out capacity loss is faster due to heat, but it is also time driven.
So with your high mileage driving of 30,000 miles per year, you got two years and 60,000 miles out of the first capacity bar.

While a low miles per year driver like me has lost four capacity bars in 34,000 miles and a couple weeks past five years of use on a 2011 LEAF.

Fortunately Nissan is replacing the battery at no cost.

But in general the original LEAF is only a reasonable design in cool locations, or in hot locations for people that drive a lot of miles.

wwhitney said:

kubel said:

+$6499 battery
-$1000 core
+$225 retrofit kit
------------------------
$5724 total for parts at full MSRP
+$570.65 labor???

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Is there sales tax on a replacement battery? That's 9% - 10% in California.

Cheers, Wayne

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no sales tax on "anything EV" here. that includes parts, labor, etc...

TaylorSFGuy said:

Tonight when I pull into the driveway the odometer will roll 150,000 miles. My GID count is 147 at full charge and I have 5 bars gone.

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Respect! Great to know this can actually happen.

I'm not anywhere near that number, but have dropped a bar presumably due to age. I've only had 2 QC's, I've mostly L2 charged at home to 80% which was the rage for a couple of years, and battery temps have been 6 bars or less both in Ohio and North Carolina. My MY12 will celebrate its 5th birthday next February.

Wonderful milestone, and congratulations to you!

Yep, it is largely about location and climate (cool is your friend)... Time is another but smaller consideration...

SalisburySam said:

Respect! Great to know this can actually happen.

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TomT said:

Yep, it is largely about location and climate...

SalisburySam said:

Respect! Great to know this can actually happen.

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its actually need. spread that 150,000 miles out over 10 years and he would have been lucky to get 100,000 miles

That guy with 150K miles really knows how to "squeeze the juice" out of the Leaf battery,.. I guess If you constantly drive the car for short distances, then you can have a useful car for many, many miles, even with 5 bars gone...

That is what I plan to do. I have all 12 bars on my car now. Round-trip commute is about 50-60 miles between charges. When the battery begins to get old, I will charge at both ends of my commute... When the battery gets older, then my wife who drives 10-15 miles per day will take the car until she (the car) can only do 10-15 miles on a charge... I hope that this will only happen after about 10 years of use.

Wow- I am impressed. I made it to 51K - admittedly, mine was a floor model, so I didn't drive the first 2.5K - before I dropped to 8 bars. Took it in, and they told me the battery was not just losing capacity, but had developed a flaw. So, they are replacing it, under the 100K/10Y warrantee.

Couple of questions I have, and this is for the community at large.
I clearly want the new battery to last, especially since (as I gather from what I have seen) I won't have any capacity warrantee. Is the best advice still the 80% charge maz, and only when below 50%?

My rep tells me that the new battery has to be built - hence a 6-8 week delay. It is their second such this month. Seems a dumb- and expensive- consequence of the decision not to make the 30 KWH battery compatible with existing models. Any idea why such a boneheaded corporate decision? If it is an engineering problem, would an adapter not be possible?

Does anybody else share with me the impression that such a F*** Y** to early adopters will drive them away from Nissan?

chkeith83 said:

... Is the best advice still the 80% charge max, and only when below 50%?
...

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Keeping charge between 35% and 80% is probably best.

But only charging when below 50% is probably irrelevant.

Nissan did warn about lots of charging after limited use.

But I think that was mainly when having charged to 100%.

When below 80% I don't think it matters much. Charging back to 80% after a 5% drop is probably OK.

On 2011 and 2012 occasional charging say at least once per month is necessary to maintain cell balance and optimal range.

chkeith83 said:

.... Seems a dumb- and expensive- consequence of the decision not to make the 30 KWH battery compatible with existing models. Any idea why such a boneheaded corporate decision? If it is an engineering problem, would an adapter not be possible?

Does anybody else share with me the impression that such a F*** Y** to early adopters will drive them away from Nissan?

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From what I have read, the batteries will work in the cars. It is not an issue of compatibility, but one of legal liability. If I understand correctly, Nissan would have to re-certify one of each model from every year (new crash tests, etc.) for use with the larger capacity battery. I could be wrong, but this is my understanding of what I have read across multiple sites and postings over the last year.

chkeith83 said:

Couple of questions I have, and this is for the community at large.
I clearly want the new battery to last, especially since (as I gather from what I have seen) I won't have any capacity warrantee. Is the best advice still the 80% charge maz, and only when below 50%?

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First off you need to remove "only" from your charging vocabulary. it simply is not that straightforward.

your battery wants to live at 50% SOC. that is where it will live the longest. So a charge cycle should cover that. so if you need 40% of your capacity, then charge from 30 to 70%.

But keep in mind;

*If you are caught short, that could be bad. things happen. you cannot always predict what is going to happen.

*Time at very SOC is worse than time at very high SOC.

my rule of thumb; If I am going to use 40sih% of my capacity, I fully charge it plugging it in just before I go to bed at night so it finishes just before I leave in the morning. Don't have TOU and yes, I generally leave VERY early.

so you have the 80% charge setting. I would only use it if I planned to drive less than 25 miles that day. Full charge for everything else but then again, that is me. you are different

As far as the 6-8 week delivery estimate; heard this several times and occasionally the wait is nearly that long, but not usually.

as far as retrofitting the 30 kwh battery, that would cost Nissan thousands. it is not that straightforward an option at this point. now does that mean it will never happen? maybe, maybe not. There is likely a way to make it happen but they have to figure out how to get the costs down.

Also I am curious as your list of companies that allowed a significant upgrade on a 5 year old product on a warranty exchange