Usefulness of Dealer Battery Reports

[GetOffYourGas]

In other words, taking the difference between the existing energy in the car at the start of a charging session and the 80% at the end of a session (charging via a level II charger to 80% for increased battery life), the kWh numbers being added don't seem to indicate a battery anywhere near one with 85% capacity remaining.

How are you measuring this? It sounds like you can measure the energy put into the car via your EVSE? Here's something to try while you wait - drive the car down as close to turtle as possible, and then charge to 100%. How much does that add?

Sorry that your experience is turning a little sour. I hope it works out for you.

[rosier9]

In other words, taking the difference between the existing energy in the car at the start of a charging session and the 80% at the end of a session (charging via a level II charger to 80% for increased battery life), the kWh numbers being added don't seem to indicate a battery anywhere near one with 85% capacity remaining.

What? No. Charge to 100% before you get to bent out of shape. Trying to back-in to battery health from kWh numbers is a tough game that is impossible only charging to 80%, it'd even be difficult to be accurate going up to 100%...

[baustin]

Dear MNL forum members,

First, thanks for all your contributions to this amazing resource. Newbie here...

My wife and I just (three days ago) purchased a used (certified pre-owned) 2013 Leaf SV with about 30,000 miles on it. Early '13 production date. We've been waiting literally years to get one in a pricing situation that made sense to us financially.

After three days of ownership, I'm starting to feel I've been suckered by the Nissan dealership. I ordered an OBD reader and have LeafSpy ready to go when it arrives, but don't / didn't have it when I bought the car the other day. Got the "guess-o-battery health" (5/5 stars on all four categories) from the dealer's battery report. I "demanded" repeatedly to get the SOH indication (the number, a percentage) from their certification testing, but was repeatedly turned down. In the end, we relented and bought the car because the dealership promised repeatedly that having the battery be reset and this not showing up / being declared via their CPO process would be "impossible." The sales person even said "If that happens, I will shop for a knife or gun for you to come back in..." We saw that SV and SL models were selling and this particular car made sense to us, so we decided to trust the "certified pre-owned" process.

Okay, enough back story. Still waiting for the OBD reader to arrive, but the problem is that not enough kWh seem to be flowing into the car when we charge it. In other words, taking the difference between the existing energy in the car at the start of a charging session and the 80% at the end of a session (charging via a level II charger to 80% for increased battery life), the kWh numbers being added don't seem to indicate a battery anywhere near one with 85% capacity remaining.

Thoughts or advice? Anyone else have a similar issue with a CPO vehicle? I've written the CPO e-mail at Nissan and the next step is contact with (a sit-in demonstration outside...) the Nissan dealership if things continue to look suspicious. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Our raw excitement at having finally gotten our hands on a Leaf is turning a little sour...

I hope for the best for you, but that is why research is so important before the purchase. If you don't go in armed with knowledge, you will get taken advantage of, by most every dealer, on any auto purchase. If you bought a Leaf built before 4/13, I hope you live in a warm climate so you have the chance of getting a new traction battery under warranty. Charging to 100% is not bad for the battery, and needs to be done regularly to balance the cells. Letting it sit at 100% charge for extended periods, especially in high heat, speeds up the degradation process.

[sub3marathonman]

Dear MNL forum members,

First, thanks for all your contributions to this amazing resource. Newbie here...

My wife and I just (three days ago) purchased a used (certified pre-owned) 2013 Leaf SV with about 30,000 miles on it. Early '13 production date. We've been waiting literally years to get one in a pricing situation that made sense to us financially.

After three days of ownership, I'm starting to feel I've been suckered by the Nissan dealership. I ordered an OBD reader and have LeafSpy ready to go when it arrives, but don't / didn't have it when I bought the car the other day. ...

Okay, enough back story. Still waiting for the OBD reader to arrive, but the problem is that not enough kWh seem to be flowing into the car when we charge it. In other words, taking the difference between the existing energy in the car at the start of a charging session and the 80% at the end of a session (charging via a level II charger to 80% for increased battery life), the kWh numbers being added don't seem to indicate a battery anywhere near one with 85% capacity remaining.

Thoughts or advice? Anyone else have a similar issue with a CPO vehicle? I've written the CPO e-mail at Nissan and the next step is contact with (a sit-in demonstration outside...) the Nissan dealership if things continue to look suspicious. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Our raw excitement at having finally gotten our hands on a Leaf is turning a little sour...

I would hold off on the sit-in, at least for now.

It is logical to think that battery capacity can be determined by amount needed to recharge from X% to Y%, but the SOC bars just aren't accurate enough. Others have suggested driving until turtle mode and then recharging to 100%, but I still don't think the results are worth the additional stress on the battery.

It is true that the only way to really know the condition of the battery is through LeafSpy. That is why everybody needs to be so thankful that Jim Polluck (Turbo3) wrote it and made it available at a reasonable price. It also has much additional functionality beyond battery health, as it can also monitor tire pressures, which is important too.

I too thought there was a problem with my replacement battery, I thought there might be a bad cell pair that was impacting the range as indicated on the GOM. But when I checked it with LeafSpy, it was well within the acceptable range.

Once the battery is checked, it will show a clearer picture. And ironically, it may be better news to have a poorer battery, as then the odds of getting it replaced under warranty by 2018 are much better. The LEAF will also need to be driven. The best situation in my opinion is if you're just about at 60K miles at just about 5 years, if you're hoping for a battery replacement.

[justinwink]

Hi all,

Thanks again for your help. I finally got my OBDII scanner a few minutes ago and here are the reports from LeafSpy Lite. If someone can help me interpret the following numbers, I'd be very appreciative. Again, very much a newbie here in a somewhat time sensitive situation (have to decide whether or not to try to return and / or swap the car. If you need anything else other than SOH and Hx to help me assess the battery status, please just let me know and I'll add it to this post.

2013 Leaf SV, 29800 miles

AHr = 55.65
SOH = 85%
Hx = 81.3%
5 QCs and 1337 L1/L2 charges

I was previously calculating the remaining battery capacity at around 75% based on the state of charge (SOC) indicator in the car at the beginning and end of a charge along with the amount of energy added via a commercial L2 charger. For example:

20% SOC start charge
79% SOC end charge
10.52 kWh added

calc to estimate total battery capacity from 10.52 kWh charge added to charge 59% (79%-20%):

10.52 kWh / (0.79-0.20) = 17.83 kWh

This would represent 74% of a full 24 kWh pack: 17.83 / 24 = 0.74

But now that I have the OBDII scanner and SOH / Hx indicators, it seems perhaps the SOH / Hx indicators are perhaps (???) based on the usable capacity of the battery, about 21 kWh:

17.83 / 21 = 85%

Is that correct? Any advice on whether we should stick with what we have or shop for something else? THANKS!!!!

[justinwink]

I just saw some of the previous replies to my initial post. Thanks again so much for that.

Just a quick note that however useless, the values I was getting from my estimates of full battery capacity were very consistent over several different L2 charges on different commercial chargers (that give a specific amount of kWh added), despite different start and end SOC and kWh added. Looking forward to hearing what people have as advice...

[TomT]

From your standpoint, the battery report is completely useless! It tells you nothing that you can't already see on the dashboard... It does send more detail to Nissan but the dealer has no way to see that info and Nissan won't tell you...

[justinwink]

Agreed--for anyone who reads this in the future. please. Please. PLEASE. Listen to me after going through this; it was a significant source of stress and a very significant sink of time over the past few days. Please simply wad up the piece of paper the dealer gives you on battery health--even if it's a Nissan dealer... Do it immediately upon receipt for dramatic effect and to let the salesperson know what you think of it. I went back and tested several Leafs with LeafSpy because I decided to exact some revenge for my wasted time and the stress. Simply put, there was zero correlation between the battery health report and the readings on LeafSpy. None. Some cars actually had less than 5/5 starts of health in some categories (much to my surprise, I assure you), but some of these also had better capacity via LeafSpy. Opposite was also true--perfect battery rating according to dealer and less actual capacity...

I have to admit it--I'm cheap. I have an iPhone and didn't want to pay rush shipping for either the specialized low-power OBDII scanner plus LeafSpy Pro for iPhone OR a new Android phone plus more basic OBDII scanner plus LeafSpy Lite (free, but given my experience above and below, I'm definitely paying for Pro not necessarily because I need or even really want it now, but to support the developers for saving my *ss). If you're debating the cost, don't. It was money very well spent.

End of story is that I was able to convince the dealership to take my previous purchase back based on false advertising and traded for a slightly more expensive, but also far superior 2013 Leaf SV:

95% SOH
95.9% Hx
Ahr 62.5 or so (can't quite remember)
10/13 manufacture date

THANK YOU (!!!) to all those prior posters to this forum who collected all the information so helpful for letting me know simply what to learn and look for.

[sub3marathonman]

Agreed--for anyone who reads this in the future. please. Please. PLEASE. Listen to me after going through this; it was a significant source of stress and a very significant sink of time over the past few days. Please simply wad up the piece of paper the dealer gives you on battery health--even if it's a Nissan dealer... Do it immediately upon receipt for dramatic effect and to let the salesperson know what you think of it. I went back and tested several Leafs with LeafSpy because I decided to exact some revenge for my wasted time and the stress. Simply put, there was zero correlation between the battery health report and the readings on LeafSpy. None. Some cars actually had less than 5/5 starts of health in some categories (much to my surprise, I assure you), but some of these also had better capacity via LeafSpy. Opposite was also true--perfect battery rating according to dealer and less actual capacity...

...

End of story is that I was able to convince the dealership to take my previous purchase back based on false advertising and traded for a slightly more expensive, but also far superior 2013 Leaf SV:

95% SOH
95.9% Hx
Ahr 62.5 or so (can't quite remember)
10/13 manufacture date

THANK YOU (!!!) to all those prior posters to this forum who collected all the information so helpful for letting me know simply what to learn and look for.

Regarding the annual Nissan battery check, I went in with seven capacity bars remaining and still had 5/5 stars in every category. The Nissan dealer actually called the Nissan headquarters to inquire about it. I ended up getting the battery replaced when it was down to 5 capacity bars remaining, and I'm sure I still would have gotten the 5/5 stars report.

That is great that you switched to a LEAF with a much healthier battery. It should be that the battery capacity warranty will be in effect several months longer too.

One thing to watch with the LeafSpy is the deltaV, as it should be fairly low, about 25mA or so, it could indicate weak cells if it is very high.

[annabel398]

Happy ending indeed! Congrats on your almost-pristine Leaf!