My SOH = 84% Yet I show 12 Bars? Sad Face :-(

[gmcjetpilot]

I bought my Leaf SV in Nov. It is 2015 with 22K miles. It was put into service very end of 2014, so it is 3 years old. I was trilled for the price and still 12 bars.....

I bought Leaf Spy Pro....I'm at 84% SOH.... I was shocked. Did the seller play with the bars shown 12 bars at 84%? I thought at 84% you would show less than 12 bars????? Please talk me down. I am thinking of selling this Leaf....

My calculations were to keep this 6 years or more before considering a battery change. Looks like at this rate I will be at 60% in 4 years. That will seriously suck for utility, i.e., not practical or usable for me.

[alozzy]

The Deep South is an absolutely brutal climate for a LEAF, so rapid battery degredation is to be expected. I personally would never buy a LEAF if I lived where you live. I know that doesn't help you, but unfortunately it's not going to get any better.

Perhaps you'll luck out and rapid degradation will continue, to the point where you qualify for a replacement battery.

I'm guessing your AHr and Hx stats are better than your SOH, explaining why you've still got 12 bars. Should drop any day though.

[cwerdna]

I thought at 84% you would show less than 12 bars?????

Not necessarily. As I posted at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... 15#p511915, when I lost my 1st bar on my '13, my SOH was down to 83%. It fluctuated some since then (e.g. between 83 and 85% or so) but still shows 11 bars.

[RegGuheert]

My calculations were to keep this 6 years or more before considering a battery change. Looks like at this rate I will be at 60% in 4 years. That will seriously suck for utility, i.e., not practical or usable for me.

I'm not sure how you can make such a calculation. There are several factors here which you may need to consider:

1) Where was your car when the original owner had it? Was it in a warmer or a cooler climate?
2) The battery SOH drops quickly at first, then it drops more slowly for a while.
3) At about the point where the third bar drops, the battery SOH begins to drop more quickly again.
4) Some of the "loss" seen in the SOH number which is reported is really due to the car moving capacity below the low-battery warning level. I find that in the summertime I can drive farther than the SOH number implies. Unfortunately, in the wintertime, it seems to be pretty accurate. That is because one cell-pair of the 96 in our LEAF's battery seems to have a particularly-high resistance in wintertime (but not in the summer). Oh, if not for that one cell pair!

Our MY2011 LEAF is six year old with over 51,000 miles and still has three bars. Our car was at about that level of SOH at about the same number of miles. I live in the northern tip of VA, so it is cooler here, but your MY2015 likely has a battery which is a bit more robust. As such, and assuming your car was use in Tennessee by the original owner, you might expect similar results to what I am showing in my signature.

This summer will be very telling for our LEAF. (Capacity of the LEAF battery is lower in the wintertime, but it does not degrade during that time, if that makes any sense.) It's at 47.4 Ah right now and the degradation has shown some acceleration over the last 10,000 miles. I'm wondering if it will lose the fourth bar this summer or wait until next.

Good luck with your LEAF. I'm sure you will like it better once the temperature increases a bit. We all do!

[cwerdna]

Our MY2011 LEAF is six year old with over 51,000 miles and still has three bars. Our car was at about that level of SOH at about the same number of miles.

I'm guessing you mean 3 bars down, not 3 bars remaining.

(I did post earlier about a car that had 3 bars left (yes, down 9 bars). There also was another recent guy on an FB group with an '11 who finally paid full price for a replacement battery in San Jose as he was down 8 bars. Unfortunately, I can't find his FB post any more. )

[RegGuheert]

I'm guessing you mean 3 bars down, not 3 bars remaining.

Yes, that's what I meant. 9 bars are remaining.

[gmcjetpilot]

The Deep South is an absolutely brutal climate for a LEAF, so rapid battery degredation is to be expected. I personally would never buy a LEAF if I lived where you live. I know that doesn't help you, but unfortunately it's not going to get any better.

Perhaps you'll luck out and rapid degradation will continue, to the point where you qualify for a replacement battery.

I'm guessing your AHr and Hx stats are better than your SOH, explaining why you've still got 12 bars. Should drop any day though.

Two things:

Please explain the Ahr and Hx stats.

This was a San Diego Car. I just bought it and had it shipped to me in Nov when weather was mild. Memphis does have hot summer weather, but it's only a month or two it's oppressive. We have pretty temperate weather, compared do other places in the USA? If the car is in shade, garage, driven at night, not charged right after driving or heat of day, it should be OK?

Driving to work we're having sub freezing cold weather and SURE ENOUGH it went to 11 but popped back to 12 bars TODAY! I'm right on the edge. How long is the battery warranty? Should I sell it?

[LeftieBiker]

AH is the battery's capacity in amp-hours. Hx appears to be the internal resistance at the moment the reading was taken, while SOH seems to be a longer term average of Hx.

Reading what you have posted, I think that you should sell the car. A 2015 is least likely to drop 4 capacity bars within the warranty period, and you imply that the range would be too small well before it reached that point. You should probably take what you can get for the car, and lease an EV with less degradation than a Leaf. You got shafted with this car.

[cwerdna]

gmc: Here's a recent post from Turbo3 and SOH and Hx: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... 44#p516444.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... 64#p497564 has some pointers to some historical posts I found about Hlth (now called Hx) and a newer health valued that is now SOH.

I haven't done any thorough digging yet about AHr. I'd search for posts by Turbo3 containing AHr. It looks like there have been numerous changes over time on this.

To me, the BMS/LBC can only make estimates about a battery's condition. It's not like the modules nor cells have something magical (that I'm aware of) that returns their condition. To me, they could look at the voltage discharge curve vs. load and temperature. Anyone here have experience in designing lithium battery management systems esp. one that has to output granular estimates of battery condition beyond just good, ok and bad?

Even state of charge estimation can be tricky, as was pointed at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.p ... 0&start=61 and http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=8266. AFAIK, from a cell, all the data you have is the current voltage and temperature.

[GerryAZ]

Gmc,

How much range do you need after 5 or 6 years? I am fairly certain that your car will not drop to 8 capacity bars by the end of 2019, but you should have at least 60 miles of usable range (highway driving with normal A/C use) in the summer and 50 miles (with reasonable heating) during winter. I expect to reach the end of the capacity warranty on my 2015 with 10 capacity bars left if degradation continues at its present rate. I made my 52-mile round trip commute with normal A/C use in my 2011 when it was down to 8 capacity bars before Nissan replaced the battery at about 28 months and 30,000 miles. The 2015 battery is doing much better since I have over 54,000 miles and still have 10 capacity bars.