Said goodbye to 11mpg yesterday

Thought I'd introduce myself. I've wanted an EV for a few years, and finally decided to trade in my 2004 GMC Sierra 2500 (6.0 gasser) for a 2014 Nissan LEAF, with just over 40K miles on it. It looks almost like new and I'm very impressed with it.

Congrats on the big step forward in efficiency. I hope you have a pleasant transition to EVs. Read through this forum and you will learn some of the challenges and ways to handle them.

Several quick suggestions on pitfalls to avoid:

* Don't leave the car plugged in but not charging for more than a few hours. This will kill the 12 volt battery.

* Don't leave the car sitting fully charged for more than a couple of hours, especially in Hot weather. This likely increases battery degradation.

* Don't recharge when the state of charge (SOC) is higher than 80% unless you really have to do it. Also not good for the battery pack.

* If the car has a Quick Charge (QC) port, avoid using it to fast charge when the battery temp "gauge" shows more than 6 bars. 5 bars or less is best, but not always possible in Summer.

Younker Nissan, you must be in the Seattle area. I know the service manager there, Charlie. He's a good guy.

Thanks everyone. Yes, I’m close to Seattle area. I live in Covington and teach in Maple Valley (Tahoma School District).

Welcome!

warrenc said:

Younker Nissan, you must be in the Seattle area.

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Indeed. That's what I thought too. Younker Nissan is in Renton, which is southeast of Seattle. I lived in King County for about 9 years.

OP lives in an ideal climate for Leaf batteries.

And here I thought the OP was in NY, Yonkers that is :lol:

I also own a 2014 LEAF SL with 44,000 miles on it. Nice car.

LeftieBiker said:

Several quick suggestions on pitfalls to avoid:

* Don't leave the car plugged in but not charging for more than a few hours. This will kill the 12 volt battery.

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Never had a problem with this. I usually plug the car sometime during the day, it recharges overnight, and I unplug the next day. The earlier cars (2011-2012) (I also owned at 2012) did have this problem if left plugged in for days. This was a bug: the DC to DC converter that charges the 12 V battery would never come on while the car was plugged in and not charging. My car doesn't have this bug, and is an early 2014.

LeftieBiker said:

* Don't leave the car sitting fully charged for more than a couple of hours, especially in Hot weather. This likely increases battery degradation.

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Best practice is to time the charge to complete as soon as reasonable before departure. The difference in battery life is noticeable. Or use timers to keep the charge level below 90% or so most of the time.

LeftieBiker said:

* Don't recharge when the state of charge (SOC) is higher than 80% unless you really have to do it. Also not good for the battery pack.

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Also best practice, but isn't as important. If you find yourself often doing this, there are several ways to avoid it. Ask, or search.

LeftieBiker said:

* If the car has a Quick Charge (QC) port, avoid using it to fast charge when the battery temp "gauge" shows more than 6 bars. 5 bars or less is best, but not always possible in Summer.

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The reason to use the QC is that you need to travel a longer distance than a full battery can give you. So if you are doing a very long drive, you may well get to higher battery temperatures. Battery life gets shorter when battery temperature rises. About twice as fast of loss at 10 C warmer. About 4 times as fast at 20 C warmer. So if you drive a long ways, QC twice and raise your battery temperature from the more normal summer of about 20 C (70F) to 35C or so. Which will shorten the life of the battery by about 3 days. Or if you do this once a year, will shorten battery life by about 1%. So don't worry if you do this once. If you did this every day, would be a problem!

The temperature bars are not at all precise, and 7 Temperature bars could mean a battery temperature as low as 23 C (or 73 F). If you really want to or need to know, I'd suggest you get LeafSpy or similar.

cwerdna said:

OP lives in an ideal climate for Leaf batteries.

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Mostly true. Somewhat closer to the Sound would be even better.

One more comment to the OP.

Make sure your garage stays as cool as reasonable. A south facing, not vented garage I'm aware of would stay quite hot, being as much as 20 C warmer than outside. Put a thermometer in your garage, and compare with outside temperatures. If you have a problem, consider adding insulation to the doors, a high and a low vent, putting a box fan in a window during the summer on a timer so it runs at night, if you have a window that is, or similar.

WetEV said:

cwerdna said:

OP lives in an ideal climate for Leaf batteries.

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Mostly true. Somewhat closer to the Sound would be even better.

One more comment to the OP.

Make sure your garage stays as cool as reasonable. A south facing, not vented garage I'm aware of would stay quite hot, being as much as 20 C warmer than outside. Put a thermometer in your garage, and compare with outside temperatures. If you have a problem, consider adding insulation to the doors, a high and a low vent, putting a box fan in a window during the summer on a timer so it runs at night, if you have a window that is, or similar.

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I second that: I live in Vancouver, WA, which should be ideal for the Leaf battery, but my south-facing insulated garage stays hot all night (it gets hot from leaving the doors open a lot, and also thanks to our ICE car). Overnight lows can be in the mid-50's outside, but the garage will still be ~80F in the morning. While I would love to have a powered garage vent system, that seems a bit overkill since it's just July and August which are the problem months. Instead, I have started leaving the Leaf outside overnight when it's hot in the garage and then bringing it back in to charge when I wake up. Probably not really needed, but since I park it outside in the heat on weekdays, it's nice to start with a cool battery.

Side note: Summers were a lot cooler here when I was a kid. Seemed like it always was raining, even in July! Now the whole West coast is on fire every summer.

9FingerFury said:

Thought I'd introduce myself. I've wanted an EV for a few years, and finally decided to trade in my 2004 GMC Sierra 2500 (6.0 gasser) for a 2014 Nissan LEAF, with just over 40K miles on it. It looks almost like new and I'm very impressed with it.

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Thank you, thank you, thank you! Enjoy at-home fueling with WA state electrons. Tell everyone that you know. One at a time, we will conquer the oil devil.

Thanks again for the tips. I ordered a 30-amp Siemens VersiCharge level 2 and am having a new circuit put in tomorrow for it. My garage stays pretty cool year-round so I’m not too worried about that. The summers have been pretty terrible though.

I’m going to reset my miles per kWh meter tomorrow to see what I’m really averaging.