Early Adopter Mistake - Running on Empty

Another update. I am now over 116,637 miles on my replacement battery and I finally lost my first Capacity Bar (11 out of 12). I'm still charging 100% during the week and 80% on the weekend. This is a dramatic difference in battery capacity from my original battery.

Hey first off thanks or posting the details so often. I am actually amazed you stuck with the car for so long. Kudos.

I am not sure but it looks like you got your new battery at about 73k miles and now you are at 116k, so you lost the bar (~15%) after 43k miles ; 15%/43k = 3.4% per 10k miles, which sounds really good for these cars. My 2015 is at 13%/35k = 3.7% per 10k.

Another update: I am now over 137,596 miles on my replacement battery and I lost my second Capacity Bar (10 out of 12). I'm still charging 100% during the week and 80% on the weekend. No issues making it to work and back on a single charge, but I usually only have one or two bars left. Fortunately, I do have the option to charge at work, assuming a charging parking spot is available.

Also, I decided to pre-order a Tesla Model Y (Long Range Rear Wheel Drive), which I already have a reservation for. My plan is to give my Nissan Leaf to my Son, once my Model Y arrives. He recently turned 16 and has a very short commute. It should be a great first car and it'll be interesting to see how much longer it lasts. It'll also be interesting to see if and when I get my Model Y Long Range RWD, considering it is no longer being offered.

So it's generally about 50,000 miles from 12 -> 10 bars. Sounds about right!

At a cost of $5500 per battery, that's 11 cents a mile. Not sustainable.

I did about 75,000 over 45 months before losing the 2nd bar. Given Leafer and I got ours for free it's fairly sustainable in our cases.

My second traction battery has 80k miles on it and is probably close to losing its second capacity bar. It has been in service for 53 months. I paid for it.

Edit- spoke too soon. It dropped the 2nd capacity bar this morning at 49.02Ahr.

That's amazing. Congrats on getting a great battery. Is your Nissan Leaf a 2011?

We lost the first bar on the replacement battery in our 2011 at ~92,000 miles last month. Since the original battery was down one bar at ~31K miles, the replacement battery is performing almost exactly the same as the original, which was replaced at 61K miles for $1200.

Almost a year ago, we bought a 2019 Chevy Bolt which puts the Leaf to shame in terms of range (and hopefully longevity) of the battery. The Leaf has been retired to around-town errand use.

TT

Yes, May 2011 delivery.

Leafer77 said:

That's amazing. Congrats on getting a great battery. Is your Nissan Leaf a 2011?

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coleafrado said:

So it's generally about 50,000 miles from 12 -> 10 bars. Sounds about right!
At a cost of $5500 per battery, that's 11 cents a mile. Not sustainable.

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True. But today's best EVs have 60 kWh batteries for about the same price as the 2011-2015 LEAF with a 24 kWh battery. The 60 kWh battery even at end of life will have far more range than the original LEAF, so if you look at today's best EVs, we're probably doing just fine.

How are the 30 and 40 kWh LEAF batteries doing compared to the 24 kWh batteries?

If anything, it defeats Nissan's argument that smaller batteries (<100 miles of range) could have ever been sustainable. Usable lifetimes increase with battery capacity squared.