Nissan issues software update to solve 30 kwh battery issues

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LeftieBiker said:
Your really are a fount of obfuscation, WetEV, which is why I rarely read you. Mileage driven does not correlate to capacity loss, and with good lithium packs like the 4/2013 through 2015 packs, time, while a factor, isn't a large one. So we have my 2013 (and Cwerdna's, IIRC) Leaf losing about 13% capacity over almost five years, which is typical for a Wolf or Lizard pack in a mild climate. Then we have the above pack, losing 9% over something like 12-15 months even after the update. My skepticism over this magical "update," tempered by my always adding that we don't know for sure either way yet,...
FWIW, my 5/2013 built used '13 Leaf is past 5 years old now and SOH is now hovering at around 83.xx%. (Carfax and Autocheck both say my car was manufactured 5/23/13.)

Stats from a few hours ago were:
AHr: 54.80
SOH: 83.82%
Hx: 78.75%
odo: 59,163 miles
L1/L2s: 3793
QCs: 0 (don't have CHAdeMO)

But from about 12 hours before that, they were:
AHr: 54.95
SOH: 84.02%
Hx: 79.13%
odo: 59,133 miles
L1/L2s: 3791
QCs: 0

I'd have to dig back to see what it was at 5 years of age and a bit before.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=511915#p511915 was my post about my 1st capacity bar loss. SOH from that point plus maybe 6 months tended to fluctuate from 83% to 86% or so. Somewhere along the way, I think Turbo3 added the two more digits of "precision" to the Leaf Spy UI.

The climate for my home and work are not that mild. I'm in a hotter part of the South Bay. I've been trying to baby my battery on most days. There's 1 guy at my work who lost 4 bars on his '11 or '12 before the 5 year/60K capacity warranty expired. There's a guy I know from https://www.facebook.com/groups/BayLeafs/ who also lost 4 bars in time. Another guy from the same FB group missed the capacity warranty and jumped ship to Clarity BEV. I think he also now has a Model 3.
 
SageBrush said:
WetEV said:
Let's see. 9% loss at 30k miles, 27% at 90k, 30% at 100k, looks like on track to miss the warranty, which is at about 66%. So why is this a design issue again?
It may not be from Nissan's POV, but a throw-away car at 100k miles is a BIG problem

So if any car dies at 100k miles, that's a BIG problem?? Even if the average is more? I'm old enough to remember when any car making it to 100k was somewhat unusual.

I've long taken the view that battery replacements would be a fact of life with older electric cars. That and people driving cars well past the warranty point.
 
LeftieBiker said:
Your really are a fount of obfuscation, WetEV, which is why I rarely read you.

If you only read people you agree with, you are less likely to learn things.

LeftieBiker said:
Mileage driven does not correlate to capacity loss,

Interesting. Cycle count isn't the only thing that matters, but cycle count matters. Why does Nissan put a mile limit on the battery warranty, if miles don't matter?

LeftieBiker said:
My skepticism over this magical "update," tempered by my always adding that we don't know for sure either way yet, isn't harming anyone and it may be steering people away from making unfortunate choices. Your unbridled optimism and claims of the "error" being eliminated by the update, OTOH, may be causing people to buy 30kwh cars that won't meet their needs in three, two, or even one year. Try to understand that what we write here is taken seriously by others, and that the quasi-authority conferred comes with responsibilities.

What I recommend, is that people buy an electric that meets their needs in adverse conditions with a margin of safety at the warranty replacement limit. If they do so, and until they drive over 100k miles/8 years, the LEAF 30 kWh will meet their needs or the battery will be replaced.

I'd suggest you also consider the "quasi-authority conferred comes with responsibilities."
 
WetEV said:
Where is Tsiah located? It would be nice if he/she would click on their name in the upper right of the screen, then select "profile", then enter something meaningful into the location.
Salt Lake City, Utah
 
WetEV said:
What I recommend, is that people buy an electric that meets their needs in adverse conditions with a margin of safety at the warranty replacement limit.
ok ...

Start with 28 kWh for the '30 kWh' LEAF
Knock off 25% for adverse conditions
Knock off 40% for margin of safety at warranty
Knock off 10% for range anxiety

28*0.75*0.60*0.9 = 11.34 kWh

Or a fully functional range of ~ 45 miles over a decade of use.
 
SageBrush said:
WetEV said:
What I recommend, is that people buy an electric that meets their needs in adverse conditions with a margin of safety at the warranty replacement limit.
ok ...

Start with 28 kWh for the '30 kWh' LEAF
Knock off 25% for adverse conditions
Knock off 40% for margin of safety at warranty
Knock off 10% for range anxiety

28*0.75*0.60*0.9 = 11.34 kWh

Or a fully functional range of ~ 45 miles over a decade of use.

Adverse conditions depends on where you live, of course. Might be more than that in the Yukon.

Range anxiety isn't what you would have if you drove a 30 kWh LEAF over a 45 mile round trip commute most places for a decade or more. Just drive, plug in when you get home and unplug when you leave. A commuting machine. Remember that sometimes, boring is good.
 
WetEV said:
Adverse conditions depends on where you live, of course. Might be more than that in the Yukon.

Range anxiety isn't what you would have if you drove a 30 kWh LEAF over a 45 mile round trip commute most places for a decade or more. Just drive, plug in when you get home and unplug when you leave. A commuting machine. Remember that sometimes, boring is good.

25% for a 4 season climate. You can comment on Seattle.
No range anxiety after 45 miles because of the of ~ 10 miles reserve.

I take it you do not like your own advice when calculated out ?
 
SageBrush said:
WetEV said:
Adverse conditions depends on where you live, of course. Might be more than that in the Yukon.

Range anxiety isn't what you would have if you drove a 30 kWh LEAF over a 45 mile round trip commute most places for a decade or more. Just drive, plug in when you get home and unplug when you leave. A commuting machine. Remember that sometimes, boring is good.

25% for a 4 season climate. You can comment on Seattle.

Seattle has a 4 season climate. Rain, showers, clouds and sometimes even sun.

WetEV said:
I take it you do not like your own advice when calculated out ?

Eh? How did you possibly get that?
 
LeftieBiker said:
Tsiah said:
2016 SL. I was in the low 90% SOH (I think 92-94%) before I got the firmware update. Immediately I saw over 101%SOH after the update and the SOH is now back to 91.62% 3 months later. 72.82Ahr. I have 30330 miles on the car. 88QC's, 1085L1/L2's. It definitely feels like I'm down 9% in range. I don't notice it until the low end of the charge but it seems like that last 20% of the battery goes a lot quicker than it used to.

This is why I'm refusing to say that the software update cures the capacity loss problem. My best GUESS at this point is that there is a bug in the original firmware that affects SOME 30kwh packs in the way that Nissan claims: makes them under-report actual capacity. It doesn't look to me like this cures the design or chemistry issue with those packs that speeds degradation in most of them.

It was never Nissan's claim that it cured capacity loss. The update only restores the 30 kwh pack on the Nissan improvement curve. IOW, the 30 kwh pack should be better than the 24 kwh pack. Granted part of it is simply a larger pack making cycling the same miles easier, etc. But before the update, many were not seeing that. Salt Lake may not be a Phoenix, but its hardly mild there in Summer.
 
It was never Nissan's claim that it cured capacity loss.

Except that what I wrote is "capacity loss problem" - NOT "capacity loss." You can choose to interpret that as "all capacity loss" but that would be silly. Just read it in context.
 
LeftieBiker said:
It was never Nissan's claim that it cured capacity loss.

Except that what I wrote is "capacity loss problem" - NOT "capacity loss." You can choose to interpret that as "all capacity loss" but that would be silly. Just read it in context.

I think we can all agree the term capacity loss implies permanence which obviously was not the case. At least we are back to where the 24 kwh packs left off where some will do great, some will do good and others should have their heads examined for choosing a LEAF.

But is the car to blame? I know a HUGE fan of the Prius who tried for years to make it work in Phoenix and failed. He now drives a... well something (VW I think) that burns liquid fuel. So its not just Nissan. Cars in general suffer there.
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
At least we are back to where the 24 kwh packs left off where some will do great, some will do good and others should have their heads examined for choosing a LEAF.
You must be kidding.

When > 50% reach 10 years old and have at least 80% of new battery capacity remaining, we can say "some will do good."
For now, I'll guess that 80% are below 80% by year 3.
 
SageBrush said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
At least we are back to where the 24 kwh packs left off where some will do great, some will do good and others should have their heads examined for choosing a LEAF.
You must be kidding.

When > 50% reach 10 years old and have at least 80% of new battery capacity remaining, we can say "some will do good."
For now, I'll guess that 80% are below 80% by year 3.

that is where 24 kwh packs left off??

News to me!
 
amissionleaf wrote:

"just to report that my '17 leaf got a firmware update today (10/8/2018). I don't have any leafspy data but I feel the update added about 15 - 20 miles to the remaining range reading. the longest range I saw in last summer was about 125 miles with a full charge. Today the range is around 105 with a full charge before the update, and showing 102 remaining + 22 driven right after update. The car was built 11/2016 and I got it in march 2017, now has 20250 miles on it."


I got a BAFX bt OBD2 scanner today (10/19/2018)(I should have had it prior to the sw update) and got my first battery stats using the leafspy lite from andriod play store. The data is:

AHr=72.72
SOH=91.50%
Hx=76.22%
4 QC and 820 L1/L2

I have never done the QC, so that must be done by dealer before I had it. is this pack in healthy state? according to the formula from this site: https://flipthefleet.org/2018/30-kwh-ni ... reporting/
SOH_post = 57 + 0.43 x SOH_pre, my SOH prior to the update would be only around 80% and should have lost 1 bar already. the calculated AHr_new = 72.72/0.915 = 79.5 was quite bit small (should be around 82?)

Looks like my pack degrades at a rate of 4.32% per 10,000 miles, that leads to the edge of missing the warranty around 64% of SOH at 100,000 miles

Any comment?
 
amissionleaf said:
Looks like my pack degrades at a rate of 4.32% per 10,000 miles, that leads to the edge of missing the warranty around 64% of SOH at 100,000 miles

Any comment?
Just as Nissan intended, vomit on their collective corporate souls.
HOWEVER, the longer warranty and starting capacity compared to my 24 kWh LEAF is a marked improvement. Enjoy the silver lining, particularly if you bought the car during the fire-sale
 
My leaf has just under 11,000 miles. It was purchased in 4/17. After the software update on 10/2/18, the SOH according to Leaf Spy pro went from 88% to 94.6%. Now after just over three weeks it is down to 93.4%, and has varied between 95.12% and 93.04%. The HX value has been steadily declining and is now hovering around 80%. The only other change that I have noticed is that the value of SOH does not vary as much with types of driving as he had before the software update.

In this short time it appears to mean that the battery may be continuing to degrade at a similar rate even though the upgrade raised the SOH. I have not seen any change in the GOM estimates or in the actual driving miles. I still get about 110 miles from a 100% charge down to about 20% state of charge. I try not to go below that. As you might guess my driving is pretty conservative. I try to avoid using the brakes as much as possible. I also attempt to keep the car as cool as I can, parking in the shade and putting a sun shade in the front window when I am unable to park in the shade.

I live in St. Louis MO, with summers in the mid 90 degree range. It seems to me that the battery degradation is still rather high for such low mileage.
 
Degradation seems to be sensitive to time as well as mileage so the degradation will probably continue at about this rate regardless of how many miles the car is driven. Keeping it cool and keeping the SOC away from the high and low extremes seems to be about the only thing that can be done to slow the degradation. More driving = more charging so there may be some slight benefit from lower miles but it's probably not much.
 
I am sorted surprised that there have not been any additional posts describing experience since having the batter software update.

It has been a month and 1/2 since I had the software update was installed on my 2017 Leaf. Other than going from 88% SOH to now around 93% the biggest change that I have noticed is the the SOH reported by Leafspy does not change with the type of driving or charging. For about a month the SOH settled in at 93.33%. In a little over a month it has decreased to 93.08%. It has been amazingly consistent. The other thing that I have noticed is that the Hx value has continued to slowly decline. It is now at 79.5% having been just above 81% after the software update.

I am hoping that battery degradation has slowed but it is two soon tho make any predictions. I would like to hear from more people about their experience.
 
Here is my experience to date:

March 2018 before update:
Ahr 73.27 SOH 92.19 Hx 86.09

March 2018 after update:
76.98. 96.86. 86.81

Two weeks after update:
77.22. 97.16. 87.39

Dec 12 2018:
76.59. 96.36. 85.81

I would not get concerned about small differences; after 18 months, my degradation is less than 4%.
 
SageBrush said:
When > 50% reach 10 years old and have at least 80% of new battery capacity remaining, we can say "some will do good."
For now, I'll guess that 80% are below 80% by year 3.
And that is a guess that has no basis in the real world as far as I know. Next month is 2019. That means a fair number of 30 kwh packs will have been on the road for 3 years quite soon. Okay, 80% below 80% by year 3. Let's check back and see how you did with that projection.
 
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