2015 SL with low mileage but look at LeafSpy

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bartable

New member
Joined
May 25, 2018
Messages
3
hi all,

I'm in the market for a used Leaf and for the past while have been reading posts about what to look for when using LeafSpy to look at the health of a Leaf's battery.

Today I took a test drive of a very low mileage Leaf: a 2015 SL with only 10,600 miles on it. Before the test drive I popped on the ODB2 device and fired up LeafSpy. But given the low mileage I was a bit surprised at what I saw and was wondering if anyone could comment on it.

here is a link to see the photo:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ythuw4b6koshi6/LeafSpy.PNG


I guess I was surprised to see SOH at 86%, Hx at 76.85% and AHr at 53. Do those numbers not seem greatly diminished for only 11K miles?

For total charges, it is showing only 20 quick charges and 268 L1/L2s. Does that sounds like a BMS reset?
Assuming the car has been owned for 3 years, it means the owner charged it only once every ~4 days which seems a bit crazy (although maybe that's why so low mileage?)

For context the car was bought and owned in Palo Alto. So summers can be warm, but not smoking hot for months on end.


Anyhow, while it looked like a screaming deal the CarFax showed it had been in an accident so I took a pass for now.

Curious to hear what you all make of the battery info though.

thanks
 
bartable said:
Today I took a test drive of a very low mileage Leaf: a 2015 SL with only 10,600 miles on it. Before the test drive I popped on the ODB2 device and fired up LeafSpy. But given the low mileage I was a bit surprised at what I saw and was wondering if anyone could comment on it.

here is a link to see the photo:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8ythuw4b6koshi6/LeafSpy.PNG


I guess I was surprised to see SOH at 86%, Hx at 76.85% and AHr at 53. Do those numbers not seem greatly diminished for only 11K miles?

For total charges, it is showing only 20 quick charges and 268 L1/L2s. Does that sounds like a BMS reset?
Assuming the car has been owned for 3 years, it means the owner charged it only once every ~4 days which seems a bit crazy (although maybe that's why so low mileage?)

For context the car was bought and owned in Palo Alto. So summers can be warm, but not smoking hot for months on end.
The numbers are plausible if the previous driver didn't take good care of the battery (e.g. left it at high state of charge/100% for long periods of time and left the car out in the sun in the heat).

I doubt it's a BMS reset with that climate (I live in the South Bay) and with those numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if you could bring them up if you charged to full and discharged to near empty a few times.

The L1 and L2 count has quirks: http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=452126#p452126. Perhaps it was actually meant to measure something else like contactor cycle count? Nissan has never acknowledged nor released documentation on anything retrieved by Leaf Spy. Regarded the bolded part, yep. And, if they didn't use timers that could also account for the low L1 and L2 count.

FWIW, my non-lizard battery used 5/2013 built '13 Leaf (was serviced in Santa Clara, CA by the previous driver) that I bought in July 2015 is of tonight was at:
AHr: 54.33
SOH: 83.07%
Hx: 77.35%
odo: whoops, I have bogus number from my screenshot, but I'm past 60.7K miles
QCs: 0 (this Leaf has no CHAdeMO)
L1/L2s: 3889 (I DO use the charging timers virtually every day)

I lost the 1st capacity bar in Nov 2017. It's still at 11 bars.
 
My 2013 LEAF LeafSpy from yesterday reports 56.16 Ahr and 86 SOH. I'm not sure why the two LS reports have similar SOH readings but the Ahr vary by ~ 5%.

OP: Question reset if the numbers look too *good*. That is not this car. Smart buyers pretty much ignore odometer readings in the LEAF. It is all about the battery health and that varies mostly by climate and to some degree by owner behavior. By the way, 53 Ahr in the car you looked at is right around the time that the 12th capacity bar drops off.
 
SageBrush said:
By the way, 53 Ahr in the car you looked at is right around the time that the 12th capacity bar drops off.

True dat. I'm around that on my second battery pack I've dropped a bar.
 
Thanks for the responses all. I walked on the car as I was trying to reconcile the LeafSpy info and then also found out about the accident. The accident looks like it was truly just a fender bender - which is to say that you can't see any evidence that it was in an accident.

If the battery is in good/reasonable condition then it might be a keeper for someone. It's still for sale on Craigslist at $13K - but they were down to $12,300 when I walked out and would probably go lower.
 
bartable said:
If the battery is in good/reasonable condition then it might be a keeper for someone. It's still for sale on Craigslist at $13K - but they were down to $12,300 when I walked out and would probably go lower.
What a ridiculous price. I paid $8,300 two years ago for a car in excellent condition and better range.
 
SageBrush said:
bartable said:
If the battery is in good/reasonable condition then it might be a keeper for someone. It's still for sale on Craigslist at $13K - but they were down to $12,300 when I walked out and would probably go lower.
What a ridiculous price. I paid $8,300 two years ago for a car in excellent condition and better range.

When prices were generally lower.
 
SageBrush said:
bartable said:
If the battery is in good/reasonable condition then it might be a keeper for someone. It's still for sale on Craigslist at $13K - but they were down to $12,300 when I walked out and would probably go lower.
What a ridiculous price. I paid $8,300 two years ago for a car in excellent condition and better range.
But your car is an S. SL has WAY more equipment (e.g. nav system, better stereo, LED headlights, leather interior, fog lights, TCU for Carwings/NissanConnect, alloy wheels, etc.)

It's an apples to oranges comparison.
 
cwerdna said:
SageBrush said:
bartable said:
If the battery is in good/reasonable condition then it might be a keeper for someone. It's still for sale on Craigslist at $13K - but they were down to $12,300 when I walked out and would probably go lower.
What a ridiculous price. I paid $8,300 two years ago for a car in excellent condition and better range.
But your car is an S. SL has WAY more equipment (e.g. nav system, better stereo, LED headlights, leather interior, fog lights, TCU for Carwings/NissanConnect, alloy wheels, etc.)

It's an apples to oranges comparison.
Look at auction prices between trim levels of otherwise similar cars. When I checked it was about $500
 
SageBrush said:
cwerdna said:
SageBrush said:
What a ridiculous price. I paid $8,300 two years ago for a car in excellent condition and better range.
But your car is an S. SL has WAY more equipment (e.g. nav system, better stereo, LED headlights, leather interior, fog lights, TCU for Carwings/NissanConnect, alloy wheels, etc.)

It's an apples to oranges comparison.
Look at auction prices between trim levels of otherwise similar cars. When I checked it was about $500
I don't have access to that nor a Manheim account. From the old data we have at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=521714#p521714, the delta for base MMR between S and SL was $2,350.

The SL is NOT similar to the S at all. I had an SV w/both packages which was basically an SL w/premium but w/o leather and w/o the rear (lame) spoiler solar panel.
 
The better metric would be average dealer used selling price for an SL vs an S for a given year. There, there would be some closeness between an S with Charge Package and an SL or SV without Premium, but a loaded SL would be at least a couple of thousand more than any S in most places.
 
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