Range projections for 8-bar 2012 LEAF for next 3-8 years and subsequent disposal

[joe77]

Hello everyone,

I bought my 2012 used with 12 battery health bars in December 2014. Just lost my 4th battery bar, at this rate it’s about one bar per year so far. The car can do 50 miles to empty on a good day now (typically 4 miles per kWh on my 25-mile-one-way work commute, which is all I use the car for), maybe could’ve done 70 miles when I bought it. What should I expect for range for the next 8 years until the car is 15 years old? Will it continue to lose one battery health bar per year until is has zero? Will it continue to lose around 5 miles of max range per year until it can only go 10 miles? If that’s so, I reckon it will not get me to work on a bad day (I park outside and Philadelphia can be in single digits Fahrenheit for several days running) starting in about three years (ie 5 battery bars and 35 mile range on a good day). Does that seem like a reasonable projection, or is it too pessimistic? Is there a chance it could do 25 miles for the next 8 years? What in the world do I do with the car once it cannot even make 25 mile trips—is there a market for such a car? Can I just take it to the dump? What will they do with the battery—surely they can’t just toss it in with the other car trash. Will Nissan take it back?

Thank you!

[cwerdna]

I bought my 2012 used with 12 battery health bars in December 2014. Just lost my 4th battery bar, at this rate it’s about one bar per year so far.

What should I expect for range for the next 8 years until the car is 15 years old? Will it continue to lose one battery health bar per year until is has zero?

Not sure why you bought a '12.... it seems like the chemistry in 4/2013 and later built Leafs thru model year '14 are better. But, that might not have been known back in Dec 2014.

My 5/2013 built '13 Leaf in a hotter part of the SF Bay Area is still at 11 bars (Leaf Spy SOH around 82.xx%) and I'm past 64K miles. We've seen cases of '13 Leafs in mild climates have 11 or still 12 bars after 90K miles.

It's hard to extrapolate given Leaf has only been out since Dec 2010. Some have done better than others based upon climate and charging habits. The worst I've sen so far was a 9 bar loser (https://www.facebook.com/groups/nissan. ... 885581945/, in a closed FB group, you'll need to join). Heck, even someone in the mild PNW with an '11 that wasn't lost his 7th bar in Dec 2017 (https://www.facebook.com/groups/seattle ... 620968334/).

I just spoke to a guy with a '12 earlier tonight in the parking garage at work and IIRC, he said he's down 3 bars (which is better than I expected).

I think your best bet short of buying Nisan's crazy prices of a new battery (low $7Ks to $8500+) is to have someone like a Cor (http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=21997, see his posts there) swapping all the modules from a newer pack in good shape from a wrecked Leaf into your casing.

Can you update your location info via your user name in the upper right > User Control Panel > Profile tab? That way, we don't need to ask in future posts/threads or do sleuthing to deduce it.

[LeftieBiker]

The 2012 is only one year younger than the oldest Leafs in existence, so we don't really know what happens in 'end stage range loss' or what will happen in eight years. There are two theories I know about: at about 2-3 bars the range will tank and the car will barely move (there are four bar-remaining Leafs around now, and probably a three or two. Or 50), or that The car will still have some range down to 1 or even 0 bars. As for loss per year: the original "Canary pack" loses capacity for several reasons: heat, time passing, and sitting at high charge for long periods, especially in hot weather. We don't know the exact details of your use case, so you may or may not be able to slow the loss a bit. Sadly, one bar per year isn't bad for one of those early packs...

[LeftieBiker]

Not sure why you bought a '12.... it seems like the chemistry in 4/2013 and later built Leafs thru model year '14 are better. But, that might not have been known back in Dec 2014.

It was late Summer of '15 when I figured it out, and I seem to remember you writing that people on Facebook did at about the same time. It required enough time to both show multiple bar losses on the early builds, and show no bar losses on the later builds. That would be about two years.

[cwerdna]

^^^
Ugh! Thanks for the reminder. You're probably right.

Now that I think about it, I bought my '13 in July 2015 and at the time, I don't think I had any idea that any particular build month would be better or worse than others. I just happened to buy a 5/2013 build and got lucky. If there was data/some suggestions that 4/2013+ Leafs were better, I might've been a disbeliever or skeptical, back then (wanting to see more data points).

I originally figured the battery on the car I'd be getting would be just as crappy as the ones that came before. I honestly didn't expect I'd still be at 11 bars in May 2019 or even Jan 2019.

BTW, the 9 bar loser in the post you probably can't see posted his pic in Dec 2017. Car was a JDM Leaf imported to Sri Lanka. He was at 176,418 km --> 109,621 miles. He posted an update in Aug 2018 saying he got the battery changed and now has a 10 bar car.

[LeftieBiker]

Now that I think about it, I bought my '13 in July 2015 and at the time, I don't think I had any idea that any particular build month would be better or worse than others. I just happened to buy a 5/2013 build and got lucky. If there was data/some suggestions that 4/2013+ Leafs were better, I might've been a disbeliever or skeptical, back then (wanting to see more data points).

Yes, you were skeptical for quite a while. If you think that you came close to disaster, I leased my 2013 SV in April - the first good month ever for Leaf batteries...I knew nothing about the cars at all, and only got interested because of the $99/month Leaf S lease offer then.

[Lothsahn]

And I stumbled right into disaster. I bought a cheap (for around here) 2011 with a known bad battery, knowing I could swap it in a couple years for $5500 for a brand new warrantied battery.

And then Nissan upped the replacement cost. The next day.

To answer the OP's question, nobody really knows. What I can tell you is that my 2011 was 7 bars (soon to be 6), with 55% SOH. I got 35-40 miles (depending on how I drive), 45 if I'm really careful in summer, and 20 miles in Winter. I use 44 psi PureContact tires with good traction, but they have a lot more resistance than Ecopias, so I take a range hit there. I also live in very hilly terrain, which hurts the range too. The real question is "when will batteries start having random catastrophic cell failures?" When that happens, the car will refuse to move. Haven't seen any posts about that yet, however, so maybe Nissan got that part of the engineering right.

Charging religiously to 80% and garage stored with only level 1 charging, my car lost 2% SOH in a year and ~5k miles.

[rmay635703]

The real question is "when will batteries start having random catastrophic cell failures?" When that happens, the car will refuse to move. Haven't seen any posts about that yet, however, so maybe Nissan got that part of the.

There have been three pack failures I’ve read about here, one is ongoing and Nissan is fighting with the meaning of is.
The other some time back got a different pack, 3rd I don’t remember what happened.

It does appear a cell failure in a very low capacity pack is very possible despite being “rare”