2019 "60 kWh" Leaf e-Plus

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GerryAZ said:
cwerdna said:
DougWantsALeaf said:
It doesn’t seem like heat is nearly as bad on the newer chemistry.
Are you talking about apparent capacity loss?

If so, Leaf Plus hasn't been out nearly long enough. It took (IIRC), two summers in hot clients for '11 and '12 Leafs to show capacity loss in the form of capacity bars gone. Back then, Leaf Spy didn't exist.

Leaf Plus has been shipping not much more than a year and Leaf in the US has been getting its butt kicked by Tesla in terms of EV sales. And, many more EV/PHEV choices are on the market now than back then.

My 2011 dropped down to 10 capacity bars after about 12 months and down to 8 bars after a little over 2 years. The 2015 was MUCH better, but was at 8 bars with several weak cells when I traded it in after 4-1/2 years and 82,436 miles. It is too soon to tell for the 2019, but initial indications for the 62 kWh battery look fairly good based on Leaf Spy readings after 9 months and 16,185 miles: AHr=171.35, SOH=97.15%, HX=111.52% (initial readings on 8/11/2019 at 64 miles were 175.15, 99.29%, and 98.19% respectively). (171.35/175.15)*100=97.8% of original capacity. The first two 90-day adjustments were small increases, but the last one was a decrease in April. That decrease may be due to fewer miles per day with less freeway driving and more days between charges since I started teleworking in early March.

I think your case is going to be quite telling. Although you missed most of the Summer, we all know that Phoenix Summers go far beyond what the calendar says. Its interesting your first two adjustments went up. Your stats are quite a bit higher than anyone else's I have seen. Everyone else seems to be hovering around 95% despite as much as 6 months difference in time of ownership.
 
My charging and use patterns may be different than others in that I typically charge fully overnight and then drive the car several days until the remaining range is less than I anticipate needing the next day. Therefore, the battery gets cycled through most of its SOC range each charge cycle. Also, the 62 kWh battery has enough range to help me avoid the expense of DCQC. I have only used DCQC's three times and could have avoided the first two if I had not wanted to experiment with DCQC. Since charging time for the larger battery is longer, there have been times when the overnight charges did not complete by the time I was ready to leave the next morning so the charging was stopped early. In those cases, the SOC was still around 90% on the dash display and the range was adequate for a couple days. I never park for extended time with high SOC so parking at the airport or my office for out-of-town trips is always at less than 80% (usually lower).

I did not change my charging pattern when my daily mileage dropped starting in early March so the car sits at higher SOC the first couple days after each charge. I wonder if this may have contributed to the drop for the April adjustment or if the drop was due to less freeway driving and less frequent charging.
 
GerryAZ said:
My charging and use patterns may be different than others in that I typically charge fully overnight and then drive the car several days until the remaining range is less than I anticipate needing the next day. Therefore, the battery gets cycled through most of its SOC range each charge cycle. Also, the 62 kWh battery has enough range to help me avoid the expense of DCQC. I have only used DCQC's three times and could have avoided the first two if I had not wanted to experiment with DCQC. Since charging time for the larger battery is longer, there have been times when the overnight charges did not complete by the time I was ready to leave the next morning so the charging was stopped early. In those cases, the SOC was still around 90% on the dash display and the range was adequate for a couple days. I never park for extended time with high SOC so parking at the airport or my office for out-of-town trips is always at less than 80% (usually lower).

I did not change my charging pattern when my daily mileage dropped starting in early March so the car sits at higher SOC the first couple days after each charge. I wonder if this may have contributed to the drop for the April adjustment or if the drop was due to less freeway driving and less frequent charging.

Good question. It almost seems like the drop is more an evaluation of our driving/charging habits.

** You drive a lot so charge to full several times a week. Low degradation (even increase in stats)
** Drive less but still charge to full. Car feels you don't need that much charge so it "penalizes" you

On my two adjustments; the driving was completely different. Picked up car in November. Drove little averaging under 1000 miles a month. Almost all DC charging but only twice a week. Adjustment; over 2½% loss.

Next Quarter starts out the same but then, road trips get mixed in and a bit more home charging. I start labor share which is just under 100 miles 4 days a week (4 weeks of this before adjustment) with DC charging every work day. adjustment; 1.2% so less than half the loss.

This Quarter; Only a little of the Nissan perks left so will flipping to mostly AC charging (unless the country really opens up which I am not expecting this early) So another Quarter with a significant change in charging/driving habits.

But then again; could all be coincidence
 
Have you all seen this website?

https://www.ecalc.ch/evcalc.php

I love how it breaks out your energy usage (drag, rolling resistance, etc..). Assuming its pretty accurate, it gives you a good idea of the relative suggested range of the different EVs at different speeds.
 
Astros said:
My fifth adjustment finished recently, and was by far the smallest yet. I've had my Leaf+ for a little over a year now and have just under 15K miles on the odometer, and am at 95.5% SOH according to LeafSpy.

Adjustments and weeks from ownership:
8 week 1 aHr
20 week 1.3 aHr
33 week 1.37 aHr (I probably just didn't catch this one exactly when it happened)
44 week 0.25 aHr
56 week 0.05 aHr

Apparently I mis-timed my capacity drops, because when I checked today I saw my biggest drop yet. That last drop was really 1.6aHr, not 0.05! We're driving much less lately and I only check LeafSpy every two weeks, so I must have just missed it the last time. Sadly, this now puts me at 94.5% SOH at exactly 15,000 miles, a whole percent worse than I had thought.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
Astros,

My SOH and time with the car is pretty identical. I am believing more and more this is algorithm at work, and less actual SOH.

Yes, I think so too. Especially since so many Leafs in different locations are showing exactly the same behavior. I think it will be very interesting to see what the reported SOH is when the first Leaf+'s start losing their first bar.
 
Astros said:
DougWantsALeaf said:
Astros,

My SOH and time with the car is pretty identical. I am believing more and more this is algorithm at work, and less actual SOH.

Yes, I think so too. Especially since so many Leafs in different locations are showing exactly the same behavior. I think it will be very interesting to see what the reported SOH is when the first Leaf+'s start losing their first bar.

I have to agree. I am not a proponent of tracking my true range by charging to full and running the pack to near dead so I don't have that baseline to check but wondering if that would even work. The question now becomes is the algorithm hiding a portion of the capacity? If so, then why? TBH; I wouldn't have any of these questions if "all" of us were in lockstep on degradation rates but then we have Gerry who stands alone with a significantly (not really but when one percent is perceived as Earth shattering as we LEAFers tend to you...well, you know :roll: ) lower rate of degradation under the worst possible conditions; full charging, not charging daily and living in Phoenix.

Everything he does "should" not be good. But in his defense; LEAF packs have demonstrated good hardiness when driven hard. Recently at WELL over 150,000 miles, A Washingtonian lost his "first" capacity bar on his 2015. It would appear that his rate of degradation was very low until he was up around 150,000 miles (had SOH still over 90%) then it accelerated quite a bit losing his first bar at 155,280 miles.

All things equal, Gerry could lose his first bar at well over 300,000 miles. Now if we look at "lighter" drivers, we have another Washingtonian who was driving a 2015 as well losing his first bar at 92,000 miles. His usage was in the average range at 17,000 miles a year. So us lighter users could see us losing our first bars at 200,000 miles or so. Expect even lighter users to have less mileage when that bar drops. So we are starting to see a baseline on the 2015's anyway. I am guessing we are still one or two years away from seeing that same line on 40 kwh packs so we have a long way to go.

Now what we don't have is LEAF Spy history on either of the two LEAFers mentioned above. The first LEAFer only started posting his stats regularly when he was at 130,000 or so miles? (The earliest post I could find was him at 92% SOH @ 141,000 but semi sure he had posted earlier)

Finally; we all know that battery stats wandering upwards is not really possible at least not in the way the earlier LEAF packs reacted. It was an obvious programming error causing the bouncy readings which was quite dramatically addressed starting with the 40 kwh packs. So everything was hunky dory until a year in, our "declining like clockwork" stats went up. Sometimes dramatically.

IOW; Despite the great progress Nissan has made, its still a work in progress.
 
I would agree. My guess is by buffering against an algorithm which paces the battery out over 8 years, they can reduce warranty claims on the cars. If battery performs better say post 18 months vs model, it gives a little back. I guess that’s ok?? It just makes you feel a bit bad here at year 1.

Anyway, My kids drove Chicago to Milwaukee (Muskego technically) and back (Much of the highway at full 70+ speeds) with battery to spare, so guess maybe I don’t care that much yet. My kids don’t care about massaging out the tenths of a kWh on these drives like I do, and were fine at the 3.7-3.9 (including a few miles of local roads some slower freeway sections) efficiency.

Unrelated, just tripped across this now dated article.

https://www.alexonautos.com/rangeexplained/

Those on the board with an SR+ and a Leaf, do you find (near sea level) you can get 240 miles of 70mph freeway realistically? The Leaf Plus can only do about 200 without riding with traffic of favorable winds.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
All

Do you think the Plus with the 16” wheels accelerates faster than the 17” wheels? Does turning traction control off help much?

TC is fully dependent on your tires. Look at any dragster. TC is obviously not in their tool box.
 
Ok, here is my latest conspiracy thought.

The Leaf BMS starts the battery at or just under 60kW, or a 3.3% buffer on the battery, not really enough for long term endurance. Still, this allows it to reach the 215/226 EPA rating for testing. The battery then steps down over the next year, down to 56-7ish kW, or an 8-10+% buffer, which appears to be what other manufacturers (except Tesla) are settling on. From that point forward, it then modulates based on keeping that buffer. As the battery is only slowly reducing from that point, we see the flattening.

This does not explain the AZ Leaf Plus, loving the Sun and heat with a higher SOH at over 1 year. Lucky 3 sigma battery which was originally 64kW??
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
All

Do you think the Plus with the 16” wheels accelerates faster than the 17” wheels? Does turning traction control off help much?

The difference in diameter is not enough to make a significant difference. My experience is that the 16-inch diameter OEM Bridgestone Ecopias that came on the 2011 provided better dry and wet traction than the 17-inch diameter OEM Michelin Energy Saver A/S tires that came on the 2015 and 2019. Traction is the main issue for acceleration (especially with the Plus models) so better tires will improve the acceleration over the OEM Michelins. The best acceleration is obtained by modulating the accelerator pedal to get maximum torque without wheel slip so there is no benefit to turning traction control off as long as you modulate the accelerator correctly.

The last tires I put on the 2015 were Ecopias one size larger than original (215/55 R17 vs. original 215/50 R17) and both acceleration and range were improved over the previous tires. I recently replaced the OEM Michelins on the 2019 with 215/55 R17 Bridgestone DriveGuard run flat tires to minimize the risk of driving around without a spare. The DriveGuards are significantly heavier and slightly larger (increased rotating mass) than the OEM Michelins, but offer much better traction. The acceleration seems to be about the same or slightly better--increased traction makes up for the slightly larger diameter and significantly increased rotating mass, but range is reduced.
 
Question to the board. In my 2013, the gids would always slowly increase in the spring as the temperatures increased. It was never more than a half dozen gids, but it would go up.

In my 2019 Plus, I have not experienced that this spring. Any anyone else seen increases between winter and summer outside temperatures? Admittedly, I don't fully charge very often, but curious what others have measured.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
Question to the board. In my 2013, the gids would always slowly increase in the spring as the temperatures increased. It was never more than a half dozen gids, but it would go up.

In my 2019 Plus, I have not experienced that this spring. Any anyone else seen increases between winter and summer outside temperatures? Admittedly, I don't fully charge very often, but curious what others have measured.

To make a LONG story short. The ideology that charging habits or temperature will significantly change the usable capacity of the pack is simply not possible.

The fluctuations you saw was more likely algorithm errors than any actual capacity change. Nissan has simply improved the algorithm. Now there still remains the question of why some 90 adjustments go up which isn't really possible.
 
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