Limiting charge to LESS than 80%

rasgaroo said:

It's not as hot as in Singapore, but close. At night the temperature goes down to around 75 - 80 degrees. In the midday, it's around 82 - 86 degrees. I have never seen a leaf here that is lower or higher than 6 bars.

For some reason, probably because of the wolf and lizard battery packs, 2014 and 2015 leafs do much better around where I live. I have never seen a 2013 leaf around here that has higher than 5 battery bars these days. Almost all 2014/2015 cars still have around 8 - 11 bars.

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Based upon my (and others) experience in Arizona, the 2015 battery does significantly better in the heat than the earlier ones. The 62 kWh battery in my 2019 is doing better than the 2015 after almost a year and almost 20k miles. Your approach to keep the charge level below 80% is good since you have limited mileage needs. Use the charge timers or just unplug by depressing the latch handle on the J1772 connector--you will not hurt the battery, onboard charger, or EVSE. It might be good to discharge deeply and charge to full once in a while (maybe once every 4 to 6 months) to allow the LBC (lithium battery controller also referred to as BMS for battery management system) to balance the cells and update its estimates of battery health. To put your temperatures in perspective, the official average temperature at the airport in Phoenix was 99.0 degrees F for the month of July. We have already set records for the most days in a year that the low temperature at night did not drop below 90 F. The high last Thursday was 118 F.

I just leased a 2020 LEAF SV 40KW. Did they take away the 80% charging ability on the new LEAF's? I can't seem to find anything about it in the manual.

They took that away in North America in 2014, I'm afraid, and it never returned.

kitra said:

I just leased a 2020 LEAF SV 40KW. Did they take away the 80% charging ability on the new LEAF's? I can't seem to find anything about it in the manual.

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Battery capacity is measured in kWh, not "KW". Leftie's correct.

You will have to use other means to limit it, if you care (e.g. charging timers, unplugging early, or an EVSE that lets you set at target % SoC (which would be an educated guess, at best)).

Thanks very much. My previous LEAF was a 2013 so I used the 80% limiter. The new 2020 we leased for 2 years and plan to get the most out of the batteries. Going to avoid quick charging. Was wishing it would limit the charge level.

kitra said:

Thanks very much. My previous LEAF was a 2013 so I used the 80% limiter. The new 2020 we leased for 2 years and plan to get the most out of the batteries. Going to avoid quick charging. Was wishing it would limit the charge level.

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Do you get dinged when you turn it in if the battery is diminished a certain amount? If not, it's a short lease so I'd just use it to the max.

Do you get dinged when you turn it in if the battery is diminished a certain amount?

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No. You do have to have annual battery reports, but AFAIK the only penalty for battery abuse is the battery warranty becoming void if the battery is exposed to (from memory) 120+ temps for 24 hours or more. The annual battery report is so optimistic that I'm not sure I've ever heard of anyone getting several of them in a row.

When I replaced the plug on my Nissan EVSE, I found the yellow wire which runs from the EVSE to a thermistor in the plug (if the plug gets too hot, the EVSE shuts off). I added a 12-hour timer in-line with that yellow wire. To charge, you have to twist the 12-hour knob. At 120 volt US level-1, the Nissan EVSE added about 4.5% SOC per hour, so if I wanted to add 20%, I'd twist it to around 4.5 hours. By interrupting the thermistor wire, I thought that would provide a gentler disconnect.

BTW, I believe that the J1772 spec doesn't require contactors for level-1 charging at 120v and 6A. So if current is low enough, whoever wrote that spec thought it was OK if the power was cut.