Living in Apartment Building - Charging questions

What about the battery use becoming more ‘steady’ as it is being used? Is that a thing or am I just being optimistic?

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If you are hoping that the battery's state of health will magically improve by following charging best practices, the answer is no.

Short of replacing the battery or doing some aero mods, you're not going to improve on the range you are getting.

Having said that, make sure the tires have 40 psi in them as otherwise your range will suffer.

LeftieBiker said:

I'd offer slightly different advice: don't worry about charging to 100% as long as you use the car soon after it's charged, and don't worry about driving it down to 10-20%. Running it to an indicated 0% (actually a bit higher in reality) can let any weak cells in the battery trigger a shutdown, even if you have a significant amount of range left. The car will slow and then shut down to protect the weakest cell(s) in the battery.

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1+

Sounds like OP has a 3 kW OBC. Between that, and having to use public charging, it will not be convenient for now. OP will be in *much* better shape when he has access to home charging.

Jctz1 said:

alozzy said:

Charging does slow down at the top end of the pack, but the 2011/2012 L2 charging rate is slow anyways so you won't really notice much tapering off until you get to high 90% SOC.

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Gotcha, thanks a lot for replying to this. What about the battery use becoming more ‘steady’ as it is being used? Is that a thing or am I just being optimistic?

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The closest thing to this would be the onboard BMS learning as close as possible, the true battery capacity. Depending on how convenient it is for you, doing a very deep discharge and then following it up with a full charge helps the BMS learn how much capacity remains. This in turn, helps the GOM do a little better prediction of mileage based on the past driving average. LeafSpy is better in that you can see how much capacity is left and then use it to calculate how much range you have based on real-time usage.

What is means is, if you do did this once every few months (or maybe it happens to be close to this in your daily driving), you will get a better idea of what you "mental" range is in your Leaf. For example, when I still owned my 2013 SV, I knew mentally that I could be anywhere in my home town and always make it home as long as I had at least 6% or more of charge left on the dash no matter if I was running heat or AC, etc. My wife on the other hand, feels like 6% is going to shut down on her at any moment, so she did a lot of "white-knuckle" driving of stress for no reason if she was only a few miles from home.

LeftieBiker said:

That's exactly what it means. Degradation reduces capacity.

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Thanks! Noted.

LeftieBiker said:

I don't understand the question, I'm afraid.

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As in, the battery drains faster when it's fully charged and once it gets to the 50% ish it kind of plateaus. Based on later responses, I can tell this is wishful thinking.

alozzy said:

Short of replacing the battery or doing some aero mods, you're not going to improve on the range you are getting.

Having said that, make sure the tires have 40 psi in them as otherwise your range will suffer.

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That's a possibility I am thinking of in the future, perhaps in 2 or 3 years, checking if I can replace the battery for a 30kWh one. Dunno if anyone in the Lower Mainland does that, though.

Ok, will keep an eye on tire pressure, thanks, @alozzy!

SageBrush said:

Sounds like OP has a 3 kW OBC. Between that, and having to use public charging, it will not be convenient for now. OP will be in *much* better shape when he has access to home charging.

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Yeah, this sounds like it's the case. Hopefully by the end of the year we'll have a more reliable home charging situation.

knightmb said:

The closest thing to this would be the onboard BMS learning as close as possible, the true battery capacity. Depending on how convenient it is for you, doing a very deep discharge and then following it up with a full charge helps the BMS learn how much capacity remains. This in turn, helps the GOM do a little better prediction of mileage based on the past driving average. LeafSpy is better in that you can see how much capacity is left and then use it to calculate how much range you have based on real-time usage.

What is means is, if you do did this once every few months (or maybe it happens to be close to this in your daily driving), you will get a better idea of what you "mental" range is in your Leaf. For example, when I still owned my 2013 SV, I knew mentally that I could be anywhere in my home town and always make it home as long as I had at least 6% or more of charge left on the dash no matter if I was running heat or AC, etc. My wife on the other hand, feels like 6% is going to shut down on her at any moment, so she did a lot of "white-knuckle" driving of stress for no reason if she was only a few miles from home.

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This is interesting. So basically it's like a reset that would let the battery know what the new driving average is, learning faster. I'll think about this, perhaps not the best idea at the moment since we have nowhere to plug it in and fully charge it after it's depleted.

Currently I'm getting roughly 5.2km/kWh on average; we took it on the highway briefly once and it behaved amazingly, and so far I know it doesn't like long hills, going upwards. Going down, the regen loves it. I have been checking A Better Route Planner to have an idea of what the range will be, and actually put in there a trip we made recently and the amount of battery drain is spot on, so so far I trust it.

The 30kwh batteries are gone, because many if not most of them were terrible. The good news is that since warranty replacements are now 40kwh batteries from the Gen II Leaf, those should be available in another year or two, if not sooner, to buy. You'd be looking at a range of roughly 150 miles with a 40kwh battery.

I suggest you not try a BMS reset, assuming that you can get one done. You'd be looking at months before seeing any improvement, and such improvement would be tiny. Focus on driving the car efficiently. You are already getting fantastic efficiency. I'm going to link our Tips & Tricks document. Many of the techniques don't apply to Gen 1.0 Leafs, but many do.

https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=482154

LeftieBiker said:

You are already getting fantastic efficiency.

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5.2 *km*/kWh is not amazing. It could be explained by the weather, traffic, or hilly city.

True enough - I forgot to convert from km. All the more reason to read the T&T guide.

Battery replacement is unlikely, due to ICBC and the salvage market they control.

The best bet is likely in Washington State. They seem to have a perpetual backlog, at EV Works though:

https://www.ev-works.com/

I don't know of anyone who has actually done a battery swap with these guys, but they seem capable:

https://www.precisionautoservice.com/

The hardest part is finding a used, healthy battery pack.

LeftieBiker said:

The 30kwh batteries are gone, because many if not most of them were terrible. The good news is that since warranty replacements are now 40kwh batteries from the Gen II Leaf, those should be available in another year or two, if not sooner, to buy. You'd be looking at a range of roughly 150 miles with a 40kwh battery.

I suggest you not try a BMS reset, assuming that you can get one done. You'd be looking at months before seeing any improvement, and such improvement would be tiny. Focus on driving the car efficiently. You are already getting fantastic efficiency. I'm going to link our Tips & Tricks document. Many of the techniques don't apply to Gen 1.0 Leafs, but many do.

https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=482154

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Been going through the tips and tricks document. The blue e was very helpful! I'll keep it bookmarked for future reference. And I do hope I can find a newer battery in a couple of years. Thanks!

SageBrush said:

5.2 *km*/kWh is not amazing. It could be explained by the weather, traffic, or hilly city.

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I was happy and got brought down back to earth by this one, hahaha. It's fair, it's an older car. We are still figuring out if it adapts to our needs well, which I hope it does, cos I love this car so far.

alozzy said:

Battery replacement is unlikely, due to ICBC and the salvage market they control.

The best bet is likely in Washington State. They seem to have a perpetual backlog, at EV Works though:

https://www.ev-works.com/

I don't know of anyone who has actually done a battery swap with these guys, but they seem capable:

https://www.precisionautoservice.com/

The hardest part is finding a used, healthy battery pack.

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I saw Precision auto when looking for places that could potentially service the car, before buying it. Which reminds me I have some questions about servicing, but I don't know whether to keep this thread alive with those or start a new one...

Thanks again for your continued input in this thread! It has been super helpful.

When I saw the title, I thought there might be a discussion on wiring up an outlet for you. I am a landlord and wonder how this will play out as more and more people will be purchasing electric cars.

Talk to your landlord and see if they'd be willing to split the cost with you to have an electrician run a new wire from your breaker box (service panel) out on to the wall of the building near where you park. Inform them that electric cars will be more prevalent soon and having the new outlet will make his apartment more desirable. for renters, maybe even get $10/month more for the apartment with the charging outlet.

I have a 12-unit building and am already trying to figure out how to get outlets on the exterior for tenants. It shouldn't be more than $100 for me since I know electric code and do my own wiring, which is legal where I am, as long as it's inspected by the local codes enforcement officer.

tony17112acst said:

When I saw the title, I thought there might be a discussion on wiring up an outlet for you. I am a landlord and wonder how this will play out as more and more people will be purchasing electric cars.

Talk to your landlord and see if they'd be willing to split the cost with you to have an electrician run a new wire from your breaker box (service panel) out on to the wall of the building near where you park. Inform them that electric cars will be more prevalent soon and having the new outlet will make his apartment more desirable. for renters, maybe even get $10/month more for the apartment with the charging outlet.

I have a 12-unit building and am already trying to figure out how to get outlets on the exterior for tenants. It shouldn't be more than $100 for me since I know electric code and do my own wiring, which is legal where I am, as long as it's inspected by the local codes enforcement officer.

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Hello!
So the building we live in is a strata. We don't own here, rather we rent from an owner who lives in a different province. The city we live in is, it seems granting money to buildings to retrofit their parking so that EV's can charge, but I asked the strata representative and it seems the city hasn't really moved forward with this yet, so they haven't talked about it since November last year, I believe.
This building is over 15 stories high and the underground parking is 5 or 6 levels, so I am not sure whether it would be possible to just run a cable in order to be able to plug the car in, but I will definitely be contacting them more often to ask about potential solutions. I had thought of reaching out to my landlord to ask to split the cost of installing at least an outlet in our parking space, billed to us, so that we can charge overnight, but with the potential of us moving out of here in the next year or so it seems kind of not worth it...
Thanks for the suggestion though!

Hopefully you have already figured out that BC Hydro, for level 3 DC charging, uses time based rates. So, for our older, slow charging LEAFs, we are paying sometimes as high as $1 per kWh on cold winter days. That's predatory pricing, an absolute rip-off.

So, if your plan is to use mostly public charging infrastructure, then you won't save much vs a fuel efficient gas car. Without access to home or work charging at much more reasonable $0.10 per kWh residential rates, you are better off selling your LEAF.

Yes, BC Hydro rates for DC fast charging in particular are that bad. This is the problem with monopolies, they can do whatever the heck they want.

So, for our older, slow charging LEAFs, we are paying sometimes as high as $1 per kWh on cold winter days.

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I'm curious: how much slower does a 9 bar Gen 1.0 Leaf DC Fast Charge than a Gen 1.5 Leaf with 10 or 11 bars? I'm not sure I've ever seen that discussed.

My 2013 SV is the only LEAF I have ever owned, so I don't know how the DC Fast charging compares to a 2011/2012 with 9 bars.

My LEAF pack's build date is after April of 2013 and it's still got 10 capacity bars remaining. However, the DC Fast charging rate can slow down to about 12 kW when temps go to -5C (Vancouver very rarely gets much colder than that).

alozzy said:

Yes, BC Hydro rates for DC fast charging in particular are that bad

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For an old LEAF, soon to be a rounding error on the BC balance sheet. That is not a predatory pricing strategy. If it is anything at all, I'd say you are being ignored.
For a modern EV they are reasonable, even cheap.

This played out the same way for us in NM at EA.
My LEAF would quickly drop to 15 kW, and at 24¢ a minute I would pay $1 a kWh
If I could charge a Tesla there at 200 kW, I would pay 14¢ a kWh

Just this month though EA switched to volumetric pricing at 42¢ a kWh, so about 3x home rates for everybody.
If EA had a decent business case at the old time based rates I would have chosen for them to continue since old LEAFs are a minority of the charging population and getting smaller by the day.

alozzy said:

Hopefully you have already figured out that BC Hydro, for level 3 DC charging, uses time based rates. So, for our older, slow charging LEAFs, we are paying sometimes as high as $1 per kWh on cold winter days. That's predatory pricing, an absolute rip-off.

So, if your plan is to use mostly public charging infrastructure, then you won't save much vs a fuel efficient gas car. Without access to home or work charging at much more reasonable $0.10 per kWh residential rates, you are better off selling your LEAF.

Yes, BC Hydro rates for DC fast charging in particular are that bad. This is the problem with monopolies, they can do whatever the heck they want.

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Yeah it is pricier definitely, to use DC charging. I found that using level 2, even for an hr and a half, replenishes my battery quite nicely and it is only about a dollar and forty cents for 4kWh.

LeftieBiker said:

I'm curious: how much slower does a 9 bar Gen 1.0 Leaf DC Fast Charge than a Gen 1.5 Leaf with 10 or 11 bars? I'm not sure I've ever seen that discussed.

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If I recall correctly, it was charging at around 1kWh every ten minutes.

BC Hydro has a new tariff as of Apr 2022

https://electricvehicles.bchydro.com/how-use-our-fast-chargers/how-much-does-it-cost-charge-fast-charging-station#:~:text=Prices%20range%20depending%20on%20the,kW%20charging%20(%2B5%25%20GST)

12.07 cents per minute for 25 kW charging (+5% GST)
21.13 cents per minute for 50 kW charging (+5% GST)
27.17 cents per minute for 100 kW charging (+5% GST)

That works out to 13¢ (US) per kWh for a reasonably modern EV. Is alozzy going to continue to whine at the oh so horrible monopoly pricing ??

I say yes.

That looks somewhat encouraging, except that I'm pretty sure that's the rate schedule based on the max charging rate of the machine, not on the actual draw of the car.

That assumption is based on the fact that BC Hydro has a few 25 kW chargers in rural areas, 50 kW chargers at most urban areas, and a few 100 kW chargers at brand new locations. So, the max charging rates of the machine match those of that rate schedule exactly, unlikely to be a coincidence.

With rare exception, EV owners in Vancouver will be charging at 50 kW chargers all the time. So, 21.13 cents per minute will apply to the vast majority of sessions, if my hunch is right.

SageBrush said:

For an old LEAF, soon to be a rounding error on the BC balance sheet. That is not a predatory pricing strategy. If it is anything at all, I'd say you are being ignored.
For a modern EV they are reasonable, even cheap.

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Even when a gas station is busy and cars are queued up, a car owner who fills up and then goes inside for some junk food doesn't pay for gas based on the amount of time spent at the pump.

Also, if a particular car takes a little longer to fill than average, that driver isn't penalized for taking longer at the pump.

With gas, you pay by volume which essentially correlates with units of energy. EV charging should not be any different...

I should also add that BC has a lot of older LEAFs on the road.

If you are so keen to compare to petrol, then pay petrol rates