2023 60 kWH vs 2022 62 kWH?

[Flyct]

What’s the deal with the Plus battery rating in model year 2023? Previous years the Plus battery was a 62 kWH battery but for model year 2023 it’s rated at 60 kWH.

Is this a different battery or just the same battery with less rating?

[knightmb]

It's possible for both.

For example, my 2020 Leaf Plus had a battery "rating" of 62 kWh, but was advertised as "56 kWh" usable.

It's possible they are still using "lab rated" 62 kWh battery as a whole and will have it set for "60 kWh usable".

In one example, it's better than mine because it will allow more power usage, thus more range than what my "62 kWh" rated but only 56 kWh could use. On the other hand, it's possible they did reduce the cells capacity some to save cost or make the manufacturing easier in some way. It's also possible it's a typo by the marketing people.

[GerryAZ]

Maybe the reduced the maximum cell voltage slightly.

[DougWantsALeaf]

My bet is that they figured it how to pull 3kWh worth of battery out of the car to save $200/car trying to offset with aero changes to balance total range of the car. The epa went down by a few miles and the wltp went up by a couple miles/kms.

The European 2023 Leaf lists battery size at 59kWh not 60kWh, so guess they round up here and down in the EU.

[LeftieBiker]

If they reduced capacity then they must have used cheaper materials, resulting in cells the same size, but with lower capacity per cell.

[DougWantsALeaf]

Has anyone seen a Leafspy screenshots on a 23 Plus yet? (Both the gids and the cell screens)

[knightmb]

I'm curious as well. I looked at the press kits for my 2020 vs. the 2023 and the mileage did come down from 215 miles to 212, but I know the EPA has also changed how it does those mileage calculations, so I wonder if the numbers would be the same or not.

The non-plus Leaf still shows as 149 miles, exactly like my wife's 2018 showed when it was advertised for sale. Going from 215 to 212 wouldn't compute for the change if they really took off 2 kWh worth of capacity from the battery as a whole. The 40 kWh battery packs only reserve 1 kWH at the top for driving, so the owner can use nearly 39 kWh of capacity. Is that shortening the battery life, hard to say since my wife is over +50K miles on her 2018 and she drives it dead, a lot and also charges it to 100% and forgets about it, a lot. Somehow, her battery SoH is still above +90%

For the EPA mileage to come down, all things being equal, the +plus Leaf would have to be only charging to around the +56 kWh mark, just like mine, which would mean they are still leaving nearly +4 kWH at the top.

It's also possible that all of this math is moot because it's just the marketing people that are bad to presenting the facts.

[DougWantsALeaf]

Epa went down, but the wltp rating went up.

City/highway

Epa on the 2019 S+ was 118/97
Epa on the 2019 SV+ was 114/94
Epa on the 2023 SV+ is 121/98

The new Leaf is per epa more efficienct than the 2019 S+, which is good news.

The battery rating going from 62 to 60 is what shaved the epa range estimate...but the 23 should do better on paper.

[watchdoc]

several sites now quote Nissan engineers as saying there have been "chemsitry changes" to the cells to acheive minor but greater efficiency. I've searched around and haven't been able to find any information about these cell changes.

[DougWantsALeaf]

I saw that too. Maybe the Leaf aligned to the Chem in the Ariya.