Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Leaf Distance

I had once again taken my Leaf in for a checkup and had them check the health of my pack. I had tried to get that Leaf Spy program so I could see for myself. I finally got a properly working OBDII device to plug into the car and use the Android Leaf Spy program to view the battery and some other goodies. It looks as though I have lost 24% of my capacity and if I reach the 33% loss before the 8 years is up I will be getting a new replacement pack. I can however drive further than what might be expected so I am going to try that. I have not been driving the Leaf to work but only around town locally. I did not want to get stranded. Since I am still able to do some decent drives I will continue but I will be for sure on the Range Anxiety Wall. I'll just bide my time until I loose that capacity enough to get a new pack replacement.

So right now I am down on bar but have been told I should be down 3. Maybe the software updates have changed the way the bars show up missing. The bars that go missing are the small ones on the right. Not the longer ones on the left.






4 comments:

  1. Don't count your chucks before they hatched, Pete. 76% SOH (state of Health) in the "Leaf SPY" could be different than what Nissan has in mind; I have heard Nissan guarantees the Number of Green Bars in the capacity counter (all the way to the right on your display; today you count 11 out of 12 apparently). By the time you have only 8 out of 12 bars left over (which equals 33%, or maybe 7 bars is the first possibility to claim warranty ) than you have over 25% "bad cells" in your pack and I estimate your range and SOH to be near zero.

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  2. The way the Leaf shows missing bars also varies with each vehicle. It is not dependent upon miles driven. Looking at the graph of the cells they look to be just fine. Just down on capacity. I will not be buying another Leaf until the cell life goes way up. Power is fine. Cell life sucks. Even with what they are determining to be fine is in fact not. I could and will be making a claim that they are still not yet ready for prime time when it comes to actual longevity of the battery. I calculated 5 years before I would have to let my Wife use the car for her commute and still be OK. I even planned that using the actual distances of 75 miles per charge to the start of the two reserve which I take as the start of the two red bars. My tool says 58 till reserve but apparently the red bars are not considered reserve. I will be able to successfully fight that because all fuel gauges have a reserve mark on the gauge and the marks are red and they did put that on the Leaf as well. I guarantee I can't get 58 miles by the time I hit the red reserve bars. That is what we visually have to go by and what is the SAFE distance to go. So with that Im way below the allowed percentage of battery loss.

    Got a question. You posted as anonymous. Do you think you could log in with a real name? Its nice to know who is posting.

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  3. I’m getting Leaf Spy on Android too, thanks for the tip.

    My name is Paul and I don’t have an account as in your listing, so it’s anonymous again. You can find my Leaf on youtube under: Nissan Leaf Range Anxiety; a 10 minute family video that unexptedly gathered many viewers and some interestng comments.
    I discovered that the Range drops dramatically and suddenly at temperature of +5 degrees Celsius ( 41 Fahrenheit) . Meanwhile the temperature gauge on the dashboard is (always) happy. Also funny ; when you get in the car in the morning the Nissan Range Expectancy is twice the real Range, even after 1000 new mornings: slow learning curve!

    So everytime an add mentions: ‘range up to … “ a stop listening, just like “ prices from … on” . What counts for an EV is: “ will your wife be able to go and return from work after owning this car 5 years, in the winter and with heater on?” and that answer is very difficult to get from sales people and also difficult to find on the internet. The Nissan Leaf is not even 5 years old. But my wife will certainly not be able to make that journey, whereas in a new Leaf and in summer times, you can easily drive double distances from todays 3rd year winter times.

    My DIY-EV will overcome some of those issues, such as the battery heater. Here in Northern Europe, 50% of all days we leave to work at a temperature of less than +5 degrees.

    Did you got yourself a new Leaf yeasterday? Too bad there won’t be a follow-up on your warranty claim announcement. Are the Nissan warranty rules published somewhere on the net?

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  4. Got it, Pete: what a wonderful tool this Nissan Leaf Spy Lite is: I now understand the car's range: my SOH=84%. Used Battery Capacity (= SOC 91% - SOC 19% ) = 72% . Leaves utility of 15 out of 24 kWh useable. Divided by 0,2 kWh/km in winter is a range of 76 km (47 miles). Which is what I experience in my 3rd winter with my nearly new Nissan Leaf.

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