First Reports Of Leaf Battery Capacity Loss

Loss of capacity in a battery while under the same stress occurs exponentially. If they have lost a bar in a year there is no way they will be merely down by 20% after five.

Perhaps on average it will be 80% remaining capacity after 5, but I'm sure many will be worse off.

This is precisely what I complained about some time ago. Nissan says 80% after 5 years and recommends 80% charge. .8*.8 means that after 5 years you're down to 47 miles range, which really is not good.​

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So maybe San Diego and skip AC, or in Seattle? Because if you drive it in the Northeast you suffer serious range degradation in sub-freezing temperatures.​

Well done.

IF this turns out to be more than just isolated cases (easily gaining attention on the internet), and a true problem for the Leaf in many cases, it will destroy public uptake of EVs; people will see the most popular EV car out there, the first mass-produced one is not cheap, has limited range, and now it's range is markedly falling? I guess we'll have to wait another year or two to really see what, if anything larger manifests itself.

 

Now that I know better, I typically charge my car to complete at 6:00 am. I drive off at 7 or 8 am, and I keep it in EV until it depletes, which is the default behavior. But there are still times, especially on weekends, where it will be charged for a full day or two. There's only so much a reasonable person can do. I can't park it in a garage at work; it has to sit in the sun, although its battery is depleted when doing so. For Leaf owners, though, I don't know how you can plan whether to keep it depleted, because it takes so long to charge and it can't simply fire up an engine when it depletes.

 

Will the Leaf do to the EV market in the US what GM did for the diesel car market in the US?

 

You're right and I don't think it's even right to feel any guilt at all about now following "proper" battery management at all times; it's just not worth it. I think for Leaf owners as long as they are not going above 80% charge in most cases that's perfectly reasonable, even if it's sitting there for a while. I think Lithium's perfect long-term storage charge is 50% but that's not always easy to manage.

it will be very interesting to see how Toyota's lithium cells do. I think in a given year they are likely to see more full cycles than a Leaf, since they will more regularly go from full to depleted.

 

Can any other corp be as retarded and perniciously evil as GM ?

 

Monsanto?

 

My 7 year old GM product has had the same number of warranty issues as my 2 year old Prius. One each.

To more directly answer your question, we will get a clue when we see how Nissan handles the falling Leaves.

I would like to see EVs succeed, but the Leafs short range that was due to get shorter with time was an obvious weakness. Wait until more of them go through a full winter's use in East Snowshoe Maine.

 

see - this is the kind of stuff I have told my wife for over a year now, that being overly cautious with the traction pack is the best way to go. I usually charge only in the traction pack's middle range - and with very regular driving patterns it's been easy to always charge enough to only get where I'm going & then only charge enough the next time to get where I'm going. I tried to simulate the prius traction pack use - just the mid range. Coming up on 18,000 miles, I'm seeing less than 3 percent capacity lost. I'm not the only 1 who used caution. There is 1 arizona owner who insTalled air condiTioning in his garage. It has paId off.
I tried to think of every way to babysit the pack. I drive 55 on the freeway to keep the battery draw under 15kW. I try to keep the air conditioning set no higher than 10 degrees below outside temperature. ThaT way the draw on the pack from AC is the smallest possible - and yet it's supplying cool air to The pack. So far So good. Living just 8 miLes from Laguna beach has helped a lot too. We haven't had to drive in temperatures above 90 so far. So if our pack goes prematurely you can be SURE that we'll be screaming about it.


SGH-I717R ? 2

 

^^ smart

 

I'm sure that helps, but it's also a million times more things to worry about than you SHOULD have to for a pricey car that already has other limitations, like range. If these packs need to be treated with kid gloves for acceptable lifespan you can just build the coffin on their future right now as far as the general public is concerned.

 

If you need to air condition your garage for the car, well that may not be the car for you unless its a classic. Perhaps the tesla, gm, ford, technique of conditioning the pack is the right one?

That 10 degree rule doesn't work well in texas or arizona. If its 102, would you really set it to 92? Doesn't make much sense to me.

It probably is the best interest of those of us in hot places to lease not buy. Left coast with more moderate temperatures are probably fine buying.

 

I don't think an owner should have to baby the battery pack. These are not kit cars. This was one problem with the BEVs for everyone conspiracy. For us in hot places we either need conditioning or more heat resistant packs in plug ins. All the non-Japanese condition their packs.

 

Worse than that - it'll be the kiss of death for the up & coming EV Infinity version - which will be their REAL money maker.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

Every product with a battery comes with a warning to keep it out of the heat & direct sun. Physical laws don't change just because the battery is bigger & stuffed in a car.

I believe air cooling is the problem. How well did VW's Beetle & other air cooled vehicles sell in the Southwest & hold up?

Tesla switched to liquid cooling for the Model S. The car's not quiet as it doesn't need a noisemaker for pedestrians. (I haven't heard one yet to confirm.)

During the Range Event at the 21st Century Automotive Challenge where the EV's run at 30mph when they pit everyone pops the hood open for cooling.

The problem with putting advanced technology in the hands of the masses is that it will be abused & neglected then blamed for poor performance.

 

^^^
Tesla used liquid cooling on the Roadster as well. They didn't switch to it starting w/the Model S.

 

They did better in hot weather than just about any small car of the era. VW chassis and powerplants were very popular in the early days of desert off-road racing.

 

The Tesla Roadster has always had a liquid cooled battery pack and I've never heard a credible report of the Model S being designed to use a non-liquid pack cooling.

Here's a paper from 2006 on the early Roadster pack design:

http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data/TeslaRoadsterBatterySystem.pdf

As for the Model S supposedly not being quiet, I've been both outside but nearby a moving Model S and inside a pre-production Model S and it was quiet. The Roadster does have a bit of motor and gear whine but many people expect that in a sports car.

 

Arguably EV is less advanced than ICE. Its lynchpin is battery technology. We had EVs a hundred years back. If Car X is an ICE-based vehicle and the driver neither knows nor cares about how it works and spends virtually no time on its upkeep and yet it still works (I just described more or less every vehicle on the road), and Car Y is EV-based, was more expensive, has worse range, and a whole lot of caveats on how its battery must be treated which vehicle possesses the more advanced technology?

 

The well engineered EV
Different capabilities doesn't mean more advanced technology.
If you take a poorly engineered ICE a horse will appear to be more advanced technology than it.
The passive cooling the Leaf uses appears to be a big problem in hotter climates. However, if you look at most of the other EVs, they are using a more active cooling/heating system which appears to be working better.

After driving an EV, I have no question which vehicle (EV vs ICE) is the more enjoyable, less expensive maintainence cost, better performing, more reliable (so far) car to drive (that would be the EVs).

 

Where do you get this stuff?
No car yet requires a noisemaker to my knowledge although a number of car makers are preemptively adding them. Tesla is waiting until the noisemaker rule goes into effect.
The Roadster and Model S don't make more noise than other EVs. I am not sure why you would say that it did, especially as a blanket statement, without confirming that.
If the cooling system has been overtaxed, the fan will kick into high gear which, in the Roadster, is more audible. I hear it a few times each summer (5 maybe).