Battery performance

pwurple

I'm going to switch mine to 80% long life mode shortly, but a question to other EV owners.

What does your range show on a 100% charge?

My leaf was showing 119k range 100% charged. That's with climate control off, eco mode off this morning. Went to 127km range with ECO mode on.

I'm only noticing this because I had a loan one for a week or so, but my brain is telling me the other one was 136km on a full charge.


I wonder how it's calculated? Is it a function of my driving style (I'll admit I like a bit of speed).

cros13

pwurple wrote: »

I'm going to switch mine to 80% long life mode shortly, but a question to other EV owners.

What does your range show on a 100% charge?

My leaf was showing 119k range 100% charged. That's with climate control off, eco mode off this morning. Went to 127km range with ECO mode on.

I'm only noticing this because I had a loan one for a week or so, but my brain is telling me the other one was 136km on a full charge.


I wonder how it's calculated? Is it a function of my driving style (I'll admit I like a bit of speed).

My dad's 141 Mk1.5 was showing 158k this weekend on 100%, he always charges to 100% rarely uses climate control and never uses ECO (which just remaps the accelerator, doesn't actually do anything if you're a decent driver).

You get used to the regen over time and your range improves. It's based on the last trip alone, and the calculation is conservative to leave a reserve.

If you want to check your packs capacity, use Leaf spy.

homer911

We rarely charge beyond 80% - partly because we rarely need to, partly for battery performance and partly because that last 20% takes so long..

cros13

homer911 wrote: »

We rarely charge beyond 80% - partly because we rarely need to, partly for battery performance and partly because that last 20% takes so long..

On a rapid charger my dad would never charge beyond 80%, but charging at home or on a street-side charger to 100% won't significantly impact the battery. My dad's battery is showing around 1.5% capacity loss since day 1.

The enemy of the Lithium Manganese chemistry of the Leaf's battery packs is heat, and in particular heat when the battery is close to full. In the Irish climate, charging at home to 80% instead of 100% doesn't make a difference to battery capacity. It's rapid charging at high temperatures or above 80-90% that you need to be careful of.

Thing with the battery in the leaf is it's most sensitive to heat ( absolutely true for the MK I, 2011-2014.) however this was for the MK I, now I know there was a change to the chemistry from 2014 on but no one know exactly, there is talk of the "lizard" battery but Nissan originally stated this was for the hot climates of the U.S.A and would not come to Europe, but there was definitely a change.

Until more data and research comes in I would be on the cautious side and not fast charge beyond the 7th battery bar. Once in a while won't have a huge impact but often it definitely will on the MK I but from 2014 is anyone's guess but best to play safe.

Batteries loose capacity gradually and these things include.

Time----whether you drive it or not.

Time spent at a high state of charge and time spent at a very low state of charge. Ideal range is about 40-70% if you don't need all the range. (if going on holidays or not using the car then the car should be stored at about 40% charge)

Miles or charge/discharge cycles

Continuous aggressive acceleration and braking.


So if you do very little driving 5K miles a year then time will be the greatest factor in capacity loss but if you drive very little you won't really notice it.

IF you do high mileage then charge/discharge cycles or cycling of the battery will be the greatest factor.

If you fast charge multiple times daily in Summer then this will be the greatest ans so on.

However all the above and it will accelerate even faster.

A huge 85 Kwh battery like in the Model S will be under much less stresses because it's heated, cooled by the a/c and it;s so large that it will probably rarely be driven below 50% charge.

And it's so big that even a 30% capacity loss would still see 180 miles range in the Leaf that could be 40 miles in the dead of winter.

Batteries are improving and the I3 battery could last a lot longer under the same conditions as the leaf, the E-Golf and so on because no two EV's will use the same battery chemistry, it will always vary to some degree.

pwurple

Have been watching the estimated range and it's increasing alright depending on how I drive.

Leaf spy, what's the craic? I have it installed, selected the bluetooth device (the car that it's paired with) but I'm just seeing a blank white screen with a grid on it. No data points. Does this need time to sync or something?

pwurple

pwurple wrote: »

Have been watching the estimated range and it's increasing alright depending on how I drive.

Leaf spy, what's the craic? I have it installed, selected the bluetooth device (the car that it's paired with) but I'm just seeing a blank white screen with a grid on it. No data points. Does this need time to sync or something?

Try select the bluetooth dongle form the app ?

The range indicator will always vary depending how you drive. For instance, if you are driving normally for a good few miles then it's pretty accurate, if you then suddenly drive like a mad man it will take a few mins to adjust but again based on this change in driving it will be pretty accurate.

The Battery % is what I manly go by, you will know after a while on average how many kms you get per 1% of battery. Or go by every 10 Kms.

pwurple

What dongle?

The two bluetooth devices paired are the car and the phone.

simdan

pwurple wrote:

My leaf was showing 119k range 100% charged. That's with climate control off, eco mode off this morning. Went to 127km range with ECO mode on.

The km range is based on your recent driving history. You obviously drive pretty hard! Im sure your battery is still at 100% but install leaf spy if you have your doubts. Mine displays 160km at full charge, climate off, sve model, bluetooth always on and I tend to actually get around 145km. Leaf spy displays number of charges from both fast and normal charges and displays my actual battery at 100% health. Love my leaf!

simdan

pwurple wrote:

The two bluetooth devices paired are the car and the phone.

pwurple wrote:

What dongle?

You need to buy the service bluetooth dongle.. It tells you in the app description. They are on eBay for around €12 delivered. You need to make sure it's the v1.5 elm 327 obd2 bluetooth version dongle. This also works for multiple cars including Minis. Remember only version 1.5 works on the leaf! Good luck!

pwurple

pwurple wrote: »

What dongle?

The two bluetooth devices paired are the car and the phone.

You need to pair it to one of these. Or similar, the one in the pic below works for me.

http://www.adverts.ie/other/elm327-mini-bluetooth-interface-high-quality-obd-2-obd-ii-auto-car-diagnostic-scanner-tool-free-shipping-within-ireland/7865215

This idiot is charging 73.80 Euro's LMAO idiot ! How some people get away with ripping people off is incredible. Surely he knows people will find the exact same one for 14-15 Euro's on the exact same site ? muppet !

http://www.adverts.ie/cd/eiiox-mini-elm327-interface-v1-5-bluetooth-obd-ii-obd2-auto-car-diagnostic-scan-tool/5376695

pwurple

simdan wrote: »

The km range is based on your recent driving history. You obviously drive pretty hard! Im sure your battery is still at 100% but install leaf spy if you have your doubts. Mine displays 160km at full charge, climate off, sve model, bluetooth always on and I tend to actually get around 145km. Leaf spy displays number of charges from both fast and normal charges and displays my actual battery at 100% health. Love my leaf!

It was just back from the dealer, they had repeatedly run down the battery to diagnose charging issues.

pwurple

simdan wrote: »

You need to buy the service bluetooth dongle.. It tells you in the app description. They are on eBay for around €12 delivered. You need to make sure it's the v1.5 elm 327 obd2 bluetooth version dongle. This also works for multiple cars including Minis. Remember only version 1.5 works on the leaf! Good luck!

Hah D'uh! Thanks. Of course it didn't work. Hehe.

Righto, that's fairly cheap. Might be no harm.

simdan

pwurple wrote:

It was just back from the dealer, they had repeatedly run down the battery to diagnose charging issues.

Ah cool.. That means they probably drove it hard. Take an easy drive(no putting the foot down or motorway travel) and then charge to 100% to see if your km range has updated. Hope this helps

reboot

homer911 wrote: »

We rarely charge beyond 80% - partly because we rarely need to, partly for battery performance and partly because that last 20% takes so long..

I wonder if the car is charged just after being driven hard, will this not present a warm battery to the charger? And on the last 90% charge, should battery balancing not be given time to sort things out?

reboot

reboot wrote: »

I wonder if the car is charged just after being driven hard, will this not present a warm battery to the charger? And on the last 90% charge, should battery balancing not be given time to sort things out?

Depends on how cold it was to begin with, but hard driving with a lot of acceleration and regen will warm up the battery, no big deal really. It won't get too hot from that. It's only when you fast charge will that warm it up the most and in winter again, not much of an issue unless doing 3 fast charges one after the other then might get a bit too hot. Never tried it. If the battery is at 7 bars + then it's not a good idea to charge over 80%, preferably less.

Battery balancing is done at any time during the charge. It has to , don't want any cells getting too high a voltage !

cros13

Nissan recommends to charge to 100% at least once a week for balancing.

I don't think there's any substantial positive effect on battery longevity from charging to 80%. The only reason I wouldn't charge to 100% is if I was going on vacation and leaving the car for a week or two.

cros13

cros13 wrote: »

Nissan recommends to charge to 100% at least once a week for balancing.

I don't think there's any substantial positive effect on battery longevity from charging to 80%. The only reason I wouldn't charge to 100% is if I was going on vacation and leaving the car for a week or two.

Charging to 80% or less will make a difference long term, depends how long you want to keep it. Then the amount of time leaving the car sit beyond 80% will also make a difference, this is known of lithium batteries for many years, the Leaf's battery is no different. If you want as much capacity from the battery for as long as possible then it is advisable. Same as leaving the car sitting at a very low charge % or driving it until turtle all the time, this too impacts longevity.

While I'm off for two weeks I leave the car hovering around 50-60%, why would I charge more when I don't need it ? Plenty for 50-60 Kms range.

Where people think all this will impact them depends on whether they will have the car in 5+ years, how many miles they do and how long their daily drips are, how many times they take a really long trip, it's on the long trips where battery degradation becomes apparent.

If you drive a Model S with 85 Kwh battery then there is no need to care at all because you'll be cycling the battery a hell of a lot less and even with 30% loss of capacity it's still a 180-200 mile range car. With a small battery such as the Leaf/zoe it makes a lot more difference.

If you drive 30-40 miles day maximum then it won't matter in the slightest because you won't notice any degradation + you'll be cycling the battery less to begin with.

Where you worry about battery degradation is if you want to keep as much capacity in the battery for as long as possible.

Knowledge of lithium batteries is getting better all the time and some previous truths about rapid charging may not be correct:

http://engineering.stanford.edu/news/rapid-charging-draining-doesn%E2%80%99t-damage-lithium-ion-battery-electrodes-much-thought

The research suggests that the charging at high amperage results in different type of charge balance in battery's ions compared to show charge. This seems to tie with user reports that the people who often rapid charge seem to have more available capacity on their batteries. *That* 100000 mile taxi in Devon would support these findings.

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that 0 and 100 percent with most rechargeable devices is nowhere near that. I'm planning to keep my leaf for 5+ years (probably as long as possible really) and won't be doing anything else except avoiding letting the car to sit at 100 percent for more than a couple of hours. Probably best to charge to high state of charge ("100 %") regularly too as this will allow the BMS to complete balancing the pack.

pwurple

cros13 wrote: »

Nissan recommends to charge to 100% at least once a week for balancing.

Interesting. I hover mine at about 30-80% now all the time. Have you a link to that recommendation? Maybe I should change my habits.

cros13

pwurple wrote: »

Interesting. I hover mine at about 30-80% now all the time. Have you a link to that recommendation? Maybe I should change my habits.

Spotted it in the US Leaf's print manual... looking for a link now.

samih

samih wrote: »

The research suggests that the charging at high amperage results in different type of charge balance in battery's ions compared to show charge. This seems to tie with user reports that the people who often rapid charge seem to have more available capacity on their batteries. *That* 100000 mile taxi in Devon would support these findings.

Once a battery is designed for fast charging then there should be no issue, the problem with the Leaf's MK I battery is it was not designed to take the current from the fast charger, and because the battery gets quiet warm fast charging this is rather obvious. It could be the case where NEC told Nissan porkies and over rated the battery and this wouldn't be the first time a battery manufacturer over rated their battery cells.

It could also be that Nissan never thought people that bought a Leaf would be doing more than 20 miles a day and fast charging wouldn't be an issue and probably not even if this was your only means of charging to a low mileage driver, in fact Nissan did quote a 10 year battery life for the MK I driving about 5,500 miles a year which is about the Japanese average believe it or not.

A few Leafs in the U.S proved this also in the U.K Nikki Gordon Bloomfield's Leaf was a good example of this opposite the 2014 Taxi with 100,000 miles. Nikki's battery lost 20% after 73K miles, loosing the first capacity bar after only 59,000 miles from over use of the fast charger which she admits to so this proves there is a change to the battery from the MK I to the MK 1.5. Most of the U.S leaf batteries that lost capacity due to excessive heat but some lost capacity from fast charging and/or cycling.

The MK 1.5 battery is different, how it has changed nobody knows. And it could be very much the case the battery can take more current by design and also many more charge/discharge cycles. So I'm not really worried about the MK 1.5 battery unless I was keeping it 8-10 years.

samih wrote: »

Also, it's worth keeping in mind that 0 and 100 percent with most rechargeable devices is nowhere near that. I'm planning to keep my leaf for 5+ years (probably as long as possible really) and won't be doing anything else except avoiding letting the car to sit at 100 percent for more than a couple of hours. Probably best to charge to high state of charge ("100 %") regularly too as this will allow the BMS to complete balancing the pack.

Most lithium batteries such as mobiles, laptops etc unfortunately use all of their capacity and have no room left top or bottom for maximum usage. And most of these batteries are designed for less than 500 cycles. Even more important to take your mobile off the charger by 80%. But mobile batteries are designed to last about 2-3 years maximum which is about the lifespan of a mobile.

While the Leaf doesn't charge all the way to 4.2 volts per cell it does get quiet close so it's not got that much of a buffer top or bottom. I must actually test this some day I get time.

A smaller capacity battery that's rated for under 1000 cycles to 70% such as the leaf MK I battery cells need to be cycled less to extend life.

If the Leaf had 200 miles range then this is less important because you'll be cycling it far less to begin with. Because it's got more capacity. If the Leaf battery cells were rated for say 5000 cycles then you don't need to worry about it.

7,000 cycles on the U.K Taxi and 1,700 fast charges are impressive meaning the majority of MK 1.5 Leafers should see no issues with their battery. But these won't be full cycles, as soon as the leaf starts charging it registers that as a charge even if it's only 2 mins !

By the way, balancing is done in the leaf at any time not just to 100%, when charging the voltage from the high cells gets bled off while the other cells continue to charge. If the battery is kept at about 30-70 % then it shouldn't really get out of balance, cells become out of balance the lower they're discharged.

DrPhilG

Interesting thread.

In general I'll be fast charging to 80% once a week, and using a 32a cable to 100% at the weekend when I tend to drive more and need the range.

I have a Donegal-Cork trip on Friday though which will involve multiple fast charges. 2 on the way to Dublin, standard charge overnight at the hotel, 2 or 3 top ups on the Cork route then a granny charge to about 80% while in Cork (won't be driving much while there) in preparation for the trip home which will be an all day affair with probably 5 fast charge top ups.

Question, the Carwings app gives the option to "start charging". Surely when it is plugged in it will be charging anyway? Or do I need to experiment with charging timers?

cros13

DrPhilG wrote: »

Question, the Carwings app gives the option to "start charging". Surely when it is plugged in it will be charging anyway? Or do I need to experiment with charging timers?

Start charging overrides the charging timer and starts charging immediately.

So does this button:


Did you get your night rate meter in yet?

pwurple

Hey ELM327 users... I ordered one, plugged it in (panel to the right of the steering column popped off, it's in there), but can't figure out the pairing. I've tried 0000 and 1234 as the PIN. It didn't come with any documentation. What's the bluetooth pin on yours? Maybe it's a standard.

As far as I can remeber it's 1234 for the bluetooth adapter.

DrPhilG

cros13 wrote: »

Start charging overrides the charging timer and starts charging immediately.

So does this button:


Did you get your night rate meter in yet?

Haven't got a night meter. I'm going to shop around electricity providers first.

DrPhilG

DrPhilG wrote: »

I have a Donegal-Cork trip on Friday though which will involve multiple fast charges. 2 on the way to Dublin, standard charge overnight at the hotel, 2 or 3 top ups on the Cork route then a granny charge to about 80% while in Cork (won't be driving much while there) in preparation for the trip home which will be an all day affair with probably 5 fast charge top ups.

Question, the Carwings app gives the option to "start charging". Surely when it is plugged in it will be charging anyway? Or do I need to experiment with charging timers?

If you have any timer set then the Leaf will (NOT) charge when you plug it in until the timer sets it to come on. Pressing the timer over ride button as in the pic above will over ride the timer. You need to be mindful of this when you plug into a normal street charge point. Doesn't apply to the fast chargers. The car starts charging from fast chargers regardless of timer settings.

regarding 5 fast charges, I'm not so sure I would worry about it now at this stage. If the U.K Taxi with over 1,700 fast charges and 7,500 L2 and loosing 10% or around that after 100,000 miles.

At your mileage 100,000 might be 10 years or more usage.

It would be great to see how hot it actually gets from 5 fast charges in a row. Be good if you can get leaf spy and the dongle and take screen shots of the battery temp.

The MK I battery chemistry was the most sensitive to heat so they've most likely changed it and to make it withstand more cycles but we'll never know.

DrPhilG

DrPhilG wrote: »

Haven't got a night meter. I'm going to shop around electricity providers first.

Bord Gais is the cheapest. I'm on a package that I pay the average per month and it adjusts depending on usage.

We use Tesco vouchers off the leccy too, so definitely the cheapest.

pwurple

Deleted User wrote: »

Bord Gais is the cheapest. I'm on a package that I pay the average per month and it adjusts depending on usage.

We use Tesco vouchers off the leccy too, so definitely the cheapest.

It depends... you can haggle with electricity providers.

pwurple

pwurple wrote: »

It depends... you can haggle with electricity providers.

Never worked for me but I might try this next time because I use so much leccy now.

I would love to be with Airtricity because they guarantee whatever you use they'll buy with 100% renewable . But they were more expensive.

The level charge has +10 percent usage loading doesn't it, i.e. you pay for extra 10 percent of units compared to your historical usage.

totLastYear / 12 * 1.1

ESB cold called and got my wife to hooked to "level pay" but when I found out later that day I just changed suppliers.

cros13

Deleted User wrote: »

I would love to be with Airtricity because they guarantee whatever you use they'll buy with 100% renewable . But they were more expensive.

I'm with Airtricity.... I have a multi-property account so they gave me a really good rate ( 7.4c/15.54c night/day). Their online billing and account management is much better too...statistics are good.

From what I can see even paying discounted retail (without using any Tesco vouchers) Bord Gais is only about a euro a month cheaper.