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unkel

@KCross - "Nissan Leaf battery degradation is nearly all down to chemistry and passage of time."

So why then is the Nissan Leaf the only EV out there with significant battery degradation? Most other EVs have very similar chemistry lithium ion batteries although iirc Nissan (AESC) doesn't use cobalt.

Tesla Model S and the BMW i3 are around almost as long as the Leaf and both have minimal battery degradation (think in the order of 10% in 10 years, not 15% in 5 years as the OP has)

ELM327

The leaf cells are inferior, and especially in the first gen, were arranged in an inferior method for heat dissipation.

Zoe, I3, Tesla, even the triplets, all other EVs from that time dont have the same level of deg as the leafs have. The triplets had active battery cooling - yes in 2010!- so they don't have much if any deg. Not too familiar with the zoe architecture but I've seen a few 2014 with well over 100k km still having 98-99 SOH. My own Tesla had nearly 200k km on it when it was sold. It had free supercharging before I bought it from Tesla so I have a feeling it got a lot of supercharging. That being said, I worked out the deg and it was 7%.

Compare that to my leaf, which I put nearly 70k on in about 14 months. Pretty much all AC charging, work and home, yet it had 11% deg when I sold it with 110k km on the clock. And that was the lizard chemistry.

There's also a nasty rumor (which is as yet afaik unproven) that the leaf24 cells were not meant to be fast charged.

Calahonda52

How is 1 bar 15%

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958093#Comment_119958093

Pretty much all AC charging, work and home, yet it had 11% deg when I sold it with 110k km on the clock

Exactly, so that battery hardly ever (if ever) overheated... so the degradation is not down to battery heating/cooling. Right?

i.e. You will never overheat a Leaf battery by simply AC charging it.

This is also my own experience. I had the app for monitoring the temps and the battery in mine never overheated, it was primarily AC charged and it had similar degradation as everyone else.... ~15% at 5yrs old.

I think Nissan also made a design decision that they probably now regret which is that you experience range loss from day 1 and they show it front and centre in the dash whereas other manufacturers like the i3, the MEB platform etc have a hidden buffer that gets released as the battery degrades but the owner doesn't see that happening as they still get the same range from the car.

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119957660#Comment_119957660

As above.

Your Ioniq and the i3 are good examples. Mad_Lad tells us alot about how he had zero degradation in his i3 and similar stories from people in the Ioniq..... I presume you aren't claiming that they actually had zero degradation?!!

They did of course have degradation just that there was buffer built in that gets released or the car starts out with, lets say, 105% battery capacity and the dash/app only starts showing degradation when it drops below 100% so you get the "feeling" there is no degradation but, of course there is, just that its hidden from you.

There is no getting away from the physics and chemistry of it.

Dont get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that Leaf batteries are as good as the rest.... I'm just saying that if a battery cooler was put into the Gen 1 Leaf it would have made little or no difference to the degradation in this country.

My own experience of battery heating in the Leaf and ELM also shows that, since we should in theory have seen alot less degradation since we weren't overheating our batteries with lots of DC charging. What benefit would a battery cooler have had when the battery was barely above 20°C for its life?

And as I said, even if you do try to overheat it, it protects itself anyway by slowing down the charging, which is like a proxy cooler.

The chemistry of the AESC cells are simply inferior to the competitors (there is a reason why Nissan tried to offload it!), the passage of time (which every Li-Ion battery suffers from) and the lack of hidden buffer all play a part. It aint the lack of coolers!

slave1

I had a 30kWh Leaf for just over 4 years, put nearly 80k kms on it, never an issue, rock solid and very comfy car, when I sold it the SOH was something like 92%-93% and given the price point was an excellent purchase by a city dweller. It never got anywhere heated on the "battery heat" scale on the dash.

slave1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958495#Comment_119958495

Nissan decided instead of 10bars, they would use 12 and the first bar is 15%, all 11 bars thereafter are 85%/11

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958622#Comment_119958622

No, I'm saying even with only AC charging the deg was much worse on the leaf than anyone else.

Leaf cells are inferior to others from the time, and before the lizard leaf, were arranged badly. Theres a reason the fluence EV has no fast charging with the same cells, and the triplets have liquid cooling.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958664#Comment_119958664

A cooler would have helped, but the cells are still inferior too.

The passive thermal management isnt great either. I did a 500+ km trip in my leaf 24 and the battery temp was in the red. It didnt slow down the charging at all, if anything it charged faster as the day went on, the 10th fast charge (yup!) was much faster than the 1st

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958728#Comment_119958728

Sure, but there is a difference between the battery being inferior and unkel's theory about battery coolers being a key part of the problem. Battery cooler would not have made any difference to you or me as our batteries didn't overheat anyway as they were primarily AC charged.... yet we still saw the degradation.

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119958736#Comment_119958736

It would help in those rare cases but its not the reason for the degradation as both our cars prove. Thats the point.

but the cells are still inferior too.

Agreed.

ELM327

It's not the sole reason. Contributory factor, yes, but agree it's not the sole reason for sure.

unkel

@KCross - batteries don't just heat up from fast charging, they do from fast discharging as well. Also known as driving 😂

You do have a point about degradation on the Leaf not having much to do with DC fast charging though. The degradation is there even with cars that rarely or never fast charge. And sure the pack in the Fluence is the same pack as in the Leaf and it has similar degradation, despite the cars not even being able to fast charge

@ELM327 - "Theres a reason the fluence EV has no fast charging"

There is, but it's not what you think! The Fluence Z.E. was designed to use battery swap (from the Better Place pilot) instead of DC fast charging.

ELM327

Oh I'm aware of the battery swap setup, but that was a result of the battery not having the capability on spec for fast charging. When I was first interested in the fluence I joined the israel owners group where I learned the horrors of better place.

Also.. they experience bad deg there too in fluence cells.

unkel

Fluence uses the same cells as the early Leaf, surely?

ELM327

Yes precisely. and even without fast charging they still see a lot of degradation - but moreso in hot countries

Old diesel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119954160#Comment_119954160

What was the issue with the pack.

Taxi use 40 kwh Leafs can suffer from swelling in the pack.

Leads to the vehicle either losing range because some modules are down - or failing isolation check when you go to start it up some morning.

Will be interesting to see how the 62 kwh holds up as heat takes longer to build up on those over the course of a working day and they should need less rapid charging too.

Old diesel

I'm open to correction but the actual traditional degradation on a 40 kwh Leaf is possibly better then earlier Leafs.

So the car will drive along as a Taxi happy out until sometime between 100 k miles and 150 k miles.

When you get issues like swelling of the pack.

I realise that James and Kate might not be everyone's cup of tea.

But this video at least shows the issue

https://youtu.be/-ySOspbt0BM

Edit

Unfortunately for EV adoption Irish taxi use of EVs kicked off in the main with Leaf 40s.

So for too many taxi drivers their first EV battery experience is Nissan half arsed design.

Ironically James has a Model 3 customer whose done 175 k miles in UK and things are going well.

That Model 3 does Uber and other similar style taxi work.

Tesla for the win

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119959328#Comment_119959328

two issues immediately come to mind. The cell positioning didnt allow for sufficient heat dissipation - worse before the lizard batteries but still an issue to this day. Secondly the cells were inferior to the competition. This is the big one, no matter what they do the cells will have more deg. The 30kWh was better than the 24, the 40 better than the 30 and the 62 better than the 40... but this is only down to less cycles of the pack for the same distance travelled.

Calahonda52

https://www.speakev.com/threads/fitting-aftermarket-parking-sensors-to-a-leaf.145115/

Is pretty compressive as guide.

The hard bit seems to be putting back the bumper, so I was wondering could it be done by going in behind the number plate?

Calahonda52

So here we are NCT fail at 84,000 kms for front suspension ball joint on front left worn.

Is this a main dealer job or a local garage, he also want the tracking reset?

Also noted that all 4 tires are 6 years old but not worn enough to fail.

I changed the front ones at some point, so where is the date on the tires that he is basing this on.

Also noted that h windscreen washer was empty...

KCross

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121142248#Comment_121142248

Is this a main dealer job or a local garage

Local garage.

And you should probably do both sides when you are at it.

he also want the tracking reset

Local tyre centre

Also noted that all 4 tires are 6 years old but not worn enough to fail.

so where is the date on the tires that he is basing this on.

The year of manufacture is printed on the outside of all tyres.

Calahonda52

Thanks KC, as always, have lined up a mechanic.

I cant for the life of me see the date on the tyres, can someplace post a picture at your convenience

liamog

It will be something like this

Calahonda52

Thanks, put 4 new tyres on and full tracking 400 euro.

Ball joints by 2: 26 euro plus 30 labour

Calahonda52

So now when I reverse, after a metre or 2 there is a slight sound and I get the impression that the "handbrake" is engaging momentarily.

82,000 kms

Any thoughts?

fael

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121519251#Comment_121519251

Yup, common issue with the leaf. If anyone has a good fix for this I would love to hear it. I got my rear brakes + pads replaced with Nissan OEM parts but did not fix it. That's on a 24kWh 2013 Leaf.

Another common one seems to be the 'L' driver type of braking. Especially when almost coming to a stop, it's like it's not sure how to deal with the regen and actual brake application and it's doing a bit of both willy nilly. Makes you look like a newbie in the car ;)