Nissan issues statement on LEAF 30-kWh battery degradation

n97 mini

It's been a bad few weeks for Nissan and their batteries.

https://insideevs.com/nissan-issues-statement-on-leaf-30-kwh-battery-degradation/

TBi

So after 2 years you have a 24kw battery... not good news for those buyers!

unkel

It's one thing to have 70% left after 7.5 years on the 24kWh (not great but at least it's a linear degradation), but to be down to almost 85% after just 2 years is pretty shocking and look at the accelerating curve :eek:

Nissan will have to replace most / all of the 30kWh batteries under warranty.

ELM327

unkel wrote: »

It's one thing to have 70% left after 7.5 years on the 24kWh (not great but at least it's a linear degradation), but to be down to almost 85% after just 2 years is pretty shocking and look at the accelerating curve :eek:

Nissan will have to replace most / all of the 30kWh batteries under warranty.

Perhaps this is the reason also for the super conservative "rapidgate" throttling

thierry14

unkel wrote: »

It's one thing to have 70% left after 7.5 years on the 24kWh (not great but at least it's a linear degradation), but to be down to almost 85% after just 2 years is pretty shocking and look at the accelerating curve :eek:

Bangers those Nissan Evs

40kWh will be the worst

Hope anyone buying one is going pcp, having the option to give back in 3 years

Time won't be kind to the poor old Leafs

Hyundai are trolling Nissan on point 1 of this article

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1116041_5-things-about-the-2019-hyundai-kona-electric-we-learned-at-the-ny-auto-show

goz83

thierry14 wrote: »

Bangers those Nissan Evs

I'm still quite happy with my Gen1 & 1.5 which are both holding out quite well.

I'd be well peeved if I had a 30kWh version and saw degradation like this.

thierry14

goz83 wrote: »

I'm still quite happy with my Gen1 & 1.5 which are both holding out quite well.

I'd be well peeved if I had a 30kWh version and saw degradation like this.

Definitely

Funny thing is

Loads of poster here were saying it was the early Leafs that had the tesco value batteries degradation issues and the later Leafs that had the good chemistry with little degradation

Looks opposite now lol

ewj1978

wait wut? I had 65k/kms on my 30kwh and sold it at near enough to 2 years old and it had 97% SOH when sold.

ELM327

thierry14 wrote: »

Definitely

Funny thing is

Loads of poster here were saying it was the early Leafs that had the tesco value batteries degradation issues and the later Leafs that had the good chemistry with little degradation

Looks opposite now lol

Gen 1 was terrible.
Gen 1.5 24kWh was great (mine took a hammering repeatedly and was still hovering 92-94% SOH when I sold it with 100k on the clock.)
Gen 1.5 30kWh is terrible
Gen 2 40kWh is super terrible (#rapidgate)

unkel

ELM327 wrote: »

Perhaps this is the reason also for the super conservative "rapidgate" throttling

Yeah, this crossed my mind too. Nissan must have known the extent of the problem when they designed the 40kWh battery. Why the hell didn't they setup a simple cooling system? Even passive (air) cooling, doesn't need to be active water cooling.

As a 30kWh owner this wouldn't worry me too much though. Fast charge the hell out of it, get a replacement battery after 4 years and either happily keep it or sell it on for a premium as it has a 100% SOH battery

ewj1978

Nissan will replace the battery. they never said they'd give you one with 100%.

unkel

ELM327 wrote: »

Gen 1 was terrible.
Gen 1.5 24kWh was great (mine took a hammering repeatedly and was still hovering 92-94% SOH when I sold it with 100k on the clock.)
Gen 1.5 30kWh is terrible
Gen 2 40kWh is super terrible (#rapidgate)

Pretty much. When someone asks me what EV to buy (and they can't afford the guts of €20k or even more) I say the sweetest spot is a 2015 24kWh SVE for about €10k. A lot of car for the money. But you're a bit harsh on the Gen 1. They are and will be perfectly suitable for many people as second cars or low mileage local cars.

liamog

Can't help but notice that Nissan have sold out of AESC just before their 40kWh battery became a liability, now it's revealed the 30kWh is suffering too.
They really dodged a bullet there.

I assume it's AESC's warranty with Nissan that has forced the protective charge rate on the 40kWh.

ELM327

unkel wrote: »

Pretty much. When someone asks me what EV to buy (and they can't afford the guts of €20k or even more) I say the sweetest spot is a 2015 24kWh SVE for about €10k. A lot of car for the money. But you're a bit harsh on the Gen 1. They are and will be perfectly suitable for many people as second cars or low mileage local cars.

Oh no they are perfectly suitable as second cars, wasnt it Soarer who bought one with 3 bars gone for a ridiculous bargain price of like 5k?

I meant terrible as regards battery management and degradation. Of course if its a second car that only does say 20km a day it's not an issue.

The 8 year battery warranty surely helps here and the initial capacity findings may be the reason why the 30 kWh pack never made it to e-NV van. As the 40 kWh is going in them Nissan must feel quite confident about them compared to the old size. Also, as the 30 kWh is not available as a cheaper battery option even for the base model new LEAF, it much sounds like there maybe is a good reasons for this. At the same time ewj1978's experience sound positive, maybe another example that cool but not too cold Irish weather is just about perfect match for LEAF's capabilities.

Of warranty: Unless it was a fresh car with for example one clearly defective module that threw out a diagnostic failure I have never heard anybody getting their battery repaired instead of a fresh new pack with the latest chemistry available on that battery size. Nissan warranty wording has always been repair or replace but in practice they have always replaced them.

n97 mini

ELM327 wrote: »

Gen 1 was terrible.
Gen 1.5 24kWh was great (mine took a hammering repeatedly and was still hovering 92-94% SOH when I sold it with 100k on the clock.)
Gen 1.5 30kWh is terrible
Gen 2 40kWh is super terrible (#rapidgate)

But every charge is #rapdigate with that model, particularly in cold weather. Luck to stay above 20kw for longer than 5 minutes.

ELM327

n97 mini wrote: »

But every charge is #rapdigate with that model, particularly in cold weather. Luck to stay above 20kw for longer than 5 minutes.

That wasn't my experience, recording 60k km and over 300 DC QC per leafspy.

The 30 Kwh heats up faster as it's allowed higher current when charging and if fast charging a lot it could impact battery life.

I don't think we have enough data though for this part of the world.

goz83

ELM327 wrote: »

Oh no they are perfectly suitable as second cars, wasnt it Soarer who bought one with 3 bars gone for a ridiculous bargain price of like 5k?

I meant terrible as regards battery management and degradation. Of course if its a second car that only does say 20km a day it's not an issue.

I picked up the bargain in June last year. €5k with 11 bars. Still have 11 bars. Looking to sell and upgrade.

Gumbo

unkel wrote: »

Pretty much. When someone asks me what EV to buy (and they can't afford the guts of €20k or even more) I say the sweetest spot is a 2015 24kWh SVE for about €10k. A lot of car for the money. But you're a bit harsh on the Gen 1. They are and will be perfectly suitable for many people as second cars or low mileage local cars.

Would you get a 15 SVE/Tekna for €10k?

KCross

kceire wrote: »

Would you get a 15 SVE/Tekna for €10k?

I wouldnt think so. Maybe £10k, but not €10k.

ELM327

KCross wrote: »

I wouldnt think so. Maybe £10k, but not €10k.

This is the cheapest SVE 2015 leaf on Donedeal
12.5k
https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/nissan-leaf-sve-6-6kw-charger/18339715

And the next (from the same seller - completely coincidentally, I have no connection to the seller at all)
13.5k

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/nissan-leaf-sve-highest-spec/18416143

KCross

ELM327 wrote: »

This is the cheapest SVE 2015 leaf on Donedeal
12.5k
https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/nissan-leaf-sve-6-6kw-charger/18339715

And the next (from the same seller - completely coincidentally, I have no connection to the seller at all)
13.5k

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/nissan-leaf-sve-highest-spec/18416143

Yea, that sounds about right.
I dont usually judge price based on the Irish dealers. I look at the UK and the asking prices range from about £10500-£12000 for SVE's right now.

So, add on your import costs and time etc, the €12500 is a decent enough price actually.

You wont get one for €10k.

zilog_jones

unkel wrote: »

Why the hell didn't they setup a simple cooling system? Even passive (air) cooling, doesn't need to be active water cooling.

I can only imagine the reason was cost, and they thought it would be "good enough" without. My Prius Plug-in with a 4.4 kWh battery has multiple fans and two ducts coming from the cabin - on the basis that you're going to keep the cabin at reasonable temperatures on a hot day. Even the standard Prius (1.3 kWh) has one fan for the battery!

goz83

kceire wrote: »

Would you get a 15 SVE/Tekna for €10k?

I've been looking and the prices are still going up. I had my eyes on a 2014 Tekna and 2015 Acenta in the UK. Both of them went up in price by £250 a few days ago and most others I was glancing at have gone up by similar money. No bargains at all.

Soarer

n97 mini wrote: »

It's been a bad few weeks for Nissan and their batteries.

https://insideevs.com/nissan-issues-statement-on-leaf-30-kwh-battery-degradation/

I bet mel.b is delighted with the timing of this report!

Soarer

ELM327 wrote: »

Oh no they are perfectly suitable as second cars, wasnt it Soarer who bought one with 3 bars gone for a ridiculous bargain price of like 5k?

I meant terrible as regards battery management and degradation. Of course if its a second car that only does say 20km a day it's not an issue.

goz83 wrote: »

I picked up the bargain in June last year. €5k with 11 bars. Still have 11 bars. Looking to sell and upgrade.

I was ripped off and paid €6k for my 10 bar!

BoatMad

103,000km 30 kwh Leaf , 2 years old in March , all bars present , GOM still giving 190 -202 in warmer days , 97% SOH

whats the problem !

slicedpanman

@BoatMad what do you put your good battery health stats down to? Our mild climate? Your charging habits?

BoatMad

slicedpanman wrote: »

@BoatMad what do you put your good battery health stats down to? Our mild climate? Your charging habits?

no idea , we dont do anything particular and as you can see the car gets very heavily used

BoatMad you still never posted your leafspy stats.

BoatMad

Deleted User wrote: »

BoatMad you still never posted your leafspy stats.

no , just never bothered , theres nothing much to see, rather like you discovered yourself

Soarer

They say....

Nissan Report wrote:

On the upside, findings suggest that high use of DC fast charging had little impact on battery SoH.

For some, that's obviously a plus.
But for the majority of people, that slowcharge overnight, it's little comfort.

Lantus

It's not great news, for nissan, the leaf or the ev market overall. Nissan should of nailed this by now having been making this car for ages.

I'm put off for the 40kwh battery now until I see data on its soh. Sad....

BoatMad

BoatMad wrote: »

no , just never bothered , theres nothing much to see, rather like you discovered yourself

It would be nice to actually "see it"

unkel

kceire wrote: »

Would you get a 15 SVE/Tekna for €10k?

ELM327 wrote: »

This is the cheapest SVE 2015 leaf on Donedeal
12.5k

Phil has one coming in for €11.5k asking, so €11k cash. And that's from a dealer with warranty. Privately you should be able to go the grand better, but you might have to bring one in from the UK yourself to manage that price

I buy at the best possible prices generally, this practice is not easy and is not the best suited for everyone

_dof_

unkel wrote: »

Phil has one coming in for €11.5k asking

That 12.5k one is the one that Phil has coming in (it's the one listed on his website as due on 28th March), unless there's another one due that isn't mentioned on his web site? It also has >110k kms which is pretty high for a 151 car.

unkel

You're right, _dof_, that's the one I saw a few days ago, so indeed asking €12.5k

Cheapest 2015 on Autotrader is an Acenta for GBP9295, probably GBP9100 after negotiation, which would have you the car landed at EUR10.6k

Linky


These cars are keeping their value very well. I would urge people to be careful and get value for money before they buy. Recent Irish sales of 30kWh Leafs for over EUR20k were utter madness imho. But I suppose limited supply will do this to prices.

BoatMad

unkel wrote: »

You're right, _dof_, that's the one I saw a few days ago, so indeed asking €12.5k

Cheapest 2015 on Autotrader is an Acenta for GBP9295, probably GBP9100 after negotiation, which would have you the car landed at EUR10.6k

Linky


These cars are keeping their value very well. I would urge people to be careful and get value for money before they buy. Recent Irish sales of 30kWh Leafs for over EUR20k were utter madness imho. But I suppose limited supply will do this to prices.

given the demonstrated mechanical reliability of the Leaf, I think it will be an excellent 2nd hand car, and likely too hold its value at 5 yeas plus then ICE cars

Zenith74

Nissan have apparently released a statement today stating that 30kwh batteries in their Leafs are not actually degrading quickly, the range and SOH indicators are reporting incorrectly due to a software issue that they can now patch in all cars (recall I guess).

http://www.cleanfleetreport.com/exclusive-nissan-leaf-battery-fix/

This would be great news, would love to have a L30 instead of the L24 if the battery lasted as well. Would be interesting for somebody here to grab some screenshots from LeafSpy then go get the patch done by Nissan and see the changes!

creedp

Any chance that software fix will mask rather than fix the problem?

As a matter of interest the latest leafspy screen grab from my L30 is below

ELM327

Perhaps it will just release more of the battery as available to the user, keeping less in reserve.
But just enough in reserve to avoid paying for battery replacements under warranty.

creedp

ELM327 wrote: »

Perhaps it will just release more of the battery as available to the user, keeping less in reserve.
But just enough in reserve to avoid paying for battery replacements under warranty.

Surely a car manufacturer wouldn't use software fixes to try and deceive its loyal customer base #SOHgate

Zenith74

creedp wrote: »

Any chance that software fix will mask rather than fix the problem?

Think us Leaf owners who monitor every single one of our limited kilometers are too wily for all that! Sure look at you, with your OBD port dump to hand at any time of the day :-)

creedp

Zenith74 wrote: »

Think us Leaf owners who monitor every single one of our limited kilometers are too wily for all that! Sure look at you, with your OBD port dump to hand at any time of the day :-)

To be fair the limited knowledge I have of EV's is almost all sourced from here. Long live Boards...

Having built ye up can I now ask for a view on what is the relationship between SOH % and available capacity. Nominally the L30 battery capacity is 30kwh with, it would appear, the accepted view being that the available capacity is approx. 28kwh. Does that mean, based on my leafspy report, that my actual available capacity is now approx. 25kwh (28kwh*89%)? With an average consumption of 15kwh / 100km this would give me a theoretical max range of 167km.

What would happen if, as suggested by ELM327, the software fix freed up additional battery capacity? Could, for example, this result in my available battery capacity increasing by 1kwh to approx 26kwh increasing the theoretical range to 173km (just 3.6%). However surely this would not change the SOH % which would still be 89% (26kwh/29kwh).

Am I oversimplifying things?

ELM327

creedp wrote: »

To be fair the limited knowledge I have of EV's is almost all sourced from here. Long live Boards...

Having built ye up can I now ask for a view on what is the relationship between SOH % and available capacity. Nominally the L30 battery capacity is 30kwh with, it would appear, the accepted view being that the available capacity is approx. 28kwh. Does that mean, based on my leafspy report, that my actual available capacity is now approx. 25kwh (28kwh*89%)? With an average consumption of 15kwh / 100km this would give me a theoretical max range of 167km.

What would happen if, as suggested by ELM327, the software fix freed up additional battery capacity? Could, for example, this result in my available battery capacity increasing by 1kwh to approx 26kwh increasing the theoretical range to 173km (just 3.6%). However surely this would not change the SOH % which would still be 89% (26kwh/29kwh).

Am I oversimplifying things?

That's a good question, and one that I'm not sure we have an answer to.
Is the SOH figure gross or net of the hidden/non accessible parts of the battery? Considering that the SOC figure is gross in leafspy I'd guess that the SOH is also gross.

creedp, your stats look surprisingly bad especially for a car that was hardly ever rapid charged.

Based on your stats your car should experience approx. 10-15 percent reduction in the attainable range if the capacity really was down as much as shown. You should try if the car can still actually archieve something close to 200 km mixed driving from 100% to turtle at lowish speeds. In summer my old L24 managed about 100k from 8X to very low battery warning at indicated 100 km/h so I would expect a L30 to archive 150 km under those conditions. If what nissan says they are going to fix is true it's the battery telling the car lies about its condition but if you actually fully use the battery it will actually have more capacity than what the battery reports.

creedp

samih wrote: »

creedp, your stats look surprisingly bad especially for a car that was hardly ever rapid charged.

Based on your stats your car should experience approx. 10-15 percent reduction in the attainable range if the capacity really was down as much as shown. You should try if the car can still actually archieve something close to 200 km mixed driving from 100% to turtle at lowish speeds. In summer my old L24 managed about 100k from 8X to very low battery warning at indicated 100 km/h so I would expect a L30 to archive 150 km under those conditions. If what nissan says they are going to fix is true it's the battery telling the car lies about its condition but if you actually fully use the battery it will actually have more capacity than what the battery reports.

Agree, I was taken aback when I took my 1st Leafspy reading about a month ago which reported a SOH of 91.74%. Since then it has varied between low 89% to low 92% with this morning reporting 89.61%.

I rarely get to do a significant journey doing an indicated 100kmh as my daily 140km commute is a mix of motorway (normally indicated 110 - 115kmh but can exceed 120kmh when under pressure), national roads (indicated 100 - 110kmh) and heavy city traffic. Because its a commute I'm always under time pressure either rushing to work after dropping off kids or rushing home to pick up. One of these weekend days when I'm not operating as a taxi Ill take it on a leisurely jaunt to see what kind of range I can get.

It will be easier to do this when I eventually get the home charger installed hopefully early next week as then I will be able to 100% in less than 5 hours. Currently if I run the car to Turtle it would take nearly 15 hrs to fully charge.

Edit - recently when travelling to Cork I left Dublin City Centre with 100% SOC and arrived in Urlingford with 25% SOC - so 132km on 75% battery driving reasonably easy - about 105kmh indicated on open road - so giving a max theoretical range of 176km

135 km with 75 percent sounds a tiny bit low but maybe the conditions were not perfect. Will be handy to have a proper home charger alright. I wouldn't despair with the results yet.

As you have leafspy you can check for weakish modules indicated by large differential voltage differences at high to medium state of charge. Sounds like you won't have any issues with your commute as you have charging at both ends.

creedp

samih wrote: »

135 km with 75 percent sounds a tiny bit low but maybe the conditions were not perfect. Will be handy to have a proper home charger alright. I wouldn't despair with the results yet.

As you have leafspy you can check for weakish modules indicated by large differential voltage differences at high to medium state of charge. Sounds like you won't have any issues with your commute as you have charging at both ends.

It was a lovely evening but traffic was extremely heavy all the way out to the Newbridge exit. So it was only from that point I was travelling in excess of 100kmh indicated.

See below a screenshot of a Leafspy Voltage Histogram - seems like a severe spike on graph yet the max voltage difference is reported as 11mV. Is this good or bad?

11 mV sounds very good. Have to take a look at the histogram view on my car the next time. But 50 mV sounds similar to what my L24 used to show.