The Case Of The Missing Bars: Leaf Owners Stage Massive Test To Prove Premature Battery Aging

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Earlier this year, Nissan Leaf owners in Arizona started to observe bars missing from the charge state display of their cars. Instead of the 12 bars that signal a full battery, some saw only 10 or less. This spread like the Arizona wildfires through the EV community. As of today, the discussion at the Mynissanleaf forum has swelled to 373 pages. Nissan looked at the affected cars, and so far has not rendered a verdict. Or maybe it did. 12 Leaf owners did assemble one night to prove Nissan wrong.

Three weeks ago, Nissan’s Executive Vice President Andy Palmer was quoted by Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald as saying that “we don’t have a battery problem” and that the battery level display is faulty. Enraged, the Arizona Leaf owners set up a massive test, and published the results at InsideEVs.

12 Leafs with odometer readings as low as 2,500 miles and as high as 29,000 miles assembled at night at 7755 South Research Drive, Tempe, Arizona. The location was chosen because it has a DC Chademo fast charger, and two J1772-2009 EVSE charging stations. From there, they did set out to drive the Leafs until the battery runs out, or more exactly, until the Turtle in the display strongly recommends to get off the road. They even had a small fleet of dollies and a flatbed truck to collect the exhausted Leafs.

The results of the test appear to support the group’s claim that the Leaf’s batteries degrade much faster than they should, at least in the hot climate of Arizona. A Leaf with 29,000 miles on the clock did last only 59.3 miles during the group’s test, a nearly 30 percent degradation from the 84 miles the group says a new Leaf should get. A Leaf with only 2,500 miles on the meter did last nearly 80 miles.

The test was professionally set up, VERY detailed description here. The group also measured the charge indicator, and found that in most cases, the instrument low-balls the available charge. Says Tony Williams who spearheaded the effort , and who had done an all-electric Canada to Mexico trip in a Leaf:

So, Andy Palmer was right… they have poor instruments. But, he was wrong about the batteries. It was sheer stupidity to tell this group of owners that the batteries are ok. “

We talked to Nissan’s General Manager of Global Communications, Jeff Kuhlman, in Yokohama. Kuhlman praises the affected owners who “are very knowledgeable, some are engineers themselves.”

He denies that Nissan has come to a conclusion on the matter: “We cannot give you a final analysis, because there simply is none available yet.”

Seven affected Leafs were inspected by Nissan , and subsequently returned to their customers. Nissan did a full data download on all units.

“The data are with our technical team in Yokohama, and they are still analyzing them,” says Kuhlman. “Once they have finished their analysis, the owners will be contacted first, and we will discuss with them what needs to be done.”

Kuhlman expects the verdict to be available “within days.”

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

More by Bertel Schmitt

Comments
Join the conversation
6 of 33 comments
  • Chuckrs Chuckrs on Sep 19, 2012

    Until The Miracle happens and someone stumbles across a robust, high energy density battery chemistry, a hybrid or high efficiency ICE is a better deal.

  • APaGttH APaGttH on Sep 19, 2012

    Nissan really, really, screwed this up. You can't change the law of physics. Battery capacity is impacted by ambient temperature. Nissan does not provide cooling for their batteries, and only provided heating optionally in the first model year. Great way to cut corners as the heating/cooling systems are expensive and add weight (which hurts range) but the impact is very clear. The batteries degrade quickly. Everyone else, from Ford, to Toyota, to GM, to Mitsubishi, to Tesla, to Fisker to.... got it right. There is no clean easy fix to this issue long term, Nissan is going to be buying customers a lot of batteries, and a Leaf with 80K to 100K miles is going to be worth - squat. Oh well, they are cheaper than a Volt.

    • See 3 previous
    • Herm Herm on Sep 21, 2012

      @BrianL No capacity warranty but the way some of these batteries are going (in Arizona) they will become warranty items with 3-4 years of use once the car refuses to accelerate.. even worse if the owner has a longer commute than normal and needs the full 80 mile range daily. There are 400 Leafs in Arizona and it costs $5000 for a new battery, you do the math. Nissan is probably waiting for the Tennessee battery factory to gear up in a couple of months, presently they are made in Japan. There is a Leaf in Washington at over 50k miles and estimated to be around 10% degradation.. battery capacity is hard to measure because anything affects range, including tire thread depth.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
Next