![]() There’s no way to know how much capacity the traction battery contains from the car’s dash display alone. See Star-Crossed Trip: Bakersfield to LAX & Return. On this particular trip I inadvertently pushed the temperature display just into the red zone. On another trip during the summer, I drove the car hard across the Mojave Desert, charging at fast chargers along the way. On one road trip we used fast chargers nine times. Using multiple fast charges on road trips raises the battery’s temperature, sometimes dramatically. On road trips, we will use DC Fast Chargers to raise the state of charge (SOC) to 90% and sometimes more when we felt it was necessary. We drive the car like we would drive any other car. We charge to 100% every time we charge at our home station. We drive the Leaf in the manner we think any other driver would. We deliberately chose not to “baby” the battery. Some drivers continued to follow this recommendation. For various reasons, Nissan abandoned this recommendation in the 2015 Leaf. Caveat: Charging & Driving HistoryĮarly in the Leaf’s introduction, Nissan recommend only charging the traction battery to 80% of its capacity as a means of extending the battery’s life. Capacity is not constant throughout the year. It reaches its lowest capacity during the winter and it reaches its maximum capacity during the summer. Thus, the traction battery’s capacity varies with the season. Higher temperatures, up to a point, increase capacity. According to measurements by Tony Williams, Nissan’s traction battery reaches its rated capacity at a standard temperature of 68 F (20 C). It’s reasonable to expect that our Leaf would experience some battery capacity degradation after two years of use in this climate even with the lizard battery and that’s what we found. Our use of the Leaf in Bakersfield presented an opportunity to monitor the lizard battery’s degradation under real-world conditions in a hot climate. Temperatures above 105 F (40 C) are not uncommon during the summer. Denizens of have called this the “lizard battery.” It is thought that Nissan began introducing new battery chemistry in the 2015 model Leaf to address the accelerated capacity degradation from high temperatures. At least for now, accelerated degradation is unique to the Leaf’s traction battery. GM’s Volt and Tesla’s Model S have shown little or no degradation. Not all EVs on the market have suffered the same fate as the Leaf. Unfortunately, the Leaf developed a reputation for accelerated battery degradation in hot climates such as Arizona and parts of California. Some 22 kWh are usable, giving the car an official EPA range of 84 miles (140 km) when the car is new.Īll batteries degrade with time and use. Not all that capacity is used to propel the car. The 2015 Nissan Leaf was built with a 24 kWh traction battery. That’s as much as some Americans drive per year. In two years we’ve put about 14,000 miles (23,000 km) on the car. Thus, we drive less per year than the average North American family. My wife Nancy is retired and I work at home. ![]() Our car did not sit idle long on the dealer’s lot before it was shipped to us. Our Leaf was manufactured in September 2014 and we took delivery in October 2014. The amount of time EVs set on a dealer’s lot unused can affect later degradation of the traction battery. The event was a good time to take stock of how much the Leaf’s traction battery has degraded during that time. We recently passed the two-year mark on our 2015 Nissan Leaf, a battery electric vehicle (EV).
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