The Biggest Question: The Battery Pack
For those who haven’t followed the LEAF closely since 2010, it’s worth pointing out that the Nissan LEAF is a vehicle with a rather interesting history. On the upside, it was the first mass-produced family electric vehicle, and Nissan sold more of them worldwide than any other electric vehicle. On the downside, early model years had battery degradation issues, leading many to question the wisdom of not including a liquid battery cooling system like other manufacturers have. Subsequent model years had improved batteries, but the longer range (and higher density) 2016–2017 models initially seemed to be degrading faster than earlier LEAFs.
Internet rumors indicated that the new 2018 model would have liquid cooling, and when that didn’t happen, people speculated that 2019 would get a larger, liquid-cooled pack. People feared that the even denser 40 kWh pack would degrade even faster than the 2016–2017 models, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
First, the 30 kWh pack proved to not be degrading faster. It turned out that Nissan made some math mistakes in the battery’s programming, and the vehicles were falsely reporting much higher degradation than was really happening. Thus, the theory that denser packs would fail faster didn’t turn out to be true.
In light of this, it shouldn’t be surprising that the 2018 model still holds up quite well. After 40,000 miles, the vehicle still shows all 12 capacity bars. The LEAFSpy app (that uses an OBD II Bluetooth dongle to talk to the vehicle’s computers) shows 92.5% capacity. What’s even better is that I drove the first 30,000 miles in the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area, including the hottest months of 2018. Despite that torture, it didn’t prematurely degrade
Internet rumors indicated that the new 2018 model would have liquid cooling, and when that didn’t happen, people speculated that 2019 would get a larger, liquid-cooled pack. People feared that the even denser 40 kWh pack would degrade even faster than the 2016–2017 models, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case.
First, the 30 kWh pack proved to not be degrading faster. It turned out that Nissan made some math mistakes in the battery’s programming, and the vehicles were falsely reporting much higher degradation than was really happening. Thus, the theory that denser packs would fail faster didn’t turn out to be true.
In light of this, it shouldn’t be surprising that the 2018 model still holds up quite well. After 40,000 miles, the vehicle still shows all 12 capacity bars. The LEAFSpy app (that uses an OBD II Bluetooth dongle to talk to the vehicle’s computers) shows 92.5% capacity. What’s even better is that I drove the first 30,000 miles in the Phoenix, Arizona, metro area, including the hottest months of 2018. Despite that torture, it didn’t prematurely degrade
