How One Nissan LEAF Driver Gets The Most Out of His Battery Pack

Side note, here, regarding my resent articles about the $5000 and $7000 residual Nissan Lease Credits, I would like to note that the sold listings on Ebay at the time of this writing were mixed on resale of the 2013 Leaf which I used as my first pass check. The lowest prices I saw in the sold listings was in the $10k range but these were all cars which had been repurchased from the original buyers because of electronic issues ranging from battery malfunction to controller malfunctions. If the only thing was a battery swap from the factory, then I would feel pretty good about getting one of these since an EV really is only four main components, the controller (Inverter), the Charger, the Battery, and the Motor.

Now, back to the battery, if you don’t have the Leaf Spy app, you are less knowledgeable than you could be. I believe there are other apps now besides this one, but this is the one I use. The companion app to this is the Leaf Logger. The Leaf Spy Lite is free, and the Leaf Spy Pro and Leaf Logger charges a nominal fee and in my opinion you should go for it. Other issue is this app only runs on the android operating system. You will also need an OBDII blue tooth reader which aren’t very expensive either. If you already have a droid phone you are all in for around $30 if I remember correctly.

Now, here is how I maximize my pack. I monitor my GIDS via the Leaf Spy app. I take note of the charged GIDS in the morning after a night charge. I also occasionally give the pack a CHAdeMo fast charge every so often. I have noted that a CHAdeMo fast charge can bring up the GIDS higher than previous 240v 30amp charges have. I also believe in “battery exercise”. While I haven’t read much about batteries having any memory effect and don’t believe that these Leaf Cells do, however, I have noted my GOM goes up after I have gone on a longer trip with the battery that involves more regen. I also keep the driving in ECO drive mode often to maximize the regen. I still average out at about 268 GIDS after an overnight 240v 30amp charge. GOM ranges at full charge each morning 85-93 depending on early morning temperature and the previous trip.

Since my daily commute is now only 17 miles each way, start out in the morning downhill and then I plug in at 120v at the office and then turn around and head back up the hills to go home this has worked out very well. I’m in sales so some days I’m putting many more miles on the car than that but some days I’m office bound and that’s the routine. The Leaf Spy app gives you graphs of every battery cell pair and you can easily see if any of the cells are wildly out of balance. None of mine have one way out of whack but I keep monitoring them anyway, Just in case.

If you are slightly battery obsessive, you will be amazed at all the information this tool can give you. If you want to keep a look at the battery temperature in southern climate’s to your tires air pressure, this tool gives it to you. It is data paradise.

You can view my two video’s on this below.

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