Charge Your LEAF EVERY DAY!

 In the ongoing saga of nursing my 12 volt battery, I have been testing various ways to maintain it without actually doing anything.  I had suspected that my interactions with the car while "not driving" it was somehow affecting my 12 volt battery by altering when the LEAF boosts the battery when powered off. Things like grabbing something out of the car while its sitting in the garage was changing things so I decided it was time to test some scenarios to see if they made any difference. Now, my normal process was to plug in a few hours every day to keep my SOC in the 40-65% range during my 4 day work week. For my days off, it varies quite a bit. At this time of year the weather is too unpredictable to make plans more than a few days in advance.  I am usually up early enough that any plans created for the day, I can simply plug in in the morning and have enough to do whatever it is I wanted to do.  The larger battery means almost always having at least 75 miles of "emergency" range so adding more for longer excursions never takes more than a few hours. 

Using LEAF Spy To Monitor 12 Volt Status. 

On the LEAF Spy screen you can see the 12 volt battery status in the lower left corner of the 4th screen; the power meter or bar graphs showing GID, SOC, etc. I prefer the power meter to see the effects of seat heaters, A/C, etc.  With LEAF Spy, you will see one of 3 basic modes

Here you can see the 12 volt battery voltage on lower

left corner @ 13.04 volts and 1.04 amps

NOTE; system current is higher because of active

charging session. Its frequently as low as .1 amps

Tip; A lot of the displays shown in LEAF Spy can toggle to different data displays. Simply tap on the display to toggle thru the options. 

12 Volt Battery Charging Automatically

This is the norm most people will see on nearly every start up. Voltage will be in the 14.4 volt range with a charge current running between 1-4 amps. In many cases, it drops to system voltage  with minimal current within a few minutes. It will also charge at any other time using an algorithm that is apparently based on time and not the actual SOC of the 12 volt. 

System Voltage

This is the normal running state of the car. In this state, the 12 volt battery is essentially not being used. The DC system is providing the power and you will see the voltage around 13.04 volts with current usually well under 1 amp.  

LEAF Spy Pro data log. To make it "readable" I condensed the data fields down. The two columns to look at here are "A" showing amps into the battery and B showing the voltage. (there is normally about 100 columns between column A and B) This shows first in the morning startup without prior charging. As expected an auto charge session begins immediately. Each entry is roughly 6 seconds apart so we see the "boost" is barely 2 minutes long. 

After the auto boost, it drops to system voltage where the DC system in the LEAF is handling most of the 12 volt needs.

12 Volt Battery Charging Manually

This is the mode we will investigate the most.  We can "force" charge the 12 volt by running the windshield wipers. I was using intermittent on the lowest setting. In this mode, the voltage is still in the 14.4 volt range but current varies from very low which means no charge being taken by the battery to several amps which means the battery is being boosted.  

This is a continuation of the same chart from above. The forced charge

lasted several minutes making it obvious that the 12 volt battery

was not at or near full capacity where lead acid wants to be as 

much as possible. 

Nissan's Insufficient 12 Volt Battery Management

As mentioned above, the 12 volt gets a boost on nearly every start up but sometimes the boost is very short including under a minute.  If a charge is terminated just before start up, there is usually no boost at all. IOW; it starts up at 13.04 volts immediately.  It was this observation that I based my tests on. 

Test # 1; Charging Daily

This was easy. I normally do that any way.  So I simply plugged in when I got up and on work days, the car charged between 70 and 90 minutes. On my days off, I charged between 45 mins and 3 hours.  

Observations; 

The different charging times did not appear to make a difference. 

40 of 52 days, Dropped to system voltage almost immediately including several days that started at system voltage. 

6 days, charge voltage lasted less than 1 minute.  The rest no longer than 2½ minutes
I attempted a force charge all 52 days;

49 times, no charge occurred. The voltage rose to 14.4 volts but current was very small under .5 amps or less. 

3 times, I was able to boost the battery for a few more minutes before current dropped below .5 amps. 

Conclusions; 

In most cases, the 12 volt battery had the most charge the system would allow. For YEARS, I thought the initial 12 volt boost to 14.4 volts on startup happened automatically as some sort of battery check so the fact that most of the time, the car started at 13.04 volts was a bit of a surprise. 

Test # 2; Not charging  every day. 

To do this, I had to throw out my SOC dogma and charge to 100% the day before my 4 day work week started.  I did this twice charging Friday night to 100%, running SOC down to 75% on Saturday and starting my work week on Sunday.   With a 28 mile RT commute, I have more than  enough range to cover the entire 4 day work week. During the test, I did not avoid detours but the most common detours I use don't add miles. In fact, one "detour" shortens my commute by .6 miles. I don't normally drive that way because it might be shorter but its a lot slower. 

Observations; 

All 8 days saw automatic 12 volt boosting lasting anywhere from 3 minutes to 8 minutes. 

On 7 days, I was also able to force charge as well lasting anywhere from 6 minutes to my ENTIRE 20 MINUTE DRIVE TO WORK. 

Conclusions

Well, I think the issue is quite obvious. I expected to see more automatic boosting on start up, but what shocked me is the extensive forced charging AFTER the automatic charging ended.  The worst happened 3 times; twice on Wednesday (end of the week) and once on Tues.  Last week on the 14th of April, I pulled into work with my 12 volt still receiving 1.6 amps of charging current. 

It would appear the algorithm is not designed to top off the battery. It appears to boost the battery on a timer.  The current feedback sensor's likely role is to prevent overcharging. 

Extended Storage

What my tests didn't address is why am I able to park my car for 22 days (on my 40 kwh in July 2018) without issues?  I have no easy way to test this because even at the far corner of my house, the car can still detect the fob and parking outside is not worth finding out more information. 

Now we know we never have to take the  fob out of our pocket when using the LEAF which means that the fob and the car are always communicating. Now most of this is short range communications that unlocks the door when you push the button, etc. So when  you spend time away from the car, it eventually drops into a lower power mode disabling the short range sensors. My Prius would turn on the courtesy lights when I walked by it with my fob in my pocket so it was always sensing the fob so wondering how aware the LEAF was with the fob? 

To test this, I locked the car at night which I normally never do since its always in the garage then in the morning, went out quickly and pushed the button to unlock  the door and open it and found a few times that I had to attempt to open the door a 2nd time because it did not unlock in time.  At first, I thought it was proof the car needed a split second to wake up.  I also tried standing next to the door for a few seconds before pushing the unlock button and that also seemed to work a bit quicker. 

In addition; I started monitoring how fast the door would unlock when I was out and about. Things like a 5 minute stop at the store, etc.  It did appear the locking mechanism was somewhat quicker most of the time but without the ability to time it; hard to say.

Recommendations

Well, the title says it all really if you want the TLDR version. But charging every day is a challenge to some who have shorter range LEAFs. For me, its easy. I have a LEAF that provides about 8 times more range than I need most of the time. So having the "room" to charge even on days I am doing little or no driving, is easy because the car is never near a full charge unless I have an event planned. So now the question becomes "How bad off is my 12 volt battery really?" 

Does my 12 volt really work that hard? 

To find out, I decided to hit Electrify America right after the beginning of its free charge Earth Day promo which means 9 PM on the 21st since I am on the west coast, so jumped in my car, launched LEAF Spy and headed out for the HUGE journey of 3.2 miles to my "2nd closest" EA location (the other one is under construction so likely not working yet...) 

I pulled up, turned off lights (something I normally do before I come to a full stop. Old habit from the 24 kwh  days) popped the charge hatch, got out, plugged in and after less than a minute the charge started. So this is at the end of the day when the car hadn't sit for more than 2 hours after my drive home due to some shorter errands I had run after work.  So this implies 12 volt battery should be in good shape as it would be getting boosted whenever Nissan felt it was needed so I'm good, right? 

Things to note here; 

You can  see the significant drain on the 12 volt as soon as the car is shut off. Obviously this cannot be sustained very long and its simply what happens when  the car is at a high state of readiness. I kinda covered it but you see the voltage dropping to 12.08 volts.  How long will this go on, I don't know as LEAF Spy lost focus so I had to restart it which accounts for the 5 minute time gap.  

My History

I have been LEAFing over a decade on 5 different versions and have never had a 12 volt failure. So am I just being lucky or is there something I am doing unknowingly that has helped me avoid the issue?

After learning the above information, I realized my reducing time at high SOC meant that frequently  the charging had finished within a few hours of my departure times. My extreme driving need from 2011 to 2018 meant charging every day was a must.  Since 2018, I have been all about SOC management so I charge every day so I can keep from being too  high (above 70% SOC) or too low (below 20%) 

Since 12 volt failure has been a constant since 2011 on social media, I have visited this issue many times so I had a vague idea of what "should be ok for now" looked like and that seemed to be between 12.15 and 12.3 volts.  But my Plus hasn't been doing as well as it hovers between 11.9 and 12.0 volts. That concerned me so a few times I removed the battery, put it on a charger and ran a full charge cycle on it but it never seemed to last more than a few days.  This was way more effort than I or anyone else would want to invest especially if there was a way to lessen the risk so....

CHARGE EVERY DAY!

EDIT

Ok, its a new year and due to several things, I let my poor LEAF sit for nearly 48 hours.  Like any pet, she has her way of telling me she needed to go out. 

As you know (or will soon learn) the 12 volt battery is boosted by an algorithm and that boost can happen at any time charging or not, running or not.  I was doing the glass thing (something that is needed regularly in Western Washington winters) and noticed the 12 volt being boosted as shown by the center light illuminated.  

Immediately recognizing the chance to collect data, I waited until the boost was complete, launched LEAF Spy and headed out for some errands. Now the errands would normally be fairly quick as I didn't have far to go but the charging current for the 12 volt was still over 4 amps so I circled a bit waiting for the current to start dropping and well after 20 mins, I decided to stop and do what I needed to get done. 

A few mins, later, out I come and yeah, car still charging.  Boosted for 8 more mins and I resisted the urge to circle the block a few times. 

This pretty much proves the algorithm is likely just time based and not based on the SOC of the 12 volt battery. I am lucky enough to be able to garage my LEAF so having it sit for 2 days didn't hurt me although I am wondering just how low my 12 volt was? 

As it stands, I still frequently boost my 12 volt manually by running my windshield wipers which is normally not difficult to do. I use Rain X so on the freeway, I actually don't need wipers as the air over the glass is sufficient enough to clear water out of the way but at lower speeds, Rain X is somewhat less effective but I usually elect to have my wipers on at the lowest intermittent speed.