The new Gen 2 batteries promise to not only deliver more range but will also be more robust lasting longer with a better chemistry.
Well, at least that was the promise. I was buzzing along seeing a very slow drop in stats after taking the car off the lot a few months ago. As always I try to get a car that whose battery is less than a month old so my build date of 01/18 was perfect when I picked up the car in Mid February.
As always, I was logging LEAF Spy readings every morning (that I drove the car) and unlike the Gen 0ne packs that bounced around all over the place making it nearly impossible to see how the pack was doing, my Gen 2 pack was moving like Molasses. It was actually quite boring. Losing .01% here and there a few times a week. I figured it would be more than 6 months to lose one percent but then one day I checked it and...
I had lost over ¼% OVERNIGHT! What happened? That was more than what I had lost in the first 4,000 miles and 2 months of driving! But that was only the beginning. The next day it was another .38% loss and it kept going and going. When the dust finally settled a week later, I had lost almost 2%.
I quickly verified this with a full charge reading and yeah; GIDs and kwh available also dropped accordingly.
I wondered what did I do wrong? How come the stats NEVER go up like they did on the Gen Ones? At first I thought maybe I was DC'ing too much. After all, its free and hard to resist plus with working all over the Puget Sound Region, sometimes a full charge wasn't enough so boosting it during the day became a common habit. I have work I need to do to complete any assignments so I would simply stop, plug in, get the work done then go. This saved me from having to cut into my home time to do it so it was a win-win.
Although hot weather hasn't been a factor yet, I did do a few trips when the pack got heated to 10 temperature bars but only a few times. So guess we will continue to monitor.
