what kind of battery is in a Nissan leaf, and how long does it generally last?
This is an interesting article from someone who live in California. The 2015 Nissan Leaf was built with a 24 kWh traction battery. Not all that capacity is used to propel the car. Some 22 kWh are usable, giving the car an official EPA range of 84 miles (140 km) when the car is new.
All batteries degrade with time and use. Anyone with a smart phone knows this. Unfortunately, the Leaf developed a reputation for accelerated battery degradation in hot climates such as Arizona and parts of California. Not all EVs on the market have suffered the same fate as the Leaf. GM’s Volt and Tesla’s Model S have shown little or no degradation. At least for now, accelerated degradation is unique to the Leaf’s traction 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. Denizens of mynissanleaf.com have called this the “lizard battery.”
We live in Bakersfield, California. It’s hot here in the summer–very hot. Temperatures above 105 F (40 C) are not uncommon during the summer. 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.
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.
1 Like
A friend has new leaf at dealer now. Battery issue. No parts available. Seems new leafs have battery issues also.
The Nissan Leaf battery is air cooled. That is a problem in very hot or cold climates. One reason the Chevy Volt battery is so rugged is that Chevy cools and heats the battery to carefully protect the battery. With my '17 Volt parked in my driveway and plugged in, I hear the systems crank up once in a while taking care of that big lump!