Batteries. Yes, again

Somehow every battery post I've done is either too complicated and most people's eyes glaze over -or- it leads to immediate "Yes, but what about..." questions. Here's an attempt to simplify all that. I'm going to assume you already know not to completely discharge your batteries on a regular basis.
If on the other hand, you want massive amounts of detail, especially about LEAFs then head over to one of my favorite blogs: DaveInOlyWA.

So, here's the simple version:
Don't leave your battery pack sitting around at full charge.
Especially if it's hot.
Seriously, that's just about all there is to it.
Here's the picture:

I picked the image off the web. I think it's from a Dalhousie University study, but don't quote me. 

What does this mean?  It means you'll get TWO to THREE TIMES the life out of your batteries if you only charge them to 80% most of the time. Having an occasional charge up to 100% won't cause a problem, especially if you don't let it sit around in the sun, in fact going to 100% every 4-6 weeks can be a good thing as it allows the batteries to balance, even-out, with one-another.
Keep in mind that most of the damage comes from sitting hot. Hitting 100% and then immediately driving off isn't nearly as damaging. So if you do need 100% on a regular basis try to schedule the charge timing so it reaches 100% an hour or so before you need to take off. If that happens to be in the cool of the morning, so much the better.

One thing that doesn't show in the picture is that it isn't quite as bad as it seems since most electric car manufacturers only allow the batteries to charge to 95-97% of full capacity anyway since they're already wise to the fact that 100%=Warranty Claims.

---------  Yep, that's it. That's really all there is. Nitpickity details below --------

If you have a Leaf from before 2014 or a Chevy Bolt you have a clever feature hidden in the on-screen menus that allows you to set the maximum charge to 80% (Leaf) or 89% (Bolt). Yay!
But only about 5% of the people are using that. Boo! It gets no press.
"How come only the pre-2014 Leafs?"
Nissan put in that feature to help preserve the battery life. Smart, huh?
Then other manufacturers complained to the EPA that the reduced charge should be taken into account when calculating the EPA Range Estimates. Ya'know, unfair to all the cars the other manufacturers weren't even making yet, but they have good lobbyists. Boo!
So Nissan removed the feature. "Screw the public, we want good EPA numbers!" Double Boo!
"Wait, so how does Chevy still have that feature?"
Basically they're smarter than Nissan. They called it a "Hilltop Reserve," basically a bit of charge space so regen would still work after you charged your car up in the hills where your house is. It's the same feature, just different marketing (safety, ya'know), and did I mention the better lobbyists?
And to be fair a 'feature' that takes 11% off the top of a 200 mile range (Bolt) is a lot easier to stomach than one which takes 20% off the top of a 100 mile range (Leaf).
Also to be fair, it's VERY possible to set the timer on your Leaf (or sometimes on the charger itself) to produce the same result, it's just a bit more bother.
Of course, after tax and rebates a Leaf has recently been (see earlier posts) just over half the cost of a Bolt, so you have to take that into consideration. Seriously, 2017 Leafs have bottomed out below $20K. Bolts were around $35K. Do the math.

You may notice there's no mention of Tesla. Firstly, they have superior battery chemistry -and- really good thermal management (ie: they keep the batteries cool) on which the Bolt also does a pretty good job, and Nissan does a really crappy job. My take: Buy a Tesla (if you're a member of the economic top 5%) or maybe a Bolt. If you're going to get a Leaf (jury's still out on the 2018's) get it as a Lease, not a 'Buy' so that the lease company takes the hit as the batteries go south in a hot climate.

Update'd LEAF

The 9 month report: 10K Miles.
First the bad news. Everything that's gone wrong or failed to operate as expected:
1. There's a slow leak in the left front tire (two weeks for 10 PSI) that we haven't been able to locate.
2. There is no '2.'  That's it for problems. Seriously.
No hickups. Never stranded us. Never ran (completely) out of charge.
[See Caveat below]

As expected the car goes round-trip to Corvallis twice a week and if the weather is nice and we're not in too big a hurry to make it up there then it does that on a single (home) charge. If it's nasty rainy and cold or we buzz up the freeway at 75 then we have to stop at the charger on the way back.

Fortunately there are three fast chargers on the route. You can easily check on the LEAF EZ-Charge app (on either the Google or Apple app stores) to see if the chargers are available and review the last few user comments to see if there's been any problems. We always try to have enough charge remaining to make it to the next charger in case of failure or a long wait. We've used the AV Network CHaDeMo fast charger at the Tangent OR freeway exit the most, Roughly 60-70 times so far. It takes around 15 min. for the amount we need.
There were two occasions where we had a short wait.
There were two occasions where we went on to the next charger in Halsey due to the wait.
There was one occasion where the charger was mis-behaving (showed a warning on the app) and we went on to the next charger. Granted it probably would have been just a case of calling the AV support number and having then remotely reset it, but we didn't have time.
That works out to an error rate of somewhere below 2%.
Keep in mind that the access to the charger networks is free for the period of our lease (ie: included in the purchase) and would have cost $180 if paid monthly or ~$500 if paid 'per use.'

Anyway, it's been a darn good ride. Plenty of acceleration for scooting around town or freeway on-ramps. Nice quiet ride. Competent cornering and braking. Comfortable interior.
We wish the heater didn't suck down the battery charge quite as fast (lops off about 15%) and it would be nice if there were about 20% more range as many fewer charging stops would be required.

Caveat: The early results from late 2016 and 2017 Leaf's that have the 30KWh ('larger') battery pack like ours indicate that battery degradation is even more pronounced on these models than on the earlier units with the 24KWh pack. Granted it's early days yet, but this is NOT a good trend. We are VERY pleased to have leased the car. We get the sweet part of the battery life and someone else has to deal with the tail end. As a result I probably wouldn't consider buying one of these used unless the price is VERY attractive and the commute distance is relatively low. We (and everyone else) are waiting to see of the Leaf Gen2 (2018) 40 KWh packs have the same problem.

What if you don't qualify for Fed Tax Credit?

Update Jan.2023: 

"And in the saddest news of this update, the 'Leasing Loophole' appears to be closing.

This still 'works' if you're actually interested in Leasing. However the whole point of the post was that you would buy out the lease almost immediately, and so get the benefit of the tax credit despite having insufficient taxable income to qualify.
What basically happened is the high resale values on used card during the pandemic plus the high demand for used EVs generally -plus- the now available $4K credit for used EVs has convinced the leasing agencies (Tesla, NMAC, GMAC - etc) to recind the option to buy out the lease. They make more money on the lease-take-back than they would otherwise. Also, somehow they're convinced that this maintains a higher used car price for their wares. In Tesla's case, this appears to be true. Not so obvious for the others. Bummer though, the little guy gets screwed again."   Anyway, make sure you read the fine print before you try this.

Updated Aug.2022: Recent changes in the Federal Tax Credit (at least as proposed, some of the changes have not been completely 'baked' yet) may make for some different decision drivers in the near future.
Right this moment (and presumably for the remainder of 2022) Nissan, Hyundai/Kia, and most of the smaller EV players still qualify for the existing Federal rebate. 

It appears that Nissan Leafs will be fine under the new rules next year given that they have the highest percentage of U.S. manufactured content of anyone excepting a few Teslas (and not generally the cheaper ones.) The 'new' Nissan? That's less clear.
Hyundai/Kia? that's also fine for now but less clear for next year due to manufacturing locations and battery materials. If you're thinking about these, I'd look sooner rather than later.

Chevy Bolt/EUV may qualify (they don't right now) of more of the content is made 'onshore' (something like 55% was from Korea as of recently) and depending on how the battery manufacturing rules play out.
It seems likely that Tesla can work their manufacturing locations, processes and pricing around to make the rebate available next year sometime. On the Model3 the cheapest one (and therefore most likely to qualify on price) currently uses batteries made by CATL in China, but in theory that could be changed enough to meet the requirements. If the ModelY gets classified as an SUV then it can be made to qualify, if it isn't so classified then no rebate there.  It's a debatable point if Tesla even needs this since they have a year long waiting list with no rebate assistance.

VW has a pretty good chance to qualify and that should be looked into soon.

Polestar would need to set up more NAFTA manufacturing to qualify.

The Audi, Jaguar, BMW, Honda, Mazda, Toyota and Mercedes all have such awful price/performance that they're not getting any attention here now.
More on this later. 'Watch this Space'

Back to our original post:

More and more, electric vehicles are reaching the point where they make viable economic sense on their own merits. Still, with state and federal incentives available it would be kind of stupid to pass those up. Granted the Oregon and California state incentives can be a pain to get but some dealers will help you with that., ...and the federal tax credit remains, at least for now*.

But let's take a look at that federal thing for a minute. To fully make use of that you must have a full $7500 left in federal tax liability after adjustments to AGI, and other adjustments and credits. That (rough calculations) implies a gross income somewhere in the $80K-$120K range or above, depending on filing status and things like mortgage deductions - etc.
...so basically you have to be in the top 20% financially speaking to fully qualify. That kinda sucks.  What about that other 80% of the folks out there who just don't make that much or are retired (early or not) or have been practicing a more frugal lifestyle?  There may be a way for those folks to 'game the system' and get the advantages of the credit even with almost no federal tax liability. Note that the Oregon credit and the California credit(s) may not have any income tests to qualify.

OK, how do we get a federal tax credit without having any federal tax liability?
Well, there's a nice little wrinkle in the rules that's designed to benefit banks and finance companies. If you lease an EV, the finance company applies for, and gets the $7500. Some of them pass that on to you, like Nissan is a good example, ...and some of them are self-serving assholes and keep most of it for themselves, like for example GMAC/Chevy.
"But wait, I wanted to buy, not lease!?"
Remain calm, we'll get there.  Obviously this is not intended as tax or financial advise. In fact lets dispense with dispensing advice and use our recent purchase as a 

Real world example:
We waltz into the out-of-state (WA) dealer with the best deals and plunk down about $3990 and waltz out with a car (Nissan Leaf S + Charging Package) and a couple weeks later they rebate the $500 they collected to handle the WA state title/registration/fees/licensing. So now we're out about $3500 and we still owe $57/month (It's an unusual example case...) for the remaining 24  months of the lease.
Lo and behold, right there on the first lease payment bill, which arrives promptly a couple weeks later, there's a buy-out offer. I can pay off the car in full this month for a little over $15,900.
Let's see. $3500 + $15,900 + fees = $20,400. WHEE, I just bought a $30,000 Nissan Leaf for $20K.

How is that not like $10,000 off again?
Yes I'd probably owe the first month's payment, so go ahead and add $57 or $66 to that. I don't care. It's still a pretty sweet deal. And there's ~1.5K in monthly payments I'm not making.

This kind of thing applies to many electric cars and some plug-in hybrids, the ones that have enough electric range to qualify. Your mileage may vary (YMMV!) and some research required.


"If this is such a great deal, why aren't you taking advantage of it?" (ie: actually paying off the car first thing)
Well, a couple things:
A: Maybe I don't have $20K sitting around right now. or
B: There's still the small matter of the ~$500/mo. that these things are depreciating (see below, and if I was going to buy outright I'd probably get an off-lease 2015 Leaf for $10K) or
C: I fully expect the buy-out offer to march downward month-by-month in concert with my payments so I might decide to buy-out later with little real financial difference. This way gives me maximum flexibility.
Well, plus there's battery degradation. See later posts.

*Nothing lasts forever and both Nissan and Tesla will probably reach the 200,000 units sold which triggers the federal credit phase-out somewhere in late 2018.
[Edit in 2018]: Looks like Tesla and GM hit the limit. Nissan won't have that problem until mid-2022. Toyota - 2022? 23?.

[Edit 2022] same still applies: A new Leaf S is $27-28K if you shop carefully. Leases (2yr) are $1K-$5K up front with buyouts in the $19K-$15K range depending on state rebates and stocking levels. You still end up between $18-20K if you're doing it right. The bigger battery models are about $8K more.  ....we bought one after selling the old one for more than we paid for it, total!

Later edit: With shortages and a war on dealers are pricing things up like crazy. YMMV.

Testing, testing, 107...

Leafers wanna know:
How far does it really go?
I've heard that question more than once. The answer of course is "It Depends!"

One thing I've picked up on is how much range you give up to go faster.
After a couple highway tests I've come up with the following yardstick/example:
72 mph is 25% faster than 58 mph.
However, when you actually measure you find that 72 mph costs 50% more energy than 58 mph.
And in fact, the 107 mile EPA spec range Leaf only goes around 65-70 miles at 75 mph, and that's on a good day!

I have a somewhat standard bi-weekly jaunt that ends up being 105-109 miles, depending on how much running around I do up there. Very little elevation gain/loss. ~40 mi. of freeway, 20 mi. of secondary and about 10 miles of 'local'. It's consistent enough that it should make a good test of the effects of hot and cold and speed and wind. With any luck I'll be back to edit this as things unfold over the winter. Right now we're working the summer 'baseline.'

It would sure look like this is the perfect assignment for a car with an EPA rated 107 mile range.
Except "There's like 'reality' dude!" and reality is maybe not so kind as nicely controlled EPA tests. Which is why I made sure there were several charge stations along the route.  In the real world you can't run the pack down to zero, both for the pack longevity and to avoid tow-trucks. You kinda have to plan to have at least 10 miles of range left over at the end.
Add that to the fact that the Battery Management System (BMS) won't let you charge all the way to a 'real 100% or let you discharge it to Zero. There's roughly one KiloWatt-hour (KWh) left at each end and that ten miles is another ~3 KWh, so now our 30 KWh pack has something like 25-26KWh usable.

You don't see a MPG display on an electric car, Duh. There is no Gallons to be 'per' of. Instead you see KWh per 100 km elsewhere and usually Miles per KWh in the U.S. That 107 mile EPA range translates into roughly 3.8 miles/KWh, of course that's with me getting home just as it reaches zero. In the real world we'll have to hit more like 4.2 miles/KWh to hit the goals.

From a couple extended tests of 30 miles or so, I know that at a constant 58 mph in 80-85 deg.F temps and no significant prevailing wind, tires at 46 psi and no AC use I can consistently hit 5 miles/KWh. Since we have 100 miles that could be covered at a constant 58, it should take 100/5 or 20 KWh to do that part of the trip. Let's assume the 10 miles of slower running around in town is similarly efficient. That's another two 5's or 2 KWh. Total of 22. Hey, this could actually work!
...according to like math and science and estimates n'stuff...

"So hey, why would you want to go that slow?"
On this example trip it takes about 12 min. additional (6 min each way) to drive 60 instead of 70-72 mph on the freeway section. It costs about 18-20 min, to get off the road and get a fast charge. If the trip can be completed on one charge you can save 5 min. or so overall by driving slower. Counter-intuitive much?

09/03/17
Start: 100% charge, 91 deg.F
          108 miles traveled. mostly at 62 mph with some AC use.
End: 18 miles of range showing, 10% of the battery remaining. 4.4 miles/KWh

So in this case a pretty good match with theory, and implies that it could have gone 125 miles.
[Since I know I can get it to 6 miles/KWh at around 45 mph, I'm pretty sure 160 miles is possible. Too bad I don't have that much patience.]

I Leaf, ergo sum

OK after that rah-rah post about the amazing deals on close-out Nissan Leafs, it was time to Leaf or get off the pot.
One thing that didn't come up in the Leaf deals post was the intense competition in the Leasing business.  I'm not usually a big fan of Leasing since you often pay just almost what the buyers pay and at the end you have nothing to show for it.  However there are times when that doesn't apply, like when you're waiting for a Tesla?
Well, not in this case: This is more about the insane lease deals flying around, and the very rapid depreciation of these "Technology Products masquerading as a car",  and especially the tax consequences.  Lets take those in order.

Insane stock/pricing (see previous post) pressure is generating some awesome loss-leader leasing advertising on 2017 Leafs in the Seattle area. The ad that finally got us in came from here:

Kirkland Nissan, near Seattle

The listed numbers were actually a bit higher but after talking to their Internet Sales Department (Thanks Sarah!) it settled out to around $3990 initially and at least 23 payments of $67/mo.
WA has no tax on EV's and the Oregon licensing is over $300 cheaper than WA. Yes you do have to sign up with NMAC, Nissan's finance arm to get the deal, but that's no hardship since it's so close to 0% effective interest you can't (literally) tell the difference. Why "at least"? well, historically NMAC has almost always (~95% of the time) allowed lease-holders to extend the lease for another six months. In this case since the monthly payment is so low it might be a bit more per month for that last six months. Regardless We're planning to keep it for 30 months if possible. I figure a lease by totaling the initial down plus all the monthlies and then divide by the number of months to generate an 'equivalent monthly payment' kinda like you were buying with zero down. In this case it's around $220/mo. (or $195 if for 30 months). The other dealers in the area were around $250/mo. Not horrible, but this place was better. The people were great too. Also they had like 20-30 rows of Leafs on  the lot, two deep. Quite the selection. Note we are in no way associated with this dealer or the people therein other than as a satisfied customer.

So about that depreciation. In mid-2015 I looked at used-vs-new Leafs for a friend of mine. Some of this is in an earlier post.  At that time the 2013's were coming off lease and selling (mostly in California) for around $13-15K. New those same cars were $31-35K minus the federal credit of $7.5K, so they depreciated $11-14K in roughly 30 months. Yep, that's about $400 per month. Just in depreciation. Must have gotten better since then though, right?  Nope, in the summer of 2017 I looked at 2015's coming off lease. Depreciation calculated out to the same numbers, give-or-take thirty bucks or so. I think it's going to be even worse with the 150mi range redesigned and somewhat cooler 2018 Leaf coming out.
Somehow this makes me quite OK with spending $195/mo. and letting someone else take the depreciation hit. Besides, since my old iMiev can't do my current commute (60 mi. range and no fast charging) and the gas car was burning through around $120+/month. My net loss looks small from that perspective alone. The new Leaf has around 100 miles range and comes with two years of free 30 min. fast charging at several of the national EV Charging station chains. They give you an EZ-Charge card with the car. Two of these chargers just happen to be on my route. I may need to charge 15 min. per day to make it home. Then the bulk of the charging happens here.

Taxes: The $7500 federal tax credit is really only applicable if you have $7500 in federal tax liability after all the other deductions. I'm not going to have that much. If I actually purchased the car I'd be leaving about $5000 on the table. However if you lease, the leasing company gets the $7500 and figures it into the price reduction they offer up front.
Add to this; Oregon just passed a $2500 direct credit for purchasers and/or leasers of new EV's registered (but not necessarily bought) in Oregon whose total price us under $50K. There is no tax liability requirement. You have 6 months to get your paperwork in. Will they have the whole program running in Feb.2018? Will I qualify for rules that haven't even been completely written yet? Who knows. However if I do qualify I'm looking at $2500 off that initial $3900 and the effective equivalent rate drops to around $150/mo. I can live with that.

Yep, here's the new toy getting a charge (finally) at Woodland WA on the way home from Seattle. It did the whole 330 mile trip with only 3 stops for charging. ~30 min each. Well except this one in Woodland. We took advantage of our new EZ-Charge card that they gave us with the car that allows you free 30 min. fast charges at AV/Aeroviornment, EVgo, BLink and ChargePoint charging stations. Basically every type we see around here except SemaConnect. The big white and green round ones you may have seen as part of the Washington/Oregon Pacific Coast Electric Highway program are included.  So we scheduled our route/timing on the way home to hit all of those different types and thus try them out. We have used 'L2' level charging at AV and BLink stations before with the earlier EV. This was a chance to try out fast charging and some other providers.
When we started south we were expecting to go 60-70 miles (at highway speeds) between charges. When we got to our first stop after driving 73 miles (in Tumwater at the AV station) we had 34 miles available still showing on the display. Way better than expected. So at that stop we re-figured the other stops. The EZ-Charge app for the phone (a specialized version of the PlugShare app that only shows Leaf compatible charging) is very useful for this, although the route planning isn't great. Google maps works great for that though. Anyway we got it down to two more stops to get home, assuming 80 miles per leg was feasible.
The fast chargers only pump in about 80% of the maximum possible charge so as not to hurt the battery. 80% of the theoretical 107 mile range should get us there even with AC running, right? It did, though it was close in the end. The EVgo station shown above in Woodland WA at the Walmart wouldn't work. 'Card Blocked' it said. Turns out the data interface between EZ-Charge and EVgo had been broken for a week and there was no ETA for getting it fixed. As you might imagine, that caused their phone support to get horribly backed up. After waiting on hold for 15 min. I just gave up and fed the machine my credit card. About 15 min. into the charge we finally talked to someone who explained all this and offered to start the charger (that was almost already done) for us. Thanks but no thanks. The charger kicked-out a little early, possibly because the batteries were getting to their thermal limits on a warm day. I wasn't going to call them again to try and restart though. Next stop Keizer OR.
We pulled into the BLink CHAdeMo charger in Keizer (just north of Salem) and one of the two chargers there worked, just like it said in the user comments section of the EZ-Charge app. 29 min. and off we go. However higher speeds (initially) and headlights on meant we arrived home just as the display went from 8 miles remaining to flashing dashes "low battery" warning. I probably should have charged a little more in Keizer. Live and learn. Hey it was only 74 miles supposedly. What could go wrong...

Big shout out to Jonathan, the owner of the dealership, who we got to talk to for about 30 min, and Haakon and especially Simon on the (non-commissioned!!) sales team. They were great to work with. Also Sarah and Jordan in the internet sales office who were very nice too.