FYI- a string from Seattle EVA that may shed light. In short, conflicting info from Nissan about Level 1 charging and battery life was apparently because Nissan feared that Level 1 users would deeply discharge their batteries more often and spend more time at low SOC. BUT, level 1 charging would otherwise be better for long-term battery life.
-snip-
I was aware of this information from Nissan
By no means am I perfect but I usually don't just assume to be correct so here is the story.
I looked into this almost two years ago do to conflicting information directly from Nissan.
My main concern at the time was Nissan not going to warranty their charger if it failed using 120. There has been chargers in the past who died using 120. Brusa which is a high end company had a mass failure in their earlier chargers when using 120 to charge over 240. The dozens of blown up Brusa chargers were out of warranty and up to the owner to take care of.
I bought two Leaf's and had planned on loaning them to drivers who would only have 120.
What I learned was Nissan was very concerned about drivers not being able to recover enough capacity to be in a higher state of charge during the majority of their driving. In other words driving in the low end of the pack. If you use spend a majority of your driving time in a low SOC it does not mater what size pack you have. It will shorten its service life.
Nissan as it turned out had really had no issue with using 120 to charge your Leaf 100% of the time. It is understandable Nissan put out this information because most of their sales are going to be to drivers who have little to no knowledge of batteries.
By the way Nissan confirmed I was correct that lower current charging was better for the pack.
It took me several weeks of contacting them every other day. Nissan provided a very limited amount of information and would put nothing in writing. These questions had to go up a chain of command and Nissan was very guarded in their verbal replies.
To me the really good news is they claim their charger is rock solid and can handle mass amounts of 120 charging. I was told they would not void the warranty on the charger but again nothing was in writing.
Don Blazer
>Your maximum cycle life will be with lower charge rates. In the Leaf it would be using the 120 Volt charging.
Please note that at least when the Leafs were introduced Nissan said that the 120 Volt trickle charging would not maximize battery life, and specifically recommended against that approach, stating that for maximum life one should:
Use 240V 3kw charging using the 80% setting.
Not continuously use “top off” charging after only driving a few miles.
Wait a few minutes after operating the vehicle to let the battery cool down before beginning charging.
I have no idea why Nissan was recommending against continual use of trickle charging, unless that somehow defeats their pack balancing circuitry, or something? In any case Nissan now seems much less paranoid about battery life issues – except in Arizona.
