It is not to the issue of leasing, but I thought this video was helpful on some points.
About That $33k NIssan LEAF Battery Replacement...
90,445 views•Oct 3, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_6gpx10QtM&t=452s
Around 6:05, she mentions that she cannot recommend the Leaf as a good used car buy if you live somewhere with extreme hot in the summer. She then focused on offering decent battery upgrade paths, and this is interesting, but more broadly what I like is she gets that it is worth discussing and thinking about whether it can be an advantage, rather than a disadvantage, to an automaker to treat their customers well, and help vehicle owners prolong the useful lives of those vehicles.
The fact that for most purposes I cannot recommend a new or used Leaf plus to a neighbor or friend in this area (and the particular area that I am in is not quite as hot as Phoenix or Tucson in the summer) is part of what prompted me to question if there are any constructive suggestions I could make to Nissan.
Another thing was watching the somewhat disappointing sales in the US, month after month, and year after year. To me, the sales are in a way more disappointing than those of some established competitors in that I think even going back to 2010, Nissan actually did want to sell the Leaf in higher volumes than they have done, and make more money on it. This is different from how I think of most of Nissan's competitors, who I think for the most part have been holding back cynically, in one way or another, to one degree or another, on EVs, and more deliberately choosing not to meet or stimulate customer demand for good long-range EVs in the most desirable segments. When you de-prioritize customer satisfaction and customer demand, you run the risk that the customer will turn to someone else, if there is somewhere else for them to go. In the case of most of the other automakers, I think this is the risk they've been running, and some customers indeed have had to go to the one company that has come closer to offering what they want. In the case of Nissan, I think in theory they wanted to identify and meet customer demand, but they were just not fully smart, nor were they particularly or consistently good listeners, about what would satisfy those of their customers and prospects in the US who might consider an EV.
Now that Nissan is finally offering a vehicle with a pre-degradation EPA range above 150 or 200 miles, (something, lest we forget, that some of us begged them to do many years ago), one would think that this car would be somewhat more popular in the US. Yes, competition and persistent low fossil fuel prices in the US have both taken some of the air out of the room, and so much time has passed that some of the initial opportunity is gone, but we can still ask if there are other additional reasons that the Leaf Plus is not selling so well, and if there is anything that Nissan could do to improve sales and to increase the number of satisfied EV customers they have.
Additionally I think it could be worth it to Nissan to mull over whether there are improvements that can be made for the customer experience that will reduce some of the concerns that some drivers will have over the loss in range of used vehicles, and related loss in value on $40k vehicles. I suppose ideas might come in around continued efforts toward transparency in replacement battery pricing, possible pack upgrades, improved future-proofing design issues not only around thermal management but allowing for module replacement rather than full pack replacement (maybe this is already done) and I suppose battery leasing can also be re-considered (at least it might be appropriate in some narrowly defined use-cases).