smkettner
Well-known member
The dealer could just as easy put a drop box next to the charge station and ask for a buck to be deposited.
Agree! But considering the total mess Nissan has made of this whole roll-out, I am not surprised that CarWings is as messed up as the rest of it.GroundLoop said:Right, so dealers can do whatever they want with their chargers, and restrict them to use by whoever wears their license plate frames.
Now, why is Carwings showing me these chargers on a map? What does it mean?
"There's a charger over there. You can't use it. It's for someone else."
It would be like showing Hotel icons everywhere there's a comfortable Tempurpedic mattress.. at someone's house.
It makes no sense at all. They should drop the dealerships from the POI database unless the chargers are available for everyone to use -- free or fee, I don't care. But don't plot them on my range map if I can't use them.
You are failing to consider emotion: The dealer may be angry over losing the business. Or the dealer may not like the idea of EVs. Or the dealer may not share your business philosophy. I'm inclined to agree with you, but the dealer still has the right to do as he pleases.ttweed said:And this is exactly why it is stupid and short-sighted for a dealer to alienate an owner who despite buying the car somewhere else might still choose to have it serviced and buy parts/accessories from them for the life of the car. It is foolish to deny a few cents of electricity to someone who might spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the next few years in parts and service ...daniel said:EXACTLY! A dealer makes money performing warranty service.
Now you sound like someone from my generation. It's been a very long time since businesses considered the customer to be right. Nowadays it's all about cutting costs to the bare minimum. The Walmart generation does not care about service, only about saving pennies.ttweed said:The first rule of customer service is "the customer is always right" (even when they're wrong.)
How is the EV Project funded? I suspect they have a miniscule fraction of the funding they need t meet their goals.walterbays said:... They probably expected, as I did, that by the time a significant number of LEAFs were on the road the EV Project would have delivered on its promises to build a public charging infrastructure.
But they have not done so, and essentially the only public infrastructure today is the Nissan dealers. Without a public infrastructure the LEAF fails and Nissan's $5 billion investment is lost. (If you really wanted a car that you could confidently drive no farther than 40 miles from home wouldn't you have instead bought an NEV for $8,000?) If LEAF fails, EVs fail - again, with all that means for energy independence, the economy, national security, and the environment.
Nissan has no leverage with the DOE. The oil companies, who want to block EV adoption, have far more influence.walterbays said:So here's what I think Nissan should do:
Lean heavily but quietly on DOE and the EV Project to get moving, and if that doesn't succeed, do it loudly.
Increase the price of LEAF by some amount calculated adequate to fund a pro rata portion of Nissan dealer charging, capital and electricity costs. For cars already sold, put that amount of money into the pot from the corporate account.
Pay this money to dealers for each charging session from a LEAF driver who bought his car from another dealer.
Get all dealers together (in person, web, phone, or email) to agree on a uniform set of charging rules, possibly something along the lines of Stevens Creek Nissan, with 24/7 access strongly preferred.
All dealers who agree to the uniform rules get listed in the directory, get payments for "foreign" charging, and get favorable treatment in their LEAF allocations.
All dealers who do not agree do not get listed in the directory, do not get any payments, and have their LEAF allocations reduced slowly, month by month, until finally their LEAF certification is revoked.
And will that make up for the dealer being unable to offer that charger to his own customers? How many chargers, at several thousand dollars a pop, will dealers have to install in order to offer public charging and still have sufficient capacity for their own use?smkettner said:The dealer could just as easy put a drop box next to the charge station and ask for a buck to be deposited.
I understand what you are saying. There is no reason to expect a dealer to expand this charging business model mostly because they need the space for inventory. However until it actually becomes a problem I think it would be in their best interest to welcome all EVs. I agree charging should be elsewhere and that just does not exist yet. The truth is I think most people will avoid the dealer for charging as soon as ANYTHING else is available. The dealer is the obsolute last resort. Noone just hangs out at a car dealership unless you need to do business. And charging is just not going to grow to be part of their business. The dealer could also redirect the person to the nearest public charger as soon as it is installed.daniel said:And will that make up for the dealer being unable to offer that charger to his own customers? How many chargers, at several thousand dollars a pop, will dealers have to install in order to offer public charging and still have sufficient capacity for their own use?smkettner said:The dealer could just as easy put a drop box next to the charge station and ask for a buck to be deposited.
Public charging is a business in itself, which dealers may or may not want to invest in. It would make more sense to encourage gas stations to install pay chargers. Delivering fuel is already their business model.
You mean besides Nissan using the fact that all LEAF dealers have EVSEs as a huge sales tool for the LEAF? Nissan created this problem by advertising the dealers as charge infrastructure, but not arranging for this to be true in FACT. At this point, only Nissan can clean up the mess.dlich18 said:This debate is about the dealer offering a free service. What makes one entitled to a free service from a vendor that the consumer has chosen not to patronize?
davewill said:You mean besides Nissan using the fact that all LEAF dealers have EVSEs as a huge sales tool for the LEAF? Nissan created this problem by advertising the dealers as charge infrastructure, but not arranging for this to be true in FACT. At this point, only Nissan can clean up the mess.
Yup! They have the right to set their charging policy and we have the right to have an opinion about that and express / publish that opinion where we see fit.davewill said:Anyway, I think bad publicity here is an entirely appropriate consequence to a dealer's decision to NOT provide this service. After all, we don't have to say nice things about them any more than they have to provide charging. It certainly isn't going to entice me to buy there!!!
daniel said:Do you really think anyone is entitled to spend 8 hours on a dealer's charger?
Not if the timer override button was used to start charging. If you're worried about this, you have to turn off the timer, not just use the override button.smkettner said:So what happens if the dealer unplugs some transient to charge a customer car.
If the dealer reconnects the transient's car when the customer is done will charging continue?
I don't think anyone has said that we are entitled to anything. Certainly the OP did not inquire if he could regularly charge for free at their dealership, he was trying to arrange a brief charge to make it home in a special circumstance, and once he was refused, made alternate arrangements. That doesn't sound like a sense of "entitlement" to me. I think you're the one who is "mixing things up" bringing this entitlement issue into the argument.dlich18 said:ttweed said:It is foolish to deny a few cents of electricity to someone who might spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars over the next few years in parts and service (as well as possibly winning them over for their next vehicle purchase) if they were received pleasantly and accommodated graciously. TT
I think this mixes up two issues. 1) Whether or not it is good business for a dealer to deny a free customer service to prospective patrons, and 2) whether or not a consumer is entitled to that free service just because he/she owns a Leaf.
Making decisions colored by anger or resentment is just as poor and self-destructive a practice in the corporate world as it is in our private lives. If that is indeed the case, someone further up the corporate totem pole with a cooler head needs to intervene before the business is driven into a ditch.daniel said:You are failing to consider emotion: The dealer may be angry over losing the business.
I can't believe this is true. Even in the retail sector, if abused sufficiently, anyone will walk away from a transaction, no matter how much money they think they are going to save. There is always someone else who will sell it for just a little bit more, without treating the customer poorly, and at some point, the customer will say "this just isn't worth it" and walk away. In the service sector, this axiom is definitely not dead yet.The Walmart generation does not care about service, only about saving pennies.
You can answer your own question by reading all about it here: http://www.theevproject.com/How is the EV Project funded? I suspect they have a miniscule fraction of the funding they need t meet their goals.
Exactly when do you think this will happen? Certainly not before there are hundreds of thousands of EVs already in service with lesser range. Even those who can afford the first 500-mile range EVs will simply expand their horizons and start making cross-country trips that will still require public infrastructure.I predict that battery technology will make public charging obsolete: When an EV has a 400-mile or 500-mile range, overnight charging will be sufficient.
Which is exactly why Nissan needs to do everything possible to get over the initial "hump" of the lack of infrastructure.We are early adopters, and need to recognize the limitations at this early stage of development, when range is limited and charging infrastructure is in its infancy.
Do you not see the contradiction of this statement with the following?I never drive more than 75 miles in a day...So the Leaf will work fine for me even without public charging.
Why do you anticipate that dealers are going to be inundated with eager, free-loading EV'ers demanding free electricity when you would never need to do it yourself? Won't most owners plan as well as you? Won't they most always charge at home also? I know I will. We are talking about the few times when someone is "caught out" under special circumstances. There is no reason that dealers should not support all Nissan customers under such circumstances. They can easily manage what will probably be a very small demand for a relatively short period of time by putting into place some reasonable policies that can provide for everyone's legitimate needs and weed out those who would abuse the privilege. The "shotgun approach" of "if you didn't buy it here, don't charge here" is the easy but ultimately destructive way out. It is not a big problem yet--why make it into one when it doesn't exist? It's an overreaction to a non-existent threat.Do you really think anyone is entitled to spend 8 hours on a dealer's charger?
Once again, it doesn't have to be "free," just available as a last resort, at a reasonable cost. How expensive is it for Nissan to have to get a tow truck out to help an owner get home when they run out of juice?And as more Leafs hit the roads, dealers in heavily-trafficked areas may find that offering free charging to all could require significant expense to install enough chargers.
The CEO for one of the pay-to-charge players, EVOASIS, told me 9 months ago they were having L3 EVSEs built in China for less than $6000. They will come.Remember that level 3 chargers are extremely expensive (one reason for the slow pace of infrastructure development).
smkettner said:Well then back on track.
No longer a Maybe but an actual May delivery here. Scheduled to pick my Leaf tomorrow morning at Fontana Nissan
It has been a long dark tunnel, but I see the light and the exit from this initial part of the journey
You are right. And like LEAFfan, I may have to move to the June thread. I was told my car would leave port this week (I won't believe it until I see it!) and that it should take another week to arrive, which could still be this month. But my dashboard says Week of June 6. My dealer says he usually gets the invoice a couple of days before the car arrives, but if mine arrives at the same time as others, I don't know whose would get prepped first or how long that takes.scharlj said:Just a quick reminder that this thread IS about people who are getting (or got) their cars in May.....
This thread is NOT about dealerships offering, or not offering free charging. I think it's high time the discussion gets a thread of its own.
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