I think this is all net-good news for Leaf owners. BTW, I think the community owes some gratitude to several+ community members. Top of mind goes to the crew that did the Az testing (Tony and sufingslovak. Sorry as I don't know the names/handles of the other folks). I believe other owners worked behind the scenes as well (not sure if they want me to mention their names).
Nissan LEAF Update from Andy Palmer
- Thread starter Hawk0630
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EdmondLeaf
Well-known member
I would like Nissan to clarify Leaf battery capacity. Nissan Leaf website still advertise 24 kWh therefore 70% of that is 16.8 kWh. Leaf should do 4 mkWh @ 60 mph in optimal condition. Does it mean that Leaf that is not able to go 67 miles at mentioned speed is eligible for battery warranty repair?
DaveinOlyWA
Well-known member
EdmondLeaf said:
clarification will tell us a lot. keep in mind a full LEAF does not access the top 6.4% (281/300= 93.6%) of the battery nor the bottom 2% leaving 91.6% left. now is this 30% loss from 100% or 91.6%?
planet4ever
Well-known member
I think you should remove that point. Nissan's printed statement (beginning of the Owners Manual) was, "this is only an estimate, and this percentage may vary (and could be significantly lower) depending on individual vehicle and Li-ion battery usage." 70% is a reasonable interpretation of "significantly lower". As several other posters have suggested in this thread, no rational company would have a warranty that forced them to replace half of their units.evchels said:
No, this is not a "by the way, of course" matter. It needs to be more like:evchels said:
4. Misc
c. What immediate steps will you take to ensure that people representing Nissan in trade shows and dealerships will stop making misleading mileage claims, both with respect to new battery performance and reductions over time and usage?
Ray
Volusiano
Well-known member
I totally disagree with removing this question. I think this is THE NUMBER ONE question to ask. Why would we be afraid to ask this question? You may not want to ask, then you don't have to ask. But if people like me and others in hot states want to ask, who are you to want to muffle others' question?planet4ever said:
Maybe you're trying to be a nice guy and play the "reasonable" card, but you're forgetting that buyers in hot climate like AZ chose to buy the LEAF because Nissan duped them into believing that the AZ heat is not going to be a factor in battery degradation at all. Why can I say this?
1. Nissan chose AZ as a Tier1 roll-out state.
2. Nissan made remarks that they have fully tested the battery in AZ and don't think AZ temperature will be a issue. They claimed to be so confident in their battery's heat performance due to their years of experience with their own battery chemistry that they decided that TMS is not needed, not even in AZ.
If owners in cooler climates are afraid to ask the 80% warranty question, then fine, don't ask. But DO NOT speak for the rest of us in hot climate states because we're entitled to ask the 80% warranty question because we're being affected by the temperature issue and this is what the issue is all about, capacity degradation mainly due to high temperature. Owners in hot climate will run into the capacity issue MUCH sooner than the rest, and will have to live with it for MUCH longer than the rest. So it's only fair to ask for the 80% warranty for hot climate owners, so they will be able to have the same useful car in the same useful time span like the rest of the other owners. Is that too much to ask?
Let's face it, Nissan made a BIG MISTAKE thinking their battery is able to handle the AZ heat. So now they need to fix their mistake and make it right to those people in hot climates. Why should early adopters who are affected by the issue pay for Nissan's own mistake?
If they want to have 2 separate warranties, 70% for cooler climate, and 80% for hotter climate 2011 and 2012 LEAFs, I'd be fine with this. But the 70% warranty for hot climate 2011 and 2012 LEAF is simply not acceptable because it just does not solve anything for hot climate owners. We just want to be able to have enough reasonable range on our car during its prime service life, just like the rest of the world. I don't think that's too much to ask.
thankyouOB
Well-known member
evchels,
great list and superior summation.
i would add to it some clear information now on dates for the announcements on warranty and battery pricing, or at least parameters smaller than 90 days; end of March, early June.
also, an explanation for why w cant know by March 1 (within 60 days), the pricing for buying a battery, new, used, refurbished, and the value of the pack when turned in.
in my view, the battery cost is the key issue to all of this, and it bothers me (and makes me wonder wtf) to see it be a trailing piece of information.
great list and superior summation.
i would add to it some clear information now on dates for the announcements on warranty and battery pricing, or at least parameters smaller than 90 days; end of March, early June.
also, an explanation for why w cant know by March 1 (within 60 days), the pricing for buying a battery, new, used, refurbished, and the value of the pack when turned in.
in my view, the battery cost is the key issue to all of this, and it bothers me (and makes me wonder wtf) to see it be a trailing piece of information.
LTLFTcomposite
Well-known member
+1while the battery performance warranty is a step in the right direction the other big missing link is what does it cost to replace it.thankyouOB said:
dhanson865
Well-known member
evchels said:
I'm not sure wehre to put this question between 2, 3, or 4 but
u. How does a used car buyer verify the health of a battery?
or restated another way
v. How does an independant mechanic or a knowledgeable end user verify the health of the battery?
Keep in mind that currently the dealer will give a 5 star report for batteries that end users would consider degraded or failing and there is no end user access to the battery health.
Also keep in mind that a Nissan dealer and presumably other dealerships can reset the bars back to 12 even on a degraded / failing battery. It is rife for a used car market with poor resale value outside of warranty because fraudulent activities of this sort wouldn't be noticed until the "sucker" drives the car through a warm season and the BMS recallibrates the number of bars.
And given the way Arizona dealers represented this issue and treated the end users it makes me and others like me unwilling to trust Nissan or their dealerships when it comes to the question of a battery test or battery health report.
Used cars also get sold across state lines and there will be a market for used batteries recovered from "totaled" vehicles (see the Prius traction battery for an example of this in action already).
I hate to muddy the waters but I feel there is a need to address this concept in some way when detailing the warranty and replacement process. Of course if the replacement batteries were cheap enough it'd be a non issue but I expect a fully new replacement battery to be expensive enough that it would be a signifigant portion of the resale value of a 5 year old Leaf.
Imagine a used car buyer having to go through a multi day process of fully draining the battery, fulling charging the battery, driving until turtle to test range, then fully charging again before being able to decide to buy or not. And imagine how poor a test that is if weather, traffic, or even poor driving skills of the buyer are skewing the test. And heaven forbid if the seller isn't willing to put that many miles on the battery for a potential sale.
TonyWilliams
Well-known member
dhanson865 said:
The aftermarket will settle on a simple load test.
Charge battery. Connect to 5kW load. Note time to empty. Calculate kWh.
Recharge and measure energy put into battery. Using the 85-ish% efficiency formula, the two kWh figures should be very close.
That's how much energy the battery will store.
On a per cell / module test, it will be very similar, just smaller scale. Charge to 4.1 volts / 8.2 volts, some load over time, recharge, note energy consumed and replenished. Easy.
dhanson865
Well-known member
TonyWilliams said:
Not something I've ever done in the past when buying a car and not something I know how to do in my home garage. Who would you suggest I get to do that for me?
TonyWilliams
Well-known member
dhanson865 said:
Where are you?
tomsax
Well-known member
The only thing on the battery report that has anything to do with battery health is the number of capacity bars at the top of the sheet, which is exactly the same as counting the capacity bars on the dash yourself.dhanson865 said:
The stars are rating the driver, not the car. They all have to do with behavior that may reduce battery life, but say nothing at all about the battery's current state of health.
It would be great if the battery report actually told us something more about the health of the battery pack than we can read directly from the dash ourselves.
It would also be nice to train the service folks to have a clue. I had the guy who was working the service counter hand me our report and tell me it was a great report (all 5 stars) and that very few do that well. The data collected from the PIA battery survey shows pretty clearly that MOST people get all 5-star reports. As soon as I asked a simple question about what the report meant, he scurried off and got the service tech that actually knows what's going on. A less educated owner would have been totally snowed by the counter guy's ignorant babbling.
dhanson865
Well-known member
tomsax said:
exactly my point, if I am looking to buy a used leaf I can't count on the Nissan dealer as being competant to verify the value of the used car because they have no clue how to tell if the battery is any good or not.
dhanson865
Well-known member
TonyWilliams said:
865 area code is in East TN. But the question applies just as well if I were in Iowa, Georgia, or Ohio.
Volusiano
Well-known member
I know I've let my position be known before. I'd just like to reiterate my position here again for Nissan to see, hopefully in a more succinct way than maybe how I might have said it before.
1. The issue at hand is the LEAF battery's inability to hold capacity in hot environments like Nissan said it could.
2. The problem we're trying to solve is how will Nissan fix this for owners who are affected by the issue.
3. The goal should be to find a reasonable solution that will give affected owners (in hot climate) the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners (in cooler climate) enjoy.
4. The question is whether the 70% warranty solution is going to solve the problem for these affected owners or not?
5. The answer is no, it still doesn't solve anything because it still won't allow affected owners to enjoy the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners enjoy.
6. The question is what will reasonably give affected owners the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners enjoy?
7. The answer is an 80% warranty in 5 years and 70% in 10 years, because Nissan has said that this is the kind of battery capacity performance unaffected owners should enjoy.
1. The issue at hand is the LEAF battery's inability to hold capacity in hot environments like Nissan said it could.
2. The problem we're trying to solve is how will Nissan fix this for owners who are affected by the issue.
3. The goal should be to find a reasonable solution that will give affected owners (in hot climate) the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners (in cooler climate) enjoy.
4. The question is whether the 70% warranty solution is going to solve the problem for these affected owners or not?
5. The answer is no, it still doesn't solve anything because it still won't allow affected owners to enjoy the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners enjoy.
6. The question is what will reasonably give affected owners the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners enjoy?
7. The answer is an 80% warranty in 5 years and 70% in 10 years, because Nissan has said that this is the kind of battery capacity performance unaffected owners should enjoy.
TonyWilliams
Well-known member
dhanson865 said:
Not if I recommended a shop in San Francisco.
leafkabob
Well-known member
Except that the owners in Seattle may hit 80% at the end of 10 years, resulting in reduced range for the last couple of years, while an AZ owner will be dealing with reduced range for 9 of the 10 years.Volusiano said:
A warranty will make your car more usable, but it won't give AZ owners "the same kind of battery capacity performance that unaffected owners enjoy." I think a battery TMS is the only thing that will level that playing field. And even then, if it becomes a future option, AZ owners will end up paying more for a Leaf to get basically the same capacity performance as those owners lucky enough to live in climatic conditions that are equivalent to EV Paradise.
JPWhite
Well-known member
Volusiano said:
This maybe true for a "Certified Used Vehicle", but my experience with dealers is that they will simply clean and polish a vehicle and pop it on the lot, worn tires, oil leaks, they don't care. It's the dealers selling these vehicles not Nissan Corporate, so they have little control on how they will be resold.
Stoaty
Well-known member
Not necessarily--Nissan could also come out with a different battery chemistry that is not significantly affected by temperatures up to those encountered in Phoenix. That is probably the end solution, although who knows how many years until that is available.leafkabob said:
