SolarExec
Active member
I know this will provoke an emotional response from some people. Please be kind! This is only one family’s experience and opinion…
Let me begin by noting that we are fans of the Leaf. We have two Prius hybrids with over 100k miles on each and a few years ago we resolved to buy electrics/plug-ins to replace them (note to Toyota: these have been great cars and if you would get your act together we would have bought a plug-in Prius without a second thought).
We also believe that when a car company like Nissan makes a big commitment to do something for the environment we should use our purchasing dollars to reward that commitment. This would have been the first Nissan we have ever bought (we had BMW, Audi, Porsche before we bought the Prius). So it was sort of a no-brainer for us to get on the reservation list for the Leaf the day it opened (was late at night so actually 4/21). We also got on the waiting list for a Chevy Volt as soon as they announced it was coming to Texas. We figured that the Volt/Leaf was a perfect fit for our two car household.
Since that initial reservation we have remained committed to the Leaf. We placed our order as soon as we were allowed and we installed a home charging dock in December as soon as it was available. But as the months have passed, we found ourselves with a series of concerns and disappointments about the car and ongoing frustration with the ordering process. Taken alone, we would probably overlook any number of these concerns, but as the issues have accumulated they became problematic enough that we have reluctantly cancelled our order. Instead we will either buy a second Volt or hold out for electrics that are coming out this year or next (Prius PHEV, Ford Focus EV, etc.).
It is my hope that by posting this here, we can get Nissan’s attention to start working on some of the issues that have led us to walk away from this purchase. In my view, they are all easily remedied.
The list of disappointments:
1. The ordering process has been an ongoing irritation. We signed up on day one. Nissan went into radio silence mode until July 27 when we received the “get ready to order” email. But it said we would have to wait until October. So we spent three months “getting ready to order” and then October came and went. So I called Nissan and after some time on the phone they opened the ordering window on November 1. We ordered and got dealer confirmation at MSRP. Then the long “Pending” silence began (and continues as I write this). Right now we are scheduled for somewhere between March and June I suppose (based on the 4-7 months general post on the web site). But who knows? No email, the dealer knows nothing, it is just an information black hole. So much for this promise in the original Leaf press release: "The Nissan LEAF purchase process is effortless, transparent and accessible, offering value with a one-stop-shop approach for everything related to the car, including the assessment, permitting and installation of in-home battery charging units," said Carlos Tavares, Chairman, Nissan Americas.
2. And speaking of the EVSE experience, it was really disappointing. I have written about it here previously so I won’t rant again, but the AV dock was, IMHO, an overpriced POJ. It has been installed since December. My email to Nissan explaining our dissatisfaction went completely unacknowledged.
3. The battery warranty is a worry. The 100k warranty sounded good but the mysterious non-commitment on capacity is a troubling asterisk. Does that mean I am driving around with a car that has a range of 50-60 miles by year four or five with nothing to do but suck it up? GM committed to 10%-30% “over the life of the warranty” so in a bad case I figure the EV range drops from 40 to 30 by end of year five and if it is worse we have a warranty claim. No such guarantee with Nissan. They say they “expect” it to have this kind of performance but they won’t commit to it. Why?
4. The lease terms were not great especially compared to the Volt, and the warranty did not make us feel great about an outright purchase. We were left wondering if GM can do $349/mo for a car that costs $8k more, we what does that say about Nissan’s confidence in the residual value, the long-term battery life and replacement cost? At the end we planned to buy rather than lease. Of course the headline $32,780 rose to $34,730 (SL) plus processing fees, tax title license, destination & handling charges with the quick charge port and floor mats which pushes the total purchase price to around $38k so not exactly a trivial purchase.
5. The car is uglier in person than in the photos. Ok, just an opinion and individual tastes will differ, but from our perspective the car is seriously ugly. Then again, we proudly drive the two ugliest cars we had ever seen before we met Leaf (the Prius) so we were ready to embrace the homeliness of the Leaf, but it certainly was not a selling feature and at least to our taste both the Volt and the Focus EV are a heck of a lot less ugly. (I will add that we think the Leaf has supermodel looks when compared to the iMEV or the BYD. So all a matter of taste and degree I suppose.)
6. The interior is cheap. This was perhaps our biggest disappointment when we drove the car. My wife put it simply: “this does not have the creature comforts you would expect of a $35,000+ car.” Instead:
a. We were especially disappointed with the cloth seats. The recycled plastic gimmick notwithstanding, they are just regular old cheap cloth seats. The fabric on the test cars at the drive event were already getting stained and worn (especially on the sides where people enter and exit the car). The somewhat embarrassed Nissan rep excused it as being 3 months old and with a lot of traffic. But three months of careful babying at various events around the country is, to our way of thinking, about the same wear and tear as two months of teenagers toting fast food. We do not think they will last. A car like this should have leather.
b. The plastic on the interior was hard, thin, and easily scratched (again, on the drive cars they all had visible scratches and already looked old).
c. The cargo configuration is awkward. The rounded edges of the hatchback and the horizontal bump (battery?) and the interior pillars get in the way. The rear cargo cover is hard plastic unlike the retractable and stow-able one we are use to (neither we nor the Nissan rep at the drive event could figure out where to stow it if you wanted to take it out say to haul a TV or something).
d. Telescoping steering wheel? Cupholders for the back? A rear seat armrest? Little things that should be expected on a $35k car…
7. The in-car technology is great in some ways but lacking in the basics. The iPhone integration is only “average” with a lot of frustrations from owners trying to make a regular old USB thumb drive work and getting mixed results with Bluetooth streaming. I expected to be able to plug in my iPhone and use it with the display screens. Little stuff like this should improve over time, but, again, this car in particular should have the cutting edge on gadgetry. If you are buying an electric car, you are almost certainly a gadget freak of some sort.
8. Range anxiety. Okay, I think range anxiety is basically non-sense. You plan your use around the car’s range and you have a different car for longer trips. But there is a different kind of range anxiety that we have come to discover. First, the stories of range dropping suddenly from 8 miles to zero freak us out. It may only be 8-10% of battery but it is a long walk! It means that the effective range of the car (since you cannot trust it below 10 miles) is 10% less. Then we see people charging only to 80% to protect the long-term battery life which is apparently especially important if you are an owner (see warranty above). The combination of these two means we have ~70 miles of reliable effective range in warm weather and maybe less in cold and that is when it is new. Hmm…
9. Safety worries. This was an issue that had been nagging at us for some time but now that we know there will be no crash test ratings this year, it has become a the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Why has this been nagging at us?
a. No knee air bags. Not a deal killer but standard on most cars in this price range.
b. The Versa had a horrible 2 star crash test rating. Yikes!
c. I asked the Nissan Leaf hotline people in October – before we ordered the car – when we would see crash test data. She put me on a long hold and then came back and said it would probably be “shortly after they go on sale” but that the crash test is “not required” to begin selling the vehicle.
d. In early January at the Leaf Drive event, The Nissan rep claimed there “are no government crash tests” only private organizations (I guess referring to the IIHS). I tried to point out that NHTSA was a government agency but he disagreed. Not worth arguing.
e. I found a different Nissan rep at the drive event and she said crash tests would be out in mid-January.
f. I asked on the online chat with “Hillary” and got the answer (posted separately) “Vehicle safety ratings are provided by two independent organizations in the United States ... The availability of ratings for a new vehicle depends on each organization’s own internal schedule.”
g. In an email to the NHTSA (also posted separately) I got the following disappointing message: “The 2011 Nissan Leaf … will not be tested.”
h. So is the thing a Versa (which we would not drive) or a Sentra (which we would not buy with a 3 star side and front rating) or an Altima (which is good)? (I know that the Volt is not being tested either, but it is based on the five star Cruze platform so we figure when it is tested it surely won’t drop below four ...)
We really hope that Nissan does well with this car. We think the press should spend less time gushing about how the Leaf is “quiet” and “a real car” and other nonsense and instead focused on how it compares with other $35k sedans and hatchbacks in the market.
Let me also say thanks to everyone on this board. You guys are an invaluable source of high quality information. You are doing a great service for the buying public who are seeking real world information about electric cars.
We thought about what would bring us back. A five star crash rating, a capacity warranty, and a transparent ordering process would be enough to overlook the other weaknesses we see in the car. The other things are nice-to-have or ought-to-have but we would have bought our first Nissan anyway. Ah well, water under the bridge...
As of today, we hereby relinquish to one of you wait-listers our “slot” for a 2011 Leaf while we wait for our Volt to arrive and figure out whether we replace our second car with another Volt or hold out for an opportunity to buy either a Ford Focus EV, a RAV4 EV, or the mythical Plug-in Prius (if it ever arrives). We hope that all of you who are buying Leafs have a great experience and we sincerely appreciate your open and honest feedback here on mynissanleaf.
Meanwhile our charging station is standing by in our garage, green light shining “ready,” waiting for some manufacturer to sell us a car.
Let me begin by noting that we are fans of the Leaf. We have two Prius hybrids with over 100k miles on each and a few years ago we resolved to buy electrics/plug-ins to replace them (note to Toyota: these have been great cars and if you would get your act together we would have bought a plug-in Prius without a second thought).
We also believe that when a car company like Nissan makes a big commitment to do something for the environment we should use our purchasing dollars to reward that commitment. This would have been the first Nissan we have ever bought (we had BMW, Audi, Porsche before we bought the Prius). So it was sort of a no-brainer for us to get on the reservation list for the Leaf the day it opened (was late at night so actually 4/21). We also got on the waiting list for a Chevy Volt as soon as they announced it was coming to Texas. We figured that the Volt/Leaf was a perfect fit for our two car household.
Since that initial reservation we have remained committed to the Leaf. We placed our order as soon as we were allowed and we installed a home charging dock in December as soon as it was available. But as the months have passed, we found ourselves with a series of concerns and disappointments about the car and ongoing frustration with the ordering process. Taken alone, we would probably overlook any number of these concerns, but as the issues have accumulated they became problematic enough that we have reluctantly cancelled our order. Instead we will either buy a second Volt or hold out for electrics that are coming out this year or next (Prius PHEV, Ford Focus EV, etc.).
It is my hope that by posting this here, we can get Nissan’s attention to start working on some of the issues that have led us to walk away from this purchase. In my view, they are all easily remedied.
The list of disappointments:
1. The ordering process has been an ongoing irritation. We signed up on day one. Nissan went into radio silence mode until July 27 when we received the “get ready to order” email. But it said we would have to wait until October. So we spent three months “getting ready to order” and then October came and went. So I called Nissan and after some time on the phone they opened the ordering window on November 1. We ordered and got dealer confirmation at MSRP. Then the long “Pending” silence began (and continues as I write this). Right now we are scheduled for somewhere between March and June I suppose (based on the 4-7 months general post on the web site). But who knows? No email, the dealer knows nothing, it is just an information black hole. So much for this promise in the original Leaf press release: "The Nissan LEAF purchase process is effortless, transparent and accessible, offering value with a one-stop-shop approach for everything related to the car, including the assessment, permitting and installation of in-home battery charging units," said Carlos Tavares, Chairman, Nissan Americas.
2. And speaking of the EVSE experience, it was really disappointing. I have written about it here previously so I won’t rant again, but the AV dock was, IMHO, an overpriced POJ. It has been installed since December. My email to Nissan explaining our dissatisfaction went completely unacknowledged.
3. The battery warranty is a worry. The 100k warranty sounded good but the mysterious non-commitment on capacity is a troubling asterisk. Does that mean I am driving around with a car that has a range of 50-60 miles by year four or five with nothing to do but suck it up? GM committed to 10%-30% “over the life of the warranty” so in a bad case I figure the EV range drops from 40 to 30 by end of year five and if it is worse we have a warranty claim. No such guarantee with Nissan. They say they “expect” it to have this kind of performance but they won’t commit to it. Why?
4. The lease terms were not great especially compared to the Volt, and the warranty did not make us feel great about an outright purchase. We were left wondering if GM can do $349/mo for a car that costs $8k more, we what does that say about Nissan’s confidence in the residual value, the long-term battery life and replacement cost? At the end we planned to buy rather than lease. Of course the headline $32,780 rose to $34,730 (SL) plus processing fees, tax title license, destination & handling charges with the quick charge port and floor mats which pushes the total purchase price to around $38k so not exactly a trivial purchase.
5. The car is uglier in person than in the photos. Ok, just an opinion and individual tastes will differ, but from our perspective the car is seriously ugly. Then again, we proudly drive the two ugliest cars we had ever seen before we met Leaf (the Prius) so we were ready to embrace the homeliness of the Leaf, but it certainly was not a selling feature and at least to our taste both the Volt and the Focus EV are a heck of a lot less ugly. (I will add that we think the Leaf has supermodel looks when compared to the iMEV or the BYD. So all a matter of taste and degree I suppose.)
6. The interior is cheap. This was perhaps our biggest disappointment when we drove the car. My wife put it simply: “this does not have the creature comforts you would expect of a $35,000+ car.” Instead:
a. We were especially disappointed with the cloth seats. The recycled plastic gimmick notwithstanding, they are just regular old cheap cloth seats. The fabric on the test cars at the drive event were already getting stained and worn (especially on the sides where people enter and exit the car). The somewhat embarrassed Nissan rep excused it as being 3 months old and with a lot of traffic. But three months of careful babying at various events around the country is, to our way of thinking, about the same wear and tear as two months of teenagers toting fast food. We do not think they will last. A car like this should have leather.
b. The plastic on the interior was hard, thin, and easily scratched (again, on the drive cars they all had visible scratches and already looked old).
c. The cargo configuration is awkward. The rounded edges of the hatchback and the horizontal bump (battery?) and the interior pillars get in the way. The rear cargo cover is hard plastic unlike the retractable and stow-able one we are use to (neither we nor the Nissan rep at the drive event could figure out where to stow it if you wanted to take it out say to haul a TV or something).
d. Telescoping steering wheel? Cupholders for the back? A rear seat armrest? Little things that should be expected on a $35k car…
7. The in-car technology is great in some ways but lacking in the basics. The iPhone integration is only “average” with a lot of frustrations from owners trying to make a regular old USB thumb drive work and getting mixed results with Bluetooth streaming. I expected to be able to plug in my iPhone and use it with the display screens. Little stuff like this should improve over time, but, again, this car in particular should have the cutting edge on gadgetry. If you are buying an electric car, you are almost certainly a gadget freak of some sort.
8. Range anxiety. Okay, I think range anxiety is basically non-sense. You plan your use around the car’s range and you have a different car for longer trips. But there is a different kind of range anxiety that we have come to discover. First, the stories of range dropping suddenly from 8 miles to zero freak us out. It may only be 8-10% of battery but it is a long walk! It means that the effective range of the car (since you cannot trust it below 10 miles) is 10% less. Then we see people charging only to 80% to protect the long-term battery life which is apparently especially important if you are an owner (see warranty above). The combination of these two means we have ~70 miles of reliable effective range in warm weather and maybe less in cold and that is when it is new. Hmm…
9. Safety worries. This was an issue that had been nagging at us for some time but now that we know there will be no crash test ratings this year, it has become a the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Why has this been nagging at us?
a. No knee air bags. Not a deal killer but standard on most cars in this price range.
b. The Versa had a horrible 2 star crash test rating. Yikes!
c. I asked the Nissan Leaf hotline people in October – before we ordered the car – when we would see crash test data. She put me on a long hold and then came back and said it would probably be “shortly after they go on sale” but that the crash test is “not required” to begin selling the vehicle.
d. In early January at the Leaf Drive event, The Nissan rep claimed there “are no government crash tests” only private organizations (I guess referring to the IIHS). I tried to point out that NHTSA was a government agency but he disagreed. Not worth arguing.
e. I found a different Nissan rep at the drive event and she said crash tests would be out in mid-January.
f. I asked on the online chat with “Hillary” and got the answer (posted separately) “Vehicle safety ratings are provided by two independent organizations in the United States ... The availability of ratings for a new vehicle depends on each organization’s own internal schedule.”
g. In an email to the NHTSA (also posted separately) I got the following disappointing message: “The 2011 Nissan Leaf … will not be tested.”
h. So is the thing a Versa (which we would not drive) or a Sentra (which we would not buy with a 3 star side and front rating) or an Altima (which is good)? (I know that the Volt is not being tested either, but it is based on the five star Cruze platform so we figure when it is tested it surely won’t drop below four ...)
We really hope that Nissan does well with this car. We think the press should spend less time gushing about how the Leaf is “quiet” and “a real car” and other nonsense and instead focused on how it compares with other $35k sedans and hatchbacks in the market.
Let me also say thanks to everyone on this board. You guys are an invaluable source of high quality information. You are doing a great service for the buying public who are seeking real world information about electric cars.
We thought about what would bring us back. A five star crash rating, a capacity warranty, and a transparent ordering process would be enough to overlook the other weaknesses we see in the car. The other things are nice-to-have or ought-to-have but we would have bought our first Nissan anyway. Ah well, water under the bridge...
As of today, we hereby relinquish to one of you wait-listers our “slot” for a 2011 Leaf while we wait for our Volt to arrive and figure out whether we replace our second car with another Volt or hold out for an opportunity to buy either a Ford Focus EV, a RAV4 EV, or the mythical Plug-in Prius (if it ever arrives). We hope that all of you who are buying Leafs have a great experience and we sincerely appreciate your open and honest feedback here on mynissanleaf.
Meanwhile our charging station is standing by in our garage, green light shining “ready,” waiting for some manufacturer to sell us a car.
