jlv said:
...There's exactly one reason: Nissan is in the business of building and selling new cars.
They really don't want to help us refurbish and enhance our used LEAFs. I think it would have been incredible had they made 40kWh packs available for old LEAFs - they'd really show their support for EVs as a forward-looking purchase. But doing so just cuts into new car sales, and that's probably all they really care about.
(my 4 year old 2013 is still pristine on the inside and (mostly) outside, and continues to drive and handle flawlessly. it is really a well-built car)
And so is my eight-capacity-bar 2011, and I expect
somebody to be driving it for many years to come.
I can't get too worked up about the ~$1,000 (?) price hike for a pack trade, since I wasn't planning on it anyway.
Seriously, how many would pay Nissan even $5 k for the pack swap, if all you got was back up to ~21.6 available kWh?
How many 2011-12 owners would, knowing the same pack would give you considerably more range, in the more efficient 2013-16 "24 kWh" LEAFS?
I still hope an aftermarket product enters the market, but to sell in quantity, it will need to be either higher capacity, or much lower price, than what Nissan offers.
The market problem, of course, is that $7,500 FTC essentially
more than pays the manufacturing cost for 24 kWh's worth of new batteries, if a qualified buyer agrees to take the rest of the new BEV with it.
It's always hard to get buyers to pay for something, that somebody else is willing to pay you to take...
By the time my LEAF pack hit's 10 years old (and the FTC expires) it will still probably do 45 or 50 miles, right lane on the freeway, and much more distance at lower speeds, and still be a very good
student or
grampa car, unless something expensive
other than the pack fails before then.
At which point, the OE pack will probably be the most valuable item to part-out...