Nissan Battery Replacement Program, Cost

Your other option is to take them to court, and then likely settle out of court. When it comes to that, they'd rather throw an extra $2k at you than have it go to court.

JPWhite said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

This is something the insurance company simply isn't concerned with due to low number of replaced batteries. As more claims come in, they will develop a standard for it. On any claim there is a place to enter in any mods you have lost including price and date of install. in a replacement battery situation, you need to emphasize that you have a 2016 battery pack in an older car. You might not get the result you wanted but this is how you start the process of getting it later down the road.

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The only way an insurance company will add a significant amount to compensate for a new battery is if the value of a used LEAF with a new battery pack is worth considerably more on the second hand car market. (currently that's not the case).

Insurance companies will only pay out what the car is worth. If the marketplace does not value a new pack very much the insurance will not pay out much more either.

It's not a question of establishing a new insurance standard, it's a question of real world value.

Be aware that replacing a worn battery is not considered a "mod" that adds value like say a premium sound system, it simply returns the cars battery to its original condition with the same range and charging characteristics when new. A 2016 battery does not add any extra range or otherwise improve the car. The 2016 battery simply wears out more slowly (or so we are lead to believe). Its like putting 60,000 mile tires on instead of 30,000 mile OEM tires. They cost more to buy, but add no extra value over the OEM tires.

The way I have seen insurance work is they start with what they consider to be the retail value of the car in excellent condition, then they start deducting for wear and tear. The best you can hope to get is the cars value in excellent condition.

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well that would be wrong. hopefully no one follows your "advice"

DaveinOlyWA said:

well that would be wrong. hopefully no one follows your "advice"

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I wasn't offering advice, just a reality check.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

"In some cases, we find someone’s modified their car to keep it roadworthy – for example, by adding a new engine. But this is unlikely to change the value of the car compared with the prices in the motor trade guides."

ncscenic said:

Decided to go ahead and purchase a new battery to be installed Thursday. Will be nice to have full range again. As expected, we lost our 4th bar sometime last week, well past the October 26th warranty period.

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That ends up being an expensive 9 weeks!

I don't know if there is still time, or what ncsenic's individual situation is, but in my opinion there is still much time and life left in that battery.

I went down to 7 capacity bars lost, 5 remaining. True, as it went down, I could feel the range going away, but I managed it as long as I could, which was about 10 miles under 60K miles.

I was still able to get 50 miles before LBW even at 5 bars down, and 35 or 40 miles before LBW at 6 bars down. I started driving slower and slower, but still around 48 mph. At 7 bars down, I was getting about 26 miles before LBW. In my situation, I could have kept going even longer, and I wish I could have seen more bars drop, as I wanted to see when the 96 month/100K mile defective battery warranty would happen.

sub3marathonman said:

I don't know if there is still time, or what ncsenic's individual situation is, but in my opinion there is still much time and life left in that battery.

I went down to 7 capacity bars lost, 5 remaining. True, as it went down, I could feel the range going away, but I managed it as long as I could, which was about 10 miles under 60K miles.

I was still able to get 50 miles before LBW even at 5 bars down, and 35 or 40 miles before LBW at 6 bars down. I started driving slower and slower, but still around 48 mph. At 7 bars down, I was getting about 26 miles before LBW. In my situation, I could have kept going even longer, and I wish I could have seen more bars drop, as I wanted to see when the 96 month/100K mile defective battery warranty would happen.

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I did the same, hoping to run it to 100,000 miles before replacing in the very distant hope that the battery would fail and be warrantable for reasons other than capacity. Alas at 99,000 miles and one month away from 100,000 miles I couldn't bear it anymore.

As you say you have to drive slower and slower, which was getting dangerous on the interstate. DC Fast charge was taking 40-45 minutes rather than 20 minutes. The inconvenience became too much. I was also holding out for the Bolt EV to become available for order in Tennessee, but with ordering only being accepted in select CARB states with the nationwide launch not happening as expected, waiting on that option evaporated as well.

ncscenic said:

Decided to go ahead and purchase a new battery to be installed Thursday. Will be nice to have full range again. As expected, we lost our 4th bar sometime last week, well past the October 26th warranty period. Basically, though, for 6 grand, we'll have what we consider to be a "new" car. We'll see how this experiment goes. The only puzzlement might come if we have an accident, as the car only books for 5K or so.

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If you don't mind me asking, what was the price for the battery and which type did you get?

JPWhite said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

well that would be wrong. hopefully no one follows your "advice"

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I wasn't offering advice, just a reality check.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

"In some cases, we find someone’s modified their car to keep it roadworthy – for example, by adding a new engine. But this is unlikely to change the value of the car compared with the prices in the motor trade guides."

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you call it a reality check, I call it surrender. This is new territory for insurance companies and there is no doubt they have an army of lawyers protecting the status quo. but its up to us to fight that. There will come a time when battery status will play a part. it is inevitable.

right now, you are right. but that time is limited

DaveinOlyWA said:

JPWhite said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

well that would be wrong. hopefully no one follows your "advice"

Click to expand...

I wasn't offering advice, just a reality check.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

"In some cases, we find someone’s modified their car to keep it roadworthy – for example, by adding a new engine. But this is unlikely to change the value of the car compared with the prices in the motor trade guides."

Click to expand...

you call it a reality check, I call it surrender. This is new territory for insurance companies and there is no doubt they have an army of lawyers protecting the status quo. but its up to us to fight that. There will come a time when battery status will play a part. it is inevitable.

right now, you are right. but that time is limited

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I seriously doubt it because, as I think someone else mentioned, the insurance company isn't concerned about what you've added to a vehicle. Let's say you have some old banger car lying around that you decide to restore for sentimental reasons. The car is only worth $1500, but you spend $10,000 restoring it and then promptly total the car. Guess what they are going to give you for the car - $1500 as that is its market value, regardless of what you spent on it. Especially as we could probably successfully argue that a battery pack, even in a car as in this case, is essentially a wear and tear item as they WILL degrade over time (hence wear and tear).

This is the same reason why I've always told people that modding their cars is ultimately a waste of money in case something happens to their cars. The exception would be like one of my older Volkswagens that I used to have. I had "collector car" insurance on it and they did take into account actual value as the car existed (i.e. it's restored value and cost), but mass produced cars do not enjoy that.

tattoogunman said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

JPWhite said:

I wasn't offering advice, just a reality check.

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html

"In some cases, we find someone’s modified their car to keep it roadworthy – for example, by adding a new engine. But this is unlikely to change the value of the car compared with the prices in the motor trade guides."

Click to expand...

you call it a reality check, I call it surrender. This is new territory for insurance companies and there is no doubt they have an army of lawyers protecting the status quo. but its up to us to fight that. There will come a time when battery status will play a part. it is inevitable.

right now, you are right. but that time is limited

Click to expand...

I seriously doubt it because, as I think someone else mentioned, the insurance company isn't concerned about what you've added to a vehicle. Let's say you have some old banger car lying around that you decide to restore for sentimental reasons. The car is only worth $1500, but you spend $10,000 restoring it and then promptly total the car. Guess what they are going to give you for the car - $1500 as that is its market value, regardless of what you spent on it. Especially as we could probably successfully argue that a battery pack, even in a car as in this case, is essentially a wear and tear item as they WILL degrade over time (hence wear and tear).

This is the same reason why I've always told people that modding their cars is ultimately a waste of money in case something happens to their cars. The exception would be like one of my older Volkswagens that I used to have. I had "collector car" insurance on it and they did take into account actual value as the car existed (i.e. it's restored value and cost), but mass produced cars do not enjoy that.

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yeah, but in your example I agree with the insurance company. the car does not drive better because it has a shiny new fender so the added value of that fender is easily debatable.

what we have is new territory so relating examples using old news, old ways, etc. is really a waste of time. there is previous example in the auto insurance industry that applies.

DaveinOlyWA said:

yeah, but in your example I agree with the insurance company. the car does not drive better because it has a shiny new fender so the added value of that fender is easily debatable.

what we have is new territory so relating examples using old news, old ways, etc. is really a waste of time. there is previous example in the auto insurance industry that applies.

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My LEAF does not drive better because of the new battery either, it does not improve the cars performance.

EVs will not change the way insurance write-offs are calculated. It all boils down to market value, nothing else matters.

Here's an example from the ombudsman site I referred to earlier.

"Mr K’s truck, which he used for work, was written off. He complained that the insurer’s offer hadn’t taken into account the special exhaust system he’d installed – which was needed to drive the truck where he worked in a city.

From the trade guides, we saw that this modification affected the value of the vehicle – and the insurer’s offer didn’t reflect its true market value. We told the insurer to adjust their offer, and to pay compensation for the loss of use of the vehicle Mr K had needed for work."

Notice that the basis for the ombudsman agreeing with the vehicle owner's claim of underpayment centers around the vehicles market value. That's all that matters.

In the future buyers may appreciate an EV with a new battery and be willing to pay more for one on the open market. If and when market data exists that shows a new battery adds X dollars to a car, then and only then will an insurance company be willing to pay more for a car with a new battery vs one with the original battery. It is and always will be market value that will determine write off valuations. It's not a question of old ways vs new ways, it's a question of enough relevant market data existing to provide the basis for valuation.

I think we are simply going to have to agree to disagree.

Hi,
This is puzzling. Your Oct 26th 2016 warr period is not far off the mark. Why didn't you discuss your situation with Nissan? They would have easily offered you a 10/90 settlement in your favor. Go back to your dealer and discuss it.

I worked with my dealer, and they negotiated a 20/80 settlement for us. Our warranty was July 1st 2016. We lost the 4th bar in Oct. Curiously, during this entire process, the dealer was indeed in "back office" discussions with Nissan. After the offer was made to us, I decided to simply called in to the regular Nissan EV phone and confirmed no case/claim was even filed on behalf of our vehicles. NOTE: We did all the battery tests every year even after the 2 years complimentary tests.

This process is not well documented on the forums but I read a forum thread where a gentleman was able to share his experiences, and I simply followed his trail. (Many thanks to rwherrick, Search for his username)

ncscenic said:

Decided to go ahead and purchase a new battery to be installed Thursday. Will be nice to have full range again. As expected, we lost our 4th bar sometime last week, well past the October 26th warranty period. Basically, though, for 6 grand, we'll have what we consider to be a "new" car. We'll see how this experiment goes. The only puzzlement might come if we have an accident, as the car only books for 5K or so.

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If you don't mind me asking, what was the price for the battery and which type did you get?

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We had a new 24Kwh battery installed, after core return, I believe the cost was 4500 or so.

For us, the range became an issue. The charging infrastructure in our neck of the woods is not conducive to short trips with a quick fill up, so we opted to upgrade the car.

In our opinion, battery replacement is a good investment in an otherwise perfectly fine automobile with hopefully many years remaining in it's life expectancy.

We basically have a "new" car for 99 bucks a month. That seems like good math to us, and the original range, even degraded to 9 bars fit our needs, but at 8, it just did not cut it.

mxp said:

This is puzzling. Your Oct 26th 2016 warr period is not far off the mark. Why didn't you discuss your situation with Nissan? They would have easily offered you a 10/90 settlement in your favor. Go back to your dealer and discuss it.

I worked with my dealer, and they negotiated a 20/80 settlement for us. Our warranty was July 1st 2016. We lost the 4th bar in Oct. Curiously, during this entire process, the dealer was indeed in "back office" discussions with Nissan. After the offer was made to us, I decided to simply called in to the regular Nissan EV phone and confirmed no case/claim was even filed on behalf of our vehicles. NOTE: We did all the battery tests every year even after the 2 years complimentary tests.

This process is not well documented on the forums but I read a forum thread where a gentleman was able to share his experiences, and I simply followed his trail. (Many thanks to rwherrick, Search for his username)

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This is infuriating. My dealer told me to pound sand and wouldn't do a thing for me. Neither did Nissan when I called the EV hotline asking for out of warranty assistance.

The lack of consistency is baffling and absolutely frustrating. I highly doubt that I will buy/lease any future Nissan's because of this.

Sorry to hear about your dealer not being proactive to help you Drees.

As far as I know, as long as you have the battery tests conducted every year, you will have a basis to get some form of settlement. BTW, I worked with a different dealer other than the one I purchased the vehicle originally from.

drees said:

mxp said:

This is puzzling. Your Oct 26th 2016 warr period is not far off the mark. Why didn't you discuss your situation with Nissan? They would have easily offered you a 10/90 settlement in your favor. Go back to your dealer and discuss it.

I worked with my dealer, and they negotiated a 20/80 settlement for us. Our warranty was July 1st 2016. We lost the 4th bar in Oct. Curiously, during this entire process, the dealer was indeed in "back office" discussions with Nissan. After the offer was made to us, I decided to simply called in to the regular Nissan EV phone and confirmed no case/claim was even filed on behalf of our vehicles. NOTE: We did all the battery tests every year even after the 2 years complimentary tests.

This process is not well documented on the forums but I read a forum thread where a gentleman was able to share his experiences, and I simply followed his trail. (Many thanks to rwherrick, Search for his username)

Click to expand...

This is infuriating. My dealer told me to pound sand and wouldn't do a thing for me. Neither did Nissan when I called the EV hotline asking for out of warranty assistance.

The lack of consistency is baffling and absolutely frustrating. I highly doubt that I will buy/lease any future Nissan's because of this.

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ncscenic said:

As our Leaf quickly approaches bar 8 out of warranty, we're interested in replacing our battery in our 2011 Leaf in the next few months and thought we would look into Nissan's Battery Replacement Program as to be prepared as it were.

After a few phone calls to Nissan's EV Customer Service Group and a visit with our service manager at the local dealership we found out that Nissan will finance the battery replacement through NMAC, but the maximum allocation is $5,500. Our dealership estimated the total cost at $6,400 or so; hence, we're looking at a "down payment" of 900 or so and some change and then payments of roughly $100 for 60 months.

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I just tried to do the same and got a quote of "about $8000." This consisted of:
Battery $5499
Upgrade kit for 2012 Leaf "about $1000"
Labor $1000
Unspecified extras

Have other people seen these sorts of prices?

billvon said:

ncscenic said:

As our Leaf quickly approaches bar 8 out of warranty, we're interested in replacing our battery in our 2011 Leaf in the next few months and thought we would look into Nissan's Battery Replacement Program as to be prepared as it were.

After a few phone calls to Nissan's EV Customer Service Group and a visit with our service manager at the local dealership we found out that Nissan will finance the battery replacement through NMAC, but the maximum allocation is $5,500. Our dealership estimated the total cost at $6,400 or so; hence, we're looking at a "down payment" of 900 or so and some change and then payments of roughly $100 for 60 months.

Click to expand...

I just tried to do the same and got a quote of "about $8000." This consisted of:
Battery $5499
Upgrade kit for 2012 Leaf "about $1000"
Labor $1000
Unspecified extras

Have other people seen these sorts of prices?

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$8,000 is way high. Check with another dealer. (The price for upgrade kit is a total rip off, should be $200 or so, not $1,000).

I got a breakdown of the cost, check out my blog and click on the image to see the cost breakdown.

https://jpwhitenissanleaf.com/2016/...-miles-for-an-electric-vehicle-is-phenomenal/

billvon said:

I just tried to do the same and got a quote of "about $8000." This consisted of:
Battery $5499
Upgrade kit for 2012 Leaf "about $1000"
Labor $1000
Unspecified extras

Have other people seen these sorts of prices?

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upgrade kit of $1000?

can you provide more specifics here? previously the upgrade kit was like $200 but that was 24 kwh to 24 kwh.

maybe....just maybe... (I really hesitate to say this) but just maybe the higher cost is due to a greater level of adaption dictated by a greater change?

JPWhite said:

$8,000 is way high. Check with another dealer. (The price for upgrade kit is a total rip off, should be $200 or so, not $1,000).

I got a breakdown of the cost, check out my blog and click on the image to see the cost breakdown.

https://jpwhitenissanleaf.com/2016/...-miles-for-an-electric-vehicle-is-phenomenal/

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Thanks, that's exactly what I needed - some evidence that $8000 is ridiculous.

billvon said:

Have other people seen these sorts of prices?

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I subscribe to Truedelta and looked up what drivers have been paying for replacement Traction batteries.

Here's the list of prices paid by 6 owners out of warranty (several of which got goodwill adjustments).

$2,937
$1,425
$1,200
$6,500
$5,600
$4,000

If you subscribe to Truedelta this information and more is available.

I would eventually like to replace my battery when it drops to low bars.. however this seems like something I should be able to do myself ..
I have rebuilt motors transmissions and done all the maintenance needed for all my previous vehicles so why not the simple battery exchange on my 2013 Nissan Leaf?