It certainly bites for me! I bought this car, I did not lease it. Now I'm down two bars with 30% of my range gone after two years. I waited for the 30 KWH battery to insure that I had enough range and passed up incredible deals on 24 KWH Leafs. Now I have a 24 KWH Leaf anyway. If I had gotten the 24 KWH car I'd probably be down one bar and still have as much capacity in it as my 30KWH has currently. I'd have saved $10K over the cost of the 2016 which would have paid for several replacement batteries.SageBrush said:The longer warranty is a clear benefit for sure, but regarding capacity we could say for sure if the 4 bar drop SoC or SOH threshold for the 30 kWh battery was known. Say the threshold is 65% for the 24 kWh battery and 60% for the 30 kWh variety, then replacements occur at ~ 15.6 kWh in the smaller battery and at 18 kWh in the larger ones. That is still quite a large difference percentage wise, and around 10 miles of range for most people.RegGuheert said:Once upon a time I wanted (and pleaded with Nissan to make available) a 30-kWh replacement battery for our MY2011/2012 LEAFs. But based on the data I have seen, I have to say that we are probably better off with a 24 kWh replacement (assuming they still use the old chemistry). It appears that the capacity of a 30-kWh battery will start out higher but will drop below that of a 24-kWh battery after a couple of years. The real benefit of the 30-kWh batteries appears to be the better capacity warranty.
So as a free replacement choice (hah!), it would be superior.
The situation where the larger pack sucks is new car owners who pay more for the larger battery to meet their use profile. Quickly dropping down to ~ 20 - 25 kWh where the car cannot meet the commute needs and yet not be in the battery replacement range is sure to bite some owners.