johnlocke said:Remember that this is a world-wide decision on their part. We are not hearing about battery failures in Europe or Japan so Nissan has probably decided to just bear the warranty costs. That is much cheaper than issuing a recall to replace defective batteries. First, it spreads the costs out over a longer period. Second, only obvious failures will be replaced so marginal batteries will remain in service. Third, you still have to go through the warranty process which will deter some and some procrastinators will time out on the warranty.Valdemar said:If not a defective batch then they must have knowingly signed up for 1 or potentially 2 warranty replacements in hotter areas. I just cannot believe they didn't have the data after the original 11/12 pack debacle. Who knows, perhaps they ran the numbers and between the lower battery manufacturing costs and EV credits they still come out ahead overall, and it was simply a business decision.
Nissan doesn't seem to care about their reputation as an EV builder so I have to assume that the Leaf is ultimately just a compliance car built to allow Nissan to sell larger ICE vehicles like trucks and SUV's with much higher margins in the US. Leafs do well enough in Europe and Japan and maybe their plan is to cede the US market to Tesla and GM.
Yup. From the moment Nissan decided to sell the battery factory the writing was on the wall that the LEAF is a compliance car in the US. This is pretty obvious to anybody who is not blinded by fanboism.
Even our boy Ed cannot find the fortitude to defend the LEAF anymore. He just hangs around to throw out Tesla FUD.