Glad to hear that Nissan is proceeding with more buy backs.
But doesn't the LEAF market have a serious problem with all informed buyers now knowing the only reasonable choice on the vehicle is to lease it?
How is there going to be any reasonable price in the market for the used LEAFs that come off of lease?
Isn't Nissan going to have to switch to an "only lease the vehicle" sales model, and that model will also have to include leasing of "Used" LEAFs, with some sort of commitment on vehicle range for the life of the lease?
I bought, now have 10,000 miles on it, with 18 months of use. Haven't yet decided to sell it as Tony did. Still no lost capacity bars, but estimate battery capacity is down somewhere in the broad range of 6% to 12%. It may work OK for several years for me with 36 miles round trip to downtown Chattanooga from home. But with long term average so far of 3.4 miles per kWh, and degradation of battery pack that occurs with time, it appears my low mileage 10,000 miles in 18 months use might translate into a vehicle that needs a replacement battery at 60,000 miles / 9 years? I love the vehicle, and really want all future vehicles I buy to be primarily electric. But a vehicle that needs a $12,000 battery replacement at 60,000 miles / 9 years seems like a somewhat bad idea for the purchaser and for the OEM seller?
Nissan would be better off in the long run if they bit the bullet now, and proceeded to offer buy back to 100% of the people who purchased, and switch everyone to leases, both new vehicle leases and used vehicle leases.
Their original preference was to not sell the battery but lease the battery, but ran into legal difficulties with this.
I don't see how they have any successful business model at this point but to switch entirely to an "only lease the vehicle" model.
I don't know if they'll make any money at that. But they seem to be heading into a total disaster with selling the vehicles. A disaster for them, and a disaster for the purchasers.