Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

[Joeviocoe]

AND, I almost forgot that Nissan actually appearantly took range from our vehicles with the early 2012 SW. They hid even more miles in that unusable range after that update, so with battery deterioration and range theivary the 75% 'rule of thumb' that Russ thinks we should live by goes out the window.

Was the official EPA estimated 73 mile range including the 'stolen range' that is no longer accessible even when 100% charged? Because that is what caused a class action suit with a Honda Hybrid if I am not mistaken.

 

[ALLWATZ]

I remain ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that people still have the nerve to tell me that I had UNREALISTIC expectations about the performance of this vehicle over time. :evil: Or that signing a waiver means that I'm accepting the fact that I'm being sold a big pile of lies and I'm supposed to lay down and take it. If you send your kid on field trip and you sign a waiver that says you absolve liability to whomever and something happens, does that mean you're supposed to sit on your hands and say 'Oh Well'. NO! You fight for what's right, and in my case, you WIN! If you add up every piece of information that was fed to buyers pre-sale, no reasonable consumer would have expected this.

The warranty covers the battery except for GRADUAL capacity loss. Losing 15% capacity in 1 year IS NOT GRADUAL!!!!!!!!

You cannot say that 99% of cars will be ok. You don't have the data to support that. The cars in Phoenix have had less than 30,000 miles and less than 18 months on them. If I were a betting woman (and I am) I would BET anyone here that Phoenix is seeing the fastest and worst of what many, many other southern drivers will be seeing as the months and miles on their cars start racking up.

Don't forget that Phoenix was a rollout market, so we've got older cars here than most places. Nissan has themselves admitted that Phoenix batteries are deteriorating at a rate about twice the national average, yet for months the message continued... 'If you treat your batteries as outlined in the user manual you can EXPECT 80% in 5 years'.

This speaks nothing to the fact that Nissan doesn't protect the battery they have given you in order to maintain that magic '73'. Anywhere between 9 and 20 miles of that 73 are miles that shouldn't be used according to the owners manual. Do you expect each user to read the EPA test standard and find that the EPA 73 miles is driving to DEAD, and that Nissan puts 9 to 24 miles between LBW and dead where you shouldn't be tapping into it?

+ 1 million. It's bad enough that Nissan has to shovel the s#!t (I just got off the phone reporting my second bar loss to EV hotline and again, got the speil about what the battery warranty covers and how the range might come back as we head to cooler weather and how I should be driving to improve the range as if I haven't been driving on planet Earth for the last 36 years)(gee that was fun). But to have to listen to the ramblings of the illiterate and empathy "challanged" is to say the least, :twisted:

 

[Joeviocoe]

I remain ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that people still have the nerve to tell me that I had UNREALISTIC expectations about the performance of this vehicle over time. :evil: ...
The warranty covers the battery except for GRADUAL capacity loss. Losing 15% capacity in 1 year IS NOT GRADUAL!!!!!!!!

You cannot say that 99% of cars will be ok. You don't have the data to support that. The cars in Phoenix have had less than 30,000 miles and less than 18 months on them. If I were a betting woman (and I am) I would BET anyone here that Phoenix is seeing the fastest and worst of what many, many other southern drivers will be seeing as the months and miles on their cars start racking up.
...

I don't disagree with any of that. Especially regarding expectations. Are you taking my comments to imply that you (or any others here) "had UNREALISTIC expectations about the performance of this vehicle over time"? Are you somehow concluding my statements about the 99% of Leafs, as saying they "will be okay"?
Or are you talking about other comments?

 

[leiko49]

Yesterday I contacted Nissan Finance Department for a quote on how much it would cost to end lease early, after driving car for 13 months. I was quoted the fee of $3000 dollars.

On April 15, less then two months ago, I contacted them 11 months and 2 weeks into the lease, and they quoted me $400. A $2600 difference! That's on top of my down payment over and above the required one, $$ that I would see like a leaves "blowin in the wind".

How is it possible the the book value of the Leaf has fallen so fast (from which they calculate the end of lease costs)?

You don't need to be an engineer to know the way the wind blows.

True, some Leaf owners the past several weeks have gotten satisfaction, in the form of the lemon law protocol, which could lead to a precedence for other owners no longer able to use the car for intended purpose at the point of purchase.

The question is will the lease owners be thrown under the proverbial bus in the weeks or months to come. The answer to this question may be blowin in the wind (for now), but its a proven fact that when empowered citizens voice their concerns in a clear and loud voice, justice may be won.

There is also little doubt that this lengthy forum has already brought some justice for the Leaf owners. So hopefully it will do the same for the lessors.

 

[leiko49]

He said out of 450 cars in Arizona only 10 have been affected, all high-mileage. He said none had been affected in Tucson. I did a physical doubletake and said, "What?" I was practically speechless. I told him I had personally met more than ten people. My own car only has 16k miles, but that's more than 2 Nissan years, I guess.

I have two bar losses, 2nd one yesterday. I have 10,500 miles on my car.

 

[TonyWilliams]

True, some Leaf owners the past several weeks have gotten satisfaction, in the form of the lemon law protocol, which could lead to a precedence for other owners no longer able to use the car for intended purpose at the point of purchase.

Nissan is not buying these cars through Lemon Law. Actually, they are circumventing Lemon Law,mand buying the cars from the owners directly. You know why!

 

[palmermd]

keeps the lemon count down. Same way the airlines schedule an hour flight for two hours so they are never late.

 

[spooka]

Nissan Leaf Range Issues
BY RUSS FINLEY ON OCT 10, 2012

http://www.consumerenergyreport.com/2012/10/10/nissan-leaf-range-issues/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

While there are some good points in the article, it is marred by a selective focus that "everything is pretty much Normal(TM)". It ignores a number of facts:

--21 kwh is pretty much the agreed on usable energy in a new Leaf that hasn't sat on a dealers lot in the hot sun for months. If Nissan wants to disclose otherwise, so be it

--the results of the range test in Arizona (using 84 miles as the standard for a new Leaf at 4 miles per kwh) are spot on with the known capacities measured by Nissan at Casa Grande (only two cars, unfortunately, that we have data for)

--there is no suggestion of bias in the range test, as the article implies. The results clearly show instrument error (about 40%) and battery degradation (60%) with no attempt to skew the numbers on the part of the testers.

I would say this article is far from accurate--and I have spent a lot of time studying and graphing the results.

+1 Kinda where I went with this. My response I left in his comments section.


I am the owner of Blue917 from the Phoenix test and I have a battery pack that will require replacement, when it’s remaining capacity reaches 70%, after only 30 to 36 months of driving. What a far cry from the 5 to 10 year estimate Nissan advertised. I drive the national average of 12,000 miles a year (32 miles a day). Currently I can travel 45 miles of mixed city/highway driving at 4.5kw/mile to low battery warning on the 80% charge Nissan recommends. When the car was new, I regularly obtained 62 miles of range under very similar driving conditions. That’s only 72% of my original range from new after only 15 months and 15,000 miles of driving. Nissan can’t explain this loss to me (as a matter of fact, they state it is normal), maybe you have some ideas?
I cannot state it more clearly than to say that Mark Larson’s chart that you quoted in this article is junk. He really needs to remove the article from the web, and you need to remove it from your article. The issue with it is he assumes that all LEAFs are shipped from Nissan in a defective state. By stating that a new LEAF only has a range of 76 mile at 4kw/mile, he is stating that Nissan is delivering all LEAFs to Phoenix drivers with a damaged battery capacity of only 19kw (19kw X 4kw/mile = 76 miles), when Nissan is really delivering a battery pack with 21kw of usable energy. To assume Nisssan is shipping a defective product when new is a bad starting point for refuting the realities of degradation Phoenix LEAF drivers are experiencing.
Here are two photos of trips I took about 1 year apart, driving the exact same course, demonstrating at least a 19% reduction in range over the course of 13 months.
http://img138.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=919210887_LeafEnd11_122_251lo.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://img177.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=919219720_LeafEnd12_122_40lo.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Statements from Nissan that concern me:
A 20% capacity loss over the period of 1 year is considered NORMAL. (Why would they state this if all of us Phoenix drivers were just blowing smoke? I encourage you to contact Nissan and confirm this.)
To obtain 76% battery capacity after 5 years in Phoenix, you may only drive a maximum average of 20 miles per day or 7,500 miles per year. (Stated by Andy Palmer here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; … WPI#t=193s
I encourage you to speak with Phoenix owners like me that own this disaster. You may change your opinion.
Paul Sepuka, Phoenix

 

[spooka]

Just dropped off the car after being contacted by Nissan corporate. They sent a technician from Casa Grande and are keeping it overnight. I asked him how many car have been affected in Arizona. He said out of 450 cars in Arizona only 10 have been affected, all high-mileage. He said none had been affected in Tucson. I did a physical doubletake and said, "What?" I was practically speechless. I told him I had personally met more than ten people. My own car only has 16k miles, but that's more than 2 Nissan years, I guess.

He had me fill out a questionnaire with three questions. How often do you charge to 100% at L2, what is your daily commute, and how often do you QC? I never QC'd until after the 2nd bar loss and found we just couldn't make it without one with the loss of range, so I made sure to list that fact.

So he's doing fact-finding and said he would be passing his info on to corporate for a final decision about what action would be taken (or not taken). Apparently I will get one of those fantastic battery check up sheets for my trouble.

Good luck! Keep us posted.
They called me Friday to tell me they would call me by yesterday to schedule the drop off for the test. Hope they call soon. :roll:

 

[leiko49]

True, some Leaf owners the past several weeks have gotten satisfaction, in the form of the lemon law protocol, which could lead to a precedence for other owners no longer able to use the car for intended purpose at the point of purchase.

Nissan is not buying these cars through Lemon Law. Actually, they are circumventing Lemon Law,mand buying the cars from the owners directly. You know why!

While it is not formally the Lemon Law, so far as I know they are following the lemon law protocol, i.e., calculation based on all fees paid out minus depreciation of mileage driven. If it looks like a lemon, tastes like a lemon, it's a .....

 

[TonyWilliams]

. If it looks like a lemon, tastes like a lemon, it's a .....

... an attempt to not get a long list of Lemon Law returns.

 

[jspearman]

. If it looks like a lemon, tastes like a lemon, it's a .....

... an attempt to not get a long list of Lemon Law returns.

I think that's right. The woman who arranged my appointment is an arbitration specialist. I think the inspection is a formality to make sure I didn't sabotage the car or do any hacking or tinkering. I fully expect to get some kind of offer after they look it over tomorrow.

One note, they want you to bring the car in charged to 100%, or as close as you can get to 100% from your house. I wryly offered to take mine next door to Riverview Toyota and quick charge it to 100% He frowned on the idea. I ended up driving home in a crappy loaner that reeks of cigarette smoke and poverty.

 

[azdre]

I remain ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED that people still have the nerve to tell me that I had UNREALISTIC expectations about the performance of this vehicle over time. :evil: ...
The warranty covers the battery except for GRADUAL capacity loss. Losing 15% capacity in 1 year IS NOT GRADUAL!!!!!!!!

You cannot say that 99% of cars will be ok. You don't have the data to support that. The cars in Phoenix have had less than 30,000 miles and less than 18 months on them. If I were a betting woman (and I am) I would BET anyone here that Phoenix is seeing the fastest and worst of what many, many other southern drivers will be seeing as the months and miles on their cars start racking up.
...

I don't disagree with any of that. Especially regarding expectations. Are you taking my comments to imply that you (or any others here) "had UNREALISTIC expectations about the performance of this vehicle over time"? Are you somehow concluding my statements about the 99% of Leafs, as saying they "will be okay"?
Or are you talking about other comments?

This was replying to a few quotes from the opinion piece posted a few pages ago:

"I strongly suspect that there’s nothing wrong with his car. I see the problem largely as a matter of expectations. "

"Certainly for 99% of the Leafs in the world, the passive system is perfectly adequate. "

 

[leiko49]

. If it looks like a lemon, tastes like a lemon, it's a .....

... an attempt to not get a long list of Lemon Law returns.

Totally agree with that, an attempt, unknown how successful this will be though.

 

[palmermd]

"Certainly for 99% of the Leafs in the world, the passive system is perfectly adequate. "

First we protest because we are a part of the 99% and now we are protesting because we are a part of the 1%. Can we make up our minds. haha.

 

[leiko49]

"Certainly for 99% of the Leafs in the world, the passive system is perfectly adequate. "

First we protest because we are a part of the 99% and now we are protesting because we are a part of the 1%. Can we make up our minds. haha.

Or, the 1% are sticking it to the 99%, then claim the 99% actually the 1%. That's the political scientists making believe they are scientists, twisting the numbers to suit their purposes. It would be funny if it didn't hurt so bad.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

realistically; what do people "think" the percentage would be? 90%?

it does not help that the initial launch was centered in the most affected areas but i would have to say that Most LEAFers will have a happy experience.

now we just went over this type of statement just the other day. glad to see that discussion was in vain

 

[leiko49]

realistically; what do people "think" the percentage would be? 90%?

it does not help that the initial launch was centered in the most affected areas but i would have to say that Most LEAFers will have a happy experience.

now we just went over this type of statement just the other day. glad to see that discussion was in vain

As a scientist who works with the concept of percentages every day, my own opinion is that if you are in the 1% of Leafers with a severe problem in Arizona (or I believe a more accurate figure of 30% of Leafers with the capacity loss problem), its still a problem that needs to be addressed. No customer should be misled, and those who may have been misled should be given some respect. However, whether the figure is 1% is important for those living in a cooler climate then Phoenix, whether or not to purchase, and for Nissan, in how to give more accurate information to those in a hotter climate (about potential battery degradation). The question of whether a more accurate figure is 90% or not can only be fully answered (as they own the carwings data set) by those who may not want to give us the answer, what they might call corporate or trade secrecy, but what we might call lack of true transparency.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

realistically; what do people "think" the percentage would be? 90%?

it does not help that the initial launch was centered in the most affected areas but i would have to say that Most LEAFers will have a happy experience.

now we just went over this type of statement just the other day. glad to see that discussion was in vain

As a scientist who works with the concept of percentages every day, my own opinion is that if you are in the 1% of Leafers with a severe problem in Arizona (or I believe a more accurate figure of 30% of Leafers with the capacity loss problem), its still a problem that needs to be addressed. No customer should be misled, and those who may have been misled should be given some respect. However, whether the figure is 1% is important for those living in a cooler climate then Phoenix, whether or not to purchase, and for Nissan, in how to give more accurate information to those in a hotter climate (about potential battery degradation). The question of whether a more accurate figure is 90% or not can only be fully answered (as they own the carwings data set) by those who may not want to give us the answer, what they might call corporate or trade secrecy, but what we might call lack of true transparency.

you do realize that my comment was solely based on the fact that many here have decided to pigeonhole on the "99%" statement to shoot this guy's statement down??

previously, we were all blamed as "militant greeners" who refused to see the shortcomings of an electric vehicle. well, it now seems we have done a complete 180 to where we are completely against anyone who is happy with their LEAF and that is essentially all the article is about.

as far as the overriding issue of this thread, i am not disputing that. i would be concerned to from lack of information on long term degradation (since what we have does not apply to Phoenix) and when the day will come when the commute will be too far since you cannot wait until that day comes before you start making noise due to the fact that there is a significant amount of time involved.

now, the publicity generated by the "one percent" has done a great job of shortening that time line but also has had the unintended consequence of creating mob mentality where others are jumping on this bandwagon when their issue is relatively mild. so now we have this impression (or you do) that 30% are unhappy.

 

[mksE55]

realistically; what do people "think" the percentage would be? 90%?

it does not help that the initial launch was centered in the most affected areas but i would have to say that Most LEAFers will have a happy experience.

now we just went over this type of statement just the other day. glad to see that discussion was in vain

As a scientist who works with the concept of percentages every day, my own opinion is that if you are in the 1% of Leafers with a severe problem in Arizona (or I believe a more accurate figure of 30% of Leafers with the capacity loss problem), its still a problem that needs to be addressed. No customer should be misled, and those who may have been misled should be given some respect. However, whether the figure is 1% is important for those living in a cooler climate then Phoenix, whether or not to purchase, and for Nissan, in how to give more accurate information to those in a hotter climate (about potential battery degradation). The question of whether a more accurate figure is 90% or not can only be fully answered (as they own the carwings data set) by those who may not want to give us the answer, what they might call corporate or trade secrecy, but what we might call lack of true transparency.

interesting concept , except ,this is no secret . how the battery is degrading is just Data obviously they used it to say the battery will last 80% in 5 years and 70% in 10. now if the continued data shows otherwise. this doesnt now become Trade Secrets.