Help me spread the word about Nissan's unethical battery warranty program.

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neotim

New member
Joined
Jan 31, 2022
Messages
3
Hey, I have a 2017 Leaf that was approved for warranty replacement on 10/12/2022. I recently started speaking to the Consumer Affairs office... they offered a buyback, which I don't want to do.

I also recently found out that Nissan is giving priority to the 2nd gen Leafs. They are getting batteries, but the older ones are not. I made a YT video about it. Will you help me by spreading the word... share my video, make your own, contact EV Vloggers and let them know, etc. Let's get the word out!

 
While I have little or no desire to defend Nissan, the manufacturer, in any way regarding how they approach warranty claims for EV battery degradation, you can't expect satisfied Leaf owners to join the crusade to disuade others from purchasing a Leaf. That just doesn't make sense.

Now warning them of the valid risks associated with buying a Leaf is reasonable. But that's true of all vehicles that have potential issues. And there are many!

You'll never convince everyone to settle for a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic.
 
While I have little or no desire to defend Nissan, the manufacturer

I have a desire to steer people away from Nissan because I think their corporate policies stink. The odd thing here is that I'm not really up in arms over the warranty story**. No doubt in part because I don't own a Nissan anymore, but in part because of this reasoning:

Nissan promised at least 8 full bars of capacity through the warranty period. That IS IT. It is a miserable warranty, and it should have made people shy away from the LEAF. But when LEAF packs failed, Nissan provided much more than the warranty required, up to and including new, bigger packs. That was not Nissan offering customer goodwill in the name of customer loyalty, it was Nissan not having a cheaper way to fulfill the warranty at the time. In retrospect, it should not surprise anyone that Nissan looked for and found less expensive ways to fulfill the warranty. Remember, this is the company that only offered a pack degradation warranty at all because of a class action lawsuit. Customer facing corporate policy could only go downhill from there as NSSN financial problems mounted.

And in the meantime, bottom feeders who thought they were smarter than the average bear bought degraded LEAFs on the cheap, expecting to win the battery lottery. Some won, now the remainder are losing. But even the losers are getting their money back or more. Honestly, I would say they are all winners except they are running around in severely range limited LEAFs, and that has been the case through at least the loss of the 10th and 9th capacity bar. How much the degraded range is a hassle for the gambler is a YMMV. The more it interferes, the more that person probably took a bad gamble.

The only reasonable expectation LEAF owners should have of the car is severely degraded range not long after the warranty lapses. Often the result is much better, but that is a gamble. Does that make for a sh1tty purchase ? Probably, but much depends on how much it cost to acquire the car, and its usage.
Was it predictable ? Sure was -- LEAF battery tech is 20 years old, and the LEAF design is an exercise in extreme cost cutting. The rest of the story just amounts to the fact that sh1t runs downhill.

** I'm talking about general pack degradation, not the cases of single cell manufacturing defects. The latter cases are being handled in a criminal way by Nissan and are a poster child for why I cannot imagine buying a new Nissan for anything over 50% of msrp
 
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Makes sense too me Nissan is giving priority to Gen2 owners: because they are still selling it, and actually don't even have any 30kWh packs anymore. Other than that?

People who think buying an cheap degraded Leaf, with highly degraded battery pack entitles them for a new battery? Well smart move, but don't even think the process would go smoothly.
 
Makes sense too me Nissan is giving priority to Gen2 owners: because they are still selling it, and actually don't even have any 30kWh packs anymore. Other than that?

People who think buying an cheap degraded Leaf, with highly degraded battery pack entitles them for a new battery? Well smart move, but don't even think the process would go smoothly.
I agree, those that thought they could buy degraded and then have the car repaired at Nissan's expense are likely in for a rude surprise.
Many of those that either didn't do their home work or listened to everything the salesman said without verifying, are the ones most disappointed with the Leaf.
Anyone remember the Honda 600? A tiny little run-about with a 2 cyl air cooled engine that pre dated the Civic. These were never meant to be highway cars, and the same holds for the Leaf. Yes, a Leaf can run at highway speeds, much better than the 600 could, but is severely cuts into range.
I am not disappointed because I did my homework before I purchased. I have a nine bar 2015 and a limited range that get more limited in the "extreme cold", but I knew that before I bought. I looked at my intended use, and logged those miles for months, before I bought. If I have a disappointment, it was also one i new about, that is I would like the car so much, that I wish it could do more.
How many complaining about a Leaf's limited use would except the limits of entry level cars of days gone by? Heat in a Leaf is better than it is in any air cooled VW or any air cooled car I can think of. Mileage is better than any car of the 60's lasting well into 100,000 miles with some battery capacity loss. We've come a long way baby, and those that are disappointed, are only so because expectations have been raised so much in recent decades.
It used to be, if you took care of a car, you might make 100.000 miles, and car clubs would have a "200,000 mile club that few made it to. Today 200,000 miles is expected. Cars in the upper 100,000 miles were un saleable in the 70's today they command thousands of dollars, because they still have life in them.
There are stories of people with the earliest Leafs choosing new batteries over "scrapping" a good car, acknowledging that after years of putting nothing into the car, it finely needs some.
In a way Leaf's problems are due more to its success than a failure. It is marketed and being used in a way it wasn't designed for. The Leaf battery is made in a way that it can be repaired, something not possible with many others including Tesla. The pack can be opened and individual modules exchanged. The only problem is there are limited cells available to make the swap because almost all are going to meet the production line needs. The design required a trade off, esp to keep it affordable. We, with 20/20 hindsight, can debate if it was a good trade off. The modular design of the cells made them flat rather than spiral, that also allowed more surface area for the cell for heat rejection, making passive cooling an option. Spiral cells can not be cooled this way and require active cooling, which also make the battery essentially not repairable. There are good arguments for both methods, but the flat cell with active cooling would be best, but so far has not been cost effective to produce.
Again, all this info is available on the web and a smart buyer would put the time in and weigh the trade-offs and their intended use.
 
I agree, those that thought they could buy degraded and then have the car repaired at Nissan's expense are likely in for a rude surprise.
Many of those that either didn't do their home work or listened to everything the salesman said without verifying, are the ones most disappointed with the Leaf.
Anyone remember the Honda 600? A tiny little run-about with a 2 cyl air cooled engine that pre dated the Civic. These were never meant to be highway cars, and the same holds for the Leaf. Yes, a Leaf can run at highway speeds, much better than the 600 could, but is severely cuts into range.

A Leaf is a fine highway car: just I think, they should have made it possible to set a lower quick charging speed. In many scenarios it would be totally doable, to just charge with 20kW instead of 50kW when you don't need to go from 20% to 80% in 45 mins.

But instead, they went ahead and allowed faster charging by solving rapid gate partly. Ofcourse that meant further degradation, of battery packs.
 
I agree it is a nice car to drive at any reasonable speed, but it has limitations when used on long trips, and DCFC is hard on the battery. Active cooling of the battery would help, but not totally eliminate the problem.
Making the recharge time longer, doesn't make it more highway trip friendly. a 20 min stop once a day is ok, for most multiple stops for longer is a hard sell to anyone other than a dedicated EV fan. There will be those that the eccentricity required to take a Leaf on a long highway trip will be part of the fun, but the general population will not be willing to do that. It is just not what is expected of a highway car.
 
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I did a 800km 2 days trip with the leaf last summer. Did not like it. Neither did the traction battery. The suggested one quick charge per day limit is not to be taken lightly.
 
I did a 800km 2 days trip with the leaf last summer. Did not like it. Neither did the traction battery. The suggested one quick charge per day limit is not to be taken lightly.
My experience with the LEAF is that it is best used as an around town, around the metro area, car. I have owned a LEAF for over 10 years. I have found that it is best used in a radius of half its range around my garage. That means all charging happens at home which is the most cost effective way to charge. I don't use fast charging (L3) which is hard on the battery pack, plus I avoid the frustration of the constant problems with public charging stations. My radius got bigger with the recent acquisition of an SL Plus. This has made the car more useful and I am happy with my LEAF. Our household also has a Prius for longer trips beyond that radius. My LEAFs have shown themselves to be well built and reliable. Life is good :).
 
Dooglas,
That was my criteria when I went looking for one, It had to make the daily trip to town and back with enough extra for winter/high winds etc. So far in the aprox 2 months I've owned it, I only have charged at home.
 
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I have a desire to steer people away from Nissan because I think their corporate policies stink. The odd thing here is that I'm not really up in arms over the warranty story. No doubt in part because I don't own a Nissan anymore, but in part because of this reasoning:

Nissan promised at least 8 full bars of capacity through the warranty period. That IS IT. It is a miserable warranty, and it should have made people shy away from the LEAF. But when LEAF packs failed, Nissan provided much more than the warranty required, up to and including new, bigger packs. That was not Nissan offering customer goodwill in the name of customer loyalty, it was Nissan not having a cheaper way to fulfill the warranty at the time. In retrospect, it should not surprise anyone that Nissan looked for and found less expensive ways to fulfill the warranty. Remember, this is the company that only offered a pack degradation warranty at all because of a class action lawsuit. Customer facing corporate policy could only go downhill from there as NSSN financial problems mounted.

And in the meantime, bottom feeders who thought they were smarter than the average bear bought degraded LEAFs on the cheap, expecting to win the battery lottery. Some won, now the remainder are losing. But even the losers are getting their money back or more. Honestly, I would say they are all winners except they are running around in severely range limited LEAFs, and that has been the case through at least the loss of the 10th and 9th capacity bar. How much the degraded range is a hassle for the gambler is a YMMV. The more it interferes, the more that person probably took a bad gamble.

The only reasonable expectation any LEAF buyers should have of the car is severely degraded range by the end of the warranty. Often the result is much better, but that is a gamble. Does that make for a sh1tty purchase ? Probably, but much depends on how much it cost to acquire the car, and its usage. Was it predictable ? Sure was -- LEAF battery tech is 20 years old, and the LEAF design is an exercise in extreme cost cutting. The rest of the story just amounts to the fact that sh1t runs downhill.
This must have been written by AI, as it is horribly confused and makes no sense.
 
I find weird that people are complaining that second-hand owners that bought the car for cheap be denied the car's warranty?

I am(was?) a very happy Leaf owner, having bought a Leaf SV in 2018 after a long wait (we ordered it six months before the end of our last car lease with a six months waiting list, but it ended being nine months, so then three months with only my motorbike for transportation), I am very happy with the car and I understand its limitations. I make a 250km highway trip about every month and it means a lot of quick charge, and we even calculated what it would cost us compared to our last gas car before switching.

I had a bad time during winter 2021 (car was three years old, 23xxxkm), some erratic guess-o-meter, then a "Entretenir service EV - Impossible de démarrer après la mise hors tension" (sorry, no idea what it is in english) made the car not start anymore. Towed to the dealership, it took 22 days to get fixed, but they opened the battery pack, found some bad cells, buttoned it back up, tested it again, still found some flaw, eventually they found another faulty cell (this one was apparently grounding the other, or something like that, this was a new one for the tech so it took more time to diagnose). I got the car back, everything worked, and I kept telling everyone that the Leaf is a good little car for what it is and that when poop happens, poop gets fixed on warranty.

But last monday (car is five years old, 47xxxkm), after some erratic behaviour from the guess-o-meter, we got the car to be tested and then we got the news: our car needs a new battery pack.

So will I keep on being a happy camper?
If a new replacement battery gets installed soon-ish (let's say, a couple months max), I will be a happy camper, and I will keep telling everyone that even though poop can happen, poop gets fixed.​
But:
If we keep seeing delivery of brand new Leafs coming in the dealer parking lot every week (right now they do get them every week) and getting sold, but Nissan is apparently not able to make a battery available to keep warrantied cars belonging to people that paid money for their cars, I will steer away from buying Nissan from now on and you can bet I will tell everyone about my experience. I already plan on making a full back window sticker telling my story if it is not done by this summer.​
Future will tell us.

Seeing a manufacturer telling people: "Yeah, your car is warrantied for eight years, we confirm that you need a replacement battery pack, but, eeerm, tough luck, we do not have any and there is a list of people waiting for one in front of you" is absolutely insulting. Circling back to my first sentence here, having bought a car brand new or second hand, if the warranty is still valid, why should anyone be denied for warrantied repair?

Everyone should pay attention to the way Nissan deals with your warranty, we never know if we will end up needing it.
 
But last monday (car is five years old, 47xxxkm), after some erratic behaviour from the guess-o-meter, we got the car to be tested and then we got the news: our car needs a new battery pack.

So will I keep on being a happy camper?
If a new replacement battery gets installed soon-ish (let's say, a couple months max), I will be a happy camper, and I will keep telling everyone that even though poop can happen, poop gets fixed.​
But:
If we keep seeing delivery of brand new Leafs coming in the dealer parking lot every week (right now they do get them every week) and getting sold, but Nissan is apparently not able to make a battery available to keep warrantied cars belonging to people that paid money for their cars, I will steer away from buying Nissan from now on and you can bet I will tell everyone about my experience. I already plan on making a full back window sticker telling my story if it is not done by this summer.​
Future will tell us.

And if you get a buyback offer (at the reasonable figure), what will you say to Nissan and what will you say to the rest of the world?
 
And if you get a buyback offer (at the reasonable figure), what will you say to Nissan and what will you say to the rest of the world?

I actually did not think about that, are they doing this? At a reasonable price, I guess I would consider it warrantied, fix it or take it back, but I'd end up on foot... I guess I would consider it since my S/O and I were already considering changing the car for a bigger one once it is fully paid.

If they offer enough so I can get another similar Leaf of similar year and mileage with a good battery, yeah, why not, but if the price is not right, it circles back to "My car is warrantied to work for 8 years and they did not honor their warranty".

But for now I am much more happy to keep the car, even with a flawed battery pack.
 
If the battery packs are in such short supply, maybe Nissan should open source their LBC BMS firmware and/or release technical documentation for all the CAN bus messages to help spur third party battery pack development. Right now, Nissan basically has a tight monopoly on Leaf battery packs thanks to the difficulty in being able to create a compatible drop-in alternative. But that monopoly truly sucks when Nissan's battery packs degrade fast, cost a lot, and their factory isn't big enough to both replace packs in old cars and produce packs for new cars simultaneously. I'd love to buy a LiFePO4 battery pack, since that chemistry is cheap and provides longer cycle life. I don't need a big expensive 40kWh pack with short life.
 
We have just completed this process of Nissan buying back our 2017 leaf rather than replace the battery as they should have. They're giving us all that we paid for the leaf in cash and taking it back. I would have rather had the battery. The LEMON law argument that they put forth and what they owe is specious. It doesn't fall under the Lemon Law. They're just conveniently using that. At first they wanted to charge us a usage fee based on mileage. Crazy! I have a lot of thoughts about this. I would have preferred a new battery on our 2017. We wound up buying a tesla with the money. Easier but not happy about it.
 
We have just completed this process of Nissan buying back our 2017 leaf rather than replace the battery as they should have. They're giving us all that we paid for the leaf in cash and taking it back. I would have rather had the battery. The LEMON law argument that they put forth and what they owe is specious. It doesn't fall under the Lemon Law. They're just conveniently using that. At first they wanted to charge us a usage fee based on mileage. Crazy! I have a lot of thoughts about this. I would have preferred a new battery on our 2017. We wound up buying a tesla with the money. Easier but not happy about it.
I understand that you would have preferred a new battery, but it would be hard to claim that Nissan did not treat you fairly in the way they chose to honor their warranty. This sounds like a better solution to me than Nissan rehabbing your existing battery or replacing it with a refurbished used battery with a limited warranty. That would be my concern. A warranty response that leaves me with a refurbed battery pack (perhaps at 10 or 11 bars) and a 12 month parts warranty. :(
 
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