How should Nissan respond to dropping capacity?

[DaveinOlyWA]

67º...*sigh* so much for hoping for a normal Summer high of 77... looks like most of the SW and MW will be 10º over normal again as usual...

 

[Stoaty]

Another viewpoint is that 2 and a half years ago the climate conditions in the US especially in the Southwest were much less severe than they are today. Given the design lifecycle of a vehicle is about 3-4 years, you have to place your bets way in advance. A key part of the analysis is cost, weight, supply chain capabilities, etc. So the bottom line is that 3 - 4 years ago, the LEAF was testing adequately for what the projected US severe environment was at that time.

Projected by who? Certainly not by the climate scientists. Is Nissan now one of the first companies to place their bet against climate change--and lose?

That is a far cry from your previous posts saying "if there is an issue". Now it is an "unforeseeable issue". There is extensive climate literature telling us that this is our future, and there were predictions from climate scientists that 2011 or 2012 may be the hottest year the world has seen so far (with a lot more to come).

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

"Projected?"

i think we can all agree that the weather has changed for the worse MUCH faster than we had "hoped". lets face it. for years we were warned this day would come and it may not be here yet but what we are seeing is a pretty good representation of what we can expect.

this weather change was projected but the scientists who provided the information were literally jeered into watering down the report. this has been proven that our own government had them go back and rewrite it to "remove the doom and gloom" from the report. that happened a decade ago!

either way; we can conjecture about what Nissan knows and when they knew it and i stand by my statement that there is nothing Nissan has learned from any of these recent developments in Phoenix

 

[edatoakrun]

="DaveinOlyWA"]...i stand by my statement that there is nothing Nissan has learned from any of these recent developments in Phoenix...

Actually, I think Nissan is learning a lot-about the psychological frailties of American car buyers.

BEVs have many advantages of over ICEVs, but even those few who actually own and drive BEVs, seem to be obsessed with the few disadvantages.

The very hot Southwest Climate was expected to lead to faster battery degradation, than for other regions where LEAFs are sold.

The much hotter than normal climate in the Southwest over the 2011-12 period has exacerbated this problem, as should be expected. Exactly how much, is a technical question, now being investigated.

The near-hysterical response by some LEAF owners, however, may be a revelation to Nissan.

 

[mdh]

="DaveinOlyWA"]...i stand by my statement that there is nothing Nissan has learned from any of these recent developments in Phoenix...

Actually, I think Nissan is learning a lot-about the psychological frailties of American car buyers.

BEVs have many advantages of over ICEVs, but even those few who actually own and drive BEVs, seem to be obsessed with the few disadvantages.

The very hot Southwest Climate was expected to lead to faster battery degradation, than for other regions where LEAFs are sold.

The much hotter than normal climate in the Southwest over the 2011-12 period has exacerbated this problem, as should be expected. Exactly how much, is a technical question, now being investigated.

The near-hysterical response by some LEAF owners, however, may be a revelation to Nissan.

I think Nissan is not helping themselves with owners being obsessed or concerned with the disadvantages. No degradation warranty, no battery refresh program and almost no bragging/marketing about their technology. In Silicon Valley, we embrace a thing called net promoter scores (NPS). It basically asks owners if you would recommend a product to friends and family. Very valuable tool. Nps drives a company to success when it is fully embraced.

 

[Herm]

i think we can all agree that the weather has changed for the worse MUCH faster than we had "hoped". lets face it. for years we were warned this day would come and it may not be here yet but what we are seeing is a pretty good representation of what we can expect.

Dave I think its time to start the mass migration to Canada, before they close the border.. you are much closer, you start and then I will follow.. pull the kids out of school tomorrow before its too late and the sky ignites!

 

[Stoaty]

The very hot Southwest Climate was expected to lead to faster battery degradation, than for other regions where LEAFs are sold.

There was nothing in their public statements to suggest that. As a matter of fact, Mark Perry is "on record" as saying that a TMS is not needed for the Leaf for places like Arizona (2010 article by Darryl Siry, with quotes from Mark Perry responding). Basically, they denied it would be a problem. Are you saying that Nissan expected it, but didn't disclose it prior to the sale? I guess Americans are funny about stuff like that; they expect the manufacturer to disclose facts that would materially affect their purchase decision. Imagine people getting "hysterical" when their $35,000 purchase is losing battery capacity 3-5 times as fast as Nissan stated would happen--no matter how closely they follow the recommendations to preserve battery capacity. Who would have thought it possible?

 

[EdmondLeaf]

I think Nissan is not helping themselves with owners being obsessed or concerned with the disadvantages. No degradation warranty, no battery refresh program and almost no bragging/marketing about their technology. In Silicon Valley, we embrace a thing called net promoter scores (NPS). It basically asks owners if you would recommend a product to friends and family. Very valuable tool. Nps drives a company to success when it is fully embraced.

Nissan position seems to be very different with early adopters trying to help market the Leaf and concerned about Leaf future. We already did a lot of work here how to protect battery from dropping capacity, however it will be much easier if Nissan will disclose more info as well provide guidance how to effectively cool battery during summer

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

i think we can all agree that the weather has changed for the worse MUCH faster than we had "hoped". lets face it. for years we were warned this day would come and it may not be here yet but what we are seeing is a pretty good representation of what we can expect.

Dave I think its time to start the mass migration to Canada, before they close the border.. you are much closer, you start and then I will follow.. pull the kids out of school tomorrow before its too late and the sky ignites!

actually i live where i live by choice AND based on reports of climate change predictions which said the Pacific Northwest would get wetter and colder while the SW, SE, and MW would slowly turn into a desert...

soon the Summer Olympics will start. England is expected to have weather like ours. it will be interesting to see how "Summery" their weather will be

 

[mwalsh]

soon the Summer Olympics will start. England is expected to have weather like ours. it will be interesting to see how "Summery" their weather will be

Being formerly of that persuasion, I can tell you that only a fool would try to predict British weather.

An anecdote of a recent summer visit to Britain tells of starting my day in shorts and a t-shirt, during a rather hot and humid London morning, but needing to shop for a sweater and long pants in a wet, blustery seaside resort just 270 miles to the north, to keep myself from freezing to death!

I have another "our weather is definitely changing in SoCal" anecdote too. Usually it gets to be about late May and I can no longer stand to get out of a hot shower and continue my grooming regimen without throwing the house A/C on to cool myself down. I've just this morning realized that, even though it's almost August AND I'm getting ready for work a hour later in the day, I have yet to feel the need to do that this year.

 

[thankyouOB]

it is July in SoCal and June gloom is still with us more than half the days this month.
or to quote someone smarter than me:

Even with the best will in the world, it would be hard for most people to stay focused on the big picture in the face of short-run fluctuations. When the mercury is high and the crops are withering, everyone talks about it, and some make the connection to global warming. But let the days grow a bit cooler and the rains fall, and inevitably people’s attention turns to other matters.

Making things much worse, of course, is the role of players who don’t have the best will in the world. Climate change denial is a major industry, lavishly financed by Exxon, the Koch brothers and others with a financial stake in the continued burning of fossil fuels. And exploiting variability is one of the key tricks of that industry’s trade. Applications range from the Fox News perennial — “It’s cold outside! Al Gore was wrong!” — to the constant claims that we’re experiencing global cooling, not warming, because it’s not as hot right now as it was a few years back.

How should we think about the relationship between climate change and day-to-day experience? Almost a quarter of a century ago James Hansen, the NASA scientist who did more than anyone to put climate change on the agenda, suggested the analogy of loaded dice. Imagine, he and his associates suggested, representing the probabilities of a hot, average or cold summer by historical standards as a die with two faces painted red, two white and two blue. By the early 21st century, they predicted, it would be as if four of the faces were red, one white and one blue. Hot summers would become much more frequent, but there would still be cold summers now and then.

And so it has proved. As documented in a new paper by Dr. Hansen and others, cold summers by historical standards still happen, but rarely, while hot summers have in fact become roughly twice as prevalent. And 9 of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.

But that’s not all: really extreme high temperatures, the kind of thing that used to happen very rarely in the past, have now become fairly common. Think of it as rolling two sixes, which happens less than 3 percent of the time with fair dice, but more often when the dice are loaded. And this rising incidence of extreme events, reflecting the same variability of weather that can obscure the reality of climate change, means that the costs of climate change aren’t a distant prospect, decades in the future. On the contrary, they’re already here, even though so far global temperatures are only about 1 degree Fahrenheit above their historical norms, a small fraction of their eventual rise if we don’t act.

The great Midwestern drought is a case in point. This drought has already sent corn prices to their highest level ever. If it continues, it could cause a global food crisis, because the U.S. heartland is still the world’s breadbasket. And yes, the drought is linked to climate change: such events have happened before, but they’re much more likely now than they used to be.

 

[leafkabob]

The much hotter than normal climate in the Southwest over the 2011-12 period has exacerbated this problem, as should be expected.

I must have missed something because I don't recall that it has been established that the climate in Phoenix has been "much hotter than normal." In fact, I would classify this summer as pretty good so far. Certainly right now I am loving our local weather. We have had a couple of weeks of primarily 95-103, as opposed to 105-110. I will even go so far as to speculate that our recent cooler weather is responsible for my still having capacity bar #11.

 

[edatoakrun]

The much hotter than normal climate in the Southwest over the 2011-12 period has exacerbated this problem, as should be expected.

I must have missed something because I don't recall that it has been established that the climate in Phoenix has been "much hotter than normal." ..

Yes, you did miss something.

It's known as reality. Check any historic climate database for your area, such as the several I've posted,including this one, this morning, on this thread:


Quote:

State of the Climate
Global Analysis
June 2012

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Climatic Data Center
...The Northern Hemisphere average land temperature, where the majority of Earth's land is located, was record warmest for June. This makes three months in a row — April, May, and June — in which record-high monthly land temperature records were set. Most areas experienced much higher-than-average monthly temperatures, including most of North America and Eurasia, and northern Africa. Only northern and western Europe, and the northwestern United States were notably cooler than average...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can view just how great the anomaly was for each month, in Phoenix and elsewhere, by selecting the month and year at the top of this page.

IIRC, it looks like Phoenix exceeded the norm by 2 to 5 degrees C, during nine out of ten, of the April-October months, in 2011-12.

I believe that's about the temperature increase that had been expected under the "worst case" scenario, for global heating, over the next 50 years, for the planet as a whole.

 

[thankyouOB]

nice research, edatoakrun!!

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

i concur. i live in the Phoenix area in the early 80's and it was hot back then but not like it is now. i dont remember (not that that is unusual) a temperature over say 102, 103?? in fact, it generally did not hit 100 other than maybe 3-4 times a month. today if it DOESNT hit 100 3-4 times a week, Phoenicians think the Ice Age is coming

but one thing i did remember is that it got pretty cold at night like 60's and 70's. apparently that is no longer the case.

 

[mwalsh]

but one thing i did remember is that it got pretty cold at night like 60's and 70's. apparently that is no longer the case.

Desert environments are supposed to bleed off heat pretty quickly once the sun has gone down. It's because there isn't generally any moisture to hold the heat. Even here in SoCal it can get pretty chilly overnight during a summer evening without cloud cover.

 

[shrink]

i concur. i live in the Phoenix area in the early 80's and it was hot back then but not like it is now. i dont remember (not that that is unusual) a temperature over say 102, 103?? in fact, it generally did not hit 100 other than maybe 3-4 times a month. today if it DOESNT hit 100 3-4 times a week, Phoenicians think the Ice Age is coming

but one thing i did remember is that it got pretty cold at night like 60's and 70's. apparently that is no longer the case.

I've only lived in Phoenix for 8 years and I'm no weather expert, but I suspect part of the phenomena is the heat island effect. In short, all the concrete holds in the heat and releases it when the sun goes down:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0922greencolumn0922.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[GRA]

i concur. i live in the Phoenix area in the early 80's and it was hot back then but not like it is now. i dont remember (not that that is unusual) a temperature over say 102, 103?? in fact, it generally did not hit 100 other than maybe 3-4 times a month. today if it DOESNT hit 100 3-4 times a week, Phoenicians think the Ice Age is coming

but one thing i did remember is that it got pretty cold at night like 60's and 70's. apparently that is no longer the case.

I've only lived in Phoenix for 8 years and I'm no weather expert, but I suspect part of the phenomena is the heat island effect. In short, all the concrete holds in the heat and releases it when the sun goes down:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0922greencolumn0922.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yes, and nighttime summer temps in Death Valley don't drop much either, for a related reason: http://www.nps.gov/deva/naturescience/weather-and-climate.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

 

[DesertDenizen]

but one thing i did remember is that it got pretty cold at night like 60's and 70's. apparently that is no longer the case.

Desert environments are supposed to bleed off heat pretty quickly once the sun has gone down. It's because there isn't generally any moisture to hold the heat. Even here in SoCal it can get pretty chilly overnight during a summer evening without cloud cover.

I live in the desert outside of Tucson, not a bit of pavement to be found, and it is usually in the upper 70s at the coolest part of day. I always charge around 6 a.m. when my pack is at its coolest. Though from all the reports of my fellow AZ Leafers it is a quixotic hope of avoiding capacity issues.

 

[leafkabob]

The much hotter than normal climate in the Southwest over the 2011-12 period has exacerbated this problem, as should be expected.

I must have missed something because I don't recall that it has been established that the climate in Phoenix has been "much hotter than normal." ..

Yes, you did miss something.

It's known as reality. Check any historic climate database for your area, such as the several I've posted,including this one, this morning, on this thread:


Quote:

State of the Climate
Global Analysis
June 2012

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Climatic Data Center
...The Northern Hemisphere average land temperature, where the majority of Earth's land is located, was record warmest for June. This makes three months in a row — April, May, and June — in which record-high monthly land temperature records were set. Most areas experienced much higher-than-average monthly temperatures, including most of North America and Eurasia, and northern Africa. Only northern and western Europe, and the northwestern United States were notably cooler than average...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can view just how great the anomaly was for each month, in Phoenix and elsewhere, by selecting the month and year at the top of this page.

IIRC, it looks like Phoenix exceeded the norm by 2 to 5 degrees C, during nine out of ten, of the April-October months, in 2011-12.

I believe that's about the temperature increase that had been expected under the "worst case" scenario, for global heating, over the next 50 years, for the planet as a whole.

I don't dispute that it is hotter in Phoenix than it has been at times in the past, but I was specifically commenting on your position that it is much hotter than normal in Phoenix, and by extension we shouldn't be surprised that we are losing battery capacity because of that.

I looked at your link but had a hard time realating it to Phoenix, since that is the climate we are talking about. Try this link to see actual historical averages by month at the Deer Valley Airport: http://weather-warehouse.com/Weathe...hoenixDeerValleyMuniArpt_Phoenix_AZ_July.html

2011 was a hot year. But if you look at July, 2011 you will see that it was actually one of our cooler Julys in the past few years. And it was only .1 degree F higher than July, 1987. If Davinolywash would have just stayed around until the early 1990s he would have experienced some cooler Julys.
[edit: I realize now I was looking at minimum temps! Oy! But if you look at the max temps, I think you will still see my point. You can look at any month of the year, from 1987 through 2011]
My point here is that if it is warmer here in Phoenix than it was in 2008 when Nissan may have been testing the Leaf here in the desert, it isn't "much hotter." I've lived in Arizona for more than 40 years, and 30 of those have been in Phoenix. I'll trade you anecdotal weather stories all day long.

Bottom line: Let's quit claiming that we are losing capacity at an unanticipated rate because of climate change in Phoenix.