How should Nissan respond to dropping capacity?

[TomT]

My BMW had the battery in the trunk and the original was still going strong when I sold it 10 years later. It was almost always garaged however.

You are talking about 12V batteries used to start cars?.. The usual practice of placing those batteries under the hood, next to a hot engine plus the Arizona heat is lethal to battery life.. some cars place the battery under the hood but in a separate compartment, or someplace else in the car.. those cars get much better results.

 

[Herm]

- Others?

1. make charging to 80% the default, you have to hit an override to charge to 100% and all sorts of warnings pop up.. yes people will whine about the short range.

2. give owners a free dvd explaining all this, also make it play automatically on the nav display when you buy the car.. people ignore stuff when they are all excited about driving their new Leaf home.

3. offer an optional 5 year 100k mile 70% capacity warranty, lets say $1000 when you buy the car.

4. Provide a real temp gauge and a real battery degradation gauge, both finely marked.

 

[smkettner]

What should Nissan do? Absolutely nothing except sell more Leaf vehicles.

If anything give us a price on a new battery. Only then can we begin to judge when replacement would be worth it and what the cost will be. Some might prefer to renew every 2 years and others can go 20 but until we can get a price it is hard to make a decision.

 

[KJD]

1. make charging to 80% the default, you have to hit an override to charge to 100% and all sorts of warnings pop up.. yes people will whine about the short range.

2. give owners a free dvd explaining all this, also make it play automatically on the nav display when you buy the car.. people ignore stuff when they are all excited about driving their new Leaf home.

3. offer an optional 5 year 100k mile 70% capacity warranty, lets say $1000 when you buy the car.

4. Provide a real temp gauge and a real battery degradation gauge, both finely marked.

These 4 ideas would be a very good start. I would like to add.

5. Nissan needs to take a more active role in getting L2 chargers installed EVERYWHERE. The reason for this goes back to item 1 above. If people could go anywhere they want and find a J1772 charge cord, then there would never be a need to charge to 100%.

6. Design a hot weather package that would be installed on cars destined for places like Phoenix and Las Vegas.

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

We don't have the data to support this level of resource allocation to L2. The jury is still out as to what combination of L2 and L3 constitutes an efficient use of resources. So far, my experience with L2 suggests that it's very useful at home and at work and a few longish term parking areas and maybe as an emergency stop gap between L3's. I do not stop long enough at each place to gain much charge on L2 much of the time, I stop for 15-30 minutes, jump in the car and burn off what I gained in minutes. L3 is fast enough to wait for and each station can handle many cars without leading to a bunch of unused dedicated parking spots that piss ICE drivers off. In the near future as the battery pack grows the need for slow charging everywhere will be even less. I firmly believe that L3 should be rolled out first, and L2 should be placed where/if needed.

...
5. Nissan needs to take a more active role in getting L2 chargers installed EVERYWHERE. The reason for this goes back to item 1 above. If people could go anywhere they want and find a J1772 charge cord, then there would never be a need to charge to 100%.
...

 

[surfingslovak]

We don't have the data to support this level of resource allocation to L2. The jury is still out as to what combination of L2 and L3 constitutes an efficient use of resources.

Please don't rush your judgement until you have experienced an 6.6 or 10 kW L2 charger! If Nissan went with a beefier unit instead of the 3.3 kW Nichicon, the car would be eminently more usable. I love how the ActiveE can pick up 20% charge when I'm tooling in downtown for an hour. Since the Leaf has a smaller battery pack, one hour on 6.6 kW L2 would translate to roughly 30% charge. That's not bad for an opportunity charge.

Yes, QC is a killer application for EVs, but aside from the quarreling that we see between manufacturers, it's also more expensive and harder to get deployed at scale. The combination of fast L2 charging with a QC network will make EVs go pretty much anywhere we want in a short amount of time.

 

[edatoakrun]

"GaslessInSeattle"We don't have the data to support this level of resource allocation to L2. The jury is still out as to what combination of L2 and L3 constitutes an efficient use of resources...I firmly believe that L3 should be rolled out first, and L2 should be placed where/if needed.

No question that a huge amount of money is being wasted on public L2 "opportunity charging", a model that is economically unsustainable, in most locations. It's horrendously expensive, due to both underutilized parking spaces and L2s (a fact currently masked by public funding) to set up parking lot apartheid between EVs and other vehicles.

BEVs will never be able to depend on charges from these L2 parking lots anyway, as the L2s will always be susceptible to ICE-ing and PHEV-ing.

IMO, the only place public funding of L2 that is justifiable, is to have one or more L2 parking places, near DC charge stations, to supply DC incapable EVs, and relive the DC chargers when demand exceeds supply, at the adjacent DC station.

Just put the Damn L2s out of cable length of the DC station!

 

[Stoaty]

Please don't rush your judgement until you have experienced an 6.6 or 10 kW L2 charger! If Nissan went with a beefier unit instead of the 3.3 kW Nichicon, the car would be eminently more usable. I love how the ActiveE can pick up 20% charge when I'm tooling in downtown for an hour. Since the Leaf has a smaller battery pack, one hour on 6.6 kW L2 would translate to roughly 30% charge.

I am getting 18% charge from one hour of charging on L2, so a 6.6 kw L2 would be about 36% for my Leaf.

 

[surfingslovak]

I am getting 18% charge from one hour of charging on L2, so a 6.6 kw L2 would be about 36% for my Leaf.

That's a great point! Note that most Coulombs I charged at only deliver around 5.5 kW, but I have seen some at 6.2 kW. I was told that this is due to lower voltage at those sites? Still, I'm pretty confident that the MY 2013 Leaf will get a substantial opportunity charge in one hour of L2.

 

[LEAFfan]

I'm getting about 20% SoC an hour from my L2 up to an 80% charge (71%). It's more because it won't hold as much as it once did.

 

[GaslessInSeattle]

you make some good points and yet i'm not rushing to judgement. 6.6 would have made our 4 hours sitting in our car till midnight, as our family of 4 waited for a charge, 2 hours shorter, but still a fiasco. putting in L2 everywhere means millions of charging stations to maintain and with each one of those stations, a dedicated parking place. honestly, we can't afford the ideological boxing match with Faux Noose america over ICE'ing. Massive L2 roll out will be much better received after millions of EV's are on the road and when we have more of an idea about what the best ratio and placement of charging stations is. Even at 6.6, it's still opportunity charging, which is nice but still a no go for much of America. I realize a slower paced life may be what we all need, but if a certain lifestyle is required for this car then it's destined to a limited niche, which is what we are seeing so far in this era of pree L3 network. The reality is that I'm an enthusiast and am tolerant of changing my habits and plans to make this work but most people aren't. Even L3 is going to be a stretch for many folks. I suspect L2/6.6 kW charging may actually delay the advancement of L3 as officials will get fooled into thinking it's adequate and the overall adoption of EV's may then be slowed.

We don't have the data to support this level of resource allocation to L2. The jury is still out as to what combination of L2 and L3 constitutes an efficient use of resources.

Please don't rush your judgement until you have experienced an 6.6 or 10 kW L2 charger! If Nissan went with a beefier unit instead of the 3.3 kW Nichicon, the car would be eminently more usable. I love how the ActiveE can pick up 20% charge when I'm tooling in downtown for an hour. Since the Leaf has a smaller battery pack, one hour on 6.6 kW L2 would translate to roughly 30% charge. That's not bad for an opportunity charge.

Yes, QC is a killer application for EVs, but aside from the quarreling that we see between manufacturers, it's also more expensive and harder to get deployed at scale. The combination of fast L2 charging with a QC network will make EVs go pretty much anywhere we want in a short amount of time.

 

[SierraQ]

While I would be upset over losing 15% so fast, I think Nissan is not obligated to do anything about it. It was very clear to all of us when we bought the car that neither Nissan or anyone else really knew how long the battery would last. The reason people are jumping all over this is because it is something we all knew was coming but secretly hoped would not for ten years. Then there is the implication that the pack may degrading as fast as 15% per year in some cases--scary but not assured since we don't know the degradation curve.

And anything short of a sudden, massive drop in capacity over, say, one week is normal at this point since "normal" is still being established. They can also point to this post (http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=8838" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false which features a nearly 40k mile leave with 100% capacity!

I can think of only one reason Nissan may act and this is bad press, like the Volt fire issue. But it is not sensational enough for bad press. "My bar is gone!" isn't as dramatic as "My car spontaneously caught fire!" So Nissan has no incentive to do anything except maybe thoroughly analyze some of these batteries to improve on future designs.

 

[surfingslovak]

6.6 would have made our 4 hours sitting in our car till midnight, as our family of 4 waited for a charge, 2 hours shorter, but still a fiasco. Even L3 is going to be a stretch for many folks. I suspect L2/6.6 kW charging may actually delay the advancement of L3 as officials will get fooled into thinking it's adequate and the overall adoption of EV's may then be slowed.

I'm not suggesting that a family of four should wait for 4 hours for a complete charge. Moreover, it's likely going to be 3.5 for a full charge, and about 1 3/4 hour for half a charge. Certainly, quite long and not for everyone, but it will get you over the hump if needed.

The problem with L3, as I see it anyway, is multifaceted. We have utility demand charges in California, plus sizable installation and equipment costs. There are less than six QC stations here after a year of trying. This might be different in other states. Although it's obvious that the Leaf was conceived and designed with QC in mind, the infrastructure buildout has been slower than anticipated.

Don't get me wrong, I would rather have L3 deployed sooner than later. What I was trying to say is that Nissan could have improved the utility of the car substantially by including a 6.6 kW L2 charger. This would take maximum advantage of infrastructure that is cheaper and easier to deploy. From a design perspective, I can see why the included a slower L2 charger, but from a end-user perspective, they did not give us much of alternative.

 

[GRA]

Does anyone know how many Leafs have been sold in Phoenix, or Arizona as a whole? It would be nice to have a denominator to go with the numerator.

That aside, I do think this is an issue that Nissan needs to get out front on, or else they may be facing large numbers of angry, dissatisfied, VOCAL customers in a year or two. If a 15% loss is reasonably normal for the first year in a hot climate, then as long as the rate then drops off to a slow decline afterwards they will be okay, provided they tell their customers about this upfront. That's what happened in the early '90s with amorphous silicon solar modules - the catalog (and any conscientous salesperson, of which I was one) stated clearly that the modules would suffer 10-20% degradation from their rated output in the first year or so, after which it would drop off to a slow, steady decline much like a crystalline solar module. Most dealers just rated them for the lower output from the get-go, so as not to have irate customers returning.

Of course, amorphous modules also sold much less well than crystalline modules, because they weren't that much less expensive and were much lower efficiency, which is not the case here. If, as I suspect, car batteries with TMS hold up much better in hot climates, that may drive sales to a more expensive car like the FFE rather than the Leaf. Even with what little anecdotal evidence we now have, I'm even more hesitant to recommend a car (without a TMS) like the Leaf in a hot climate to someone, than I already was.

 

[RegGuheert]

...I think Nissan is not obligated to do anything abou it. It was very clear to all of us when we bought the car that neither Nissan or anyone else really knew how long the battery would last.

I agree they have no current obligations. But as they become aware of real-life situations related to LEAF battery degradation that are "outside" of their current statements regarding battery degradation, do you feel they have any obligation to do something different with respect to future buyers.

Put another way, if you were shopping for a LEAF today, would you want them to do anything differently now? Where I live, I guess I would like to have up-front data they have in this region, but it wouldn't be a deal- breaker. But if I lived in Phoenix, I think I would push Nissan a lot harder for details before making a purchase. I would also look closely at EVs with battery temperature management systems.

 

[Stoaty]

While I would be upset over losing 15% so fast, I think Nissan is not obligated to do anything about it. It was very clear to all of us when we bought the car that neither Nissan or anyone else really knew how long the battery would last.

They aren't legally obligated to do anything, but if the don't get out in front of this it could definitely put a damper on sales in hot areas of the country. I wouldn't buy a Leaf right now if I lived in Phoenix. Also, Nissan made many statements such as "expected to have 80% capacity remaining at 5 years" and "70-80% capacity left at 8 years". There were no caveats that all bets are off if you live in Arizona. It may be that Nissan thought they knew about how the battery would do in hotter temperatures, but weren't correct. It may be that in the next 4 years those who have lost one capacity bar will slowly go down to 80% (and not lose another capacity bar). Nissan clearly DID set expectations significantly higher than 15% capacity loss in one year.

 

[TonyWilliams]

I am getting 18% charge from one hour of charging on L2, so a 6.6 kw L2 would be about 36% for my Leaf.

That's a great point! Note that most Coulombs I charged at only deliver around 5.5 kW, but I have seen some at 6.2 kW. I was told that this is due to lower voltage at those sites? Still, I'm pretty confident that the MY 2013 Leaf will get a substantial opportunity charge in one hour of L2.

Because it's at 208v instead of 240v.

 

[surfingslovak]

Because it's at 208v instead of 240v.

Yes, that would make sense! The ratio works out to be about 86% for both the output power and the line voltage. For what it's worth, only one driver in the ActiveE Facebook group reported a Coulomb that would output the full 6.6 kW. Highest I have seen was 6.2 or 6.3 kW. This was at 40% SOC.

 

[derkraut]

I'm rather technically challenged (ie: dumb) concerning electricity. So, I have to ask some dumb questions:

1. Does 6.6KW L2 charge your battery twice as fast as 3.3KW L2?
2. Would 10KW L2 charging be "easier" on your battery than QC L3? would it be slower or faster?
3. If the on-board Leaf charger is accepting--say--16 Amps of draw, does it make any difference if you're using QC or L2? Wouldn't the charging time be the same?

See...I told you they were dumb questions. :roll:

 

[TonyWilliams]

I'm rather technically challenged (ie: dumb) concerning electricity. So, I have to ask some dumb questions:

1. Does 6.6KW L2 charge your battery twice as fast as 3.3KW L2?

Yes

2. Would 10KW L2 charging be "easier" on your battery than QC L3? would it be slower or faster?

At the same rate? 10kW? The same.

3. If the on-board Leaf charger is accepting--say--16 Amps of draw, does it make any difference if you're using QC or L2? Wouldn't the charging time be the same?

It depends what the voltage is. Voltage times amperage is watts. E=IR