Nubo said:
I've always said it would take some real competition for Nissan to up its EV game and that they'd rest on their (fairly earned) laurels until then.
But it's interesting to see so many vehicles now in development/planning with these range claims. WHERE ARE THOSE BATTERIES? Do they yet exist in usable form or is this all predicated on laboratory data and predictions?
The batteries for the Bolt and the Model 3 exist already. There are batteries for other competitors but they don't matter as much.
As to resting on their laurels after watching Tesla do monthly or there about updates to the Model S software since 2012 it really bites that I can't drive to the nearest Nissan dealer and get upgraded software for my 2012 Leaf and I know that if I buy a 60 kWh Leaf it'll have outdated software the day it ships and they'll never update the software in the 4 years after that.
I still have to press OK every time I start the Leaf.
I still have to use a OBDII adapter + phone to get SOC% (could be hacked into the dash in place of the trees or added to the center screen either would be a huge boon for reducing the drain on my 12v battery and make life more convenient for others that borrow the car)
I still can't set charge timers with any sort of flexibility on end percentage or setting more than one charge timer per day. Something on that front wouldn't be that hard to modify if you had access to the source. Change the 100% setting to 85% and the 80% setting to 70% and then override or no timer set would do 100% and I'd have 3 functional levels with a minor software change. Put more effort into it and give me a slider or more than two end percentage buttons and that'd be even better (I'd like a 50% and 70% and 90% if I had 3 buttons).
I could go on and on but you can't tell me that a company as big as Nissan can't do a simple post sale software update/fix/release of any kind?
That alone is reason enough to buy the Tesla Model 3 over the Leaf 2. Just knowing how ever many mistakes Tesla makes they'll at least fix some of them. Not just one, but multiple items are guaranteed to be suboptimal on both cars and Tesla will fix some items. If they start out equal the Tesla car will be better by month 6 before Nissan can even get the next "model year" out.
Will Chevy be any better on software updates for the Bolt? Even if not at least they have active cooling for the battery pack for those of us living south of the 40th parallel that have seen degradation on the Leaf.