RegGuheert said:
I'm with you on the theme of your posts. Your observation that we are working our way through the grieving process is dead-on!
The main reason I posted in May the Nissan should stop selling in Phoenix is that prospective owners from that city were coming here for advice and they were not being told to use caution by members here. Rather they were being told to dive into the shallow end of the pool. "The water's great!" No mention of the fact that the batteries were dying so fast that they wouldn't be able to make their commute for the life of the lease.
But I will answer one of your rhetorical questions:
timhebb said:
Once we recognize that the poisoned pea under our stack of mattresses is the inevitability of battery mortality, what difference does it make whether our batteries linger 4% less long in the Arizona heat, or 10% longer in Seattle's mists?
Simply put, the difference is total cost of ownership. All of us wanted to get into the EV movement (or to take the next step) and we all had our own threshold of cost that we were willing to bear to make our go/no-go decision on the purchase and/or lease of the LEAF. We all weighed the costs and risks based on our financial situations and our perceptions of the utility of the cars.
Unfortunately, Nissan painted the picture with a broad brush and did not properly differentiate between the life of the LEAF in Phoenix versus Seattle versus San Diego. Worse, when Elon Musk publicly stated that the battery system was primitive and would not survive in the desert, Nissan insisted that they had done the testing there and all was well. Yes, they had done the testing, but, no, all was not well. Based on Nissan's communications, no owner could possibly have foreseen losing a capacity bar weighted at 15% in just 4.4 months and 3900 miles. That experience is too far from the picture that Nissan painted to be reconciled with their statements that this is "normal". But more importantly it completely destroys the TCO for the LEAF for that individual. I seriously doubt that any of us, including those in Phoenix, thought we might be signing up to replace out batteries every year or two.
Thanks again for carefully parsing and helping to clarify some of these issues.
All I've been trying to say in my last couple of posts is that battery capacity loss is partially a tech/engineering problem and partially a consumer psychology/paradigm change problem, and the latter may be just as tough a nut to crack as the former. As much as I love my Leaf, I mourn the steady incremental loss of capacity and range that I sense almost every day, and I live in a supposedly temperate, Leaf-battery-friendly climate (Los Angeles). After 18 months, I haven't lost a bar yet, but the loss of range since day one has been clear and dramatic. I wouldn't think of embarking (clumsy word choice, invoking a boating metaphor) on certain itineraries that I once would not have hesitated to drive. I resist undertaking homegrown pseudo-scientific analyses purporting to quantify and metricize the loss - for one, I want to experience the Leaf like an ordinary driver and, two, I don't have the patience, obsession or interest in buying a GIDmeter or other like tools, although I appreciate the findings of the many MNL members who have and continue to conduct obsessive testing, observation and analysis.
I suspect my personal response to my Leaf's slow decline is and will be shared by many if not most BEV drivers. Unlike our experience with the ICE paradigm, we live with an ongoing, ever-present sense of the vehicle's mortality, almost as if it were an untreatable and irreversible disease, which takes a heavy toll on us emotionally and mentally over time. With an ICE, when something goes wrong, we can usually just have parts replaced and - voila! - it's as good as new (at least, that is how we psychologically perceive most repairs on an ICE vehicle). The nearest ICE analog to the BEVs' existential condition would be something like the gradual loss of cylinder compression, which is essentially untreatable without a major engine overhaul or replacement.
My point is that the experience - the paradigm - of owning/driving a BEV is radically different from that of an ICE car, and there's a profound psychological component involved. When I acquired my Leaf, I thought I was prepared for the concept of capacity loss. I intellectually accepted it, and dismissed the thought from my mind. But now, 18 months later, even though the battery's performance and condition are probably well within the guidelines established by Nissan (certainly more favorable than that of Tucson Leafs), I find I'm not really emotionally accepting of the loss. In fact, I often find myself running through my mental calendar to contemplate the day when, lease expired, I'll be free to sign paperwork to get behind the wheel of a new Leaf, or Tesla, or some freshly minted BEV yet to come to market.
Perhaps, as some have suggested, this is a result of Nissan's particular engineering choices. I believe that it's probably too early to tell. The success of the new paradigm depends on more than the chemistry of the batteries; to a large degree it depends as well on the mysterious chemistry of the human brain.
With the Volt it's obviously less of a concern.
