Open Letter from Nissan, September 22, 2012

[Weatherman]

I'd like to make a rather unusual proposal.

How about Nissan keep the various gages, but dump the incremental bar presentation? What I mean by this is that, for the temperature, state of charge and battery capacity displays, make them look similar to analog readouts - a continuous bar that increases or decreases in pixel length, but doesn’t have perceptible, discrete increments.

The unfortunate thing about the incremented bars is that they show an apparent precision, which implies a much greater level of accuracy in the readout than actually exists. It's like those digital thermometers, which measure to the nearest 10th of a degree, but have a + or - 2 degree margin of error. Most of the time, I'd just rather read a mercury thermometer, instead.

It's very easy to become overly fixated on the bars. When I sold my first LEAF, it wasn't because I had lost any of the capacity bars; it was because, for each mile I drove, the state of charge bars were disappearing a lot faster than I expected. Maybe the state of charge bars were giving an inaccurate reading on how much energy was still left in the battery? I don't know, and may never know. In any case, fixating on variations in the bars-lost-per-mile spooked me enough to sell the car.

 

[Volusiano]

Asking differently: assuming the capacity info is still accessible within the car - how significant is the downside of not having it on the dash?

I would like to have it on the dash so that if there's a loss of a capacity bar, I'd know right away for the purpose of record keeping of when the additional loss occurs. It also helps to report additional losses to Nissan on a timely basis for my case number with them.

I don't mind that it's not on the dashboard as long as milestones for the losses are recorded somewhere so when I go and check, I would know exactly when each of my capacity bar losses occur.

 

[Volusiano]

I've only seen Jeff Kuhlman posted maybe a few times on this thread so far. Most notably was his introduction post, and another one was a response to see if he could talk with the other Nissan execs about coming to Phoenix for a town hall of some sort.

I thought we were going to hear a lot more from Jeff than just a few posts he's put in so far. There have been a ton of posts from LEAF owners with lots of comments and ideas on this thread, and also lots of recent events like the AZ lemon-law buybacks, the Mark Perry retirement, and also the newly Nissan-announced 7500-mile Nissan-LEAF-Year (as Tony Williams dubbed it).

So Jeff, please participate some more and give us your thoughts on what Nissan is thinking in light of the recent events and comments on this thread? I really hope you'd be a regular participant on this thread/forum to answer questions, like you said you would. Thanks.

Mr. Kuhlman has contributed four posts to this forum in five days. In any world other than this forum, this would be seen as an amazing response. A high level Nissan Motors (the parent company of the Nissan and Infiniti brands) executive choosing to participate at all is almost unheard of. During that time he has gone from Japan to France, all the while conducting his business, which is Nissan Global Communications, which includes virtually every Nissan business world wide.

You don't need to speak on Jeff Kuhlman's behalf and defend his infrequent participation on this forum because he's an executive and a busy guy travelling all over from Japan to France, etc. That's all inconsequential because if you had bothered to read his first post closely, Jeff Kuhlman's is the one who wrote on this thread the following:

My commitment to you is to monitor frequently, comment often and bring Nissan people – executives, engineers, designer, technologists – to this forum.

So I'm just calling on his own commitment to comment often on this thread/forum. If he hadn't written that, I wouldn't bother calling him in on it.

In this high tech world now-a-day, being busy travelling to Japan or France is no excuse for not being able to communicate, when you can be connected almost 24/7 anytime, anywhere.

Also, you made it sound like he's such a high executive at Nissan that we're already so graced to have his presence on the forum, we shouldn't bother him about why he's not participating as often as he's promised. I, on the other hand, think that as head of Nissan Global Communications, it's his MAIN job to communicate with customers on behalf as Nissan. He's the one who posted on this forum on his own free will. He's the one who committed to comment often on this forum. So I'm only asking him to put the money where his mouth is and to comment on this forum often as he said he would. Actually, he didn't only just say that he would. He stressed that he will "commit" to doing it.

It should be clear (but perhaps it is not to some), that Chelsea Sexton is acting, to a degree, as Nissan's proxy in this matter.

No, it's not clear at all that Chelsea is acting as Nissan's proxy in this matter. On the other hand, it's totally wrong to assume that Chelsea is acting as Nissan's proxy in this matter. Chelsea doesn't work for Nissan. Chelsea doesn't speak on Nissan's behalf. Chelsea only was asked by Nissan to form and head a board representing Nissan LEAF owners to help speak on Nissan LEAF owners' behalf about the issues they have with the LEAF.

That's 180 degrees opposite to what you assume her mission is. She's LEAF owner's proxy, not Nissan's proxy.

 

[Volusiano]

Nissan on Reuter says that LEAF owners can only realistically expect 40 miles out of the LEAF a day in between charges. But if you take 40*365 days a year = 14,600 miles. That's 2 NissanLEAFYears.

So for Phoenix, we shouldn't even be driving 40 miles per day, but should keep to 20 miles per day only?

So if we stick to only 20 miles per day driving, battery range will never become an issue, right?

 

[thankyouOB]

bars are good.
available kwh is good.

whatever you have you can work with.
when i go somewhere new, i use the bars to estimate if i am on track to do 6 miles a bar and whether (on a 100% charge) i am going to get there with 6 bars left.

if i have to do the same thing with available or consumed from full kwh, all good.
i would think in this day and age that you could have default or factory setting for gauges and then the sophisticated user could create his or her own "view." isnt that how it works with most operating system displays, such as Lion or Microsoft? it is user adjustable.

what i really want to know is:
what will it cost for a new battery installed with core return?
and what is the core return worth?

allot of this other stuff is details.

(as to hawkeye's frequency of posting; he is a communications professional and should know that to sustain interest at a blog you have to appear at least daily. since he is one of the 1%, maybe he can get away with every other day. but please, just dont put the dog on the roof and tell us that is normal.)

 

[planet4ever]

I've only seen Jeff Kuhlman posted maybe a few times on this thread so far. Most notably was his introduction post, and another one was a response to see if he could talk with the other Nissan execs about coming to Phoenix for a town hall of some sort.

I thought we were going to hear a lot more from Jeff than just a few posts he's put in so far. There have been a ton of posts from LEAF owners with lots of comments and ideas on this thread, and also lots of recent events like the AZ lemon-law buybacks, the Mark Perry retirement, and also the newly Nissan-announced 7500-mile Nissan-LEAF-Year (as Tony Williams dubbed it).

I think the problem may be less Jeff Kuhlman's activity than what I will hesitantly call the signal to noise ratio. Not that most of what is posted here is really noise, but there is a lot of it. I had hoped, as I suspect he had, that this thread could become a communication vehicle between Jeff Kuhlman and LEAF drivers. It has, to a moderately better extent, been good communication between Chelsea Sexton and LEAF drivers, which is also very useful.

Here is a somewhat radical suggestion: What if we strongly suggest that every post here should reference and respond to something that Jeff or Chelsea has said? There are lots of other threads where we can debate among ourselves. I just pulled new text posted here today (no poster data, no signature, no quotes) and gave it to my word processor. It told me there were 6,235 words. That is an awful lot for Jeff to dig through when he arrives at the office tomorrow. ... and it keeps coming.

To take my own advice, I nodded vigorously when I read Chelsea's comment:

Capacity is also only one of many reasons why the GOM numbers vary - and why so many drivers of all plug-in models would prefer %SOC on the dash instead of (or in addition to) bars or a GOM.

... but then I thought about it a bit more and decided it was both incomplete and not quite on target. I like surfingslovak's comment that we should be able to see a kWh estimate. But many drivers like and try to believe the GOM. Nissan really needs to do something for them, as well. I think Stoaty is onto something here: replace the GOM with "miles based on your long-term driving average."

Ray

 

[GenericUser]

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.

Yeah, but a new ICE car generally does not need a "major engine overhaul" or replacement after one year. And if it did it would generally be taken care of under warranty. That's the issue: Hey Nissan - fix it!

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.

I'll wager that Nissan can completely fix the problem without knowing a thing about "the mysterious chemistry of the human brain." It may involve a lot of money to do so, but the services of a neurologist or psychologist are not necessary.

 

[LEAFguy]

He's the one who committed to comment often on this forum. So I'm only asking him to put the money where his mouth is and to comment on this forum often as he said he would. Actually, he didn't only just say that he would. He stressed that he will "commit" to doing it.

We have a different idea of what often means. I think four comments in five days is often.

Chelsea doesn't work for Nissan. Chelsea doesn't speak on Nissan's behalf. She's LEAF owner's proxy, not Nissan's proxy.

I stand corrected.

 

[thankyouOB]

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.

Yeah, but a new ICE car generally* does not need a "major engine overhaul" or replacement after one year...

neither does the leaf.
get a grip, new guy.

* emphasis added

 

[vrwl]

If I could only have one, I would rather have kwh of usable energy instead of %SOC. If your battery is down 25% in capacity, you will still show 100% SOC when fully charged, but you won't be able to go nearly as far. If you have kwh of usable energy and either "ideal miles" or miles based on your long-term driving average that is all you would really need. I would prefer the either of the latter two mileage estimates to the GOM.

+1

 

[JRP3]

Asking differently: assuming the capacity info is still accessible within the car - how significant is the downside of not having it on the dash?

The downside is not that significant, (as long as drivers have the option of putting it on the dash if they want it), but neither is the upside. Playing with gauges just seems like sleight of hand and does nothing to address the real issue, EV's need more reliable range in more driving conditions and a more stable pack capacity. If an EV can't deliver all of that it will fail.

 

[DaveEV]

Asking differently: assuming the capacity info is still accessible within the car - how significant is the downside of not having it on the dash?

The answer is: it depends! As others have stated, especially as capacity decreases, it becomes more and more important to have an accurate estimate of available capacity for use especially as a higher percentage of the pack remains under LBW.

Tesla has solved this issue by providing 2 DTE indicators. One is based on recent driving patterns. One is based n "ideal" miles - which is driving 55 mph in good road conditions.

I think that ideally, you'd be able to quickly see DTE based on a user-provided mi/kWh rate to save one from doing the math. The challenge of course would be building an intuitive interface to adjust this quickly.

Yes, here I am mixing up discussion of "available capacity info", SOC and DTE here. But they are all interrelated and thus important for maximizing range and usage of the vehicle - and really if done correctly, the gauges combined as Tesla has done - as capacity degrades, the ideal miles DTE indicator will decrease accordingly.

 

[Volusiano]

I've only seen Jeff Kuhlman posted maybe a few times on this thread so far. Most notably was his introduction post, and another one was a response to see if he could talk with the other Nissan execs about coming to Phoenix for a town hall of some sort.

I thought we were going to hear a lot more from Jeff than just a few posts he's put in so far. There have been a ton of posts from LEAF owners with lots of comments and ideas on this thread, and also lots of recent events like the AZ lemon-law buybacks, the Mark Perry retirement, and also the newly Nissan-announced 7500-mile Nissan-LEAF-Year (as Tony Williams dubbed it).

I think the problem may be less Jeff Kuhlman's activity than what I will hesitantly call the signal to noise ratio. Not that most of what is posted here is really noise, but there is a lot of it. I had hoped, as I suspect he had, that this thread could become a communication vehicle between Jeff Kuhlman and LEAF drivers. It has, to a moderately better extent, been good communication between Chelsea Sexton and LEAF drivers, which is also very useful.

Here is a somewhat radical suggestion: What if we strongly suggest that every post here should reference and respond to something that Jeff or Chelsea has said? There are lots of other threads where we can debate among ourselves. I just pulled new text posted here today (no poster data, no signature, no quotes) and gave it to my word processor. It told me there were 6,235 words. That is an awful lot for Jeff to dig through when he arrives at the office tomorrow. ... and it keeps coming.

Ray

I agree with you, Ray, that there's a lot of noise and it'd be hard for Jeff to skim through all that noise and get to the meat of the good questions. I would second your suggestion about doing some kind of filtering. I would propose the following: how about we create a new thread called Nissan Q&A and make it accessible by only Chelsea and the moderator, and we would submit questions to Nissan on this "Open Letter from Nissan" thread, and have Chelsea determine the filtering on whether the questions should be forwarded to the Nissan Q&A thread or not. Hopefully, Chelsea would be fair enough to make good judgement on what question has merit to be forwarded from here to the Nissan Q&A thread. Then Jeff only has to respond to the Nissan Q&A thread.

I would still recommend Jeff to monitor this thread closely, even in light of the creation of a Nissan Q&A thread, because although a lot of the posts here are noise, there are also a lot of posts that make very good points and propose very good ideas that merit Nissan's consideration.

I myself already have a few basic questions for Nissan:

1) What is the official cost for the LEAF battery replacement (it's been asked by tons of people already)?

2) I'd like to get Jeff's comment on the 7500 miles NissanLEAFYear. Does Nissan really expect people to drive only 20 miles per day to conform to this 7500 miles NissanLEAFYear?

3) In light of the news about the 2 Phoenix lemon buybacks and the lease penalty refund to Scott Yarish, what is Nissan's long-term plan to make things right for the remaining affected LEAF owners with premature capacity loss who don't necessarily want to pursue the lemon buyback approach, but would like to be made whole by Nissan in some other ways?

 

[GenericUser]

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.

Yeah, but a new ICE car generally* does not need a "major engine overhaul" or replacement after one year...

neither does the leaf.
get a grip, new guy.

* emphasis added

Read the rest of the sentence. Even when the engine failure of the kind the poster I quoted was comparing to the Leaf's battery problems occurs (whether or not a rare event), most car manufacturers would fix it under warranty.

In Nissan's case, you get stalling and stonewalling.

I'll not comment on your last sentence. You can think everything is fine with the Leaf if you like, of course.

I'd love to go ahead and buy one. Many would. But not without a viable battery technology. If Nissan continues their current non-response, few will buy Leafs. Very few.

And FWIW, I don't think the battery problem is rare. If it were, Nissan would just fix the few cars reporting problems. I think it is pretty clear that a defective design, rather than a few defective cars (or driving beyond what the "average" Phoenix driver does in a year, or 100% charging, or whatever) is the issue, and Nissan is trying to avoid admitting that because it obviously exposes them to great financial damage.

 

[JPWhite]

Tesla has solved this issue by providing 2 DTE indicators. One is based on recent driving patterns. One is based n "ideal" miles - which is driving 55 mph in good road conditions.

Just so we don't overlook what Nisan DO provide us, there are two DTE estimates on the LEAF. Just like Tesla You have to know where to look.

Press the blue button on the steering wheel and you get the GOM estimate as the 'high' number. (It's always hopelessly optimistic) and a lower number which is more realistic (sometimes marginally pessimistic).

I wish I had the choice of which number the GOM shows. Sure, show the optimistic number as default to support your marketing efforts for test drives, but give me the driver the ability to see the lower number directly on the dash as an option under my control so I don't have to continually press the blue button to check on it.

Edit: What I would like to see added is the ability prior to setting off on a trip to indicate how I expect to drive such that the DTE estimate is based on my projections about the route planned rather than be based on what I did yesterday. This could be automated through a CarWings route planning/send to vehicle option.

 

[JRP3]

2) I'd like to get Jeff's comment on the 7500 miles NissanLEAFYear. Does Nissan really expect people to drive only 20 miles per day to conform to this 7500 miles NissanLEAFYear?

2a) If Nissan is claiming that high mileage is to blame, how do they explain cars with higher mileage in cooler climates that have not experienced capacity loss?

 

[nogajim]

Asking differently: assuming the capacity info is still accessible within the car - how significant is the downside of not having it on the dash?

Tesla has solved this issue by providing 2 DTE indicators. One is based on recent driving patterns. One is based n "ideal" miles - which is driving 55 mph in good road conditions.

I agree. There needs to be some GOM-type reading, but also some reading that is more absolute. That way you can refer to the absolute number to correct mentally for the GOM, so we don't have to figure out how many of this year's bars it takes to make a trip that used 7 bars last year.

 

[Pipcecil]

I do agree with many posters that it was not the best move to keep information from hotter climates that the battery would degrade faster.

I know the batteries will wear over time - I completely accept that
I know the more miles I put on the car the more loss I will have - I accept that too.

BUT I don't accept the inequality. Take a regular ICE car (like a Nissan Versa). Lets say the average life of the engine is 100,000 miles. If I drive 20,000 miles a year the engine only last 5 years, but that is my fault for driving so much. If someone else drives 10,000 a year it last 10 years. It doesn't matter if that person lives in Seattle, Phoenix, Dallas, New York, or Tampa Bay. If I drive 10,000 a year it will have about equal wear where ever I live.

But the leaf is different. 20,000 miles in Seattle does NOT equal 20,000 miles in Phoenix. If someone drove 20,000 per year in Phoenix the car would only last 3 years according to Nissan's heat effects chart, but a seattle person may last 5 years (this assumes 100,000 end of life). That's a big difference. And that difference is what I think most people are unhappy with. People in Texas, Arizona, and California should NOT be penalized from their location to have a vehicle not last as long. If we were informed before, then it is easy our fault, but we were not. I assumed, just like every vehicle that when I traveled 20,000 miles it would be the same as my Seattle counterparts, just like every other vehicle.

I know many people want a TMS in the Leaf, but some (especially up north) don't because of the additional cost. Would it be difficult from a manufacturing point to offer both? Maybe an option when you purchase the vehicle? So people unconcered or with very low Nissan Leaf Years (tm) can decided to forgo the additional cost and people in Arizona could decide it is important enough, just like A/C!

 

[Pipcecil]

Asking differently: assuming the capacity info is still accessible within the car - how significant is the downside of not having it on the dash?

I would only find this acceptable if the range meter was more accurate...quite more accurate.

Prime example was this weekend:

It was raining fairly hard all day saturday, i KNOW that driving in the rain cuts down range, but it varies. After the raining driving a full charge only showed 52 miles of range...that is quite scary. If there was no capacity gauge, how would I know that it was driving conditions related versus battery capacity related? Take a simple mass person A...they won't pay attention if there is extra wind that day and the resulting range meter shows less - they may assume their battery is degrading.

Take the flip example, I now, regularly see about mild to low 70's miles on the range meter after 2 bars loss. The gauge used to show in the upper 90's when I had full bars. How would I know that the 70's reading was not a bad day (like wind) but a true loss in range? Its got to be accesible and easily to compare range changes. I have to know that the 70's reading is a permanent effect, and I need to know the 50's is a weather effect. Without a capacity meter, I wouldn't know.

 

[Nubo]

As regards GOM, I would much rather have a simple display of kWH remaining, with a resolution of 1 decimal point. The math is easy -- I can take it from there. And so can anyone else. No matter how fancy the GOM, it doesn't know what I know -- how I'm going to be using the car for the remainder of the day, which roads I may decide to take, etc...

Nissan has the most sophisticated computer in existence and they're not bothering to use it. It's located just aft and somewhat above the steering wheel. (well, usually)


All I want is kWH and M/kWH. (fuel on-board and burn-rate). I know it's not a perfect science. If there is a margin of error, show that too. There's no point to baroque computations and data-gathering that just end up with a false indication.