saywatt said:
The Leaf is a new car with new technology. Nissan has given us a darn good first step in what I hope is a perminent new revolution. If I have to make a few manual adjustments to the CC system, I'll handle it like I do when I drive by a gas station.........try and keep from laughing out loud! :lol:
It makes no sense to do some sort of value judgment about the whole product and whether you think Nissan did enough. Before I purchased it, I was able to see the carpet and seat quality, so I was not ripped off by the fact that those were dreadfully cheap. It is unreasonable to make me test whether the HVAC system does what they advertised. Who would ever dream to ask if the engineers put the heating element on the other side of a water based heat exchanger, thus wrecking one of the benefits of an electric car?
This is a simple business transaction. They advertised an automatic climate control system and did not deliver it. I advertised US dollars and delivered. (the nissan website says the leaf has "Automatic Temperature Control (ATC)", but I thought I checked this a few weeks ago and it did not say that. I thought it said "Automatic Climate Control". It does not matter if they did or did not change that text because it still does not advertise the feature properly. The "auto" button takes over the fan speed.)
Am I happy to have an electric car? Yes, absolutely. Do I think Nissan made an excellent electric car? No, not even close. As far as I can tell they screwed up all the features that should have been better in an electric car. It should have a better HVAC system than an ICE car, because it is an electric car. Instead, it is worse. If electric seats make sense in an ICE car, they make even more sense in an electric car. Do we have electric seats? No.
They did not comprehend that the car is used 99.9% of the time going to/from the garage charger, and spent way too much engineering time showing me where other charging stations are as if this was a low range gas car. Instead they should have spent that engineering time to make a system that provides the information about whether home is within range. The low energy warning should not sound when I am nearing home, it should sound when home is on the edge of range and I deviate from the route home. The HVAC system should not spend energy if getting home is going to be a problem.
They made the same mistakes in their marketing. At the test drive thing in Tukwilla last year, they spent an inordinate amount of time and money attempting to convince buyers that this was just like a gas car. What a waste.
They wasted a bunch of money on that stupid dashboard display that you see through the wheel (pointless temperature gauge, useless left/right dots, and range gauge that could not be more juvenile). They wasted space and engineering money on that idiotic tach thingy with the imbecile trees. How could engineers spend so much time making this crap and not realize that these things are entirely useless? I don't have a problem if they were able to crank these things out in an afternoon, and never gave them another thought, but they spent months on this. They spent time on that crap instead of ensuring that the HVAC worked properly.
I might have been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt with regards to engineering costs, but having blown so much engineering money on that childish display, they have made it clear they did not have budget problems.
Should we give them a pass on this simply because they made an electric car? No. No way. This is entirely inexcusable.