Battery Leasing in hot climate areas?

[SageBrush]

dup post

[johnlocke]

Like I said earlier, it's a bet I wouldn't take but others might. A Leaf with a severely degraded 60 KWH battery (8 bars, 64%) would still have as much range as a new 40 KWH Leaf. Even if you missed the warranty cut-off, the car is still good for 140-150 mi/charge and a practical range of 100-120 mi. That's certainly adequate for most people. It would make a good $10K beater that you could drive for another 50,000-100,000 mi. before the battery went tits up. If you're using it as a second car for short trips around town and are willing to charge it every night, you could drive it down to 3-4 bars. There are a lot of old 24 KWH leafs with 20-40 mile ranges still in use.

Do you or does anyone know what is the replacement price assigned to a ~60 kWh Leaf Plus battery pack? This would help flesh out the idea of a lease price. It would also help us envision pricing on used-up low-range Leaf Plus Chassis..... even if they were down to 60 or 100 miles of range, if a driver knows they can always go out and pay $8k-$15k (or whatever) for a pack replacement, and be ready to travel 200+ EPA miles, then I would think in theory this would impact the used vehicle prices.

I think some of this discussion comes down to shifting some of the thinking we do (not all of it, but some of it) from up-front new vehicle prices and considerations to used vehicle prices and considerations. A large percentage of the public discussions and industry analyses done on EVS over the last 10-20+ years are about new vehicle prices and considerations. Now that the on the road fleets are maturing, I'm hoping this will help shift an increased amount of the discussion to one that also reflects some of the market dynamics of having usable used vehicles in the marketplace.

I doubt that even Nissan knows what the replacement cost is for 60 KWH batteries. All 60 KWH batteries are under warranty for 8 years. The only way there would be a replacement value is if some unlucky soul managed to rupture a pack by running over something or in a crash. In a crash bad enough to damage or rupture a pack, the car would probably be totaled by insurance anyway. I'm sure that some enterprising character will figure out how to economically refurbish packs eventually. My guess at current cost, for a 60 KWH battery would be $8-10K for the cells and $3-4K for labor to refurbish the pack and a another $2K to swap the new pack for the old one. My guess is that most consumers would rather put that much down on a newer car instead. Even if you could get the refurbishment cost down to $5K most people would opt for a newer car instead. Putting $5K into a $10K car isn't going to make sense to most people.

By the way, Tesla has quoted $5K to $7K to refurbish a Model 3 battery depending on it's size. That's for new cells only and Tesla keeps the old cells.

[johnlocke]

Do you or does anyone know what is the replacement price assigned to a ~60 kWh Leaf Plus battery pack? This would help flesh out the idea of a lease price. It would also help us envision pricing on used-up low-range Leaf Plus Chassis.....

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Battery size will not magically convince Nissan to change its stripes and start supporting a battery rejuvenation scheme for prior generation cars.
You either buy a car with a long-lived battery, or you end up with a chassis right about when the warranty runs out. You keep talking about the latter, but avoid thinking about who paid to bring a crap battery to market that has poor value. Nissan is tired of being the one to eat the massive early depreciation through fire-sale leases and there are just not enough suckers in the world for the bottom feeders to live off.

So either someone like the Chinese learn to make and sell profitably a LEAF-like crap EV for about $15k, or your idea dies on the vine.

Tesla seems to be the exception to this rule since they talk about battery repair and replacement, and actually came out with an upgraded battery for the 1st gen Roadster. I say "seems" because I do not know of any actual battery purchases and the upgrade price was quite expensive -- something done for nostalgia rather than value.

More likely, some Chinese company reverse engineers the Leaf battery and builds a 50-60 KWH replacement battery.

[SageBrush]

More likely, some Chinese company reverse engineers the Leaf battery and builds a 50-60 KWH replacement battery.

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Possibly, but I doubt the market is big enough and the logistics/installation is a nightmare. Even if Nissan open-sources (hah!) the entire system I am skeptical of the business case.

You just have to look into the Prius battery rejuvenation story to read failure. And that was easy by comparison.

[jlsoaz]

Do you or does anyone know what is the replacement price assigned to a ~60 kWh Leaf Plus battery pack? This would help flesh out the idea of a lease price. It would also help us envision pricing on used-up low-range Leaf Plus Chassis..... even if they were down to 60 or 100 miles of range, if a driver knows they can always go out and pay $8k-$15k (or whatever) for a pack replacement, and be ready to travel 200+ EPA miles, then I would think in theory this would impact the used vehicle prices.
[....]

I doubt that even Nissan knows what the replacement cost is for 60 KWH batteries. All 60 KWH batteries are under warranty for 8 years. The only way there would be a replacement value is if some unlucky soul managed to rupture a pack by running over something or in a crash. In a crash bad enough to damage or rupture a pack, the car would probably be totaled by insurance anyway. I'm sure that some enterprising character will figure out how to economically refurbish packs eventually. My guess at current cost, for a 60 KWH battery would be $8-10K for the cells and $3-4K for labor to refurbish the pack and a another $2K to swap the new pack for the old one. My guess is that most consumers would rather put that much down on a newer car instead. Even if you could get the refurbishment cost down to $5K most people would opt for a newer car instead. Putting $5K into a $10K car isn't going to make sense to most people.

By the way, Tesla has quoted $5K to $7K to refurbish a Model 3 battery depending on it's size. That's for new cells only and Tesla keeps the old cells.

Well, it sounds like Tesla is ahead in the transparency department, as to being up-front about pack "refurbishment" costs. I'm not sure if this is the same as pack (or module) replacement, but good to know. I may be misunderstanding something you've said here, but it sounds like Tesla may understand that even if a product is years away from warranty expiration, there can be other reasons to publish refurbishment or replacement prices.

Even if the battery pack is under warranty, I'm thinking it would be useful to Nissan customers if Nissan were to publish the pack replacement cost once the pack gets out of warranty, and then they could get a sense of expectations for vehicle value past the vehicle warranty. We went through some of this around 2013-2014 where Nissan execs expressed that they hadn't really envisioned needing to replace packs that quickly, and then they came up with more clear warranty terms (and posted them here) and then they came up with pack replacement prices and if I recall, posted them here.

Sure, time has passed and the issues have changed and so, for example, posting the pack replacement price is arguably not going to come up soon if the packs are under warranty for 8 years (I'm just taking the 8 years figure from your statement). I'll need to look around later and understand better if the number of bars warranty terms similar to the battery packs from years ago.

[SageBrush]

Well, it sounds like Tesla is ahead in the transparency department, as to being up-front about pack "refurbishment" costs. I'm not sure if this is the same as pack (or module) replacement, but good to know.

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Tesla (Elon) was talking about swapping modules as a refurb strategy. IIRC the Model 3 has 2-3 modules. Only my impression -- I took Elon's statements to mean that a Model 3 should never be junked due to the battery.

This is consistent with the Tesla sustainability mission; and I gather that the Model 3/battery was engineered with future repair/refurb in mind. This is all part of Elon's grand vision of 1MM mile Tesla cars wandering around as robo-taxis. I have no idea if that vision will pan out but it does explain why Tesla cars are not engineered to be 8 year disposables like a LEAF

[WetEV]

Well, it sounds like Tesla is ahead in the transparency department, as to being up-front about pack "refurbishment" costs. I'm not sure if this is the same as pack (or module) replacement, but good to know.

.
Tesla (Elon) was talking about swapping modules as a refurb strategy. IIRC the Model 3 has 2-3 modules. Only my impression -- I took Elon's statements to mean that a Model 3 should never be junked due to the battery.

This is consistent with the Tesla sustainability mission; and I gather that the Model 3/battery was engineered with future repair/refurb in mind. This is all part of Elon's grand vision of 1MM mile Tesla cars wandering around as robo-taxis. I have no idea if that vision will pan out but it does explain why Tesla cars are not engineered to be 8 year disposables like a LEAF

Which is why you can't get parts for a Tesla Roadster from Telsa.

Need a hood? Better find someone that can fabricate one.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a ... l-medlock/

[LeftieBiker]

Tesla - and Musk in particular - certainly do talk a lot...

[cwerdna]

Well, it sounds like Tesla is ahead in the transparency department, as to being up-front about pack "refurbishment" costs. I'm not sure if this is the same as pack (or module) replacement, but good to know.

.
Tesla (Elon) was talking about swapping modules as a refurb strategy. IIRC the Model 3 has 2-3 modules. Only my impression -- I took Elon's statements to mean that a Model 3 should never be junked due to the battery.

This is consistent with the Tesla sustainability mission; and I gather that the Model 3/battery was engineered with future repair/refurb in mind. This is all part of Elon's grand vision of 1MM mile Tesla cars wandering around as robo-taxis. I have no idea if that vision will pan out but it does explain why Tesla cars are not engineered to be 8 year disposables like a LEAF

Which is why you can't get parts for a Tesla Roadster from Telsa.

Need a hood? Better find someone that can fabricate one.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/a ... l-medlock/

Not just hoods of Roadsters... definitely watch that CNBC piece which the above links to at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tI1Ord5GsQI. It's only ~10.5 minutes.

At https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=569085#p569085, I also reported some interesting stories from my insurance agent re: folks w/older Model S supposedly having trouble getting parts for accident repairs.

[jlv]

Which is why you can't get parts for a Tesla Roadster from Telsa.

And I always thought it was because it was a niche car where less than 2500 were sold.