How should Nissan respond to dropping capacity?

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

RegGuheert

Well-known member
Joined
Mar 19, 2012
Messages
6,419
Location
Northern VA
Let me preface this post by saying that I think the LEAF is any outstanding automobile and a remarkable piece of engineering. We love out LEAF and we expect to get many, many trouble-free years out it! My comments below are all intended to help the LEAF to maintain the excellent image that Nissan has managed to build for that car.

Several LEAF owners in and around Phoenix have reported that their LEAF has removed a segment from the dashboard display indicating that 15% of their battery capacity is now gone after approximately one year of ownership. The charging and driving behavior of these individuals appears to vary from extremely harsh (frequent 100% charging and full-throttle acceleration) to extremely gentle (rarely charge to 100% and high-efficiency driving). But the result is the same: their LEAF battery capacity is now less than 85% of what it was when they purchased the car. Unfortunately, to my knowledge Nissan has not communicated to anyone that it was possible to lose 15% of the battery capacity within the first year of ownership.

This situation is CLEARLY not covered by Nissan's Li-ion battery warranty, as they expressly do not warranty capacity of the LEAF battery. One could argue that LEAF owners should simply drive until the battery will no longer properly propel the car and then have Nissan replace it under warranty. Unfortunately, that is not workable for many as the range of the car will likely get too low to fulfill the car's intended mission.

So what should be done about this? I feel that Nissan should take the financial risk for all of the LEAFs sold into areas where the climate is hotter than some set of criteria that only they can determine based on this first year of data they have collected on the LEAF. They can do this by offering (not forcing) to buy back all of the LEAFs in the affected areas and allow their customers to retain the cars by instead signing a lease agreement for two more years. Nissan should also stop selling LEAFs in the affected areas and instead should only offer leases until more data can be gathered and Nissan can clearly communicate to prospective buyers what the experience has been from several years of actual experience in that area.

This might sound like a drastic step, but I feel that the reputation of the LEAF, of Nissan, and of EVs in general may be irreparably tarnished if this issue is not immediately addressed. I would like nothing better than to be proven wrong about the magnitude of this issue, but the experience of LEAF owners in Phoenix is so far from what I consider to be reasonable expectations that I feel Nissan must address it now.

Edit: Desensationalized title.

[MOD NOTE: Tweaked title after thread merge -drees]
 
By "several", do you mean 1, or 2?

How many others in AZ have not yet had (visible) capacity problems?

What part of "expected loss of capacity" did you
not understand when you bought your car?

Should Nissan also stop selling in very cold areas, and take
back the roughly 1000 that they have sold in Norway?

Or, stop selling to those who might drive agressively, or
those who might Quick Charge, or park outside?

I expect that hot and cold weather experiences will help
improve EVs and Batteries of the future.

If one cannot take being on the "leading edge", a very new,
innovative vehicle design might not be right for that person?
 
garygid said:
By "several", do you mean ONE, or TWO?
FIVE. With one more about to cross that threshold.
garygid said:
What part of "expected loss of capacity" did you
not understand when you bought your car?
The part about losing 15% in one year. I'm sorry, but that is so far from anything reasonable or what Nissan has communicated that something needs to be done. We might as well start the discussion now.
garygid said:
Should Nissan also stop selling in very cold areas, and take back the roughly 1000 that they have sold in Norway?
No. Loss of capacity due to cold weather is not permanent (to my knowledge). In fact, I think many in Norway will experience the longest battery lives of any Nissan LEAFs.
 
garygid said:
By "several", do you mean ONE, or TWO?

What part of "expected loss of capacity" did you
not understand when you bought your car?

Should Nissan also stop selling in very cold areas, and take
back the roughly 1000 that they have sold in Norway?

I agree. By definition, if you buy or lease a Leaf you are an early adopter of new technology and the larger the dataset the larger the edge cases and that's how technology gets better; the edge cases are the more interesting data points. It sounds as though Nissan is in this for the long haul and are not playing the safe game.
 
I love my LEAF, but I would not buy a motorcycle to ride in Alaska winters.

Batteries like to be warm, not HOT.

IMHO, I think Nissan should be at the front door to investigate
the issue to see if it is a battery or sensor problem. Not sure if stopping all sales is warranted.

Too many questions to troubleshoot first.
 
garygid said:
If one cannot take being on the "leading edge", a very new, innovative vehicle design might not be right for that person?
I will say that is PRECISELY the reason for my post, Gary!

Nissan is currently building two large LEAF and two large battery factories right now. It seems that Nissan, GM and Toyota have worked their way through a large portion of the EV early adopter crowd. If they ONLY want to address the needs of those of us who want to be on the bleeding edge, then they should stop their construction projects. Otherwise, they will need to show that it is Nissan, and not their customers, who will take the brunt of the impact from these large capacity drops.
 
i sympathize.
i live in an ideal climate for a test-model Leaf; along socal coast.
I dont have the heater issues except rarely, and the climate is temperate in the extreme; never too hot or cold.

It was a big factor in taking the leap to buy a new model car. I have not done that before, always waiting till the bugs got ironed out on major changes in cars. Of course, these days, those changes come faster and so avoiding -- until the second or third year -- a new tranny or engine line in a car class is harder.

That said, I was very eager to get an EV and am very happy with it. I am pretty unclear on whether I would have bought one if I lived in a hotter or colder climate.
 
I wonder how many people in PHX would agree. :) I, for one, don't and you would have to pry my Leaf from my dead fingers despite all the growing pains associated with the technology.
 
TickTock said:
I wonder how many people in PHX would agree. :) I, for one, don't and you would have to pry my Leaf from my dead fingers despite all the growing pains associated with the technology.
O.K. But as I said, they should not (and cannot) force you to convert to a lease.

The point is that not everyone will be so understanding, both within Phoenix and elsewhere.

It is difficult throwing off even inaccurate perceptions of EVs. Nissan can SAY that the batteries will not continue to lose 15% of their original capacity each year in Phoenix, but what evidence have they provided to support those claims? Frankly, since they never claimed that some customers WOULD see 15% capacity loss in the first year, their credibility needs a boost on this issue right about now.
 
Does the Volt have a display for battery temperature and degradation level?.. AFAIK no, perhaps Nissan was concerned about these issues.
 
as with other issues and naysaying -- think ecotality in balboa park -- you may be creating a larger problem than exists.
do we have a few cases here or many? you dont know and neither do we.
should Nissan be stand up on this? of course. were we warned -- I am pretty sure that we were, though as with any warranty sometimes it is hard to get it enforced and the fine print is often exclusionary.

will it become another "battery fire" story for the darksiders? yup.

meanwhile, my consumer reports survey just landed and I am going to tell them +10 for the Leaf in every category.
 
At some point, if they want their EV program to continue succeeding in the market. Nissan simply have to start warranting capacity. That means a clear definition of what constitutes a capacity warranty claim (capacity vs. age), what will be done to remedy, and what constitutes abuse. Otherwise we're all flying blind. As a relatively early adopter I was willing to take that risk, although I hedged my bets with a lease. The mainstream buyers (Nissan's 'pragmatic majority' ) are going to want some of these terms defined before they buy in. Clearly the terms are not meaningfully defined today, when even someone with 15% loss in a year gets mostly 5-stars (and a 4-star) on the battery report. That's like handing in a blank essay and getting an "A-".
 
Herm said:
Does the Volt have a display for battery temperature and degradation level?.. AFAIK no, perhaps Nissan was concerned about these issues.

The Volt has a thermal management system for the battery - i.e., it actively keeps the battery at safe temperature.
 
shrink said:
The Volt has a thermal management system for the battery - i.e., it actively keeps the battery at safe temperature.
The ICE in my car also has a thermal management system - thermostat, pump and radiator - yet the dash still has a temp gauge and warning light...

The point of these devices is to know the state of your vehicle so you can tell when (not if) these systems start to fail.
=Smidge=
 
Smidge204 said:
shrink said:
The Volt has a thermal management system for the battery - i.e., it actively keeps the battery at safe temperature.
The ICE in my car also has a thermal management system - thermostat, pump and radiator - yet the dash still has a temp gauge and warning light...

The point of these devices is to know the state of your vehicle so you can tell when (not if) these systems start to fail.
=Smidge=

The OnStar diagnostics would catch it if there's an issue.
 
...and I have a LEAF and Volt in Phoenix, AZ. I haven't noticed any battery capacity loss yet, but I think it's too early to stop selling the LEAF here. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

However, I am concerned and hope Nissan investigates and takes care of the affected owners. I did buy both cars and am starting to wish I had leased the LEAF.

RE: the Volt
Q. Battery Capacity over vehicle life.
A. Like all batteries, the amount of energy that the high voltage "propulsion" battery can store will decrease with time and miles driven. Depending on use, the battery may degrade as little as 10% to as much as 30% of capacity over the warranty period.

That's better than 15% over the first year, but it seems the sample size is pretty small at this point to warrant a recall or stopping sales in Phoenix.
 
there seem to be two competing threads on this topic, with the OP starting this one with an hysterical headline while the other one was ongoing.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=8802" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
He didnt seem to be making headway there with his argument.
It is clear to me that is a tactic to add heat and fury rather than light to the discussion.
 
Back
Top