How should Nissan respond to dropping capacity?

[LEAFfan]

They cant afford to damage their global investment.. so expect a reaction soon. I'm sure they are following this forum avidly now.

LOL, where have you been? They've been following/monitoring this forum for quite some time...at least a year or so.

[Cheezmo]

Interesting. My dealer (Courtsey Nissan) was pushing so hard for the Lease instead of a buy he was almost winking at me, and urging me to take the Lease option.

That's actually good to hear. But it would have been better if he had given you the reason you would want to lease.

Somehow I don't imagine all dealerships in the hot climates are pushing the lease over a sale, but I could be wrong.

I seriously doubt that salesman had any knowledge about heat and batter degradation. Jay and I both agreed that we probably knew more about the cars than he did. More likely he stood to make more money off the lease for some reason.

[smkettner]

Hi all,
When I received my Leave in 5/2011 my range showed 115 to 120 miles.
Now after 13 month with about 9253 miles I lost my first capacity bar.
My range with a full charge shows only 85 miles!?
At my 12 month checkup a week ago they told me that this is normal and I should not be concerned.
But I am concerned, since I drive about 70 miles per day and sometime a little more and that means I have trouble getting home some days.
I really love my Leaf, but I'm going to try to sell or trade my Leaf in the next 4 to 5 weeks.
I'm not very hopeful that Nissan will do anything and I cannot effort to get stuck in the middle of the day with an empty battery, which will happen one day since there are not enough charging stations around.

I am semi convinced a software upgrade during battery check reduced the estimated miles on my LEAF.
The initial miles seemed to suddenly drop 10 or 15 miles after the one year check.
Although the estimated charge time has improved.

[Cheezmo]

This is a possibility. Can this be confirmed by checking the battery capacity of a "new" Leaf in AZ or TX ??

There was a 2-month old Leaf in Texas, which was reading 265 Gids, a 6% reduction of capacity.

Of course 2 days later I got 273. Who knows if I charged to 100% the next day I might have gotten a little higher. I'm not sure we fully understand how to measure "max capacity". Some number of 100% charges over a period of time, at a certain temperature, etc.

[azknauer]

Sorry, I forgot.
I live in Chandler, AZ.

I think all of us would appreciate it if you updated your location info.

I added my location to my signature.

[OrientExpress]

2.

[myleaf]

Article on issue from greencarreports

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/107 ... n-responds" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Stoaty]

In reading through all of these posts, I really don't see any actual problems here.

Yup. "Battery capacity loss at an accelerated rate in hot climates, we knew about this from the testing. Don't tell the customer about this before the sale--no problem."

[Volusiano]

Nissan's Hot weather testing facility is near Maricopa, in Stanfield Arizona. They have been testing the LEAF and battery packs there for many many years. In fact, the battery packs that are in the current LEAFs were tested there for quite a while prior to the 2010 launch. Somehow, I have to believe that if there was an issue, it would have been detected and solved by now.

In reading through all of these posts, I really don't see any actual problems here.

You don't see any actual problems here??? What about the problem of losing 1 bar capacity too soon as stated in the title of the thread?

I would venture to say that Nissan knows about the early capacity loss through their tests, but chose not to disclose it in fear of throwing a monkey wrench into their initial launch campaign. They chose to let initial customers in hot weather cities discover the problem by themselves and if it turns out to be a widespread problem, they'll play it by ears and find a way to alleviate consumers' concern when the time comes.

Well, the time has come and they should be listening and hopefully will be coming up with a better response soon. Or else, nobody is going to want to buy the Leaf anymore even if new customers don't live in hot weather cities, due to fear of not knowing what else Nissan is keeping from their customers.

Right now, they're not really responding to it. They're simply dismissing it. But I think the elephant will grow bigger and won't leave the room.

[OrientExpress]

5.