Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

I wanted to chime in here with my thoughts but Nubo said everything I wanted to say, and more elegantly. Great job Nubo.

I absolutely love this car and they way it drives. If only the battery could keep up reasonably, this is everything I wanted an EV to be. 4 months and 5K miles later I haven't seen any range reduction, but GID meter says that I am down 6%.

Also I am now babying this car through July and August, by only driving in the mornings before 10 am and never parking it in the sun. And always keeping the SOC between 20 to 50%. To me that is an OK price to pay being an early adopter on a new technology. But if I start losing bars within a year, thats a different story. I am only leasing it for 24 months but I want to drive it as if I bought it.

TickTock said:

This is why one or two early battery replacements does not mean Nissan knew about the issue - they probably thought these were such anomalies. Only until the recent wave of reports came in of multiple bar loss would they have really had to accept the fact that maybe there really is an issue that needs to be addressed. Give Nissan some time. Diagnosis of issues arising during high volume manufacturing cannot happen in one or two weeks - it's can easily take months.

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You are a bit naive if you don't realize that Nissan has been well aware of this problem and are acting like this is the first time based on the forum postings of battery bar loss. You really believe that they only know about a "handful" that have lost two or more bars? They know about many more through the battery pack checks. Also, every car in the Phoenix area (maybe around 300 or so less the 100 in Tucson) has lost more than 2-3% capacity at the one-year battery pack checks. They also knew/know this. That it will "take months", when they already knew about it for some time, is what Nissan wants to hear because it will just give them more time to stall until they have the packs from TN.

mkjayakumar said:

I wanted to chime in here with my thoughts but Nubo said everything I wanted to say, and more elegantly. Great job Nubo.

I absolutely love this car and they way it drives. If only the battery could keep up reasonably, this is everything I wanted an EV to be. 4 months and 5K miles later I haven't seen any range reduction, but GID meter says that I am down 6%.

Also I am now babying this car through July and August, by only driving in the mornings before 10 am and never parking it in the sun. And always keeping the SOC between 20 to 50%. To me that is an OK price to pay being an early adopter on a new technology. But if I start losing bars within a year, thats a different story. I am only leasing it for 24 months but I want to drive it as if I bought it.

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Temp in DFW a bit cooler than in OKC this year and my friend with a bit more than 2 mo of driving is down to 257GID (9.5 % GID loss with 2.5KM). Leaf is his only car so he is trying to protect it for heat as much as possible. Some people believe that summer temp will not affect them, however there is no magic number for temp battery degradation. Like 100F have a big affect but 99F is OK. I wish it will be like that but, even from SoCal there is a report of bar loss.

LEAFfan said:

TickTock said:

This is why one or two early battery replacements does not mean Nissan knew about the issue - they probably thought these were such anomalies. Only until the recent wave of reports came in of multiple bar loss would they have really had to accept the fact that maybe there really is an issue that needs to be addressed. Give Nissan some time. Diagnosis of issues arising during high volume manufacturing cannot happen in one or two weeks - it's can easily take months.

Click to expand...

You are a bit naive if you don't realize that Nissan has been well aware of this problem and are acting like this is the first time based on the forum postings of battery bar loss. You really believe that they only know about a "handful" that have lost two or more bars? They know about many more through the battery pack checks. Also, every car in the Phoenix area (maybe around 300 or so less the 100 in Tucson) has lost more than 2-3% capacity at the one-year battery pack checks. They also knew/know this. That it will "take months", when they already knew about it for some time, is what Nissan wants to hear because it will just give them more time to stall until they have the packs from TN.

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What's wrong with waiting until the new packs come out? If your car is physically unable to do your daily drive that is one thing. But if you are just stressed out about it potentially not making it next year, then what is the issue? I get that there is still a lot of uncertainty surrounding what they will and what they won't do. But, best case scenario, if they change out the worst packs (2+ bars) for a new battery chemistry from the TN set and it works, then there really isn't an issue. They will be able to develop more technology for the cars that are losing more slowly and potentially do a full recall when they are more established and have a surplus. Again, best case scenario.

Just as a thought experiment, if Nissan were to offer to buy back any Arizona car sold to date at an average price of say $35k, it would cost them at most only $14 million (400 x $35k). Adding cars just in other hot areas (TX, OK, SE CA etc.) would add some more to that. If they were to take the most extreme measure and offer to buy back every single Leaf sold in the US to date (which no one is suggesting is necessary) at their full MSRP from any willing owner, up to 13k cars @ $35k each, the total cost would be a maximum of $455 million.

To put these costs in perspective, Nissan's net income for FY 2011/2012 ending March 31, was $4.28 billion. I'd say the cost of any step they take to make owners whole would be cheap, compared to the damage to their reputation and its effect on future sales that not taking care of their customers will have. But then, their actions to date have been inexplicable to me, so clearly Nissan and I use different logic.

Every remedy which has been suggested in the course of this and the other thread, such as converting purchases to leases, replacing the pack and so on, would cost just a fraction of buying the cars back. Of course, Nissan should stop digging themselves further into a hole and immediately suspend sales and probably leasing in the affected areas, and/or institute much more rigorous pre-sale/lease information requirements.

Edit: Revised and expanded.

GRA said:

Just as a thought experiment, if Nissan were to take the extreme measure of buying back every single Leaf sold in the US to date (which no one is suggesting is necessary) at their full MSRP, say 13k cars @ $35k each, the total cost would be $455 million. Buying back all 400 Az. cars for the same amount would cost them only $14 million. Adding cars just in other hot areas (TX, OK, SE CA etc.) would add some more to that.

Nissan's net income for FY 2011/2012 ending March 31, was $4.28 billion. I'd say the cost of any step they take to make owners whole would be cheap, compared to the damage to their reputation and its effect on future sales that not taking care of their customers will have. But then, their actions to date have been inexplicable to me, so clearly Nissan and I use different logic.

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that would not work. my car is not for sale

I have a couple of questions. Have we had any indication that battery packs made in Tennessee will be any more heat-tolerant than those currently in our cars? I'd be very surprised if Nissan has made any changes.

Has anyone found any data in Ingineer's battery report info that tells Nissan how much capacity has been lost? I see lots of info on factors that might influence battery life, but no field for capacity or lost capacity. Are we sure Nissan is getting that data, either from CarWings or battery health checks? Maybe they really are relying upon reports from dealers and those of us who have contacted the hotline. Hard to believe, but.... do we really know?

kolmstead said:

I have a couple of questions. Have we had any indication that battery packs made in Tennessee will be any more heat-tolerant than those currently in our cars? I'd be very surprised if Nissan has made any changes.

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To my knowledge, we have had no such indication. But I do not think that means they will not improve the battery. Supposing they do have a fix in hand that will come from TN, they would likely freeze ALL sales of 2012 LEAFs if they announced now. Frankly, it would be better for Nissan to continue to take their lumps in AZ than announce a new LEAF battery too early.

But this is ENTIRELY supposition. We simply do not know.

Oh boy, this thread has definitely beaten all records by the amount of speculation contained. Just to throw one more into the mix, does anyone think that all these issues may be related to a bad batch of batteries?

Valdemar said:

Oh boy, this thread has definitely beaten all records by the amount of speculation contained. Just to throw one more into the mix, does anyone think that all these issues may be related to a bad batch of batteries?

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no

DaveinOlyWA said:

Valdemar said:

Oh boy, this thread has definitely beaten all records by the amount of speculation contained. Just to throw one more into the mix, does anyone think that all these issues may be related to a bad batch of batteries?

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no

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Agreed. I think it's more likely that a fix (or some solution) is in the works (perhaps also in the 2013 car, possibly from TN, or not), but given the ultimate cost of deploying that fix to existing cars in the field, they would likely want to take their time in testing it to ensure they only have to fix it ONCE and for all...

DaveinOlyWA said:

Valdemar said:

Oh boy, this thread has definitely beaten all records by the amount of speculation contained. Just to throw one more into the mix, does anyone think that all these issues may be related to a bad batch of batteries?

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no

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Can you elaborate please? The fact that only a fraction of AZ users, including ones that followed "long battery life" recommendations, experienced catastrophic battery capacity loss may well point into that direction.

Valdemar said:

Can you elaborate please? The fact that only a fraction of AZ users, including ones that followed "long battery life" recommendations, experienced catastrophic battery capacity may well point into that direction.

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How do you explain that all the bad batteries ended up in Arizona when vin numbers are not sequential and there are vin's outside AZ that are working just fine that should have been in the same "batch"?

Valdemar said:

Can you elaborate please?

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The batteries in the LEAFs in AZ are losing capacity in precisely the manner expected for the chemistry that Nissan chose. This was publicly predicted by several observers outside of Nissan. While Nissan strongly denied the heat would be a problem in Phoenix, it has turned out to be quite a significant one.

palmermd said:

Valdemar said:

Can you elaborate please? The fact that only a fraction of AZ users, including ones that followed "long battery life" recommendations, experienced catastrophic battery capacity may well point into that direction.

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How do you explain that all the bad batteries ended up in Arizona when vin numbers are not sequential and there are vin's outside AZ that are working just fine that should have been in the same "batch"?

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Do we know if sequentiality of VIN numbers has anything to do with the order in which batteries are made?

Valdemar said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

Valdemar said:

Oh boy, this thread has definitely beaten all records by the amount of speculation contained. Just to throw one more into the mix, does anyone think that all these issues may be related to a bad batch of batteries?

Click to expand...

no

Click to expand...

Can you elaborate please? The fact that only a fraction of AZ users, including ones that followed "long battery life" recommendations, experienced catastrophic battery capacity may well point into that direction.

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If you're talking about the 2-3 capacity bar losses as "catastrophic", we really have no idea how many are really out there out of the 400 cars in AZ. Until this problem is corrected, there will be many more. Even new cars now that have been sitting on the car lots in AZ have lost capacity, so it isn't really a fact that it is just a fraction of AZ users. Only Nissan knows how many actual 2-3 bar losers there are from the ones that have had their yearly check. Some have lost a capacity bar after only 7 months and around 10-12K miles.

RegGuheert said:

Valdemar said:

Can you elaborate please?

Click to expand...

The batteries in the LEAFs in AZ are losing capacity in precisely the manner expected for the chemistry that Nissan chose. This was publicly predicted by several observers outside of Nissan. While Nissan strongly denied the heat would be a problem in Phoenix, it has turned out to be quite a significant one.

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How many Leafs are there in Phoenix? Are all of them affected to a comparable extent?

it would be a bit unlikely to have a defective battery pack that covers 12 months of deliveries. after all, we seem to have a fairly consistent level of degradation from people who got their LEAF in Jan 2011 along with people who received their LEAF in Oct 2011.

i will say; i am in the camp that feels that Nissan has full prior knowledge of the heat issues for AZ and have already taken steps to rectify the issue in the 2013 MY along with addressing current 2012 and 2011 MY owners when US production begins

Valdemar said:

RegGuheert said:

Valdemar said:

Can you elaborate please?

Click to expand...

The batteries in the LEAFs in AZ are losing capacity in precisely the manner expected for the chemistry that Nissan chose. This was publicly predicted by several observers outside of Nissan. While Nissan strongly denied the heat would be a problem in Phoenix, it has turned out to be quite a significant one.

Click to expand...

How many Leafs are there in Phoenix? Are all of them affected to a comparable extent?

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Just subtract the ones in Tucson from 400 which is supposed to be the total in AZ and you would be close. Maybe Tucson has 50-100 which would leave the Phoenix area with 300-350.

DaveinOlyWA said:

it would be a bit unlikely to have a defective battery pack that covers 12 months of deliveries. after all, we seem to have a fairly consistent level of degradation from people who got their LEAF in Jan 2011 along with people who received their LEAF in Oct 2011.

i will say; i am in the camp that feels that Nissan has full prior knowledge of the heat issues for AZ and have already taken steps to rectify the issue in the 2013 MY along with addressing current 2012 and 2011 MY owners when US production begins

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That would have been a suicidal move on their part to knowingly sell vehicles with problems in this emerging market. Which is not to say this didn't happen.