Letter about possible Nissan Lawsuit

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prberg

Well-known member
Joined
May 23, 2010
Messages
227
Location
Burbank, California
Curious if anyone else has received a letter from a law firm regarding a potential Nissan lawsuit regarding the battery capacity issues? Although the letter actually says it is related to a defect in the battery cooling system. Funny.. the car doesn't have a battery cooling system so not sure how it can be defective.

I can see how those who have lost a few battery capacity bars might be into something like this. Especially if Nissan doesn't come back with some answers and/or solutions regarding these issues.

I still have all my capacity bars so I won't likely be joining in.. but I was curious how people felt about this. I didn't see any posts regarding this issue.. sorry if I missed it.

I'm still loving the car. I do hope the battery holds up for a nice long time, but it still meets my needs for about 95% of my trips. It would be nice when the battery does lose alot of capacity.. that I can replace the battery for a reasonable cost and hopefully get more range that what I got when the car was brand new. Although if that time comes before like 8 years I will be quite disappointed.

-Peter
 
Yes, it's been covered here.

First, let me say that this law firm probably doesn't know anything about a LEAF, and might not even know anything about the auto industry. They are trolling for business. They may be the best, worst, or something in the middle choice for a law firm for these issues, but I would seriously research any of them before signing on the dotted line.

Before anybody signs ANY attorney/client priviledge document, please take a deep breath (EVEN AFTER MR. PERRY'S or any other Nissan decision maker's announcement in the coming weeks) and then wait a week or two. My honest opinion is that there may be no other logical option, but companies don't "fix" things in litigation. They can't. They'd lose, since that's akin to admitting their product was faulty.

Anyway, all I'm asking for is wait a week AFTER the announcement. We'll hash it out here. If you still, then, don't have a good taste for the situation, do what you have to do.
 
Or maybe an adverse court ruling would be the last straw that causes Nissan to discontinue selling the Leaf, at least in the United States. Sell it in other countries where the legal environment is more favorable, and let the U.S. content themselves with gasoline-powered models, as we continue our march into world-noncompetitive oblivion.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Or maybe an adverse court ruling would be the last straw that causes Nissan to discontinue selling the Leaf, at least in the United States.

Its a hostile anti-EV environment in the US right now, and Nissan is not helping. I have always felt that we would have trouble from one class of Leaf owners.. those with long range commutes desperate to get away from a gasoline bill. Apparently the batteries are holding up ok under heavy use as long as the weather is moderate.
 
Herm said:
LTLFTcomposite said:
Or maybe an adverse court ruling would be the last straw that causes Nissan to discontinue selling the Leaf, at least in the United States.

Its a hostile anti-EV environment in the US right now, and Nissan is not helping. I have always felt that we would have trouble from one class of Leaf owners.. those with long range commutes desperate to get away from a gasoline bill. Apparently the batteries are holding up ok under heavy use as long as the weather is moderate.
Wouldn't it be ironic to have a factory in Tennessee cranking out 150k Leafs a year and have every last one of them loaded on train cars headed for the port to be shipped to other parts of the world? So there are your "green jobs" (with health care) doing nothing to greenify things here. Assuming CO2 and other pollutants all get mixed around in the atmosphere sooner or later maybe it doesn't matter where the cars are. Let the Leaf ply the roads of Scandinavia where no doubt the thermal management is irrelevant.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Assuming CO2 and other pollutants all get mixed around in the atmosphere sooner or later maybe it doesn't matter where the cars are. Let the Leaf ply the roads of Scandinavia where no doubt the thermal management is irrelevant.

Its pretty irrelevant what we do in the US compared to the amount of CO2 pumped out by the Pacific Rim nations.. if you want to do some good convince a person in China to keep an electric bicycle handy. The rest of the world wants cars and electric appliances now that they can afford it.

I prefer to use the energy-self sufficiency argument when talking about EV, and even that may be ignored with the recent explosion and glut in US produced crude.

The best thing to do is accelerate research into batteries and safe fail-safe nukes.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Or maybe an adverse court ruling would be the last straw that causes Nissan to discontinue selling the Leaf, at least in the United States. Sell it in other countries where the legal environment is more favorable, and let the U.S. content themselves with gasoline-powered models, as we continue our march into world-noncompetitive oblivion.

Couldn't have said it better myself.
 
Herm said:
Its pretty irrelevant what we do in the US compared to the amount of CO2 pumped out by the Pacific Rim nations.. if you want to do some good convince a person in China to keep an electric bicycle handy.
If you want to do some good convince a person in the U.S. to buy less of the stuff that China is making for us.
 
Stoaty said:
Herm said:
Its pretty irrelevant what we do in the US compared to the amount of CO2 pumped out by the Pacific Rim nations.. if you want to do some good convince a person in China to keep an electric bicycle handy.

If you want to do some good convince a person in the U.S. to buy less of the stuff that China is making for us.

Well unless you don't want an iPad/iPod/iPhone (really just about any phone), PC, or a display to view it on (ok--that might be Korea), along with a multitude of other electronics, that will be pretty difficult. The continue long-term "off-shoring" of our manufacturing capability has seen to that. Of course, you could actually buy a US MADE Leaf next year if the hysteria (and lawyers) don't take care of that also :twisted:
 
Stanton said:
Stoaty said:
If you want to do some good convince a person in the U.S. to buy less of the stuff that China is making for us.
Well unless you don't want an iPad/iPod/iPhone (really just about any phone), PC, or a display to view it on (ok, that might be Korea), that will be pretty difficult.
Never said it would be easy, only that Herm's argument that it is out of our hands is not true.
 
Tony provides great advice. the problem with litigation is you are almost always doubling or tripling the calendar or more, much more. iow, everything slows down; your happiness, your resolution, your your your. Nissan has all the time and the money in the world. i dont. i cant wait it out and i doubt that you can either.

so, i would circle a date on the Calendar of Halloween. make that decision day. i would give Nissan no more time than that and i am one of the most optimistic people on this board. my "EVness" has pushed me into the "land of promise" which really does not allow me to get that negative. this land provides me access to a million rationalizations

so its litigate and maybe come to an agreement in a year or more, or see what Nissan has to say. i agree, Nissan is slow, not forthcoming with encouragement or anything else for that matter, but to a resolution that does not make us happy will go a long way towards killing a lot of future sales.

now, granted a much better LEAF for 2013 and so on will eliminate most of the damage of the 2011 LEAF and that would be Nissan's other possible course.

as far as all this noise "Nissan is investigating" or "we were taken by surprise" i dont buy any of that. i fully believe that Nissan was fully aware of how the heat of AZ would affect the cars
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Or maybe an adverse court ruling would be the last straw that causes Nissan to discontinue selling the Leaf, at least in the United States. Sell it in other countries where the legal environment is more favorable, and let the U.S. content themselves with gasoline-powered models, as we continue our march into world-noncompetitive oblivion.

Never happen, not after the mega $millions Nissan has invested in their TN plant. The notion that they would just export that production is equally absurd, as Nissan has plants overseas that are more than capable of meeting demand.

With Toyota (and Scion), GM, Ford, Honda, virtually all European makes, Tesla etc. having EV's on the market or announcing new models, and with the mega $millions each is devoting to EV research, Nissan would not abandon USA Leafs just because some ambulance chasing blood-sucker tricks enough Leaf owners to join a class action suit.

EVs are here to stay, regardless of the sad experiences of some hot climate owners. In the broad scope of things, that is a minuscule percentage of all EV owners.
 
dandrewk said:
Never happen, not after the mega $millions Nissan has invested in their TN plant. The notion that they would just export that production is equally absurd, as Nissan has plants overseas that are more than capable of meeting demand.
Companies walk from mega $million investments all the time. In business, decisions made in the past that didn't work out don't justify perpetuating the error, at least not in a well-run business.

If Nissan chose to discontinue the Leaf in the U.S. but not elsewhere I see no reason why they wouldn't still produce them here, in the factory built with a low interest loan from the U.S. taxpayer.

dandrewk said:
Nissan would not abandon USA Leafs just because some ambulance chasing blood-sucker tricks enough Leaf owners to join a class action suit.
It will be like the opti-grab, each Leaf owner will get a check for $1.78, and the firm handling the suit will get $75M.
 
LTLFTcomposite said:
Companies walk from mega $million investments all the time. In business, decisions made in the past that didn't work out don't justify perpetuating the error, at least not in a well-run business.

If Nissan chose to discontinue the Leaf in the U.S. but not elsewhere I see no reason why they wouldn't still produce them here, in the factory built with a low interest loan from the U.S. taxpayer.

Well of course, stretching to those extremes you could make that case. Yet, Nissan would be walking away from several million dollars of plant upgrade... for what? The threat of some litigation? Or keeping the plant and exporting when cheaper options exist overseas? It's not like they can't keep up with current "demand".

Possible, well of course. I'd put the likelihood as somewhere between zero and zero percent.
 
They only people that win in these cases are the lawyers. All this nonsense about Nissan to stop selling cars is laughable.
 
I was involved in the eBay class action suit... and we WON!!!!

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One minor correction to something said earlier. In general, in negligence cases at least, corrective action cannot be used in a trial as proof of negligence. It is against public policy to give companies/property owners/etc. an incentive to leave something in a dangerous condition, so the plaintiff can't use it. Whether that applies in a product liability action based on contract, not tort, or because cars are specially regulated, etc., I don't know. However, I don't believe a lawsuit will slow Nissan down in improving the car. For one thing, they can always say, probably truthfully, that they were already working on the improvement, so it's not evidence of a problem, it's just good engineering and quality control. Every manufacturer is constantly improving their cars as the whole industry changes. It's not proof of anything legally wrong with the last generation car. I don't recommend litigating against a big company except in the most egregious cases and only if you have an insurance lawyer or someone like that footing the bill.
 
If they stop selling or manufacturing the Leaf, it would be for lack of sales, not for defective batteries. Sales were tanking before the battery issue was known.

EV's are here to stay? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe not in their current iteration as Electric only vehicles.

Perhaps Nissan will use that technology and make an extended range vehicle because that's where it looks like electric propulsion is headed.

Auto plants convert to different production lines and models all the time.
 
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