Andy Palmer and Chelsea Sexton Discuss the Nissan LEAF

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i like your theory and appreciate the thoughtfulness on your part, but i like allot of theories that turn out to be wrong.


chelsea?
andy?

nissan is debating what issues with regard to announcing a price on the battery?
 
thankyouOB said:
i like your theory and appreciate the thoughtfulness on your part, but i like allot of theories that turn out to be wrong.


chelsea?
andy?

nissan is debating what issues with regard to announcing a price on the battery?

I obviously can't appropriately answer this on Nissan's behalf. Andy did express concern to me that today's price would scare new folks, though I explained that it was important to some drivers to know for a complete TCO picture. I'm sure there's more to it internally than that, however.

I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
 
davewill said:
They don't want to give us today's answer. LEAF batteries today are made overseas and are probably priced pretty scary due to yen-dollar exchange. Tennessee batteries will be cheaper, and they will likely get cheaper still in 3-8 years when people are actually likely to buy a new battery. So, if they are forced to announce a price, do they scare everyone with a high one? Do they announce a price consistent with the future and just hope they don't get burned by someone insisting on buying now or by the costs not dropping as they project?
The way the Tesla Roadster Replacement Battery Agreement works is quoting a fixed price ($12k) for pack replacement after 7 years from car purchase. Plus a fixed discount ($1k) for each year you wait beyond that, but not exceeding past the ninth year (so $9k is the 10th year price). After the 9th year it's use-it-or-lose-it. Before the 7th year is completed it's not usable (per the contract language). (But ... if you're out of warranty and your Roadster pack drops suddenly and you are in your 6th or start of 7th year ... maybe Tesla would "accomodate" you for a $1k upcharge for each year, but that's just a guess). However, I mention the latter, because for AZ LEAFs that show unusually fast degradation (oops, sorry, Normal Nissan AZ Year performance !) with a non-owner fault situation ( I think you know what I am getting at ... ), maybe Nissan would "accomodate" and pro-rate their 8th-year/100k-miles fixed replacement cost in such a way as to allow early replacement while providing a bit of a discount. Other "normal" regions (12,500 mile Nissan Year places) would get the standard contract without early replacement option.

(The Tesla Agreement does not specify any miles; calendar time only.)

The bottom line is ... with such a future contract price EVERY LEAF prospect can rest somewhat easier, knowing upfront what it MIGHT cost them at a particular point in time. I can't tell you how many times I am asked "how long will the battery last" and "how expensive is it". The answer I give regularly is the EXEMPLARY pioneering Tesla method, and finish up with ... "If Nissan gave me an 8th year as-new replacement battery for an additional 10% of LEAF MSRP upfront I would immediately opt-in." Because it helps me with the resale value of the LEAF if I opt not to keep it that long. ( The LEAF Replacement Battery Agreement would transfer with the car. And to me it's like an insurance policy to cover the long-term risk. I know it's non-refundable ( if the car is totaled for example ), but that part of the factors I can weigh when making the decision to purchase the LEAF RBA. :)

( The time-frame/miles parameters of the RBA could be user-choice for, of course, different cost. Just like extended warranty contracts can be chosen a-la-carte. )

Edit: Keep in mind the $12k Tesla RBA price is for a 56kWh (53kWh) pack of different construction & chemistry. Don't let that price influence the LEAF RBA cost.
 
evchels said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
Was it made very clear that the requested price is for an EXCHANGE ***NOT*** a NEW part ? I.e. including a "core charge" whereby the old part is returned to Nissan, for perhaps, refurbishment and reuse ?
 
mwalsh said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
I figured as much. Should have bet Evdriver that pizza after all. Wish he'd cut the snark and deliver only facts. :?
Yes, but Ingineer confirmed the $5,000 price. Perhaps the difference is between a new pack and a remanufactured one.
 
LEAFer said:
evchels said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
Was it made very clear that the requested price is for an EXCHANGE ***NOT*** a NEW part ? I.e. including a "core charge" whereby the old part is returned to Nissan, for perhaps, refurbishment and reuse ?

Yes. What my own automotive experience hasn't taught me, my better half has! :)

Though in reality, I also told him we'd be happy to take all versions of battery price they were willing to give. Modules, whole packs, core charge or not, etc.
 
Stoaty said:
mwalsh said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
I figured as much. Should have bet Evdriver that pizza after all. Wish he'd cut the snark and deliver only facts. :?
Yes, but Ingineer confirmed the $5,000 price. Perhaps the difference is between a new pack and a remanufactured one.

I think EVDriver and Ingineer had the same source, and it turned out that source was incorrect. He may have been a reliable source for information in the past, but it looks like they were both fooled by him this time.
 
evchels said:
thankyouOB said:
i like your theory and appreciate the thoughtfulness on your part, but i like allot of theories that turn out to be wrong.


chelsea?
andy?

nissan is debating what issues with regard to announcing a price on the battery?

I obviously can't appropriately answer this on Nissan's behalf. Andy did express concern to me that today's price would scare new folks, though I explained that it was important to some drivers to know for a complete TCO picture. I'm sure there's more to it internally than that, however.

I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
Wow!
Thanks.
U r the real thing.
 
mwalsh said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.

I figured as much. Should have bet Evdriver that pizza after all. Wish he'd cut the snark and deliver only facts. :?
While $5k might be too low, there is a limit to how high it can go. According to Bob Lutz, the Volt battery is on the order of $350/kWh. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/boblutz/2012/09/10/the-real-story-on-gms-volt-costs/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
TonyWilliams said:
Volusiano said:
It seems like Nissan has already known all along that its 80%/70% glide path in 5/10 years is a big drop off up front. So why did Nissan withhold that information from the customer at the point of purchase and let them assume incorrectly that the glide path is linear? Nissan never said anything about the glide path being non-linear with a big drop off up front until the cat was out of the bag and the premature losses in Phoenix started piling up.

They knew...it's precisely why that first capacity bar segment at the top is 15%. That's more than DOUBLE the remaining bars segments.

They just used a non-linear display to match the non-linear degradation, and like normal... didn't tell the consumer.


Can you review again how you measured that the top bar segment is 15% of the capacity?
 
Ran the car to a dead stop. An hour or so later it still would not shift into drive.

rumpole said:
Knowing full well the Leaf battery is a completely different chemistry, has anyone run a Leaf to empty and let it sit for 20 or 30 minutes? Can you then get a another couple of miles?

The 15% number for the first capacity loss bar came from the service manual.
 
evchels said:
I did bounce the $5000 figure off him though, and was told it's too low even compared to their internal costs.
My Leaf costs me about 2 cents a mile in electricity to drive. Taking $5,000 as a lower bound of exchange price for a remanufactured battery and assuming best case degradation of 10 years, 12,000 miles per year, that's another 4 cents a mile for battery usage. If instead the exchange price is $10,000 and the car needs it after 5 years, then it's 16 cents a mile for battery usage. The total 18 cents a mile would be just a bit worse than a comparable conventional Toyota Camry at 30MPG and $5/gal.

Of course a Leaf with 120,000 miles on it and a new battery isn't like an ICE with 120,000 miles on it. Body and seat covers on both could be dinged up, but the Leaf wouldn't be looking at a valve job, ring job, transmission job, etc. So total depreciation could be considerably lower on the Leaf.

Anyway, thinking of the battery costs being 2X to 8X more than the electricity costs makes me think differently about saving electricity - as Nissan should have emphasized to buyers at the outset. I'm glad I use the timer to charge to 80% finishing at 5am so it doesn't sit overnight at high SOC. And if I need some more range during the day now I'm happy to charge another hour or two at peak electricity rates that are 4X my usual rates, rather than charge to 100% to avoid needing a daytime charge. Heck, I'd be happy to pay $30 or more for a quick charge now and then rather than leave my car sitting around near 100% charge, just in case I needed the range. (That is if any quick charge stations existed around here.)
 
thanks for the math, Walter.
i am cool with the first example; the second -- costing more than a 30 mpg car at $5 a gallon -- gives me hives.
 
LEAFfan said:
evchels said:
4) More information on the variables impacting degradation- e.g., how much freeway driving, fast charges, etc. (I actually really like the web app idea for this.)

I'm going to repeat what I posted because I would love to hear what Mr. Palmer will say about drivers that have babied their batteries (complete opposite of his 4 variables/conditions), driven LESS than 7500 miles in LESS than one year, and STILL have lost one or two capacity bars. Why can't he just be upfront and honest and admit that the major factor for battery pack degradation is high ambient heat over time?
What I disliked the most about Palmer's responses is his attempt to hide the over-riding importance of elevated temperature among the other variables. I hope, Chelsea, that you press him on this in your next session.

Even without the detailed data Nissan has, most of us on this forum are aware of the dramatic difference in loss rate statistics between Northern CA, Southern CA, and AZ. The Gid meter accurately predicts when you are about to lose a capacity bar. My Gid data, along with that of my friends in SoCal, suggests that many of us are going to be down 2 capacity bars by the end of next Summer. There must be at least 2K LEAFs in SoCal at least a year old, far more than AZ, so the number of disatisfied customers is going to rise dramatically. Two bars of loss is more than 20% of useful range if you use VLBW as your lower limit. That is the point where the car can no longer do many of the cross-town trips that I need to do. Losing that much in 2 1/2 years is much faster than Nissan led me to believe.

I am also very skeptical about the Glide Path. Nissan has emphasized that the highest loss is correlated with higher mileage, but cycle loss of Li batteries is generally linear and does not slow down like calendar loss.
 
One thing about the whole "Arizona area situation" is that they didn't halt sales when they started to see a trend of a problem.

They talk of the LEAF being a model with new technology, still being "proven", yet they can't halt sales when a "crisis" comes up?
They brought customer cars in for study... They bought some back... But meanwhile kept selling as if nothing could be wrong?

Doesn't the industry generally "take a pause" when they see signs that something could be wrong, even if they think it might still be customer over-reaction? With total Arizona sales being, what, 450?, it doesn't seem like such huge numbers that putting a sales hold for a while would be unthinkable. Are they committed to selling this model in those areas "no matter what?"
 
evchels said:
4) More information on the variables impacting degradation- e.g., how much freeway driving, fast charges, etc. (I actually really like the web app idea for this.)
Here's an idea that could be used to estimate capacity loss based on driving behavior - simply build an app for your smart-phone which records your typical driving. This way you can run the app for a day - a week - a month - etc and just let it collect data on how you drive. Then plug this data into the simulator, combine with a handful of other parameters (climate, 80 vs 100% charging, when the charging is done, where you normally park, etc) and then provide a glide path. Use that information to show that you may or may not be able to make some of those drives without additional charging in the future.

klapauzius said:
drees said:
Mark Perry stated exactly that a number of times - if you find capacity low at some point you'd be able to "refresh" your pack by replacing the weakest ones and get a good bump in capacity.
Has anyone done that yet? I would think the Arizona Leafs would be a great testbed for that hypothesis, as they represent a time-accelerated sample of what is going to happen to all Leaf batteries eventually.

Why was this not presented as an option for the Arizona cases? My guess is, because it is not working. That would have been such a nice solution for the conundrum, swap out a part for $600 and buy another year solace from concerned owners...
From what I can tell - the battery test used to show if there are any weak outliers did not find any in the cars that have been tested. In other words - capacity degradation across the pack is happening pretty evenly and there aren't any cells significantly below the the best cells. I certainly have to imagine that if Nissan found any weak cells when they took the cars to Case Grande, they would have had them replaced if doing so would have improved usable capacity of the pack.

LEAFfan said:
I would love to hear what Mr. Palmer will say about drivers that have babied their batteries (complete opposite of his 4 variables/conditions), driven LESS than 7500 miles in LESS than one year, and STILL have lost one or two capacity bars.
It's clear from Tony's range test and Andy confirmed that the capacity gauge is pessimistic. Fixing the gauge has got to be a top priority since at a minimum it will reduce the perception of an issue for many owners.
 
tbleakne said:
I am also very skeptical about the Glide Path. Nissan has emphasized that the highest loss is correlated with higher mileage, but cycle loss of Li batteries is generally linear and does not slow down like calendar loss.
While the cycling losses themselves might be relatively small, the extra heat generated by higher mileage would certainly lead to greater calendar losses, which will hopefully slow. As Nissan's testing was accelerated, however, I doubt that even they know absolutely for sure.

Whatever the case, though, the bottom line is that the LEAF is not meeting customer expectations in hot climates, and Nissan is largely responsible for having created those expectations. In the long run, the LEAF absolutely needs to have either a more heat-tolerant battery chemistry or a TMS.

According to Green Car Reports, by the way, the upcoming Smart ED will have a liquid cooled 17.8 kWh battery pack, a range close to the LEAF's, and a total pre-incentive price of about $25K. That'll make it the least expensive production EV, proof that a TMS doesn't have to be extraordinarily expensive.
 
We dont know if the Smart ED battery will be cooled to ambient air temps or lower using the AC. We just know it will be liquid cooled.
 
walterbays said:
I'm glad I use the timer to charge to 80% finishing at 5am so it doesn't sit overnight at high SOC.
Of course if you use the timer to charge to 100% and finish at 5am or just before you need it it wouldn't be sitting overnight at high SOC either.
 
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