Meeting with Nissan, Phoenix, Jan 8, 2013, 6pm, drinks prior

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Phil, what's the function of the camera in the charge port door? Is it associated with the Around View Monitor? If so, how does it see the environment if the charge door is closed?
 
Phil, just curious, why do you think the emergency brake change? Is the foot actuation mechanical...and less expensive? Was this a cost cutting measure? Or have there been problems with the original?

Also, thanks to all who attended and represented the Leaf ownership community. Your advocacy benefits us all, both in direct conversation with Nissan, and through the dissemination of info. here.

Gary
 
Thanks, Phil. Was there any word about these UI changes being propagated to 2011-2012 models as software upgrades? E.g., SOC%, forced 80% mode, climate temp for timer/remote. We can make some good use of that too!

Also, do you know if you can force a slower 3 kW charge when plugged to a 6+ kW EVSE? Would that have any effect on battery longevity?

Thanks again.
 
Randy said:
LEAFfan said:
thankyouOB said:
any word from the Chels on last night?
or efforts to get Nissan to fill in our questionnaire.
I am particularly interested in their fudge on the battery price issue. is there a date yet?
my birthday is at the end of March...that would be a nice gift.

Andy said sometime in the Spring, Mar./April.

Translation: The price is so high right now that you'd laugh at us if we told you...

for the 2012's? ya, you probably nailed that one. better to get rid of them first before revealing the price of the 2013's otherwise they wont sell.
 
TonyWilliams said:
Well, you guys are quick to dismiss without having heard a word. Yes, it is PR. That's your modern world. But, many of you may be interested to know that both of those speaking (Andy and Billy) personally drive a LEAF at home.
...
I think it's because of what we read at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=257079#p257079" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; last night.

waidy said:
Great photos with descriptions. Thank you so much, Phil. I guess I don't need to go to San Francisco Saturday to see it. You photos save me a trip.
Another thank you to Phil for his great pics and descriptions. I'm glad he took pics and described some of the more interesting stuff on the '13.

The tow CHAdeMO generator + charger that Nissan brought looks almost identical to they brought to Alt Car Expo late last year.

Per http://sfbayleafs.org/event/sf-bayleafsggeva-january-meeting/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, the '13 Leaf will be shown in south SJ. That might be a tad better for you but I know it's not that close still. It's a GREAT location for me though. :D
 
Phil, did you notice that the J receptical looked different? Another person and I thought it looked like it had heftier pins to handle the 30A charging.
 
Any word on whether Nissan is using more accurate instrumentation to keep track of energy stored in battery pack (since they were blaming the instruments for part of the reported battery capacity loss in hot climates)?
 
Stoaty said:
Any word on whether Nissan is using more accurate instrumentation to keep track of energy stored in battery pack (since they were blaming the instruments for part of the reported battery capacity loss in hot climates)?
Aside from Andy's statements that they have tightened up the accuracy of the capacity bars in the 2013 version, and that they will correct the sloppiness in the earlier versions via a software update in the "spring," I don't recall anything else. As Volusiano reported, Andy said that they made the bars in the 2011/2012 read conservatively so that no one would ever have less capacity than the bars stated. Or stated another way, although my 10 bar car should be at approx. 79% per the 2011 version 1 manual, according to Andy, I haven't really lost that much capacity. (My car went 69 miles in the Phoenix Range Test in September. Assuming a new car would go 84 miles, my range was 82% of that.)
 
I expected the video of the meeting to be posted by this morning. Since it hasn't been, I'm guessing that the lawyers are having some heartburn about posting it unedited. So in the absence of the video, and at the risk of having my faulty memory exposed if the video is later posted, I offer the following:
My overall sense of the meeting is that most of the audience was primarily interested in the battery degradation problem and in the end weren't satisfied with what they heard. At least a couple of people reported being at 8 bars and were very concerned about their range. Other folks had more bars but were equally concerned about their range.

My take on the meeting is that:
1. Nissan thinks it has solved the battery issue by coming out with this warranty.
2. Nissan has no intention (at this point at least) of going to a fluid cooling system for the battery. When more than one person suggested that such a system would solve the problem, Andy was pretty clear in stating that "there are many ways to dissipate heat, and fluid is only one of them." He really doesn't think it is the way to go. He also said they have no "Dubai Leaf," or any plans for a "desert version."

I think that Nissan really has no solution to the battery problem, isn't really interested in the AZ/hot climate market, and thinks that hot climate folks should be happy to have a leaf last 6-7 years (this assumes a one-time bump during the warranty period, followed by a drop back down to 8-9 bars by year 6 or 7.

Anyway, in my opinion the frustration/disappointment on the audience's part was palpable.

In spite of all of that, I was encouraged by the meeting. I believe Andy is sincere and felt he was honest with his responses. It would have been pretty easy to avoid coming to Phoenix or to have someone else do it instead. Billy and Jeff also struck me as sincere and genuinely interested in resolving our issues. Unfortunately I just don't think they really get what our issue is.
 
leafkabob said:
Unfortunately I just don't think they really get what our issue is.
Bummer! Although I'm sure there's no shortage of opinions and ideas, I'd have hoped that the question list at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11136" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; would've captured part/much of what many hot climate owners want. Problem is, from what I'm hearing, the meeting didn't go that way at all.

Perhaps the action item for every dissatisfied hot climate current Leaf owner/lessee is to spell out what they'd like to see for both themselves (e.g. buyback, convert sale to lease, etc.) and the longer term (e.g. stop sale of Leaf in AZ, TX, hot climates, better disclosures for hot climate folks, etc.) and log it with Nissan? Some of that probably has been done by filing complaints. Nissan can then figure out where the overlap and buckets are...

I know many folks have posted what they'd like but it's probably now buried in one of many threads, including the 500+ page one.
 
philipscoggins said:
Seems strange to pick Phoenix for the town hall if they weren't going to listen/show concern to what the majority of Phoenix residents are concerned about.
I think they did listen and show concern. They just don't have anything to offer that was satisfying. They think the new warranty should do it. I think most AZ 2011/2012 purchasers don't agree.
 
leafkabob said:
philipscoggins said:
Seems strange to pick Phoenix for the town hall if they weren't going to listen/show concern to what the majority of Phoenix residents are concerned about.
I think they did listen and show concern. They just don't have anything to offer that was satisfying. They think the new warranty should do it. I think most AZ 2011/2012 purchasers don't agree.
Sounds like it's time for a poll. :D
 
leaf kabob said:
Unfortunately I just don't think they really get what our issue is.
What surprised me was that they don't seem to understand how the instrumentation in the car can make range disappear at a much faster rate than the capacity bars would indicate. I believe that few people are aware, or have acknowledged, that disproportionate amount of usable capacity is lost between the very low battery warning and full charge. At least two cars during the range test seemed to go substantially farther after the low battery warning than one would have expected.

Additionally, the guessometer, or the DTE gauge, isn't helping things either. Many owners either take this number literally or use some approximation to derive range projections from it. I think it's safe to say that the guessometer is widly optimistic on a full charge when the car is new. Contrast that with a pessimistic reading in heat-affected cars. This discrepancy can make it difficult to asses how far the LEAF will go. Also recall that Tony had trouble making an accurate projection from Gids for several cars during the range test.

Note that I'm not mentioning this to discount the issue of battery capacity loss. I'm simply trying to explain how poor or inaccurate instrumentation can compound the problem, and make life even more difficult for affected owners.
VK6iSY
 
leafkabob said:
2. Nissan has no intention (at this point at least) of going to a fluid cooling system for the battery. When more than one person suggested that such a system would solve the problem, Andy was pretty clear in stating that "there are many ways to dissipate heat, and fluid is only one of them." He really doesn't think it is the way to go. He also said they have no "Dubai Leaf," or any plans for a "desert version."
I remember Andy said something to the effect that the LEAF battery uses air cooling to dissipate the heat. I think it's misleading to even say this because it may lead people to incorrectly think that there's "forced" air cooling by fan in the LEAF. Fan-forced air cooling in the LEAF battery is not even there as far as I can tell. The only heat dissipation on the LEAF battery is simply through direct thermal transfer between the battery packs through the battery outer shell casing.

leafkabob said:
In spite of all of that, I was encouraged by the meeting. I believe Andy is sincere and felt he was honest with his responses. It would have been pretty easy to avoid coming to Phoenix or to have someone else do it instead. Billy and Jeff also struck me as sincere and genuinely interested in resolving our issues. Unfortunately I just don't think they really get what our issue is.
I on the other hand think they really do get what our issue is but are not genuinely interested in resolving our issue. They never once during the 1.5 hour town hall asked what the audience thinks it would take to resolve the issue to the audience's satisfaction. I thought that this should have been the HEART of the discussion, the PRIMARY reason for them to come all the way out to Phoenix, to address and discuss the issue of how to make it right directly with the actual people who are affected and are living day to day with the issue.

Even if they don't have a technical solution, like TMS or new heat-resistant chemistry, there are other non-technical solutions that they can still come up with to remedy the issue if they really want to. A better-than-9-bar warranty specifically just for hot climate 2011 and 2012 owners would be a good start.
 
Volusiano said:
They never once during the 1.5 hour town hall asked what the audience thinks it would take to resolve the issue to the audience's satisfaction.
That's a good observation. They seemed to be on the defensive the entire time. Whether that was intentional or not, I don't know.
 
LEAFfan said:
Phil, did you notice that the J receptical looked different? Another person and I thought it looked like it had heftier pins to handle the 30A charging.
The pins are always the same diameter, even on 70A inlets. But the inlet is a new Yazaki design. It looked to me as if it may very well have thermal monitoring, but I couldn't take it apart to confirm. =)

-Phil
 
TonyWilliams said:
Many of the modifications to the 2013 were direct results of user input. The North American battery does have a slightly different chemistry than Japan (sorry, no hard tech data).
Not so much interested in tech data as in the functional significance of the "slightly different chemistry". Why is the chemistry different for U.S.? More heat tolerant? Slightly higher capacity? Red, white and blue colors for the electrolyte?
 
Stoaty said:
Not so much interested in tech data as in the functional significance of the "slightly different chemistry". Why is the chemistry different for U.S.? More heat tolerant? Slightly higher capacity? Red, white and blue colors for the electrolyte?
If I recall correctly, Andy insinuated that the battery chemistry has been tweaked, which was at least partially motivated by the issues owners have encountered. Can't really comment on electrolyte color ;-)
 
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