Update on Battery Warranty Enhancement for 2011 & 2012 LEAF

JeremyW said:

Does this update in any way affect how many quick charges the car is able to do in a day? Is there any change to the temperature gauge? From what I've been reading the '13s seem to show more temperature bars at a given temp than a 11 or 12.

Also, does quick charging more than once a day (or some other threshold) affect the warranty? If I were to quick charge 6+ times in a day and nearly cook the pack, would that count as customer abuse and void the warranty, even though the car will let you quick charge so often?

I have quick charged nearly 75 times since I got the car a year ago.

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usadiamond said:

This warranty just sounds offensive to me. A leaf with 9 bars or less is no better than a golf cart. First, false advertisement about 100 mile range BS and now warranty to guarantee 49 mile range?! I'd rather Nissan to be straight up and just tell the 1st gen Leaf owners to suck it up and prepare for their cars to run useless in a few years.
I still have all 12 bars, but only get about 60 mile range down from 80 after less than two years. #nissandisappointing

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TonyWilliams said:

usadiamond said:

This warranty just sounds offensive to me. A leaf with 9 bars or less is no better than a golf cart. First, false advertisement about 100 mile range BS and now warranty to guarantee 49 mile range?! I'd rather Nissan to be straight up and just tell the 1st gen Leaf owners to suck it up and prepare for their cars to run useless in a few years.
I still have all 12 bars, but only get about 60 mile range down from 80 after less than two years. #nissandisappointing

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Since you seem to be cross posting from Facebook, I'll repost here:

Well, I feel like a long, hard fought battle has provided something concrete that the LEAF community didn't have previously, and would not have gotten without some serious pushback. I doubt Nissan will ever use the "everything is normal" line again, but instead rightly reference the warranty.

I also doubt that the naysayers amongst the LEAF community will attack fellow advocates with such disregard concerning battery degradation.

I personally, amongst others, received some pretty vile attacks from well known folks in this very community, both LEAF and greater EV community. I won't ever forget.

This warranty is a positive step toward a future where consumers understand the limitations of this EV, and are protected at about 70% of capacity. Now I want Nissan to warn consumers at the sale point what heat AND cold will do to range.

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LEAFfan said:

mwalsh said:

Here is something that is bothering me - I am down to ~220 Gids on a charge. With the accepted threshold for bar loss being ~232 Gids, technically I should have lost a bar some time ago. Yet I still have all twelve. What is up with that?

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First of all, I don't see where you believe that 232 Gids is the 'accepted' threshold for first bar loss. The % Gids is usually around 80-81%/225-227 Gids for first bar loss, not 83%/232 Gids. I've tested many cars and every one was around 80-81% Gids when they lost their first bar. Your car will lose one soon as yours is the first I've seen to be in the 70s % and still have all 12 CBs. So I'm going to call your car an Outlier.

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downeykp said:

Tony, I for one appreciate the fact that you put your ass and your pocketbook on the line to show Nissan the errors of their ways. I think Nissan underestimated the amount of talent and intellect (of most) here on the forum.
We would not be where we are today without you and the people who helped you with range test.
Mahalo

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TonyWilliams said:

downeykp said:

Tony, I for one appreciate the fact that you put your ass and your pocketbook on the line to show Nissan the errors of their ways. I think Nissan underestimated the amount of talent and intellect (of most) here on the forum.
We would not be where we are today without you and the people who helped you with range test.
Mahalo

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I genuinely appreciate that, thanks. Folks might not realize some of the ramifications of what I tried to accomplish. Had Nissan decided to take a different path, they could have held the line that "all was normal" and sued me into oblivion with legal bills. Obviously, they could have guys like Nissan's Craig Pike in Phoenix, who was involved in testing the LEAF at their Casa Grande facility, tell a court how "wrong" I and my fellow LEAF owners were. Nissan could have paid another 100 engineers and scientists to all be singing the same tune.

I would have had to pay expert witnesses to counter their claims, in addition to the bills for my legal counsel. Heck, Nissan could have thrown out a couple of "experts" from Nissan LEAF enthusiasts groups, some of which would be more than happy to throw me under the bus. They know who they are. Even nationally recognized "plug in" advocates were working behind the scenes to discredit us (with the intention of "defending" EVs). We had other "experts" craft websites and blogs to counter my claims, who I am absolutely positive would have taken the stand with impressive education credentials and equally impressive looking graphs and charts to "prove" me wrong.

Make no mistake; I did fully expect to get sued and yes, I did have robust contingency plans for such an attack. My U.S. Marine Corps training left me with a valuable skill; the best defense is offense.

There are other more serious risks. Somebody could have been injured or killed with their cars intentionally disabled on the side of the freeway during my test. It was strongly suggested to Nissan by a fantastic EV advocate that they allow us to use their private, safe test track. The said no. Cars were damaged during the event, loading them on the tow dollies. That could have cost real money for myself and the other participants.

So, I just want to offer some insight into what myself, and others faced at the time, and what I reasonably expected to be the outcome. Yes, we really were hanging our asses out there, and backed it up with our pocketbooks; probably more than most folks realize.

i surely didn't expect this warranty as an outcome, that's for sure. Or a meeting with Nissan's leadership in Phoenix in January 2013 about these issues. Or Nissan paying almost $3000 to cover all our expenses for the Sept 15, 2012 LEAF range test in Phoenix.

Nissan is pulling itself out of this mess, and perhaps in the only way they can. I absolutely guarantee that they have learned a lot, and that will only make their 2015 LEAF with improved battery that much better. They wisely, in my opinion, skuttled the Infinti LE, and will no doubt refocus their sites on the competition from Tesla's BlueStar Gen III car for a future, far better Infiniti EV product. The future is bright for EV's and I will continue to promote and advocate for all EV's, as well as loudly criticize where I feel things have gone astray. I'm considering launching "EVcritic" this fall.

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TonyWilliams said:

Or Nissan paying almost $3000 to cover all our expenses for the Sept 15, 2012 LEAF range test in Phoenix.

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MrIanB said:

This is like getting a warranty on a tire and they give you a used tire for a replacement rather than a new one.

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scottf200 said:

In another weird way all the NYT publicity very likely helped out the supercharger program (distance between and number of them). This stuff can be a blessing in the end once a lot of the immediate pain is over.

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Charles Whalen said:

You kinda have to take a step back and look at the longer term perspective here and realize that we are in the very, very early developmental stage of lithium-powered EVs. By buying a first-model-year Volt (or a first-model-year Leaf, for that matter), you have to understand and accept that as a very early adopter, the bargain you are making, and the adventure that you are willingly undertaking, is to basically be an extended beta tester for the avant-garde, technologically-leading-edge automakers (principally GM, Tesla, and Nissan) in their early developmental process of their first-generation lithium-powered EVs and to assist them in their ongoing learning process in that regard.

This is a very exciting time and that is an exciting role to play, but you also have to understand and be willing to accept some of the risks and responsibilities that come with that. These three leading-edge automakers are taking enormous risks by doing this and making these second-generation EVs, with commercial intent and commitment this time, on this second go-round, but without a demonstrated, proven market for them; and we early adopters have to likewise be a partner with them and be willing to take a few (much smaller in comparison) risks on our end too. It’s very much a shared-risk and shared-adventure partnership in that regard. Above all, it really properly requires a highly-educated and technically-savvy early-adopter customer to undertake this role...

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MrIanB said:

So if I understand this battery warranty, the replacement pack will have a 9 or so max recharge capacity instead of the original 12 bars? This is like getting a warranty on a tire and they give you a used tire for a replacement rather than a new one. This to me is unacceptable and the Leaf will be going back to Nissan in 21 months and moving on to another maker.

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Volusiano said:

The way I interpret what there is a conditional event (for lack of a better word) going on here. And that conditional event is the introduction of the warranty for the 2011-2012 LEAFs, and part of this warranty introduction is the SW update, all happening here in June 2013.

So the way I read it is that if you already lost more than 3 bars before June 2013 (before the conditional event), they still would honor the warranty retroactively, because at the time you lost your 4th bar (or more), Nissan can't blame you for not having the sw update installed because it was not available at that time yet, until now.

But now that the sw update is available, as part of the conditional event in June 2013, they expect you to come in to do the sw update. If you don't come in and do the sw update now, but claim your warranty say a year from now, they will not honor it unless you do the sw update first.

Nissan didn't write that sentence to give you a loop hole to not do the sw update. On the contrary, Nissan wrote that sentence to close the loop hole. Why else would they have written it like that? The whole point is that the sw update will result in less warranty claim, because the capacity reading will be less pessimistic. So why would Nissan write a clause in there to allow users to not do the sw update so that their capacity reading remains pessimistic so that they can claim their warranty sooner? It just doesn't make any sense.

The only sensible interpretation of that clause is Nissan saying "We'll let those of you who rely on the pessimistic reading to claim your warranty get away with it because your capacity loss happened before we were able to tighten up the reading with the software update." It also implies to mean that "Now that we have a sw update to tighten up the capacity reading, everyone else who claims the warranty after June 2013 (the conditional event) will need to make their claim based on the tightened-up reading caused by the sw update." For sure I doubt that it means "Oh, but we'll give you a loop hole whereby you don't have to get a sw update to tighten up the reading, and we will also honor the warranty after June 2013 just the same if you're smart enough to use our loop hole to continue having the pessimistic reading so you can claim your warranty sooner."

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int displayCapacityBars = realCapacityBars();
while (displayCapacityBars < 9 && monthsInService() < 60 && odometerMiles() < 60000) {
    displayCapacityBars++;
}

MrIanB said:

So if I understand this battery warranty, the replacement pack will have a 9 or so max recharge capacity instead of the original 12 bars? This is like getting a warranty on a tire and they give you a used tire for a replacement rather than a new one. This to me is unacceptable and the Leaf will be going back to Nissan in 21 months and moving on to another maker.

Ian B

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Valdemar said:

Not requiring the update would help to fix trust issues between Nissan and its current customers, otherwise I'm not so sure this new warranty isn't just a new PR stunt.

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Volusiano said:

Valdemar said:

Not requiring the update would help to fix trust issues between Nissan and its current customers, otherwise I'm not so sure this new warranty isn't just a new PR stunt.

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Or the fact that they only gave you a lame 30%/9-bar warranty in 5 year is enough to tell you whether it's just a PR stunt, or whether they really put the money where their mouth was when they let their spokesman Mark Perry claim 20% average loss in 5 year and 30% average loss in 10 years in the beginning of the roll-out.

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