Firetruck41 wrote:Per the single comment I could find related to this, as I suspected, Nissan (marketing) corporate does not intend to use 30kwh batts in old cars. No surprise there. Until we know the technological hurdles, it remains to be seen if there will be a way to use the 30kwh pack in an "old" Leaf (without Nissan's blessing, of course).
This might be Nissan engineering, not marketing.
As an engineer, I'd want to be somewhat cautious in putting a different battery in an older car. Might be a firmware compatibility problem, or perhaps other issues. The only way to be real sure is to instrument the communications and test over a range of conditions. If this is your car, of course, this is fun. Not so fun when it is a customer's car.
Testing costs money. Even if no changes are needed or unexpected issues turn up.
So is there a positive return on investment? If not, why should Nissan spend the resources on this? Even if there is, this has to be second priority to getting the car with the 30kWh battery into production.
Now, a year or two from now, with larger margin and larger expected sales, the answer might be different. And once the production of the 24kWh battery is ramping down, there may be savings from not supporting the old battery and just switching to the newer technology.
(Disclosure: I once worked in automotive electronics design.)