Warning: Battery Replacement Cost Increase (now $8500)

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This price hike really is the last straw as, I went to the new LEAF event and really like their ProPilot, I was seriously considering the 2019 60KWh LEAF e-plus, but now I will not get one and not recommend any Nissan vehicles to anyone based on their business practices. I'm glad I got mine certified pre-owned so didn't pay nearly as much as MSRP, the deprecation on the other hand will pretty much wipe out any operational cost savings by the time I get rid of the car.

I wish there are businesses that specialize in swapping the LEAF cells by reusing good cells from salvaged packs, can this be a profitable venture if price is set at about half of what Nissan is charging for new packs?
 
Providing an affordable battery replacement option should be a first and foremost commitment of every EV manufacturer. If a car can't live to 200,000 miles, its really not a car just ready to compete with ICE cars. yet

Tesla is better at supporting cars long term. Most Model S cars that have reached 200,000 miles are still being well supported by Tesla, including offers of a $10,000-$12,000 battery replacement pack.

Only a matter of time, before a lot of Leaf enthusiasts will move to the $35,000 Tesla car...
 
SageBrush said:
cwerdna said:
McHoffa said:
The way I've been treated by Tesla so far is like night and day. Also, two 1800 mile road trips later I can say this is the best EV available.
Sure, when the company has lost north of $5.5 billion so far (maybe $6 billion, need to update my spreadsheet) and has racked up debt of over $10 billion (see page 59 of http://ir.tesla.com/node/18946/html). They lost over $700 million last quarter alone (see page 5 and note those figures are in thousands).

It's "easy" to create products with great performance, provide good service and create a great SC network when making money or just breaking even "doesn't" matter.
Ahem.

Build a Gigafactory
Build a PV factory
Build not one but TWO car production lines
Build out the Supercharger network at a pace unheard of, a magnitude faster than all the others combined.

... And expect to be profitable from Q3 onwards.

Exactly... they could have been profitable a long time ago if they were fine with just making the S and X. But no, they had to keep spending money to create the Model 3, the best car I've driven in my 24 years of driving.
 
SageBrush said:
Usaverageguy said:
The Nissan dealer did call me back and agree to install the battery at my price of $8200. I do not blame the dealer for the problem. It is Nissan that has quietly increased the battery price and yet allowed buyers to still believe they could buy a use Leaf and replace the battery at $5500 plus some labor. And nowhere have I ever heard of an adapter kit necessary to do the replacement.

To be clear. I still love my Leaf. It is a well built car. It is comfortable to drive and I have had no maintenance issues with it. Now that I am getting a new battery and with it better range I am even happier with it. But at this point I would still never recommend a Leaf to anyone. They are too expensive to buy and then have to essentially throw away after because of the battery life issue. Other EV's with liquid cooled battery packs have longer lives and would be a much better choice.
People hate expensive repairs. They will go out and buy something new for 3-5x the repair cost and grumble less.
I'm not sure it is rational.
It's rational, because who wants to spend that much money on an older car that's bound to start having other issues, vs a new car that's in warranty. I used to only drive cheap used cars. Sure it cost me less, but man, when you suddenly have to come up with a couple thousand to be able to get to work, etc, or you get stranded on the side of the road multiple times in a year, it really sucks. It's worth the new car cost to avoid that.
 
WetEV said:
mihird said:
Only a matter of time, before a lot of Leaf enthusiasts will move to the $35,000 Tesla car...

Assuming there ever is a $35,000 Tesla car.
For those waiting for that one, their delivery estimate just dropped from 6-9 months to 5-8 months. It's coming.
 
cwerdna said:
SageBrush said:
cwerdna said:
Sure, when the company has lost north of $5.5 billion so far (maybe $6 billion, need to update my spreadsheet) and has racked up debt of over $10 billion (see page 59 of http://ir.tesla.com/node/18946/html). They lost over $700 million last quarter alone (see page 5 and note those figures are in thousands).

It's "easy" to create products with great performance, provide good service and create a great SC network when making money or just breaking even "doesn't" matter.
Ahem.

Build a Gigafactory
Build a PV factory
Build not one but TWO car production lines
Build out the Supercharger network at a pace unheard of, a magnitude faster than all the others combined.

... And expect to be profitable from Q3 onwards.
Sigh... I already went thru this before: http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=509755#p509755 and http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=509813#p509813.

The fanboys like to claim Tesla is profitable with their cars. Ok. There is positive gross profit. But that ALREADY subtracts out the amortized cost of the above capex. Building all those things you described comes out of CASH and doesn't directly by itself upfront count as part of expense. For vehicles, it is spread out over time as part of cost of automotive revenues which fanboys like to point out is profitable and also make the claim that margins are higher than everyone else. (But, it seems like other automakers (at least Ford and GM, haven't checked all others) don't have a separate line item for R&D. They include it in cost of automotive revenues, so of course their apparent gross margin will be lower and Tesla's will be inflated.)
You keep a spreadsheet on Tesla's losses per quarter?

"The fanboys"?

and, with that, I'm outta here...

I love my Tesla. My Leaf would just be "ok" if it weren't losing battery capacity to the point of being useless for us. Thanks to my experience with Nissan over this and the 2g -> 3g upgrade and my great experience for the past 5 months with my Model 3, next car will be another Tesla.

If being happy with a product because it looks good, performs well, and is better than any of the EV competition (at least for the foreseeable future) makes me a fanboy, then so be it. I was considering a new Leaf for our second car next year just six months ago. Never again, and I will steer everyone away from them now.
 
McHoffa said:
You keep a spreadsheet on Tesla's losses per quarter?
Yes, so I can keep track of the actual numbers for each year they report (and quarters for when an entire year hasn't passed), add them up AND have URLs and page numbers of the actual sources (from their SEC filings). All of this means I have an easy reference and don't need to keep repeating work.

Previously, I had some totals and even posted them, but that was years ago, so I'd keep having to refer back, add on the new numbers and so on. That's a waste of time.
 
Politics aside, can we confirm pack replacements are really $8500? I called a dealer today and they said anywhere from $4k to $9k, seems like quite the range...
 
proudapron said:
Politics aside, can we confirm pack replacements are really $8500? I called a dealer today and they said anywhere from $4k to $9k, seems like quite the range...
Well, the floor would seem to be $5499 + tax, labor and possible installation kit (http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=17168).

If you need it done, then tell them you want it for $4K. Did you talk to the service dept or sales?
 
Anybody going to buy into the FENIX replacement battery system?,


Well, I just did. $150 down payment to getting a battery that will never degrade* - The form said 93 in stock before I paid. So 7 other people bought-in. Was it you?

Never worry about a degrading battery ever again!

Reserve your never-degrading battery now!
Click here: http://fenixpower.wpengine.com/leafbattery
- - -
* - There will be some sort of monthly payment. Not sure on the particulars just yet.

fenix.jpg



https://www.instagram.com/p/BoQg8TLnIoG/?taken-by=ubuygas
 
UBUYGAS said:
Anybody going to buy into the FENIX replacement battery system?,


Well, I just did. $150 down payment to getting a battery that will never degrade* - The form said 93 in stock before I paid. So 7 other people bought-in. Was it you?

Never worry about a degrading battery ever again!

Reserve your never-degrading battery now!
Click here: http://fenixpower.wpengine.com/leafbattery
- - -
* - There will be some sort of monthly payment. Not sure on the particulars just yet.
That's a pretty ridiculous claim about never degrading. I just skimmed what they're claiming now.

The modules all degrade pretty evenly. Having a single bad module is an exception and outlier (e.g. http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21700) . They really are going to get some place to dismount an over 600 lb pack, open it up, swap out modules and put it back?

I don't know who his partner and engineering staff are, but from looking at https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbysinger/, I'm concerned he doesn't have the EE and manufacturing knowledge to pull this off. I wouldn't be surprised if he runs into some serious obstacles after spending a ton of time and money doing investigation and development, only to find that he can't make it work at the prices he's quoting or significantly less than what Nissan wants.

The discussion should probably continue at http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=26597 and perhaps that thread should be re-titled to cover specifically Fenix Power.
 
Negating the obvious "never say never" statement, a lifelong lease is just as outlandish.

But the concept is valid and it would be a lot of cash flow. He states they are set for the first 6,000 units so obviously quite a bit more going on that we can see or exposed to at this point.

He says that there is currently no "buy it" proposal and returning existing pack is "not required" but would cost more as in large deposit required when the normal process would have no deposit.

But the ideology that this would be more than a bridge to another EV is not really valid. This would be great for someone who does not want to drop down to a gasser while waiting for the "next best thing" which after all this time, still always seems to be "next year."

What I see is a lot of market for someone who would do this 2-4 years but beyond that? Not seeing it. Right now, $200 a month for 30 kwh to a LEAFer who owns a car valued at $5,000 is a great option but not a long term one.

So the real question becomes how does service termination work? Is the original pack kept on ice and replaced when the customer ends their lease? What if they sell the car and the new customer is unwilling to continue the lease and is not ok with buying the pack?

Will the entire 30 kwh be available or subject to a "Volt-like" BMS process?

All in all, its like any new business venture; The initial info creates way more questions than it answers. The only thing I can say for sure is that there is definitely a need for this.
 
I came back in here to see if this rumor was true and it would seem to be the case (battery price increase). With that said, while it stinks, I think some things need to be kept in mind.

1) Nissan is not making these battery packs anymore since they have a new model out. Continuing to make the older packs on an "as needed" basis is obviously going to increase the price since they will not be making them in bulk anymore. This is also for the Leaf - from what I've heard, a pack for something like a Bolt and typical Tesla are twice that price being in the $15K+ range just for the packs.

2) Maybe the packs just need to be viewed as a major repair item for EVs just like an engine or transmission is on an ICE vehicle. Yes, it's outlandishly expensive, but it is what it is. What do people do when they have a crazy high repair bill on their car? Often they will ditch it and move on - people should probably see this as standard practice for EVs as well. An engine and transmission are generally not eight grand, but some can be. It sucks as the cars would probably be next to perfect otherwise, but it is what it is.

3) This is still the biggest hurdle with EVs and it's that battery packs are still prohibitively expensive. Sure, they are coming down in price, but they're still expensive. It's also why I have said repeatedly that I still think EVs are too expensive to go mainstream yet for us poor people. Buying used was, and probably still will be, the path I take when/if I'm able to get into an EV down the road. However, I'm increasingly leaning towards a PHEV over a used Leaf for the very reasons we are talking about. I would not be in a position anytime soon after buying a used EV of any make/model to replace a pack financially (my problem obviously).

I'm personally not convinced that battery packs are going to come down enough in price to negate any of these issues given what they are made out of. Even replacement battery packs for phones and other electronics often cost a significant percentage of what the thing they are powering cost in the first place (not all, but some). I would like to see Renault's approach adopted by Nissan, Tesla, Chevy, and everyone else - knock the price of the battery pack off of the car to start with. So your $30K Leaf (or whatever) now costs closer to $20K (or lower) and allow the purchaser to lease the battery pack instead. Sure, that will add up over time, but you don't have to worry about replacing the pack out of pocket down the road as the company would just replace it as part of the battery lease deal. Of course you could also just lease an EV entirely to begin with, but still. I also expect auto makers to engineer in obsolescence into this tech to force people into new EVs down the road. Like others have said, this opens up possibilities for 3rd party vendors, but that's not a cheap operation to start and demand would have to be high enough. I'd argue the bulk of the people buying EVs at the moment are probably making enough money to simply swap out the car altogether rather than worry about a repair.
 
An initial battery pack size, that keeps the vehicle useful for the life of the vehicle 10-15 years/200,000 miles will make it bearable to purchase into an expensive replacement pack.

I think, the 60Kwh sized battery packs should continue to give at least 125 mile range well up to 200K miles....

At what size will the pack stabilize (manufacturers will no longer be motivated to keep improving the battery capacity) is anybody's guess...
Until we reach those intersection points of a stable battery size, large enough battery capacity to last 10-15 years...or after market companies step in to provide replacement packs for EVs....when will battery pack replacements become a financially viable decision..is up in the air.
 
jlv said:
From their website:
and a subscription model of less than $200/mo.
People are really willing to pay over $2K/year to lease a battery for a car valued at $5K-10K?

When alternatives requires a $30,000+ purchase

or financing $8500 for a new pack... Yeah... there will be people willing to do this.
 
I am one of those people. Lost one of my biggest clients, making 1/4 of the money I made 2 years ago. Divorced last month. house in foreclosure. selling it and moving into an apartment. Don't have the capital to buy or lease a new car. I have my 5.5-year old LEAF that the only thing wrong is the battery. $200 a month is very doable. The time not spent at the CHAdeMO each month will generate this $200

(I also have a car that is special, I have around $8000 in upgrades that I don't want to move to another LEAF or can't, Like my Sunroof, That was $1140, Can't move it, would have to buy a new one. 1000W stereo was $3000, I could move most of it but would have to do a bunch of the work over. I have 6 dashcams all with hidden wires run through the car, don't want to do that work again, I have Air horns, I have a spare tire hidden under the trunk floor. I have LED Door entry lights)

For me, this aftermarket battery is exactly what I want. And it's going to be 30kWh!!! even more, range than I had before.


DaveinOlyWA said:
jlv said:
From their website:
and a subscription model of less than $200/mo.
People are really willing to pay over $2K/year to lease a battery for a car valued at $5K-10K?

When alternatives requires a $30,000+ purchase

or financing $8500 for a new pack... Yeah... there will be people willing to do this.
 
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