has anyone actually paid for an out of warranty battery replacement

This is the reply I got from our local dealer service advisor for my questions on the replacement.


I checked with my parts department and he called Nissan, but they are not giving him any info. We did find that you can replaced the cells one at time. The cells are $300 a piece, but they will not send them to us without an open repair order, due to you have to be specially trained to replace them and they will not sell the cells to the public. They would not give him power ratings for the battery.

I haven't heard of cell replacement before and I am not sure this would be a good idea due to drastic imbalance with the non-replaced cells.

Thank you all for your continued input.

Cell replacement helps if there are truly bad cells in the pack, those will typically raise an ECU error code. If no ECU error code then chances are all cells are more or less evenly degraded and changing just a couple would be a waste of money as it won't make that much of a difference. I suppose you could make an economic case for a DIY job if the cells were available for direct purchase, but paying a dealer for 5hrs of labor at $130/hr or so plus the parts to get a couple of mile range back doesn't make sense. That said, it doesn't hurt to use Leaf Spy to get an idea if there are maybe some modules which are significantly worse than the others but not bad enough to throw an ECU code. Usually the degradation is more or less even however.

Replacing cells instead of the pack is a good idea only if the pack is generally in excellent shape but one or a few cells are bad. In that case they would be covered under the 8 year warranty against battery defects.

My 24 kWh battery pack was replaced today (Wed) for an additional (mostly labor) cost of $968.87. Took ~4 hrs (plus some time for charging pack so I could drive back home). I don't have Leaf Spy capability to evaluate pack after charging 100% when I arrived home.

Additional to what?

MikeD said:

powersurge: The 2011-2012 24kWh Leafs require some extra parts that the later 24kWh Leafs don't (for which my dealership charged me ~$350 -- probably cheaper buying these directly?) . But the $4588.98 for the battery pack itself seems to be a competitive price. I will soon have some labor (etc?) charges after the install is done.

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Please make a post of your battery replacement experience when it is done!!! I am sure everyone on this site will be interested...

MikeD said:

My 24 kWh battery pack was replaced today (Wed) for an additional (mostly labor) cost of $968.87. Took ~4 hrs (plus some time for charging pack so I could drive back home). I don't have Leaf Spy capability to evaluate pack after charging 100% when I arrived home.

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Thank you!

Can you please share more details?
What was total cost?
Location?
What was mileage and bars on old batter?
Did they tell you what the new warranty on the battery is?

AR

DrR:
When it recently became necessary to frequently charge twice (or more) daily and there were local destinations that I could barely get there and back, it was clear that I needed a battery pack replacement -- and 24kWh has been sufficient for at least 8 years. Battery capacity bars were now down to 7 @ 72,326 miles.

I called the service dept of Chattanooga East Nissan (where I got the car May 12 2011) to discuss the replacement in person, but everyone was busy and I was asked to leave a message. On second thought I decided to use the available Chat instead, since I could compose my total cost quote request in advance -- giving important details like my Leaf's VIN -- then paste it into chat. I did this maybe a couple days before Thurs morning Jan 16th when I got a call from service rep Jeff saying total cost would be $6366.17. I asked him to let me think it over maybe a few days, but ended up calling him back an hour or so later to tell Jeff to go ahead. He told me if I could prepay the parts, the new pack could be installed quicker, so I asked if he could handle me arriving within the hour with a check. "Yes", he could. So after arriving and waiting maybe an hour or two or so for them to check out my Leaf's battery and to do what else was needed, then signing several forms I wrote the check which was EFT processed: the pre-paid parts total was $5436.31. They then ran the paperwork past Nissan, but it was rejected initially as needing a couple more forms for me to sign. One was for agreeing I did not want to keep my old battery pack (as otherwise I would have to pay a $1000 additional core charge).

On Wed morning Jan 22 about 8:30 Jeff called to say the pack and all other needed parts had arrived, and they were ready to do the work any time that day and that the pack replacement would take about 4 hours or so. I arrived at the service dept with my Leaf by 9:30, and opted to wait there. They finished the work after about 4 1/2 hours, but wanted to charge the battery about another 1 1/2 hours before I left for home.

The following are the parts used for my 2011 SL Leaf (my understanding is that only the pack and the last two listed parts should be necessary for 2013+ MY 24kWh battery replacement):
295B0-9RB9E - Battery Assy Main - $4588.98
740D0-3NF1A - Bracket Assy (2) - $86.32
297C1-3NF0A - Disconnect Switch - $96.54
01125-N0111 - Bolt (10) - $2.13
748N2-3NF0A - Battery Splash Cover - $33.82
748N3-3NF0A - Battery Splash Cover - $22.48
744J7-5SB0A - Frame Plate (2) - N/C
01456-00031 - Screw (4) - N/C
Parts Sales Tax - $500.55
Parts Total - $5436.31

Labor - $831.88
Environmental Disposal/Shop Supply Fee - $54.95
Labor Sales Tax - $82.04
Labor Total - $968.87

Grand Total - $6405.18

I don't know what the new warranty is, I did not ask (as it is unlikely to be useful to me).

This looks like no increase at all from the original replacement price. Where all these stories about $8-9k replacements came from? Were people being quoted 30kwh packs for their 24kwh cars?

Valdemar said:

This looks like no increase at all from the original replacement price. Where all these stories about $8-9k replacements came from?

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https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=543241#p543241 has a pointer to a well-known tech (Aaron) back when confirmed the price had gone up and that it'd be $7k to $7.5k to get it done.

Valdemar said:

Were people being quoted 30kwh packs for their 24kwh cars?

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Possibly but I don't think so. I believe the 30 kWh pack was even more money. See https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=561349#p561349.

If it was a 24kwh pack then they may be putting them "on sale" because they sat on the shelf for several years. That isn't necessarily bad, as long as they were stored at low SOC and low to moderate temps.

I think the original 2011-12 non-CW battery pack part no (what I replaced) is 295B0-3NA7A and the current price for that part is typical of that at NissanPartsDeal.com which is $7691.00 vs their 295B0-9RB9E (what was my replacement) price which is $4739.82 (although my dealer only charged $4588.98), which is $2951.18 more. Perhaps a past increase in the exact original battery pack part played a role in the story...

I suspect that there are a lot of internal differences between the 3NA7A and the 9RB9E part. The former probably uses cabling, buss bars, controller, etc that were changed beginning in 2013 and the battery modules themselves have changed more than once (improved) since then, I think.

I can verify that the initial state of charge for my new battery pack was about 6 miles (according to Jeff) and is why I had to wait longer to get my Leaf before driving home. (BTW they offered to drive me home (and back) during the wait, but I chose to spend that time at the dealership.)

Valdemar said:

This looks like no increase at all from the original replacement price. Where all these stories about $8-9k replacements came from? Were people being quoted 30kwh packs for their 24kwh cars?

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Here is the actual quote. It isnt made up.

I was also quoted $8500 for a 24kWh replacement from Boulder Nissan a few weeks ago.

Greedy dealers? Where's the breakdown for parts and labor?

I was quoted in the $5,500 range by my dealer (just verbal quote, but no reason for them to offer unrealistically low number) before trading my 2015 in on the 2019.

To all with high quotes: Try again but this time ask specifically for battery pack 295B0-9RB9E (w/o CW) or 295B0-9RB9D (w/ CW), which ever is appropriate for your Leaf.

goldbrick said:

I'm wondering if that $1000 core charge will bring down the cost of salvage packs. Isn't the going rate for a used pack about $2500 now?

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I'm no expert, but the pack I bought a few months ago was about $2000, and $400 of that was shipping. It's a 2011 model. Interesting to hear that there is a $1000 core charge. I'm wondering if a dealer would sell it to me for $1100 and I could just load it on my equipment trailer. (I'm using for energy storage, if it isn't clear.)

^That is exactly what I was thinking. In my current house, I'm planning to go grid-tied but if I buy my parents' place in the future, it might make sense to go off-grid. I haven't done the math but it seems like a used Leaf battery is much cheaper than just about any other battery storage at the moment and if a used pack could be had for $1200 or something that makes it even better.

Good luck with your project and feel free to post any details here. There is an off-topic area that has a bunch of solar installs and such.

If you have the tools and talent you could take your battery apart and firesale the modules for $25 each.
There's 96 of them so you get a lot more than a $1,000 back real quick.