Nissan did on several occasions come out and say "we've tested the Leaf in hash conditions". We all know they did, they've released videos of some of it. Driving in water, getting stuck by simulated lightning, etc. You have to assume they hot climate testing is an "of course they did". After all they have a proving grounds right there in Arizona! So we definitely have expectation that if they had tested them there, and are selling them there, they should work fine there.
The battery problem may be they performed accelerated life testing which sometimes doesn't work the same as real-world calendar tests. It's looking to me like the Battery ECU (LBC) is also "jumping the gun" to some degree and reporting more loss in most of the cars than has really occurred. Software bug? Simple error based on not being able to do actual real-world real-time tests? Possibly.
I still think they'll step up and fix this somehow, but engineering teams (and brass) in large multi-national auto corporations move slowly. Consumers with a broken car rightly expect it fixed right away, but it may take them more time to accurately deduce what happened, develop a solution, test it (and you can bet it will be through!), and then finally get it in our hands.
In my opinion, they should have stepped up and immediately opened a personal dialog with their customers whenever a Leaf reports trouble. Until the Leaf and it's associated tech are well-proven, this is a good tactic, and it sure seemed like they were doing this with us at first anyway. There are many reports of them "flying engineers in" from Japan to look at problematic cars. Maybe this already happened and they are presently hard at work on a solution (one could hope). But the lack of expedient and direct communication with their customers is hard to overlook, whatever the outcome finally is.
When it's a single car with a weird problem, they should definitely step up! Sainty should never have had to experience what he did. They should have instantly given him a Loaner car (Either a Leaf or at least something nicer, like an Infiniti), and then looked for the problem. Seems obvious to me this isn't just an "absent-minded customer" situation. However, most of this, to me, sounds like the Dealer's screw-up, not Nissan's. (directly anyway) We all know how poor the Nissan dealer network is (on average) in dealing with the Leaf. I think many dealers see the Leaf is an end to their "way of life" and a threat to continued business, and don't really want it to succeed anyway. Unfortunately for Nissan the whole dealer thing is a major problem in this country. Tesla knows this which is why they are doing it differently.
-Phil