Carwings Survey from Nissan

[cwerdna]

I didn't receive the survey either.

I agree, Nissan has done nothing to improve CarWings from day one. If they want to charge for it, they need to be continually improving CarWings. They can't even get the miles driven right.

I kinda see what you mean. Really? The miles driven aren't right? (I don't look at the Carwings site for my stats all that much.) How much are they off by? Is it a %, a fixed amount or something indeterminate or random?

From hearing these values, $140/year or more is crazy. It's not worth THAT much to me. Yeah, I'm sure one part of the problem for Nissan is paying for the cellular data plan.

It is semi-nice to be able to check charging status and do the remote charging start (to use the workaround I learned of to get the car to start charging from 80% to 100%, on demand, via a charging timer "hack") and remote climate start.

The nav system's charging station finder is almost useless to me. I wouldn't ever depend on it, besides it being rather clunky. The only time it's somewhat interesting is if I happen to come across a blue plug icon on the map as I'm driving thru an area. I might peek at its info and/or look for it on Plugshare.

For its current functionality and for my charging situation, if my free trial were over, I'd probably be willing to pay somewhere between $25 to $50/year, tops. This won't apply to me as I'm only on a 2 year lease.

 

[cgaydos]

Yeah, I'm sure one part of the problem for Nissan is paying for the cellular data plan.

They probably pay very little.

This is not comparable at all to your personal cell data plan. First, the data used by Carwings for a given car can be measuring in a few small kilobytes per day - there are no images, videos, formats, etc., and the data will be in compact form. Second, they are using the 2G network, which is limited to a small and declining number of very old devices. There is no congestion issue - ATT's costs for maintaining that network are fixed and the minimal usage Nissan puts on it adds nothing except for a tiny additional load on the billing system and internet traffic to Nissan's servers. Third, built into the costs of your personal data plan are: a) all the costs associated with acquiring you as a customer, b) providing you with detailed information as part of your subscription, c) incentives to keep you from switching carriers at the end of your contract ("churn" in industry-speak), and d) funds for R&D of new technologies to keep up with the competition. When a company like Nissan wants to buy a block of carrier access they'll always get a big discount just to start because (a) and (b) costs are much smaller. Throw in the fact that the request for connectivity is 100% uniform for every device (a LEAF, in this case), and they are using an under-utilized, fully amortized legacy network and ATT can afford to give the service away almost for free.

Now, throw in the fact that with Carwings Nissan gains incredibly valuable real world engineering and marketing data that would cost far more than the few dollars a month (guessing, but probably under $5) they are paying for Carwings connections. They know exactly their customers drive and charging patterns and also have tremendous insight - even if they don't share it with us - into battery degradation and the factors that influence it.

My take is that they know they have to give Carwings away for free at the start to get people to try it and use it (same with satellite radio or services like On Star) and they really wanted the use data on this early adopter type of vehicle so didn't bother to build pricing into Carwings at the outset, but they always figured it would one day count as an additional source of revenue. Now, 3+ years after launch, they are trying to figure out what kind of revenue they can get and whether it is worth it to collect that revenue (the cost of getting the revenue will include building and maintaining a billing infrastructure as well as the lost good will of a segment of their customer base). It make sense that they are running this kind of survey. Based on responses here and my own experience my guess it that they are finding people will pay a lot less than they'd hoped, and then only if the service gets a lot better. Now, that may actually make it worthwhile for them to invest in improving Carwings and charging for it - even if doing so ends up being a break-even situation financially the improved Carwings would be a great selling point for future LEAFs.

 

[ericsf]

I'd pay around $80-100 per year but only IF:
- They update the charging stations information with accessibility info like where they are EXACTLY and cost for parking and charging. Just a dot on the map is often not enough to find the actual location.
- They add real-time data on availability of the charging station (ChargePoint does it). No point driving there if there is no port available.
- They update the GPS maps continuously as part of the deal.
- They remove the "Accept" button each time I start the car.
- They make it more responsive.

Then, I would pay for the service. A few bucks a month. But based on how much improvement Carwings got over the past 3 years I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Nubo]

It's amusing how Nissan LEAF surveys always seem to want to steer the respondent to specific preconceived values and outcomes.

 

[JPWhite]

I'd pay around $80-100 per year but only IF:
- They update the charging stations information with accessibility info like where they are EXACTLY and cost for parking and charging. Just a dot on the map is often not enough to find the actual location.
- They add real-time data on availability of the charging station (ChargePoint does it). No point driving there if there is no port available.
- They update the GPS maps continuously as part of the deal.
- They remove the "Accept" button each time I start the car.
- They make it more responsive.

Then, I would pay for the service. A few bucks a month. But based on how much improvement Carwings got over the past 3 years I'm not holding my breath.

Got my survey over the weekend and got round to it this morning.

I'd agree with your pricing, not Nissans. I'd go as high as $120/yr at a pinch if the service added new features such as locate your car, remote door lock/unlock etc.

What Nissan have to realize is if we can get unlimited streaming from Netflix for $7.99/month, they can't expect to charge much more than this before folks simply say no. $200/yr is $16/month, double Netflix, and CarWings isn't as entertaining either :-(

 

[cgaydos]

Tonight I'm trying to use Carwings to find out if my 16-year old daughter will have enough charge to get home. I say "trying" because I keep getting server errors or "can't communicate with the vehicle errors".

I'm in the software industry. Once I had to explain to an engineering manager that when our product gave wrong device information our customer didn't give a crap whether the problem was caused by the underlying operating system or our product - the problem was our product was lying and the customer considered us to blame. The same goes for Carwings - if I can't rely on getting updates when I really need it then its usefulness is not much higher than zero. The first problem Nissan has to fix before even thinking about charging for this service is reliability.

 

[DaveEV]

What Nissan have to realize is if we can get unlimited streaming from Netflix for $7.99/month, they can't expect to charge much more than this before folks simply say no. $200/yr is $16/month, double Netflix, and CarWings isn't as entertaining either :-(

Hah, that's a good metric. Personally, I'd say that CarWings is only a small fraction of what Netflix is worth.

I'd really have a hard time paying more than a couple bucks a month for it. Maybe $25/year at most? Even at that price I feel like it's expensive for what you get. As everyone else says, it's slow, unreliable and features are limited in usefulness - a lot of the time because of how slow and unreliable it is.

 

[essaunders]

I use carwings to:

check to ensure the car is plugged in
check charge level
remotely start climate control
very rarely - start charging

that's it. I can walk down to my garage to check the plug status - so I'm not likely to pay for that. the charge level checks are more a curiosity thing than need - so not really paying for that.

the remote climate I do use and is nice, but a luxury. I'd pay for that. maybe a dollar a month or so? Really, it would likely cost them more to bill me for the service than i'd be willing to pay - especially on my 2012 with the 2G.

All this and the data collection part of carwings hasn't worked for me since last November. that was at least mildly interesting data (even if of questionable accuracy).

 

[Rat]

I have a 2011, but I'm not quite to the end of the 3 years. I didn't get the survey and I don't have a smart phone. 2G and 3G are shoes sizes for bigfooted midgets so far as I know. I used Carwings a lot when GoogleMaps could Send to Car, but until Google fixes that in their new GoogleMaps, it's useless to me. I occasionally preheat the car in the winter, but it's always in my garage when I do that so I could just walk out there to start it heating. I don't think that uses Carwings anyway. I know you can log in the Nissan "new Owner" page, click "View Leaf Status" and see the state of charge and climate control state, remotely begin charging or using the climate control without clicking the Launch Carwings link at the bottom. In its current state I would pay nothing for it. I haven't used it in weeks.

 

[JPWhite]

I used Carwings a lot when GoogleMaps could Send to Car, but until Google fixes that in their new GoogleMaps, it's useless to me.

It's possible to switch back to the old Google Maps and use the send to car feature once more.

 

[JeremyW]

If Nissan starts charging for carwings (at any price) without improving features then I see OVMS getting a good shot in the arm from some of our die-hard Leafers.

 

[Rat]

I used Carwings a lot when GoogleMaps could Send to Car, but until Google fixes that in their new GoogleMaps, it's useless to me.

It's possible to switch back to the old Google Maps and use the send to car feature once more.

It still won't work using Firefox, which is my usual browser, but it does now finally work again in Chrome. Today was the first time I was able to get it to work since the switch. In Firefox it gets all the way to the send to car final screen, but when you push the Send button, nothing happens. The standard "Message successfully sent to car" message does not appear and there is nothing to download in the car.

 

[JPWhite]

I used Carwings a lot when GoogleMaps could Send to Car, but until Google fixes that in their new GoogleMaps, it's useless to me.

It's possible to switch back to the old Google Maps and use the send to car feature once more.

It still won't work using Firefox, which is my usual browser, but it does now finally work again in Chrome. Today was the first time I was able to get it to work since the switch. In Firefox it gets all the way to the send to car final screen, but when you push the Send button, nothing happens. The standard "Message successfully sent to car" message does not appear and there is nothing to download in the car.

I use Firefox as well with no issues. Maybe your profile is corrupt? At least clear out your browsing history/cache and cookies to see if that helps.