Leafer77 said:
Thank you for sharing the links and resources. These might be helpful tomorrow. I'm focusing my argument on that the battery loss is not "gradual" and exceeded my expectations, along with what Nissan was communicating to its customers. Therefore, the normal battery capacity warranty should not apply.
My driving range is based on a full charge and me reaching VLBW, once experiencing "Turtle". Without being too specific on this forum, my route is from San Marcos, CA to just off the Genessee via the 15S/163S, which according to Google Maps is 30.8 miles. No extreme hills or elevation changes. Traveling at 65MPH, without AC. Tires are at about 40PSI.
Unfortunately, your capacity loss was most likely gradual vs. sudden (e.g. one day, you could go 70 miles before hitting turtle and the next (and beyond) on the same route, you ran out say 40 miles into the trip...) So, I don't think that's a good angle.
But yes, it's very unfortunate that Nissan has made many statements as to claims of remaining capacity after n years that turned out to be either wrong or have a ton of caveats.
(Side note: Too bad not many people commented on http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=16236.)
Re: that route, I didn't look it up, but you should install Google Earth and use it to see the elevation profile: http://priuschat.com/threads/google-earth-can-give-you-an-elevation-profile-of-a-route-between-2-points.100653/ and what the net elevation gains or losses are.
Make sure you really hit VLBW and NOT just LBW. The warnings are LBW, VLBW then turtle. Someone correct me if I"m wrong, but IIRC, when you hit VLBW, the GOM turns to a non-number of - - -.
Valdemar said:
Not sure about Leafer, but with at most 15kWh usable available from my pack I almost find your questionnaire offensive. I can squeeze 60 miles still with some freeway to under VLBW and not sweat it (do it daily), but it is likely way out of comfort zone for most others. I can see a 4-bar looser can easily be a 40-45 mile range car.
Offensive? Really? This is the first time I've EVER heard that. If so, please provide feedback on making it "non-offensive". http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=11591 states why I created such a questionnaire (and originally did so on Priuschat for "low" gas mileage complainers where I was tired of jumping in and wasting a lot of time to no avail or seeing others do the same).
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=261457#p261457 was an example of something very vague of someone complaining of "getting a whopping 30 miles per charge here in frigid Chicago" after having lost no capacity bars. They did answer the questionnaire but there was still a fair amount of back and forth.
There are plenty of Leaf drivers who don't even know about the capacity bars or are totally confused about range, like http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=16446 and http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=268304#p268304.
I never got around to posting a story about someone at my work who got rid of his Leaf (unclear if it was an '11 or '12) by turning it in early and said he couldn't be more glad to get rid of it (sometime last year, IIRC), partly due to range anxiety and capacity loss. Too bad I only found out about this 1-2 months after he got rid of it. I don't know the exact distance of his commute but his city to my work is about 23 miles, one way, almost all highway yet we have free L1 and L2 charging at work. If he lived in the next city further south from work, it'd be 27 miles, so I'm guessing his commute was no further than 30 miles, each way... again w/free L2 charging at work w/courteous EV/PHEV drivers who are pretty good about plug sharing.
He couldn't tell me how many capacity bars he was down by and I work in a tech company! He certainly didn't know anything about battery gids nor tools like gid meters like Wattsleft or tools like Leaf Spy.
At least answering a standard questionnaire gives us some useful baseline info instead of wasting a ton of time (collectively) and having to speculation and go back/foth.