Open Letter from Nissan, September 22, 2012

[padamson1]

RegGuheert has parsed another distinction critical to the dialog with Nissan, and even among ourselves, Leaf owners/lessees.

For his steady contributions of penetrating, insightful commentary here, I nominate RegGuheert as a member of Chelsea Sexton's global advisory board.

Seconded...

 

[RegGuheert]

Of RegGuheert's numerous sound and sensible observations, this one stands among the keenest and cuts closest to the bone.

has parsed another distinction critical to the dialog with Nissan, and even among ourselves, Leaf owners/lessees.

For his steady contributions of penetrating, insightful commentary here, I nominate RegGuheert as a member of Chelsea Sexton's global advisory board.

Wow! Those are mighty kind words and they are appreciated!

I wonder if I have come to the correct forum today! :lol:

 

[TonyWilliams]

I wonder if I have come to the correct forum today! :lol:

Considering the *ss kicking you got for suggesting some of those thoughts originally.

 

[RegGuheert]

Considering the *ss kicking you got for suggesting some of those thoughts originally.

It wasn't fashionable then!

 

[GreenPowerDP]

The message we heard in the open letter is that the range loss that is being reported is within design specifications, and that Nissan wants to address customer concerns.

That's not exactly the message that I heard. Look carefully at the words that Carla Bailo wrote:

• The Nissan LEAFs inspected in Arizona are operating to specification and their battery capacity loss over time is consistent with their usage and operating environment. No battery defects were found.

Note that she says the "LEAFs" "are operating to specification" and then talks about battery capacity. She only mentions range in one sentence that I saw in the entire letter.

[snip]

By NOT testing the RANGE of the cars sent to Casa Grande, Nissan missed an opportunity to experience first-hand the problem that their customers have been complaining about.

IMO, we as a community need to break our habit of referring to range and battery capacity interchangeably. They are not interchangeable and we are contributing to communication issues with Nissan whenever we do this.

RegGuheert - you are correct - I did not quote the letter and do not want to contribute to any confusion. I understand that capacity loss and range loss are related, but not the same. The point of my post was about perception. The real question is what will they do about it?

By testing the range of the cars - Nissan would have experienced the problem first hand - however that does not get us any closer to a resolution. In order to troubleshoot the problem, Nissan should have examined the batteries, software and instrumentation. The letter implies that there were no defects in the battery.

I don't believe that Nissan doubts any of the complaints, or else they would not have been motivated to examine cars in question. As has been suggested here, there could be issues with the Battery, instrumentation, or software, and possibly a combination of all 3.

 

[RegGuheert]

RegGuheert - you are correct - I did not quote the letter and do not want to contribute to any confusion. I understand that capacity loss and range loss are related, but not the same.

Welcome to the forum, BTW! Sorry, I didn't mean to call you out by quoting your post. I should have noted that. I should have also stated that I have been the worst offender when it comes to focusing ONLY on battery capacity here!

By testing the range of the cars - Nissan would have experienced the problem first hand - however that does not get us any closer to a resolution.

I'm with you on all the other points you have made, but I will disagree with you here. In my experience, accurately defining the problem is very often the hardest part of any task, particularly if engineering is involved. I agree with you that the instrumentation and software are also involved here, but I did not see any mention of those things in Carla Bailo's letter. As such I get the impression that Nissan and LEAF owners may not be focused on the same topic.

 

[evchels]

... we as a community need to break our habit of referring to range and battery capacity interchangeably. They are not interchangeable and we are contributing to communication issues with Nissan whenever we do this.

RegGuheert has parsed another distinction critical to the dialog with Nissan, and even among ourselves, Leaf owners/lessees.

Agreed, and is relevant to something I've been wondering about. Others have noted that Nissan must really regret ever putting that capacity gauge in there in the first place, and I expect that's probably true. But Nissan deserves credit for making that type of information available, in hindsight, I think it's actually detrimental to put it in the car.

You're right on that it's range that matters, not capacity. A car either does what you need it to do, or it doesn't. But once that first bar disappears anyone would focus on it and start to perceive his car as declining, even if he hadn't noticed a range difference and the car still met his needs just fine. Even if it's completely accurate, having the gauge there at all encourages drivers to pay attention to capacity (the "data") over range (the experience). I'm even more concerned about the impact of that as the driver group expands beyond - fingers crossed - the technically-oriented early adopters.

I've no idea if Nissan plans to leave the gauge there, but I can also see them being concerned about this group's reaction if they take it out- as if they're trying to hide something after this whole AZ episode. What do you think? Would not having the gauge there be ok if you could get the information from your dealer (or maybe Carwings) if you wanted it?

For his steady contributions of penetrating, insightful commentary here, I nominate RegGuheert as a member of Chelsea Sexton's global advisory board.

Noted.

 

[xtremeflyer]

My Open Letter to Nissan:

Dear Nissan,

I want to thank you for finally coming forward with your analysis of the issues concerning battery capacity loss in Phoenix. I have some issues and concerns of my own and I thought I'd follow it up with my own letter. I'd like to give you a brief history of my Leaf car buying experience.

I originally signed up for the reservation list on 4/20/2010, although my credit card did not work because it was an AMEX. I was able to get through the next day, but that pushed my order to late October. When signing up for a reservation, I did the questionaire to see if I was a good fit. I also went to the Orange County test drive event in October of that year, everyone said I was a good fit. I told the questionaire that my commute was 80 round trip per day on freeways. It didn't say I was a good fit for only a short amount of time, it said I was a good fit. I do not remember if that questionaire had all the disclaimers, but I'm sure it did.

My dashboard said I would receive the Leaf in Feb, then in March, then it turns out I was one of the "lost orders". I finally received my car in May after working with corporate. My dealer told me I was the second person to order from him, but the 9th person to receive a car from him. Nevermind, once I got my Leaf, I was happy. It's funny, I think we've all "forgotten" about that lost order fiasco once we all drove the Leaf because we all fell in love with it, but in reality, this should have been our first sense of Nissan's inability to communicate openly with their early adopters. Our first drive was to Santa Monica, 50 miles away, and I was punching it.. Oops, so much for that 100 mile range, we got to Santa Monica with less than 20 miles left. Luckily we were able to hook right up to the charging station and spent 4 hours shopping and eating. This was my first lesson.

I started my 76 mile RT commute without an HOV sticker, but it was summer, so not as big a traffic issue. I whipped up and down the 405 without any range anxiety whatsoever. My sticker arrived just in time for the fall and now I was able to pop in and out of the carpool lane to keep my commute within sane levels. I would usually get home on LBW and have 6-8 miles left. That was even enough to run an errand or two if I needed. In Feb of this year, I even sold my 2005 Pathfinder because I just didn't need the extra car, I had learned to live with the Leaf's range. (BTW, I bought the 2005 Pathfinder while trading in a 2003 Infiniti G35 Coupe, which I bought trading in a 2000 Xterra, the connection being I have a history of being an early adopter for first year Nissan/Infiniti out of the box vehicles)

Now, here I am, at the end of summer number 2, with a lost capacity bar, in a temperate climate, within my Lease miles (15k/year). One note about Lease miles. Nissan considered the difference between 12k miles/yr and 15k miles/yr to be worth 1% of the car's value, or about $350 for 9000 miles, but now you are saying that 15k miles/year is high miles, if you thought that 2 years ago, I would assume you would have made the residual between the 12k miles and 15k miles larger than 4 cents a mile.

Today, with my 76 mile commute, I now get home with VLBW. Every day. I am concerned about 2 things. Am I going to be able to run my heater in the "winter" mornings and be able to get home in the afternoon like I did last year? And, will I be able to make it home from work at the end of next summer if more "normal" battery degradation occurs?

So here's what I'm asking from you today. I think it's pretty simple. When I am no longer comfortable with the range on my Leaf, I want to be able to hand you my keys and walk away. I'm not asking you to buy my car back today, I'm not asking you to warranty the battery capacity, or range or anything of that matter. I'm only asking that once "I am no longer a perfect candidate for the Leaf", you take it back. From posts on this forum, it looks like you've done that for a select group of people once they complained. I don't want to go through that, I want you to offer it to me and all the other owners. I understand that if I have some excessive wear and tear on the vehicle or I'm over my prorated miles, I would be charged for that. I know this isn't normal course of business, but neither is the Leaf or how you sold the Leaf, so why not be innovative with how you take the Leaf back. This would remove my two concerns because once those questions are no, I'd hand you back the keys. And guess what, I'll need to buy another car, if you look at my history, it'll probably be a Nissan.

~David Imboden

 

[ericsf]

RegGuheert - you are correct - I did not quote the letter and do not want to contribute to any confusion. I understand that capacity loss and range loss are related, but not the same.

Welcome to the forum, BTW! Sorry, I didn't mean to call you out by quoting your post. I should have noted that. I should have also stated that I have been the worst offender when it comes to focusing ONLY on battery capacity here!

By testing the range of the cars - Nissan would have experienced the problem first hand - however that does not get us any closer to a resolution.

I'm with you on all the other points you have made, but I will disagree with you here. In my experience, accurately defining the problem is very often the hardest part of any task, particularly if engineering is involved. I agree with you that the instrumentation and software are also involved here, but I did not see any mention of those things in Carla Bailo's letter. As such I get the impression that Nissan and LEAF owners may not be focused on the same topic.

Effective range is what matters to owners : I agree.

That said, Nissan has devised a test described in the LEAF's service manual which consists in running down the battery using the AC and the heater running at full blast and checking how long it takes to drain the battery for a battery with nominal capacity according to Nissan. I would suspect they have done a similar test to determine the capacity of the packs of the cars they took. They know as much as we do that a driving range test has many external variables which are difficult to control (difficult, not impossible).

I've been asking a few days ago if anyone amongst the owners who have lost bars have attempted to perform this battery test as described by Nissan. Tony answered me with links to all the road tests that he and other people have conducted and I did not see any mention of that test beeing done. I am not sure if he misunderstood my question or if I missed this in the pages of discussion he pointed me to.

 

[Pipcecil]

I do hope Nissan and the group commission recognizes there are people with problems beyond Arizona, like us Texas people and even those in California. As one of the original bar loosers in Texas (on second and well onto the third) I don't want to be left out. Arizona does have the greater problem so yes, concentration there and California, having the majority of the LEAFs gets attention too, but hopefully us Texas people don't get forgotten or become an after thought.

Being apart of a regional goverment organization (MPO) responsible for helping implement air quality programs and benefits, including an alternative fuel vehicles, its hard to recommend to local goverments and fleets Leafs knowing how my personal range loss I have experienced (from mid 80's to high 60's). We may even pull out the recommendation totally unless results are shown otherwise. Granted we don't dictate what fleets/school distrcits/local entities can use for fleets, but we do make recommendations and influence their choices (and give them grant monies!). Much will need to be rectified to persuade entities such as mine that all is "ok" when we have limited funding to spend, we can't afford to support something that will only last one or two years of service.

 

[RegGuheert]

I've been asking a few days ago if anyone amongst the owners who have lost bars have attempted to perform this battery test as described by Nissan. Tony answered me with links to all the road tests that he and other people have conducted and I did not see any mention of that test beeing done. I am not sure if he misunderstood my question or if I missed this in the pages of discussion he pointed me to.

I haven't done the test, but I am interested to learn more about the capacity of our LEAF's battery. In other words, I would like to do this test! Unfortunately, I do not recall that exact test in the service manuals. Can you please start a thread on this and give the page number of the manual so that some of us can give it a try and report our results?

 

[kolmstead]

Given the feelings of distrust that many of us have at this point, I don't think removing the gauge is a good idea. Taking away the only tool that Nissan provided for us to judge battery condition would not make us happy. Even if the tool has serious flaws.

Even without the gauge, the most severely affected folks would know by now that something was wrong. It would just be more difficult to quantify and prove the problem, as the Tempe test showed.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

Much will need to be rectified to persuade entities such as mine that all is "ok" when we have limited funding to spend, we can't afford to support something that will only last one or two years of service.

Let's not forget the contribution of the taxpayer in all this. The hope was that money was being spent to jump start a viable technology, not a failure.

 

[RegGuheert]

Agreed, and is relevant to something I've been wondering about. Others have noted that Nissan must really regret ever putting that capacity gauge in there in the first place, and I expect that's probably true. But Nissan deserves credit for making that type of information available, in hindsight, I think it's actually detrimental to put it in the car.

There needs to be a gauge, IMO. Without a capacity gauge, how can a prospective buyer assess the capability of a used EV? I predict there will be multiple rounds of legislation in the future to try to protect consumers from "battery fraud" on both new and used EVs, just like we have today related to the odometer.

 

[thankyouOB]

My Open Letter to Nissan:

Dear Nissan,

I want to thank you for finally coming forward with your analysis of the issues concerning battery capacity loss in Phoenix. I have some issues and concerns of my own and I thought I'd follow it up with my own letter. I'd like to give you a brief history of my Leaf car buying experience.
...
I started my 76 mile RT commute without an HOV sticker, but it was summer, so not as big a traffic issue. I whipped up and down the 405 without any range anxiety whatsoever. My sticker arrived just in time for the fall and now I was able to pop in and out of the carpool lane to keep my commute within sane levels. I would usually get home on LBW and have 6-8 miles left. That was even enough to run an errand or two if I needed. In Feb of this year, I even sold my 2005 Pathfinder because I just didn't need the extra car, I had learned to live with the Leaf's range. (BTW, I bought the 2005 Pathfinder while trading in a 2003 Infiniti G35 Coupe, which I bought trading in a 2000 Xterra, the connection being I have a history of being an early adopter for first year Nissan/Infiniti out of the box vehicles)

Now, here I am, at the end of summer number 2, with a lost capacity bar, in a temperate climate, within my Lease miles (15k/year). One note about Lease miles. Nissan considered the difference between 12k miles/yr and 15k miles/yr to be worth 1% of the car's value, or about $350 for 9000 miles, but now you are saying that 15k miles/year is high miles, if you thought that 2 years ago, I would assume you would have made the residual between the 12k miles and 15k miles larger than 4 cents a mile.

Today, with my 76 mile commute, I now get home with VLBW. Every day. I am concerned about 2 things. Am I going to be able to run my heater in the "winter" mornings and be able to get home in the afternoon like I did last year? And, will I be able to make it home from work at the end of next summer if more "normal" battery degradation occurs?

So here's what I'm asking from you today. I think it's pretty simple. When I am no longer comfortable with the range on my Leaf, I want to be able to hand you my keys and walk away. I'm not asking you to buy my car back today, I'm not asking you to warranty the battery capacity, or range or anything of that matter. I'm only asking that once "I am no longer a perfect candidate for the Leaf", you take it back. From posts on this forum, it looks like you've done that for a select group of people once they complained. I don't want to go through that, I want you to offer it to me and all the other owners. I understand that if I have some excessive wear and tear on the vehicle or I'm over my prorated miles, I would be charged for that. I know this isn't normal course of business, but neither is the Leaf or how you sold the Leaf, so why not be innovative with how you take the Leaf back. This would remove my two concerns because once those questions are no, I'd hand you back the keys. And guess what, I'll need to buy another car, if you look at my history, it'll probably be a Nissan.

~David Imboden

I would lose the 2nd and 3rd grafs -- except for the good fit part -- as they are off topic, and edit the letter to fix the transitions and make it about loss of capacity and not also introduce the spritzo around acquisition troubles.

 

[Nubo]

...
IMO, we as a community need to break our habit of referring to range and battery capacity interchangeably. They are not interchangeable and we are contributing to communication issues with Nissan whenever we do this.

I disagree on this point. Though they may NOT be interchangeable at this point with LEAF, they really SHOULD be interchangeable. Miles/kWH * kWH = MILES. This is fundamental.

That the two (battery capacity and range) are not in agreement for LEAF would then appear to be a matter of a problem with how the battery is being managed or how its capacity is being reported.

The answer is not to remove or nerf the capacity gauge, but to have a reliable capacity gauge. This IS important information for the owner. Not only should it not be eliminated, it should have even more resolution that it currently does.

I understand that determining actual capacity is not easy and presents technical challenges. But they are challenges that need to be better met for this EV to become a truly reliable car in the real world.

 

[surfingslovak]

The answer is not to remove or nerf the capacity gauge, but to have a reliable capacity gauge. This IS important information for the owner. Not only should it not be eliminated, it should have even more resolution that it currently does.

I understand that determining actual capacity is not easy and presents technical challenges. But they are challenges that need to be better met for this EV to become a truly reliable car in the real world.

Good comment, and I appreciate Reg's view as well. I have to admit that I'm a fan of the approach the Volt team has taken with the dash indicators. The driver can see and track usable battery capacity in kWh; there is no need to count bars.

 

[RegGuheert]

I disagree on this point. Though they may NOT be interchangeable at this point with LEAF, they really SHOULD be interchangeable. Miles/kWH * kWH = MILES. This is fundamental.

It is not as fundamental as you make it out to be. Two batteries can have identical kWh capacity, but if the series resistance is different, then you cannot drive two identical cars the same distance even if the conditions are also identical. That is one of the serious problems we have with discussions of the capacity of these degraded batteries. We really have NO IDEA how much the resistance has increased. To me, that is a "dirty little secret" that Nissan needs to come clean on.

 

[mwalsh]

The one thing that has become clear is that this has become the defacto place to come for information on the LEAF. We on the forum have probably known this since the fall of 2010. But now the rest of the World knows it, and this is the place where other sites come for boots-on-the-ground knowledge and reportage. The user base here is literate, technically minded, and opinionated, and I think Nissan corporation is finally (thankfully) coming round to the notion that they ignore us at their peril. It's not too late to save the relationship between loyal and enthusistaic LEAF owners and Nissan, but it will take masterful communication and action from here on in, not platitudes and hauteur.

 

[ericsf]

I've been asking a few days ago if anyone amongst the owners who have lost bars have attempted to perform this battery test as described by Nissan. Tony answered me with links to all the road tests that he and other people have conducted and I did not see any mention of that test beeing done. I am not sure if he misunderstood my question or if I missed this in the pages of discussion he pointed me to.

I haven't done the test, but I am interested to learn more about the capacity of our LEAF's battery. In other words, I would like to do this test! Unfortunately, I do not recall that exact test in the service manuals. Can you please start a thread on this and give the page number of the manual so that some of us can give it a try and report our results?

This table was posted more than a year ago in a thread where the discussion raging at the time was about how much usable capacity was in the pack. I'll post it as soon as (if) I can find it.