Greetings Folks,
I am a bit of an old school lurker of the forum. Took delivery of my Leaf in SD on the first production run (which was delayed by nuclear mishap and tsunamis somewhere far flung). I must admit I have enjoyed my leaf much but I became somewhat disenchanted with the capacity loss. Dropped off the board and can't recall my old credentials now. Typical story here right? Having recently hit the break point of 8 bars, I came back on to find some information on other people's experience and read quite a bit of content. I'm still not sure "what to expect" in the sense of what the dealership and Nissan as a company is going to do to make this right and want to know from folks who have been through the process, "actual experience" and not a sea-lawyer's view of things.
March 5th
A little bit of information on my Leaf and habits (all qualitative):
- Car is a 2011 model, purchased in May with the QC port inc. and is currently under 50K with 8 capacity bars. Did I mention I live in San Diego where the weather/temp. is fairly consistent year round?
- I'm a nerd (and engineer) and before buying this car made some informed decisions about expected battery loss and my commute. I signed up early for the product, was assured with warranty offers and a couple surveys that Nissan was going to do it right and that at the end of the day I would have 80-100m range (depending on driving habits) and could expect a 20% reduction in capacity before the battery settles. My commute requires a tad less than 27 miles each way (~52 round trip (RT)) where 30% of it is street and 70% is highway. Given this understanding of what I was getting into, I figured I would have many years with the car w/o requiring a charge within a RT commute. I lost the ability to get to work and home on one charge in late 2012.
- Odd issue #1, picking up the Leaf, Dealer shows me that if I continue to depress the trigger on the Charging Cable after a charge is complete, I can "top the car off" to get more mileage. This is obviously dumb and suffered this to pass in my limited interaction with them (other than regular service and battery tests).
- Best number of estimated mileage on full charge I have seen was 127 miles remaining in the early years. Think kWh was 3.9 then.
- Worst number of estimated mileage on full charge I have seen is 38 miles remaining as of recent. kWh is 3.4 but dealer reset it somewhere along the way.
- Understand that mileage is a terrible gauge of actual utility for this car BUT given the top end and bottom end, and my decline in performance over the years, this is quite terrible.
- I have QC'd the car maybe all of 5 times. I picked up somewhere this is probably not nice for the battery on a regular basis.
- Odd issue #2, I have had every battery test on time and have received the highest possible rating for battery condition and capacity. The first test was free, my most current one I had to pay for. I'm quite sure I paid for a inaccurate test report not reflecting that I was over 15K into 9 bars. (thanks for the notes about LeafSpy and the OBD Bluetooth tool, shopping around now as a prep to deal with this).
- The car has been in an accident. A hit and run actually. I parked on the street at my favorite sandwich shop on a Friday at least 12' behind some Company Truck. The idiot backed into my Leaf when he could have pulled out straight and crushed front charging port and receptacle before fleeing the scene. I couldn't remember the exact company name or more than the first couple letters of the LP, but the dummy did fax his order in to my favorite sandwich shop. I was able to track him down. And I eventually got made whole on the matter. Car performance before and after wasn't noticeably impacted although there was a fiasco with coolant leaking into the charging port and short circuiting some stuff up front. I'll fess up that I was intimidated by the idea of driving a jostled battery around having tossed a few of the smaller size around as a kid for fun but got over that issue in a few weeks. Interesting story aside, I wouldn't attribute this to terrible performance.
- I received a bunch of crap in the mail about a Class Action and thought about joining the cause. Work was busy and to be honest I wasn't driving much due to business travel and had some concerns with what investments I'd have to make to deal with it. And then it only seemed like a short while after that somebody/everybody "settled" (or was bought/compensated) and then we ended up with some revised bullshit warranty that didn't really seem much an improvement of the empty performance backed promises made initially.
- That capacity bar is funky. I've seen it show 9 bars then 8 briefly and then maybe 9 again. I've felt like it's been a mirage or something, trick of the eye, but now it seems to have settled at 8. There is something to be said about hanging our hat on visual instrumentation that is super inaccurate and will likely screw many drivers out of getting their due on the warranty. Perhaps this is done on purpose. Can't say I am a stranger to how the bottom-line can get leveraged on an engineering team by the folks managing the money.
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I want to go on record that no matter what capacity math is being used by my fellow geniuses out there, going from 12 bars to 9 bars (or 8) should not represent a reduction from being able to RT to work and back home with no low warnings to now where I am having the low charge warning come on before pulling into work in the AM. I'm passionate about getting this fixed. I am planning to post my experiences as I go through the motions of trying to get some sort of equitable adjustment from Nissan (new or better battery hopefully) but fully expect that I am going to get screwed around with or short changed. Such as the nature with "claiming" anything we pay into: warranty, insurance, disability, or whatever. As I get more quantitative data assembled, I am willing to throw that on here too along with my experiences. Hopefully this will be useful to other folks who I'd imagine are going to reach the threshold quite easily, like myself.
Have read a lot on here but thanks for advice on the matter of the "warranty experience" in advance. I'm thinking to call the hotline first tomorrow and then dealer.
I am a bit of an old school lurker of the forum. Took delivery of my Leaf in SD on the first production run (which was delayed by nuclear mishap and tsunamis somewhere far flung). I must admit I have enjoyed my leaf much but I became somewhat disenchanted with the capacity loss. Dropped off the board and can't recall my old credentials now. Typical story here right? Having recently hit the break point of 8 bars, I came back on to find some information on other people's experience and read quite a bit of content. I'm still not sure "what to expect" in the sense of what the dealership and Nissan as a company is going to do to make this right and want to know from folks who have been through the process, "actual experience" and not a sea-lawyer's view of things.
March 5th
A little bit of information on my Leaf and habits (all qualitative):
- Car is a 2011 model, purchased in May with the QC port inc. and is currently under 50K with 8 capacity bars. Did I mention I live in San Diego where the weather/temp. is fairly consistent year round?
- I'm a nerd (and engineer) and before buying this car made some informed decisions about expected battery loss and my commute. I signed up early for the product, was assured with warranty offers and a couple surveys that Nissan was going to do it right and that at the end of the day I would have 80-100m range (depending on driving habits) and could expect a 20% reduction in capacity before the battery settles. My commute requires a tad less than 27 miles each way (~52 round trip (RT)) where 30% of it is street and 70% is highway. Given this understanding of what I was getting into, I figured I would have many years with the car w/o requiring a charge within a RT commute. I lost the ability to get to work and home on one charge in late 2012.
- Odd issue #1, picking up the Leaf, Dealer shows me that if I continue to depress the trigger on the Charging Cable after a charge is complete, I can "top the car off" to get more mileage. This is obviously dumb and suffered this to pass in my limited interaction with them (other than regular service and battery tests).
- Best number of estimated mileage on full charge I have seen was 127 miles remaining in the early years. Think kWh was 3.9 then.
- Worst number of estimated mileage on full charge I have seen is 38 miles remaining as of recent. kWh is 3.4 but dealer reset it somewhere along the way.
- Understand that mileage is a terrible gauge of actual utility for this car BUT given the top end and bottom end, and my decline in performance over the years, this is quite terrible.
- I have QC'd the car maybe all of 5 times. I picked up somewhere this is probably not nice for the battery on a regular basis.
- Odd issue #2, I have had every battery test on time and have received the highest possible rating for battery condition and capacity. The first test was free, my most current one I had to pay for. I'm quite sure I paid for a inaccurate test report not reflecting that I was over 15K into 9 bars. (thanks for the notes about LeafSpy and the OBD Bluetooth tool, shopping around now as a prep to deal with this).
- The car has been in an accident. A hit and run actually. I parked on the street at my favorite sandwich shop on a Friday at least 12' behind some Company Truck. The idiot backed into my Leaf when he could have pulled out straight and crushed front charging port and receptacle before fleeing the scene. I couldn't remember the exact company name or more than the first couple letters of the LP, but the dummy did fax his order in to my favorite sandwich shop. I was able to track him down. And I eventually got made whole on the matter. Car performance before and after wasn't noticeably impacted although there was a fiasco with coolant leaking into the charging port and short circuiting some stuff up front. I'll fess up that I was intimidated by the idea of driving a jostled battery around having tossed a few of the smaller size around as a kid for fun but got over that issue in a few weeks. Interesting story aside, I wouldn't attribute this to terrible performance.
- I received a bunch of crap in the mail about a Class Action and thought about joining the cause. Work was busy and to be honest I wasn't driving much due to business travel and had some concerns with what investments I'd have to make to deal with it. And then it only seemed like a short while after that somebody/everybody "settled" (or was bought/compensated) and then we ended up with some revised bullshit warranty that didn't really seem much an improvement of the empty performance backed promises made initially.
- That capacity bar is funky. I've seen it show 9 bars then 8 briefly and then maybe 9 again. I've felt like it's been a mirage or something, trick of the eye, but now it seems to have settled at 8. There is something to be said about hanging our hat on visual instrumentation that is super inaccurate and will likely screw many drivers out of getting their due on the warranty. Perhaps this is done on purpose. Can't say I am a stranger to how the bottom-line can get leveraged on an engineering team by the folks managing the money.
_____________________________________________________________________________
I want to go on record that no matter what capacity math is being used by my fellow geniuses out there, going from 12 bars to 9 bars (or 8) should not represent a reduction from being able to RT to work and back home with no low warnings to now where I am having the low charge warning come on before pulling into work in the AM. I'm passionate about getting this fixed. I am planning to post my experiences as I go through the motions of trying to get some sort of equitable adjustment from Nissan (new or better battery hopefully) but fully expect that I am going to get screwed around with or short changed. Such as the nature with "claiming" anything we pay into: warranty, insurance, disability, or whatever. As I get more quantitative data assembled, I am willing to throw that on here too along with my experiences. Hopefully this will be useful to other folks who I'd imagine are going to reach the threshold quite easily, like myself.
Have read a lot on here but thanks for advice on the matter of the "warranty experience" in advance. I'm thinking to call the hotline first tomorrow and then dealer.
