Do you want to pitch in and buy a LEAF battery?

Since we do not have any information from Nissan about what they will do or how much it will cost to get a new battery, I suggest we push the topic and pool our funds to purchase a new battery for one of the LEAF owners (not a lessee) in Phoenix who has severe battery capacity degradation. I suggest opossum and azdre, since they have been leaders in getting the word out on this issue.

If we do this, I think the following things will occur:

1) We will learn the price of a replacement LEAF battery and it's installation.
2) We will learn if there are any core charges that we will get back from returning a spent battery.
3) If there is no core value to the battery, we can have one for testing and disassembly.
4) We can pursue using the spent battery for RE applications and can press Nissan to tell us what is behind their claims for uses for the spent EV batteries.
5) One forum LEAF owner will experience some relief from the battery capacity issues. They can sell the vehicle to a cold climate as "new battery" if they like.
6) We will prevent everyone with high capacity losses from simply dumping their cars. The benefit here is that Nissan will NOT be able to claim that no LEAF batteries have needed to be replaced within the first two years.
7) We will learn about any issues with getting a replacement battery, installation, etc.
8) On the downside, purchasing a battery after less than two years ownership also sends the message that this level of degradation should be the owner's responsibility, regardless of the claims made by Nissan.

In short, we can help out a forum member (or two) and can learn a lot about LEAF battery replacements at the same time.

Thoughts?

First, get answers to #1 and #2 above.

Why not wait until Tennessee factory is up and running?

It is illuminating to check prices now, and later.

RegGuheert said:

In short, we can help out a forum member (or two) and can learn a lot about LEAF battery replacements at the same time.
Thoughts?

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I have a feeling a $10 donation by everyone is not going to cut it. I expect the price to be many thousands of dollars. GM's subsidized price is $3,000 and you can bet Nissan's battery will be well in excess of double that, possibly triple or quadruple. Personally, I'm not going to give hundreds of dollars to a stranger with the hopes that other people will also give hundreds of dollars, to tell us information we basically already know.

garygid said:

First, get answers to #1 and #2 above.

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Yes, but I don't think any dealer will provide a quote unless there is a bonafide request. And if they did, I would not put much credibility in the number, since this has not been done outside of warranty to my knowledge.

coqui said:

Why not wait until Tennessee factory is up and running?

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That is the intention. It should be cranking out batteries this month, correct?

adric22 said:

I have a feeling a $10 donation by everyone is not going to cut it. I expect the price to be many thousands of dollars. GM's subsidized price is $3,000 and you can bet Nissan's battery will be well in excess of double that, possibly triple or quadruple.

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I'm thinking $100.00 from 100 to 150 people.

adric22 said:

Personally, I'm not going to give hundreds of dollars to a stranger with the hopes that other people will also give hundreds of dollars, to tell us information we basically already know.

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How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

RegGuheert said:

How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

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Well, we know how much an individual cell costs, and we know how many cells there are. The math shouldn't be that difficult. Even when I bought a "new battery" for my 2002 Toyota Prius all it really came with was the metal structure and the cells. I had to transplant the battery ICU, sensor lines, copper rails, venting hoses, and a million other little parts from the old battery pack.

adric22 said:

RegGuheert said:

How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

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Well, we know how much an individual cell costs, and we know how many cells there are. The math shouldn't be that difficult. Even when I bought a "new battery" for my 2002 Toyota Prius all it really came with was the metal structure and the cells. I had to transplant the battery ICU, sensor lines, copper rails, venting hoses, and a million other little parts from the old battery pack.

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I see. So that is what you need to do, then, is replace each of the modules. I wonder how much labor that would involve?

Personally, I think the 3 and 4 bar loosers are likely in better shape than some of the rest of us. The high heat/fast decline will certainly lead to warranty repair at some point, likely in the near future. those folks who are seeing less extreme degradation are the ones most likely to be left in the cold as a fix comes around, IMHO.

Personally, until they figure out how/if there is a way to make passive cooling work in places like Phoenix, replacing batteries is just going to lead to the same problem in a remarkably short period of time... why waste the resources until there is a fix?

adric22 said:

RegGuheert said:

How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

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Well, we know how much an individual cell costs, and we know how many cells there are. The math shouldn't be that difficult. Even when I bought a "new battery" for my 2002 Toyota Prius all it really came with was the metal structure and the cells. I had to transplant the battery ICU, sensor lines, copper rails, venting hoses, and a million other little parts from the old battery pack.

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I think it is unlikely that the cost of a replacement pack is the sum cost of it's parts. $600 x 48 = $28,800! Might as well buy a new Leaf! I have no doubt that buying a whole pack will be much less, though I don't know how much less.

If you add up the retail cost of the individual parts of a Leaf, you'll end up with a cost many times the $35K MSRP.

DoxyLover said:

I think it is unlikely that the cost of a replacement pack is the sum cost of it's parts. $600 x 48 = $28,800! Might as well buy a new Leaf! I have no doubt that buying a whole pack will be much less, though I don't know how much less.

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That was the premise of this thread, but adric22 brings up a good point: perhaps the reason we do not know the price of a pack is because Nissan does not and will not sell it that way. Let's hope that is not the case, as I would much rather have a factory-sealed battery in my LEAF. But perhaps Nissan is using the ink-jet-printer marketing approach for the LEAF and they expect to make all their money selling ink cartridges, er, battery modules.

RegGuheert said:

How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

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From a PM:

They had to replace a bunch of battery cells. It took couple of weeks, parts had to be ordered, a specialist had to drive up from Los Angeles to do the repairs, yadda, yadda. It was expensive (I didn’t have to pay) – about $3000, including rental car.

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This Facebook thread could be of interest as well.

I don't think this will fly, it's an awful lot to ask! What if right after everyone coughs up $100 Nissan steps up and offers to fix the car for free? Ouch!

Though I'd certainly love to teardown the old pack and do some in-depth analysis. =)

-Phil

DoxyLover said:

$600 x 48 = $28,800! Might as well buy a new Leaf!

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surfingslovak said:

RegGuheert said:

How much does it cost to replace a battery in a LEAF?

Click to expand...

From a PM:

They had to replace a bunch of battery cells. It took couple of weeks, parts had to be ordered, a specialist had to drive up from Los Angeles to do the repairs, yadda, yadda. It was expensive (I didn’t have to pay) – about $3000, including rental car.

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$28,800 + $3,000 = $31,800

If this is the only option available to LEAF owners for battery replacement then it looks like those without enough capacity to be useful will be headed to the scrap heap!

Someone here posted that the Ford Energy 23kWh battery was $10.5k, and gave a part number... Nissan's should be lower since they own the battery factory. Or not.

DoxyLover said:

I think it is unlikely that the cost of a replacement pack is the sum cost of it's parts. $600 x 48 = $28,800! Might as well buy a new Leaf! I have no doubt that buying a whole pack will be much less, though I don't know how much less.

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I thought that $600 figure included labor.. is that not accurate?

adric22 said:

DoxyLover said:

I think it is unlikely that the cost of a replacement pack is the sum cost of it's parts. $600 x 48 = $28,800! Might as well buy a new Leaf! I have no doubt that buying a whole pack will be much less, though I don't know how much less.

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I thought that $600 figure included labor.. is that not accurate?

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The $3K price tag I mentioned above presumably covered labor, replacement cost for at least couple of modules, and two weeks worth of rental car. This is second-hand data, I heard it from a coworker of the affected owner.

Herm said:

Someone here posted that the Ford Energy 23kWh battery was $10.5k, and gave a part number... Nissan's should be lower since they own the battery factory. Or not.

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That was me. A FFE owner posted the info on myfocuselectric.com and I thought it worthwhile to post on the FFE thread here. Things that make you go "hmm", eh?

I do not want my battery replaced without propper battery cooling installed ..I do not want to go through this again with the heat in Phx..