New owner of 2011 Leaf

Hello!

I am going to pick up my LEAF from CarMax this evening.

I don't know how many bars it's already down, but I got the service plan and plan to hold them to replacing the battery if it gets too bad.

I'm in the Houston, Texas area, and there seem to be a lot of commercial charging stations around. Some seem to have a subscription/membership plan. Is there anyone else in the Houston area who can provide advice about such subscriptions?

"I don't know how many bars it's already down, but I got the service plan and plan to hold them to replacing the battery if it gets too bad."

Count them on the right hand side of the range readout, the short bars. 12 is good, 9 is sad.

As for holding them to replacement, good luck with that. Unless it is a catastrophic failure, or there is an explicit capacity percentage written into the warranty they will treat it like tires wearing out, i.e. your problem. Make sure to have that in writing before taking delivery.

The good news, if you want to think of it that way, is that you should still be covered till 5 years/60,000 under the updated Nissan battery warranty. If it drops to <66% (8 bars I think) you can get a new battery.

How many miles on it?

Does it have a quick charge port? You can tell by popping the charging port cover (nose of the car) and seeing it has one outlet or two. If it only has one, there will be a big blank space to the left of where you plug the car in. Hopefully you have two, because the Houston area is filled with Quick Chargers from NRG eVgo (nrgevgo.com), which will be especially useful for a 2011 in a hot climate -- if your battery isn't currently degraded much, it will be soon, and quick chargers will help you get where you need to go.

As another poster said, don't count on your CarMax service plan doing anything for your battery capacity. Batteries are a wear item, like tires and windshield wipers. You may also want to check that the car qualifies for Nissan's capacity warranty. Some owners opted out of a class action lawsuit that Nissan is attempting to tie to the warranty, causing some cars to be blacklisted by VIN from qualifying for the warranty. Any Nissan dealer can look that up for you.

IN the SF Bay Area, there seems to be two major "subscription" services. Well, not really subscription, but membership charge stations. One is "Blink" and one is "Chargepoint". Blink, you sign up and they send you a card, which you pay off from a credit card or whatever, Chargepoint charges your credit card $25 and subtracts usage from it until it drops to zero, then refills your account $25 from you credit card ... so basically they are making money on all the "float" since you are loaning them $25 and they have a lot of customers. Pretty smart of them if you think of it.

Anyway, so then you go and drive up to a charger, and then swipe your card and it charges you either by the hour (bad if you have a slow charger, like your (and my) 2011 Leaf) or by the actual kW you draw (good, but also higher price than you'd pay at home.) then fill up.

Both have "apps" so for a smart phone so they'll send you notification when you car is done charging, which is important because you SHOULD move your car after it's full so others can charge there.

My car is also a 2011 and the battery is down at 9 bars. If I can kill it to 8 bars in a year or two, I should be able to get a new battery from Nissan under their capacty warranty for 2011/2012 cars.

The problem with used Leafs, and you'll see it here on this forum, is that people don't care about the leased car's batteries and just kill them.

Howdy fellow Houstonian...

Did you wind up picking up the Leaf? I did the same thing from CarMax, got the warranty like you did thinking the same thing. I guess I need to find out about my VIN from the dealer.

I will say locally it seems like the NRG EVGo network is pretty big, and you can sign up for a simple "flex" plan with them online that's pay as you go or a subscription service. I did find out they will essentially lease you a home 220V charger for between $14.95-$24.95 a month for 24/36 months depending on wether or not any wiring needs to be done. Depending on your situation and terms it can be a pretty decent deal. At the end of the term you can either return it (if you're upgrading) or buy it off them for $150 I believe. Anyway, it seems to be something that's not publicized all that well but it worked out great for me because I already had a 50A 220V circuit in the garage, and I didn't want to drop $600-700 on a charger all at once. I think ChargePoint is the second most common network around town that I've seen. Thus far, I've only been charging at home. No charger at work, and no quick charge port anyway. Just using it as a daily commuter.

Anyway, good luck.

DocBio

What a Shocker! - 2 posts and no response in 3 weeks!

Yo Linza, If you are not going to reply to our Help then don't ask the question!


Lasareath

Linza said:

Hello!

I am going to pick up my LEAF from CarMax this evening.

I don't know how many bars it's already down, but I got the service plan and plan to hold them to replacing the battery if it gets too bad.

I'm in the Houston, Texas area, and there seem to be a lot of commercial charging stations around. Some seem to have a subscription/membership plan. Is there anyone else in the Houston area who can provide advice about such subscriptions?

Click to expand...

docbio said:

Howdy fellow Houstonian...
Did you wind up picking up the Leaf? I did the same thing from CarMax, got the warranty like you did thinking the same thing. I guess I need to find out about my VIN from the dealer.
DocBio

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Once you do your research, you may decide that the warranty isn't worth it on a LEAF. In which case, you can cancel and get a refund - full in the first 30 days and prorated after that. I'm pretty sure that applies to all warranties like this - I know it does on the Nissan policies. I cancelled mine and the refund is making the next 3+ lease payments.

billg said:

Once you do your research, you may decide that the warranty isn't worth it on a LEAF. In which case, you can cancel and get a refund - full in the first 30 days and prorated after that. I'm pretty sure that applies to all warranties like this - I know it does on the Nissan policies. I cancelled mine and the refund is making the next 3+ lease payments.

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Thanks. I'll look into it. The overall cost wasn't that much, about 3 months payments, but given the overall reliability I'm not sure it's a security blanket I need - especially if they're not going to cover the battery.

docbio said:

...The overall cost wasn't that much, about 3 months payments, but given the overall reliability I'm not sure it's a security blanket I need - especially if they're not going to cover the battery.

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2011 has been very reliable.
I'm at 23,000 miles 42 months with no out of warranty repairs.
But some have had charger failures and a few had emergency brake problem.
Those repairs are very expensive.
I'm glad I have my 7 year 70,000 mile extended warranty even though it does not cover capacity.
But it is an individual choice.

NYLEAF said:

...You may also want to check that the car qualifies for Nissan's capacity warranty. Some owners opted out of a class action lawsuit that Nissan is attempting to tie to the warranty, causing some cars to be blacklisted by VIN from qualifying for the warranty. Any Nissan dealer can look that up for you.

Click to expand...

110 opted out.
Hard to know what will happen with that.
Rumored that Nissan has proposed alternate settlement.

Nissan warranty also requires annual battery "test" within three months of in service date.
Nissan has refused some capacity warranty replacements because of abuse or possibly not having "tests" done.

I did have some battery problems that led to a dealership visit, and they were quick to offer to replace the battery even after a VIN check, so I think the original owner was not one of the 110.

- It had 44k miles when I bought it, which is not bad for a 3 year old car. It was a fleet vehicle, so I suspect it has spent most of its life in a parking lot.
- It does have the fast charger port
- I am also loving the fast charger network. I joined both nrg and Blink on ya'll's advice, and it has worked out pretty well. NRG hasn't charged me anything even though I keep asking for a bill, so I think they filed me with the new Leaf owners and gave me the two years free charging. No objections here.

The dealership visit ended up with them replacing the motor controller and AV control unit, both covered under the extended warranty, but not the battery yet (10 bars). You were correct to tell me to get in writing that CarMax would cover the battery. If it gets to 8 bars after the Nissan warranty, I guess we'll test the process.

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall reading here that NRG is negligent with billing, sometimes sending a big bill after months of no bill at all. You may want to look into that.

That's no good. I'll check out what their TOS says about billing frequency.

LeftieBiker said:

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall reading here that NRG is negligent with billing, sometimes sending a big bill after months of no bill at all. You may want to look into that.

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See Tony Williams topic:
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=19528#p418176" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;