This is my first post so apologies for any breach in protocol. I would like to relate an ongoing experience to see if anyone has had similar issues or if anyone has suggestions.
I've owned my car for about 3.5 years but it has very low mileage -- about 22,000 miles. I pay attention to Nissan's recommendation for optimal battery life, specifically:
- I do not have fast charging (400v) capability
- It is garaged indoors and the temperature here (Silicon Valley) rarely reaches 90 degrees
- It never sits with an empty battery
About a year and a half ago my wife started driving the car. At the time, we had Nissan test it, mostly out of curiosity. It’s behavior was essentially “like new”. The range has been very consistent since it was new, with a slow degradation.
We lost the first bar on the range scale recently, so I should expect a battery capacity drop of 15% to 20.4 KWhr and a range of 69 miles under our typical conditions. In fact, as recently as two months ago, we routinely got a range near 70 miles.
While the expected range does, in fact show about 69 miles, recently, the actual range abruptly dropped from about 70 miles to less than 50 miles. Last week, my wife found herself in a situation where she could not make it home. She found the nearest dealership and I came to pick her up. A service technician at the Dealership drove the car the next day and immediately agreed that it is not behaving properly. However, he needed Nissan to approve any work. A Nissan tech drove it two days later and concluded that it is within specs. I was asked to come pick up the car. On my way home from the dealership I drove on a lightly travelled highway, late at night, averaging 4.3 Miles/KWhr (per the dashboard).
After calling Nissan corporate and escalating the issue, the file was reviewed and it was agreed that something must be done. They told me they would replace one module in the battery. The technician at the dealership agreed with me that this was not likely to make a difference and, sure enough, it did not. I just drove it home this afternoon and, once again was able to barely squeeze 40 miles out of it. I never exceeded 65 MPH and the maximum elevation difference over the entire trip was about 500 feet.
I have a set of pictures taken of the dashboard during the trip. they show the estimated range dropping by about 1.5 to 1.75 mile for each mile that I actually drove, going from 67 miles to 0 while I actually drove 40 miles.
Nissan says that their guarantee relates to the indicated range (e.g. the number of bars lost) but not to the actual range. Seems like a cute exercise in legalese. So now, I have a large paperweight sitting in my garage.
I've owned my car for about 3.5 years but it has very low mileage -- about 22,000 miles. I pay attention to Nissan's recommendation for optimal battery life, specifically:
- I do not have fast charging (400v) capability
- It is garaged indoors and the temperature here (Silicon Valley) rarely reaches 90 degrees
- It never sits with an empty battery
About a year and a half ago my wife started driving the car. At the time, we had Nissan test it, mostly out of curiosity. It’s behavior was essentially “like new”. The range has been very consistent since it was new, with a slow degradation.
We lost the first bar on the range scale recently, so I should expect a battery capacity drop of 15% to 20.4 KWhr and a range of 69 miles under our typical conditions. In fact, as recently as two months ago, we routinely got a range near 70 miles.
While the expected range does, in fact show about 69 miles, recently, the actual range abruptly dropped from about 70 miles to less than 50 miles. Last week, my wife found herself in a situation where she could not make it home. She found the nearest dealership and I came to pick her up. A service technician at the Dealership drove the car the next day and immediately agreed that it is not behaving properly. However, he needed Nissan to approve any work. A Nissan tech drove it two days later and concluded that it is within specs. I was asked to come pick up the car. On my way home from the dealership I drove on a lightly travelled highway, late at night, averaging 4.3 Miles/KWhr (per the dashboard).
After calling Nissan corporate and escalating the issue, the file was reviewed and it was agreed that something must be done. They told me they would replace one module in the battery. The technician at the dealership agreed with me that this was not likely to make a difference and, sure enough, it did not. I just drove it home this afternoon and, once again was able to barely squeeze 40 miles out of it. I never exceeded 65 MPH and the maximum elevation difference over the entire trip was about 500 feet.
I have a set of pictures taken of the dashboard during the trip. they show the estimated range dropping by about 1.5 to 1.75 mile for each mile that I actually drove, going from 67 miles to 0 while I actually drove 40 miles.
Nissan says that their guarantee relates to the indicated range (e.g. the number of bars lost) but not to the actual range. Seems like a cute exercise in legalese. So now, I have a large paperweight sitting in my garage.
