'16 30 kWh pack - backwards compatibility and warranty?

Valdemar said:

nerys said:

I was planning for an upgrade in 3 years.

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Who knows, they might allow it later. Time will tell.

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I think they will. In fact, I think they may offer no other option than a 30-kWh upgrade in the future simply because they will no longer have a source for the 24-kWh battery.

Of course, this may all be wishful thinking on my part.

RegGuheert said:

Valdemar said:

nerys said:

I was planning for an upgrade in 3 years.

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Who knows, they might allow it later. Time will tell.

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I think they will. In fact, I think they may offer no other option than a 30-kWh upgrade in the future simply because they will no longer have a source for the 24-kWh battery.

Of course, this may all be wishful thinking on my part.

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I think they will as well, but by the time they do you and I might be the only ones paying attention.

Say they do it in 2020 when Tesla Model 3 is out, Volt 2 or 3 is out, Chevy Bolt is out, Nissan Leaf 2 is out (with say a 48 kWh top option and a 36 kWh base).

We could come back here and say "See, I told you so" but the majority of the forum will ignore us and be arguing about the newer cars.

Someone puts a 30 kWh battery in a 2012 and someone else says "So, that isn't enough range for me, I won't buy a car with less than 48 kWh." and off they go ignoring us old timers.

dhanson865 said:

I think they will as well, but by the time they do you and I might be the only ones paying attention.

Say they do it in 2020 when Tesla Model 3 is out, Volt 2 or 3 is out, Chevy Bolt is out, Nissan Leaf 2 is out (with say a 48 kWh top option and a 36 kWh base).

We could come back here and say "See, I told you so" but the majority of the forum will ignore us and be arguing about the newer cars.

Someone puts a 30 kWh battery in a 2012 and someone else says "So, that isn't enough range for me, I won't buy a car with less than 48 kWh." and off they go ignoring us old timers.

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That's ok by me. As long as I can keep using my 2012 for a good long time, I'll be happy. Heck, I don't need a 30kWh battery - or I wouldn't have purchased a car with 24kWh. The bigger problem is that by 2020, my battery will not hold anywhere near 24kWh (heck, it doesn't today). I need a minimum 25 mile dead-of-winter range, which I sometimes struggle with now. If the rest of the car holds up, I'll just keep it around as a beater car. It's worth more to me as a beater car than the <$1k I'd be able to get for it in 2020.

Even if Nissan doesn't offer one, I gotta think that in 5 years there will be a big enough aftermarket need for someone to produce a 3rd party pack between 24-30kwh at a reasonable price.

Someone on an earlier post said something that makes a lot of sense. If you put a new $6K pack in your 5 year old Leaf and then total it in an accident, you're never gonna be able to explain to your insurance that the value of the car is now $6K higher. That's a big risk.

If i replace the battery in my car i intended tonadd a custom rider to my policy specifically to cover the battery pack.

nerys said:

If i replace the battery in my car i intended tonadd a custom rider to my policy specifically to cover the battery pack.

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Wow. I didn't even know that you could do that.

I know you can with custom cars i assume i can do so with something as expensive as the battery. I have not actually asked as such a scenario has not occured yet (me replacing a battery)

nerys said:

I know you can with custom cars i assume i can do so with something as expensive as the battery. I have not actually asked as such a scenario has not occured yet (me replacing a battery)

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Most insurance allows this, if you do extensive upgrades to an older vehicle with recipts to prove it to note the increased value of the pre-existing frame.

nerys said:

If i replace the battery in my car i intended tonadd a custom rider to my policy specifically to cover the battery pack.

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I spoke with my insurance and they basically told me no such provision exists and suggested to keep the receipts and pray the adjuster will take them into consideration should the car get totaled.

Valdemar said:

nerys said:

If i replace the battery in my car i intended tonadd a custom rider to my policy specifically to cover the battery pack.

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I spoke with my insurance and they basically told me no such provision exists and suggested to keep the receipts and pray the adjuster will take them into consideration should the car get totaled.

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Then I would change insurance providers.

Darrenf said:

Valdemar said:

nerys said:

If i replace the battery in my car i intended tonadd a custom rider to my policy specifically to cover the battery pack.

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I spoke with my insurance and they basically told me no such provision exists and suggested to keep the receipts and pray the adjuster will take them into consideration should the car get totaled.

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Then I would change insurance providers.

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Possibly. I'm with Auto Club, they are supposedly one of the best ones out there.

possibly you simply asked the question the wrong way.

ie something along the line of can I get an agreed value policy for an upgrade to my car?

tkdbrusco said:

Even if Nissan doesn't offer one, I gotta think that in 5 years there will be a big enough aftermarket need for someone to produce a 3rd party pack between 24-30kwh at a reasonable price.

Someone on an earlier post said something that makes a lot of sense. If you put a new $6K pack in your 5 year old Leaf and then total it in an accident, you're never gonna be able to explain to your insurance that the value of the car is now $6K higher. That's a big risk.

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The bigger risk is if you put a new 30kWh pack in your car and it needs a warrantee replacement.....

Any aftermarket company planning on doing this will not be able to sell them without a warrantee of some kind. None of the people who get into this business will have a shipping system in place like a major auto maker with a dealer network that already has a truck with a lift on the back delivering stuff that cannot be lifted by hand every single day (or a few times a week) that they can just throw a battery on for near nothing.

None of the cars needing a battery replacement can be driven far so the market cannot rely on people brining the cars to the shop. That leaves 2 options, shipping the car or shipping the battery. This business will not work without using the old battery as a core so if it's shipping the battery you have to add the cost of 2 way shipping. If you bring the car in and the client lives less than 100 miles away you only pay to tow the car there but that market will be very small and won't support a business.

Who's going to pay the 2 way shipping on a warrantee job? If the battery comes down to $145/kWh at retail where GM says wholesale is now then that's $4350 plus shipping. I'd expect shipping 2 ways to be $2k if you ship a lot, for a smaller start up it would probably be $2k each way coast to coast. It would also require delivery to a shop or an extra fee for home delivery DIY types. Also a home delivery DIY type (the best market for this kind of thing I think) would never be able to repack an old battery for delivery without special tools and again would pay an extra fee for pick up with a lift. If the fine print says a warrantee job will cost you shipping 2 ways most people would run. If the business builds it into the cost they will either eat away their profit margin if they make a few mistakes or be forced to build it into the price of each battery and raise costs further.

I think there might be a small chance of this business working out for a short while in California only, for anyone not there plan on being shocked by shipping so much that you'd just trade in for a new car. The other risk is that the business will not be able to evolve to do the same for the second or third gen of BEVs as the batteries get better and deteriorate less the chance of them ending up in the hands of an owner who now needs the original capacity and wants to fix instead of trade is slim. After all a 200mile BEV with 45% capacity loss will still beat the 30kWh 2016 leaf and satisfy what more than 70k Americans have already said is enough.

The other chance is that someone might develop a booster battery that can go in the trunk and feed in extra energy to the main battery and somehow trick the car into thinking the juice is coming from the main battery. This might only allow a boost back up to original capacity though. It would be much cheaper but the return wouldn't be as much.

Dorman already offers hybrid battery packs. I could see them doing the same with BEV packs as the business case develops. I wouldn't be surprised to see some niche entrepreneurs reconditioning/selling some variation of packs for BEVs as well, as there are companies that are reconditioning hybrid packs, replacing dead cells, etc. It won't cost $2k to ship, not even close.

I don't see there being enough interest to make it economically viable for quite some time.

Firetruck41 said:

Dorman already offers hybrid battery packs. I could see them doing the same with BEV packs as the business case develops.

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Firetruck41 said:

Dorman already offers hybrid battery packs. I could see them doing the same with BEV packs as the business case develops. I wouldn't be surprised to see some niche entrepreneurs reconditioning/selling some variation of packs for BEVs as well, as there are companies that are reconditioning hybrid packs, replacing dead cells, etc. It won't cost $2k to ship, not even close.

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Yes that's for fixing packs, that will happen if people want to devote the time to figuring it out. There are many problems with the leaf to hybrid comparison though.

The first is that many people with a degraded hybrid pack don't care that there's a % loss in fuel economy as the battery ages. At this point most people have paid off the car so it's still cheaper to run with an old battery and pay a bit more for fuel. What they do care about is when a cell is bad and throws a code. The easy fix that most places are doing is finding a salvaged car and using each individual cell to take out and replace the bad cells in the good hybrids. This does not restore brand new capacity or increase it to better than new like many people have referenced they hope will happen. It simply gets rid of the code and makes the car drivable again. This would be compared to having a pack in a leaf with low capacity and finding a car at a wrecker with better capacity then switching the cells.

This leads into the next problem that others have said on the forum here. Each pack is programed to the car. Nissan will not tell non Nissan dealers how to program a used pack to another car. Although this may be information that a repair shop could get if they paid for it like other special tools it would probably be very very expensive and might mean that each car has to go to the battery supplies shop and it can't be mailed out. Also in this case your best bet would be to get back to 80-90% of original capacity.

This leads to the next problem in comparing the pack to hybrids. Most hybrid batteries can be accessed through the trunk or under the seat and 1 or 2 people can lift them out or maybe even fix them in the car. I thought about replacing my insight battery myself if I ever needed to. I built a grid charger for it and had everything exposed and saw that it would have been easy to do. The battery unit is bolted together and comes apart with tools. The leaf battery is a sealed chunk of metal that no single person could move, it has to be lowered from under the car with a lift. It's big enough that if you were working under the car on jack stands it could kill you if it fell on you. From reading about people who have used leaf cells from this case they inspect it and find no way to open it without destroying it with angle grinders.

I trust that a capable shop could figure out a way to open and reuse/reseal the case if they wanted to but it rules out the chance of shipping out cells that are then assembled into that case by the DIY user or any old garage willing to take on the job.

As for the cost of shipping, the weights I've seen for buying used cells put half a pack at around 200 and the quoted weight of the battery is 660 from Nissan so that means the case is around 180 lbs. You do a shipping quote from California to NY for a pack that's about 6'x5'x2' and 660lbs and tell me what you get? Yes they won't all ship across the country but with odd size heavy packages like that it's not a linear relationship with cost and distance especially when you add on fees for having a truck with a tailgate capable of delivery it to a place without a dock.

The last thing I'd like to point out is years back there were many people that popped up and started selling plug in prius kits that would offer all electric driving on a gen II car up to 67km/hr, could easily get over 100mpg on the highway ((yes that wasn't counting the kWh) and sold $5k-$12k kits. I looked a while back to see if the price had come down and I couldn't find anyone doing it anymore. The company that originally started the rebuilt insight battery business went belly up. It's possible that it was mismanagement and it's possible that it was the debt from starting it up. If it's the later that is the case the only reason we still have people doing that now are because his supplier started selling the raw product he tested and evaluated to work to other people. They then picked up with his work with little investment needed. So the only thing that's worked in hybrids is selling a proven product (either used OEM or from an established company) that takes near 0 time and cost to develop.

Dorman is one of the largest suppliers of auto parts/remanufactured parts (and yeas some of their stuff is crap), and the remanufactured packs have a 3 year warranty. Yes it's different than a BEV, but the market will be there for a replacement pack at some point, IMHO. There are a lot of DIYers like myself that will have no problem physically replacing a battery pack. To change the clutch on a Mini Cooper, you have to dissassemble the entire front end, I mean you remove the subframe, complete suspension, steering, wheels, bumper, radiator, AC, transmission, etc... And enthusiast DIYers do it all the time. That's just to replace a clutch, physically replacing a battery will be easy in comparison. There are niche one man operation, to small companies serving enthusiast/DIY owners like myself for all different models of cars, as the Leaf ages, I would not be surprised to see that grow for the Leaf as well.

As for shipping cost, I have had some large items shipped to my house. A large rolling heavy duty toolbox was larger than the battery pack and probably 1-200lbs less in weight, it was delivered on a freight truck for free ($30 extra for lift gate delivery). Since the toolbox was about $1200, I think shipping was quite a bit less than $2k.

https://transportevolved.com/2015/10/19/first-drive-report-2016-euro-spec-nissan-leaf-like-the-old-leaf-but-with-more-range-if-you-pay/ states:

Contrary to previous reports Nissan engineers told us during the launch event that the new 30kWh pack could, technically, be fitted to the previous generation of LEAF electric cars as the charging system, motor, controller, and suspension are all identical to the 2013 LEAF.

However, Nissan stated that each car would have to individually undergo homologation, an expensive and time consuming process that it felt would not be worth the effort for owners when added to the cost of the new battery pack. As a consequence, no upgrade path is being offered right now.

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cwerdna said:

https://transportevolved.com/2015/10/19/first-drive-report-2016-euro-spec-nissan-leaf-like-the-old-leaf-but-with-more-range-if-you-pay/ states:

Contrary to previous reports Nissan engineers told us during the launch event that the new 30kWh pack could, technically, be fitted to the previous generation of LEAF electric cars as the charging system, motor, controller, and suspension are all identical to the 2013 LEAF.

However, Nissan stated that each car would have to individually undergo homologation, an expensive and time consuming process that it felt would not be worth the effort for owners when added to the cost of the new battery pack. As a consequence, no upgrade path is being offered right now.

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oh you beat me by seconds!! I will delete my post

cwerdna said:

https://transportevolved.com/2015/10/19/first-drive-report-2016-euro-spec-nissan-leaf-like-the-old-leaf-but-with-more-range-if-you-pay/ states:

Contrary to previous reports Nissan engineers told us during the launch event that the new 30kWh pack could, technically, be fitted to the previous generation of LEAF electric cars as the charging system, motor, controller, and suspension are all identical to the 2013 LEAF.

However, Nissan stated that each car would have to individually undergo homologation, an expensive and time consuming process that it felt would not be worth the effort for owners when added to the cost of the new battery pack. As a consequence, no upgrade path is being offered right now.

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I wonder what the homologation entails? Firmware update? Wiring harness? another adapter kit?