edatoakrun said:
I do think a replacement cost in this range excludes any benefit from complex and energy consuming ATM battery cooling for all BEVs, except perhaps for BEVs in the very hottest climates and/or those with frequent repeated QC use
Hold your horses. A TMS should be of little relevance in most of California, as the majority of these cars lives close to the coast. Yet many of us are seeing significant decline in autonomy, perhaps on the order of 7 to 10% per year. This cannot be explained by the lack of TMS alone.
Bringing the cost of the battery down to this level could be very important, crucial even, for the transition to EVs. However, unless Nissan starts building larger packs with longer range for the US market, I doubt that the car will see the wide acceptance it aspires to and we want to see. Not if it loses range at this rate in moderate climates.
Anecdotal as they are, there are too many reports about the LEAF not having enough range to comfortably cover all the typical use cases that life in a major metropolitan area entails. Yes, infrastructue build up will help, but we are not there yet.
The 6 kW onboard charger will help as well, but let's see how much it will cost. And lastly, Nissan needs to work to build trust with buyers. This begins with marketing and ends with warranty work. I doubt that any of us are expecting handouts, but a fair and staightforward handling of issues that come up should be a given.
At the implied battery cost, I'm surprised that they won't offer a special level of the extended warranty, which would include traction battery capacity coverage. Tesla pioneered this approach when it started offering prepaid pack replacement for the Roadster. The cost was $12K for a 50 kW battery, which was allegedly subsidized as well.
