May Deliveries! Or... May(be)?

[JimLovewell]

Call PG&E and threaten to plug in two hair dryers and run them on high for 5 hours! If you really want to push them over the edge, do it at 3pm, run the Air conditioner and turn on the oven!

Did they tell you not to do any cooking or to not use your air conditioner until they install a second transformer? The should have!! A LEAF charging at 3.3 kW just isn't a big deal unless there are many of them (like 3 or more) on the same transformer or the transformer is ALREADY OVERCAPACITY form load that's probably existed for the last 5 YEARS or more!

Are they charging you anything for the tranmsformer upgrade? Really what PG&E is probably doing is hiding decades of neglect in not having previously upgraded their transformer for increasing neighborhood load - new big screen TVs, Air Conditioners etc. by tagging it on you and the EV instead of their PG&E's own decades of neglect.

I'm making some assumptions since I don't know the current transformer rating and loading, but this is reallly suspicious unless you have two neighbors both charging their Tesla Roadsters at full power!

Yes, I fully agree! 3.8 KWatts is on the order of a kitchen stove cooking dinner (and I have not one but two stoves). I don’t see PG&E making a hissy fit about stoves, plasma TV and the like. Oh, I almost forgot, no they are not charging me for the decades of neglect. I went and counted the houses that I share the transformer with and there are 12. I don’t know what the transformer rating is or what a typical number of homes a transformer supports. I am glad though that PG&E is updating my neighborhood as I had a 100 Amp subpanel installed to support EVSE so in the future (a car for my wife next year) I plan to hook up additional EVSE for more cars.) Also, this will support one Tesla at charging at 17KWatt.

 

[daniel]

Call PG&E and threaten to plug in two hair dryers and run them on high for 5 hours! If you really want to push them over the edge, do it at 3pm, run the Air conditioner and turn on the oven!

Did they tell you not to do any cooking or to not use your air conditioner until they install a second transformer? The should have!! A LEAF charging at 3.3 kW just isn't a big deal unless there are many of them (like 3 or more) on the same transformer or the transformer is ALREADY OVERCAPACITY form load that's probably existed for the last 5 YEARS or more!

Are they charging you anything for the tranmsformer upgrade? Really what PG&E is probably doing is hiding decades of neglect in not having previously upgraded their transformer for increasing neighborhood load - new big screen TVs, Air Conditioners etc. by tagging it on you and the EV instead of their PG&E's own decades of neglect.

I'm making some assumptions since I don't know the current transformer rating and loading, but this is reallly suspicious unless you have two neighbors both charging their Tesla Roadsters at full power!

I would imagine it's not the draw from the car they are concerned about, but the CAPACITY of the new meter and panel. With the second meter and panel, the house COULD draw the full capacity of the new panel.

Still, it's a pathetically small transformer if one additional panel is going to push it beyond its limit.

I'm glad I decided not to buy an EVSE and will instead just plug my Leaf into the wall. That's assuming I ever get a Leaf, which seems doubtful.

 

[JimLovewell]

Well what a surprise (or maybe not) when I logged into my DB this morning Nissan changed my estimated delivery from May 16 to May 26. I probably should be happy because Nissan didn’t change my April 22 date until 3 weeks after the due date and this is only 5 days after the due date. Well the good news is I am still (but just barely if you believe the dash board date) in May. What I don’t understand is why it takes more than 60 days to get a car from port Long Beach to San Leandro, 475 miles away.

So the waiting continues.

 

[smkettner]

Because there is way more than just your car. And there were several issues to be delt with causing us all to go back through the processing line up to four times instead of once.

 

[seandexter]

Yeah, a laundry list of items varying from understandable (bad software) to preposterous (baked pollen). :lol: I have been extrememly patient and understanding with Nissan's efforts but have to agree that it is a bad omen that it is taking over 60 days to get a car out of port. I feel that the port staff and poor management has done much to sour my attitude towards Nissan USA. My car delivery date lingered at April 22 for a month before finally receiving my 'email' and an updated delivery date of May 26. Given this prolonged process I am not counting on it.

 

[kmp647]

The other thing I don't understand is the car processing workers at the ports saw very few cars for a while after the earthquake

You would think they would fly through the incoming cars and get them out to dealers

 

[JimLovewell]

My DB is has changed on a daily basis this weekend. (Does that mean someone is working at port Long Beach for this to happen? I wouldn’t have expected any changes on the weekend. Have other forum member’s experienced date changes on a Saturday and Sunday?)
Anyway on Friday, 5/20, my estimated delivery was 5/16. On Saturday my estimated deliver was charged to 5/26. Today, Sunday, it is changed again to 5/31. I wonder if I should start posting in “June 2011 Delivery.” Or maybe I should start a new thread “June 2012 Delivery.” When AndyH named the end of the thread “Or…May(be)?” he was right on! Only Rapture has so many false delivery dates! How is it that it takes more than 60 days to ship a car from Long Beach to San Leandro, 475 miles? So the waiting continues. :evil:

 

[JimLovewell]

Because there is way more than just your car. And there were several issues to be delt with causing us all to go back through the processing line up to four times instead of once.

How do you know this?

 

[seandexter]

Because there is way more than just your car. And there were several issues to be delt with causing us all to go back through the processing line up to four times instead of once.

How do you know this?

Irrelevant how/if smkettner knows this. This only fact I am interested in this point is that "my car' (and JimLovewell's car) supposedly was on the ship that departed Japan on March 10, 2011. The point is that the car is still not delivered to the dealer.

Yes there have been some "issues," however it is ridiculous that Nissan USA has floundered in processing these vehicles in a timely manner; worse is that they continue to make false promises for delivery time and CS continues to provide us with phone baloney excuses like baked pollen and "waiting for a truck". If I were an executive in Tennessee I would be more than steamed about pissing off so many customers and people in LB would be looking for a new job.

 

[daniel]

The only explanation that makes sense to me is the one I've been saying for some time now: NISSAN JUST DOES NOT CARE ABOUT US! They know that most of us will buy the car whenever it comes, since basically they have the only game in town. According to this site:

http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2010/_STORY/100528-01-e.html

it looks as though Nissan makes about 300,000 cars a month, which would be three and a half million cars a year. The initial U.S. roll-out of the Leaf was supposed to be about 4,700 cars. That's roughly one one-thousandth of their annual production. We EV enthusiasts tend to consider the Leaf an important event, but to Nissan we are a corner of a backwater hidden behind a disused shipping crate.

They farmed out the whole ordering system to the cheapest incompetent nincompoops they could find, precisely because they did not care. It's either that, or the Nissan execs themselves are incompetent, and I don't believe that. They've been building fine cars for a long time, and by all accounts, from lucky owners, the Leaf is a fine car. Nissan knows what it's doing. It just doesn't care about people so far out on the fringe that we'd rather drive an EV than an SUV or a truck.

 

[smkettner]

I speculate many of our cars dated for April delivery were yanked from shipping for a couple weeks while the engineers were running around like crazy with the no start issue. Then they programmed a fix and finaly got around to fixing the programming on our 1000 to 1500 cars. (the # is from the Nissan press realease, do a search) They may have also checked the refrigerant level in the air conditioners. This does not take all that long on one car but there were so many. Turning wrenches used to pay the rent for me and a job like this would be huge. Especially if the crew is more attuned to just adding some accessories. Nissan may not immediately have ten air conditioner service machines or ten guys certified to run them.

While not all cars went to CA but you could have gotten a solid idea on the steady delivery process in the last three weeks if you had watched the CVRP fund each night and weekends when the initial applications would pile up after hours. Unfortunately someone is at the very end of the processing line and the delay is extra fustrating. Nissan wants your money asap and is not picking on anyone. Just luck of the draw.

Don't tell me you have never been backed up at work and someone complains their 15 minute request took way too long. This just goes up a couple levels on that idea.

I have no inside information. But any middle manager should know how these boondoggles get out of hand quickly following some unanticipated SNAFU.

 

[daniel]

So what's the story when you're told your car is in Portland with a "week of April 22" delivery, and two weeks later you call and that car has gone to someone else, and a different car is assigned to you and waiting for who-knows-what in Long Beach? What's going on when they promise a car to someone and then yank it??? Not talking about a car that disappeared in the tsunami. Talking about a car that was six hours away. Promises mean nothing to Nissan! Promises to deliver 4,700 cars to the U.S. in December and January, but, oh well, promises mean nothing so divert that production to Japan. Promises to deliver a car with a specific VIN, but, oh, well, promises mean nothing so divert that car to somebody else. A man who breaks his promises is a dishonest man. I think it was the dishonesty from Nissan, as much as anything else, that made a friend of mine just cancel his order. It makes me sick to still be intending to buy a car from this dishonest company! Sadly, they have the only game in town right now. But as far as I'm concerned, they're no better than crooks. And not a lot better than politicians.

 

[nader]

I'm getting increased DB activity this weekend. Went from 5/26 to 5/25 Sunday AM. Woke up to another update email from Nissan regarding the change too. I know the dealer has been invoiced so I imagine it'll happen any day now. Brendan mentioned that with the Leaf, being invoiced doesn't mean a subsequent delivery in 1-2 days.

 

[seandexter]

I have been a lowly worker, middle manager, and corporate exec. What has occurred is no SNAFU. What has happened is very poor execution of a good idea, with little management commitment of the needed additional resources at the point things were not hapenning with delivery. This may have snuck up on them (I doubt it) but was most likely a financial decision, at a very high cost of consumer satisfaction. Also, there has been very poor execution by CS in the classic overpromise and underdeliver situation. Nissan USA should have hired some more techs to help out at the port; plain and simple. Don't provide customers 'estimates' and fail to meet them by over a month with lame excuses. There are thousands of unemployed auto workers and I am sure there would be no shortage of qualified temporary personnel to add at the port should management care to actually fufill orders as promised. I do not understand why people insist on excusing the poor management of this rollout. It is behind schedule, customers are pissed off, CS can't put out the fires popping up, and the dealers (at least mine) are tired of explaining why the car is not on the lot.

Also, I still haven't forgotten that I ordered this car a year ago, was originally told December 2010.

Time to stop fooling around and deliver.

 

[smkettner]

34 new CA rebates applied for this weekend so far. That probably translates into 50 to 60 US deliveries. They are moving along.
https://energycenter.org/index.php/...an-vehicle-rebate-project/cvrp-program-status

If that is not fast enough well there is not much to do about it.

Previous two weekends were more so I assume Nissan is getting to the end of this.

 

[LEAFfan]

I know the dealer has been invoiced so I imagine it'll happen any day now. Brendan mentioned that with the Leaf, being invoiced doesn't mean a subsequent delivery in 1-2 days.

Mine was invoiced May 16th (the day it left for Portland) with a delivery date of 'week of May 26' (which can mean a June delivery to my home) but the dealer says they don't have the invoicing yet. I don't understand how it can take more than a couple days for it to show up on the dealer's DB.

 

[daniel]

I have been a lowly worker, middle manager, and corporate exec. What has occurred is no SNAFU. What has happened is very poor execution of a good idea, with little management commitment of the needed additional resources at the point things were not hapenning with delivery. This may have snuck up on them (I doubt it) but was most likely a financial decision, at a very high cost of consumer satisfaction. Also, there has been very poor execution by CS in the classic overpromise and underdeliver situation. Nissan USA should have hired some more techs to help out at the port; plain and simple. Don't provide customers 'estimates' and fail to meet them by over a month with lame excuses. There are thousands of unemployed auto workers and I am sure there would be no shortage of qualified temporary personnel to add at the port should management care to actually fufill orders as promised. I do not understand why people insist on excusing the poor management of this rollout. It is behind schedule, customers are pissed off, CS can't put out the fires popping up, and the dealers (at least mine) are tired of explaining why the car is not on the lot.

Also, I still haven't forgotten that I ordered this car a year ago, was originally told December 2010.

Time to stop fooling around and deliver.

VERY WELL PUT!!!

 

[lzendle]

Interesting reply to dealer from EV Ops Manager - West Region South. (Note: My dashboard currently says ETA 5/30/11, and CS tells me that even though I got the 7 day notice 4/19/11, it's the "car mats" that are holding up delivery.)

_______________________________________
Email reply to dealer:
I show an ETA of June 6th. In regards to the California Rebate Money ..... I would not worry, the state is placing an additional $2,000,000 into the fund. You will hear that announcement shortly.

Sincerely,
Kyle B. Lentz
Nissan North America
Electric Vehicle Operations Manager - West Region South
Cell 615-585-0598

 

[DaveEV]

Email reply to dealer:
I show an ETA of June 6th. In regards to the California Rebate Money ..... I would not worry, the state is placing an additional $2,000,000 into the fund. You will hear that announcement shortly.

Sincerely,
Kyle B. Lentz
Nissan North America
Electric Vehicle Operations Manager - West Region South
Cell 615-585-0598

Let Kyle know that all bets are off at the end of June - and that there are a good number of October orders with late June or July ETAs who stand to lose $2500 because of these delays...

 

[opencar]

Email reply to dealer:
I show an ETA of June 6th. In regards to the California Rebate Money ..... I would not worry, the state is placing an additional $2,000,000 into the fund. You will hear that announcement shortly.

Sincerely,
Kyle B. Lentz
Nissan North America
Electric Vehicle Operations Manager - West Region South
Cell 615-585-0598

Let Kyle know that all bets are off at the end of June - and that there are a good number of October orders with late June or July ETAs who stand to lose $2500 because of these delays...

Many of the 2010 orders will be at risk given the current drain on the funds - checkout the recent burn rate!