Nissan Reaches Settlement in Defective LEAF Battery Class Ac

[surfingslovak]

and per line item #9, page 4:
By opting out you will not be entitled to receive the settlement benefits.

Wow. I think it would be good to have this confirmed with someone at Nissan. So much for the voluntary retroactive warranty. Now it looks like it wouldn't have happened without a lawsuit?

 

[TimLee]

What's everyone's opinion of Nissan NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

 

[GRA]

What's everyone's opinion of Nissan NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

Pretty much the same as it's been for the past year, ever since the "nothing to see here, the battery's fine, all is for the best in the best of all possible LEAF worlds" shuffle began.

 

[Weatherman]

A few thousand battery replacements over the next six years is, simply, a small price to pay to get people to shut up about it.

Nothing new, here. Move along.

 

[walterbays]

Thanks Tim and Tom! Very helpful.

One clear change is the correction of the interpretation of the EVSE standard to provide better EVSE compatibility

This makes the update worth having. Now I have no real troubles with public Blinks, a few Chargepoints, and a few other EVSE's, and most importantly my home Blink. But my home Blink occasionally - rarely - gets the orange screen power fault which I now suspect is due to their faulty cable connections. Eventually the Blink will probably become unusable, and with Ecotality gone there's unlikely to be anyone willing to repair and give warranty on repaired Blinks. So it will have to go to the recycling bin and I'll have to buy a new EVSE, which may or may not be compatible with my current Leaf firmware.

Other than that, seems like it primarily tightens the tolerance of accuracy on the capacity determination. Could that matter for you positively or negatively? :?

What it does, simply, is tighten up the tolerance in the BMS from plus and minus 10 percent to plus 0 and minus 4 percent. In other words, it is far more accurate.

So the "tolerance" I keep reading about refers to the variation between predicted and actual DTE? And you're saying for example, that if my DTE today reads 50 it's actually 45-55 whereas after the update if it reads 50 then it's actually 48-50? But of course that has to be with the same assumption that I'll continue to drive exactly as I have been driving, whether 65mph and uphill or 35mph and downhill.

I'm not sure how much that can help those of us who live in hilly places, and places with slow city streets and wildly speeding freeways, and sporadic traffic jams that can bring either to lengthy stops. By far the biggest factor in DTE inaccuracy cannot be eliminated without knowing where you're going and how you're going to drive to get there. A year or two ago Ford patented a means of doing some of that, since the navigation system knows where you're going, by what route, and what the posted speed limit is on portions of that route. If you added in knowledge of real time traffic congestion along the route, plus predictions of historical congestion farther along the route at the time you're expected to pass that section, plus the elevation profile of the route, you could estimate DTE very closely. It would be fun to watch the DTE change when you changed the NAV route settings from "fastest" to "avoid highways."

 

[Stoaty]

So the "tolerance" I keep reading about refers to the variation between predicted and actual DTE? And you're saying for example, that if my DTE today reads 50 it's actually 45-55 whereas after the update if it reads 50 then it's actually 48-50?

Nope. The update has nothing to do with the guess-o-meter. It more accurately reports the capacity of your "fuel tank" (the battery), which slowly shrinks as the battery ages. The capacity bars (not the fuel bars) are based on this reported capacity.

 

[KillaWhat]

I lost 14% of my pack capacity OVERNIGHT last month, and Nissan is calling it normal pack degradation?

My full charge is now 84%

Sorry, I missed that somehow. Was that because of the firmware update. Could you provide a link?

No.
I have a CAN Meter, so I watch pack capacity pretty closely.
Started the day last month with a 97% charge, charged overnight, and in the morning I'm down to 84%. Max Charge.
Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April.

Nissan say it looks OK to them; they claim to have no clue what a GID is, don't know why I seem to think my pack is now at 84% (since their GOM bar dealy is now calibrated to apparently be able to get to like 80% before it looses a bar) and just tough crackers; deal with it.

Nice.

I have decided to NOT opt out.
I re-read the notice.
I have the further option to OBJECT to the settlement, and I believe that is what I'm going to do.
It may be futile, but at least I get to go on record somewhere that I believe this is a steaming pile.

 

[surfingslovak]

Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April.

Nissan say it looks OK to them; they claim to have no clue what a GID is, don't know why I seem to think my pack is now at 84% (since their GOM bar dealy is now calibrated to apparently be able to get to like 80% before it looses a bar) and just tough crackers; deal with it.

Interesting, so this could be the case of a module or two going bye-bye. Thanks for sharing. Why would Nissan choose to not take action is another matter. Perhaps they are waiting for an additional trigger?

 

[KillaWhat]

Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April.

Nissan say it looks OK to them; they claim to have no clue what a GID is, don't know why I seem to think my pack is now at 84% (since their GOM bar dealy is now calibrated to apparently be able to get to like 80% before it looses a bar) and just tough crackers; deal with it.

Interesting, so this could be the case of a module or two going bye-bye. Thanks for sharing. Why would Nissan choose to not take action is another matter. Perhaps they are waiting for an additional trigger?

They are taking no action because they don't have to.
I'm not below 7 bars.

 

[surfingslovak]

I'm not below 7 bars.

Oh, you mean capacity bars? Yes, but there were proactive module replacements in the past, presumably based on CarWings data. I think in your case, this trigger, a cell voltage difference, or whatever it is, might not have occurred yet. Nissan might be puzzled by your ability to monitor capacity, but as you say, a loss of 16% or 20% by itself is not necessarily actionable. TickTock observed a large drop or capacity in his then-new LEAF in Phoenix, and documented on the forum how he was told that this was normal. This was, of course, before the new capacity warranty was put in place. I hope that you will be able to get closure on this particular problem soon, one way or another.

 

[Stoaty]

They are taking no action because they don't have to.
I'm not below 7 bars.

The warranty kicks in when you get below 9 capacity bars (e.g., when you hit 8 capacity bars).

 

[KJD]

I lost 14% of my pack capacity OVERNIGHT last month, and Nissan is calling it normal pack degradation?
My full charge is now 84%

Sorry, I missed that somehow. Was that because of the firmware update. Could you provide a link?

No.
I have a CAN Meter, so I watch pack capacity pretty closely.
Started the day last month with a 97% charge, charged overnight, and in the morning I'm down to 84%. Max Charge.
Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April.

It would be interesting to see the cell pair data on Turbo3's Leaf Spy app.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14284" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am sure there is a spec somewhere on diff between highest and lowest cell pair. Nissan could not claim ignorance of that one.

 

[turbo2ltr]

I was promised a 100 mile car; I was sold a 70 mile car, and now I'm driving a 50 mile car after 10K miles.

I lost 14% of my pack capacity OVERNIGHT last month, and Nissan is calling it normal pack degradation?

My full charge is now 84%

I would feel a little less anxiety if I knew what a new cell and whole pack were going to cost, like I was promised.

Just so bizarre..........

My 24k mile 2011 is at 8 bars and still goes over 50 highway miles so I'm guessing you are exaggerating a bit.

Nissan told us why they have not released a cost for the battery. Personally I'm fine with their reasoning as I would like to see EV adoption grow. If you needed to know the cost of the battery to own the car, then you should have waited until it the cost was released.

I'd like to opt out simply because I don't like supporting the scam that is class action suits. Personally I like to think Nissan would have done the right thing (especially since the settlement seems to be the same thing that they already announced) so there was no reason to go through the motion except to give lawyers something to fill their pockets with. The lawyers are the only winners in most of these suits. Today's overly litigious society has caused more harm than good and I don't like being forced into being a part of it.

 

[Vuman]

I was promised a 100 mile car; I was sold a 70 mile car, and now I'm driving a 50 mile car after 10K miles.

I lost 14% of my pack capacity OVERNIGHT last month, and Nissan is calling it normal pack degradation?

My full charge is now 84%

I would feel a little less anxiety if I knew what a new cell and whole pack were going to cost, like I was promised.

Just so bizarre..........

My 24k mile 2011 is at 8 bars and still goes over 50 highway miles so I'm guessing you are exaggerating a bit.

Nissan told us why they have not released a cost for the battery. Personally I'm fine with their reasoning as I would like to see EV adoption grow. If you needed to know the cost of the battery to own the car, then you should have waited until it the cost was released.

I'd like to opt out simply because I don't like supporting the scam that is class action suits. Personally I like to think Nissan would have done the right thing (especially since the settlement seems to be the same thing that they already announced) so there was no reason to go through the motion except to give lawyers something to fill their pockets with. The lawyers are the only winners in most of these suits. Today's overly litigious society has caused more harm than good and I don't like being forced into being a part of it.

Turbo, since you are at 8 bars, you should ask for them to replace your battery now and you could still opt out next month. As for me, I'm down 2 bars at 14,000 miles. Should hit 8 bars by next sumner, however, I'm going to opt out also as this is not a good outcome for most 11/12 Leaf owners. Only Nissan and the lawyers are benefiting from this one.

As for class action lawsuits, not all of are bad. Class action lawsuits can help a large group of people if done right. This one was not done right.

 

[DaveEV]

Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April.

It would be interesting to see the cell pair data on Turbo3's Leaf Spy app.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=14284" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I am sure there is a spec somewhere on diff between highest and lowest cell pair. Nissan could not claim ignorance of that one.

Yes, there is a test procedure, it involves running the pack down somewhere below LBW or so and recording how much lower the lowest cell-pair is than the average.

Someone posted it not long ago, unfortunately can't find the post...

I too, would be interested to see cell-pair voltages from the ELM327 app when fully charged, around 50% SOC, LBW and lower if possible.

 

[planet4ever]

Cell pair test at the dealer shows I have about 6 cells in sequence that have changed dramatically since my last cell pair test in April. Nissan say it looks OK to them; they claim to have no clue what a GID is, don't know why I seem to think my pack is now at 84% (since their GOM bar dealy is now calibrated to apparently be able to get to like 80% before it looses a bar) and just tough crackers; deal with it.

Interesting, so this could be the case of a module or two going bye-bye. Thanks for sharing. Why would Nissan choose to not take action is another matter. Perhaps they are waiting for an additional trigger?

They are taking no action because they don't have to. I'm not below 7 bars.

The trigger you are referring to is below 9 bars, not below 7, but that is beside the point. You have a valid claim under the original 96 month/100K warranty no matter how many capacity bars are showing. The applicable restriction there is:

Loss of battery capacity due to or resulting from gradual capacity loss is NOT covered under this warranty.

A 14% loss overnight is not gradual, and you apparently have the numbers to prove this is what happened. Naturally Nissan will claim not to know what a GID is, because that is a term we created here on the forum. But if you show a court that the numbers you are reporting came from the LEAF's OBDII, it will cross examine Nissan as to the meaning of that data and then back you up.

You should opt out of the settlement, go back to Nissan with technical data from garygid as to what you were reading, threaten a court case, and keep fighting.

Ray

 

[Spindoctor]

Anyone have a link to the opt out information? My postcard seems to have been misplaced.

Thanks.
Never mind - found it!

http://classaction.kccllc.net/content.aspx?c=5620&sh=1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



10. How can I exclude myself from the settlement?

To exclude yourself from the settlement, you must mail the Settlement Administrator a Request for Exclusion that contains the following information:

The name of the lawsuit: “Humberto Daniel Klee and David Wallak, individually, and on behalf of a class of similarly situated individuals v. Nissan North America, Inc., Civil Action No.
CV 12-08238.”

Your full name, current address and telephone number;

Your vehicle year and model;

Your vehicle’s Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and mileage as of the date of this Notice;

A specific statement of your intent to exclude yourself from the lawsuit (for example, “Please exclude me from the Klee Settlement.”);

A specific statement that you do not wish to be a Settlement Class Member and choose to be excluded from any judgment entered pursuant to the settlement (for example, “I do not wish to be a Settlement Class Member and want to be excluded from the Settlement.”); and

Your signature and the date you signed it.

You must send your Request for Exclusion by first-class United States Mail in enough time to ensure the Settlement Administrator receives it by October 28, 2013 at the address below:

Nissan Leaf Settlement Administrator
P.O. Box 43191
Providence, RI 02940-3191

If you do not follow these procedures and deadlines to exclude yourself from the settlement, you will remain a Settlement Class Member and lose any opportunity to exclude yourself from the settlement. This means that your rights will be determined in this lawsuit by the Settlement Agreement if it receives final approval from the Court.

 

[LTLFTcomposite]

Most people will remain in the class because that's the default if no action is taken. I should get myself excluded from the class, but it's an even money bet the form will sit on my desk and get buried under other higher priorities.

 

[dgpcolorado]

Most people will remain in the class because that's the default if no action is taken. I should get myself excluded from the class, but it's an even money bet the form will sit on my desk and get buried under other higher priorities.

It annoys me that the default is to join the class. It should be the other way around. Why should I have to jump through their hoops if I want nothing to do with it?

 

[TomT]

At least you received a form. To date, I've received nothing.

Most people will remain in the class because that's the default if no action is taken. I should get myself excluded from the class, but it's an even money bet the form will sit on my desk and get buried under other higher priorities.