Intentionally buying marginal battery on 3-year old leaf?

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philibuster

Member
Joined
Aug 11, 2020
Messages
5
I see on one of the stickies regarding batteries and warranty that the 30kwh batteries in the 2017 leaf are able to be replaced with 40kwh batteries under warranty.

I am shopping for a USED leaf, and it has been hinted that there is a strategy of finding a 30kwh leaf under battery warranty with lower battery health. Specifically, I am looking at a 10-bar 2017 leaf SV from Arizona. Is there a way to confirm that a battery is still covered under warranty? The exclusions list on the warranty sheet say >120F over 24hrs. Is there a datalogger on the battery to confirm that it did not reach this temperature exclusion? Can a dealer tell me if it is OK? I am looking at a leaf from carmax in Arizona, and I doubt they have the necessary tools (or desire) to read the data.

Some background: I only need about 38 miles every day round trip, and this will be a third car, which will never be taken on long trips, so I can eat some battery degradation off the ~100 miles without it impacting me. I can also top up charge at my workplace if I ever need to. I live in Colorado, and have a 4x4 truck for slippery winter roads.
 
The car does record high battery temps - otherwise Nissan would have no way of knowing if the warranty was violated. I have no recollection of anyone ever reporting a warranty being violated by sustained high temps, though. The pack has a lot of mass, and a 120F day wouldn't come near heating it to 120F. The risk is more from body shop paint booth heaters.
 
Thanks for the input. Right now it shows 68 mi per full charge! Yeesh! But I have 5 years (or 75,000mi) to lose 2 more bars and get a replacement battery under warranty. It's a carmax, so I can probably get it inspected by the dealership to read it and see if I want to keep it within 30 days.
 
There is no free lunch, and OP is not the first, or even the 1,000th person to consider this strategy.

It has risks that the gambler should be aware of:
1. Nissan refuses warranty
2. Nissan goes tits up
3. Nissan closes its EV program
4. Nissan puts in a refurb battery
5. Nissan replaces a bad cell instead of the pack
6. Nissan replaces with another crappy 30 kWh battery
7. Nissan delays
8. The degradation is less than the display says, and after the software update the battery lasts past warranty expiration.
9. Nissan replaces with a 40 kWh battery that failed QC for new cars. Degradation path unknown

Nissan has been very clear for years that they offer NO customer goodwill, and if there is any way for them to legally not fulfill a warranty they will do so. Their current corporate financial plight is only going to push them to be the worse corporate jackasses they can be. And that is saying something, since we are talking about Nissan.

OP: are you feeling lucky ? Do you have the money to lose ?
 
This is a third vehicle that will do mainly in-town and commuting in clear weather. My current daily driver is a 16mpg truck, which is not nice on the pump. I am not relying on this, and I also only need 40 miles/day. If it can't do that with 9 bars of battery, I suppose I'm barking up the wrong tree here. It's also not going to break the bank for me if I have to pay out of pocket to have a battery refurbed or replaced. I guess I'm asking if there's greater than 50% chance it'll work out in my favor!
 
Is there any updates on if indeed all 30kwh packs are being warranty replaced with 40kwh? Does it depend on the dealer (i.e. who may have an EV tech that enjoys opening up battery packs)? Does it depend on warranty remaining (as not to do the job twice)?

Understanding life is a crap shoot and their only obligation is to replace 8 bars with 9. Just wondering if there's any strategy here.
 
Nissan has announced that the 30kWh pack is discontinued and NLA. All 30kWh replacements that I have read about have been upgraded by Nissan to 40kWh packs at no charge (and often no notification !) to the owners. That said, Nissan isn't legally required to use new 40kWh packs when doing a warranty replacement of 30kWh packs but all signs indicate that it what they are doing.

I don't think it has anything to do with the specific dealer since they source all their parts from Nissan corporate offices and get paid by Nissan corp for their work.
 
IIRC, there was one Leaf that got a new 30kwh pack under warranty after the change was announced, because there was a 30kwh pack left in stock somewhere. So the odds of getting one are non-zero, but low.
 
Doesn't look like it's been mentioned yet, but the other consideration is the 100,000 mile limit on the 30 kWh pack warranty. I would personally hit that one before the 96 month (8 year) limit, as you have to average less than 12,500 miles per year to make it to 8 years...
 
goldbrick said:
Nissan has announced that the 30kWh pack is discontinued and NLA. All 30kWh replacements that I have read about have been upgraded by Nissan to 40kWh packs at no charge (and often no notification !) to the owners.

Does this mean that 24kWh Leafs could also (potentially) get a 40kWh battery at this point? My 06/2013 is currently at the dealer awaiting a warranty battery replacement. Based on initial estimates, I won't know the outcome for a couple of weeks. And I suspect warranty coverage for replacement batteries is substantially less than the original 96 months.
 
DIYev said:
goldbrick said:
Nissan has announced that the 30kWh pack is discontinued and NLA. All 30kWh replacements that I have read about have been upgraded by Nissan to 40kWh packs at no charge (and often no notification !) to the owners.

Does this mean that 24kWh Leafs could also (potentially) get a 40kWh battery at this point? My 06/2013 is currently at the dealer awaiting a warranty battery replacement. Based on initial estimates, I won't know the outcome for a couple of weeks. And I suspect warranty coverage for replacement batteries is substantially less than the original 96 months.

I don't remember a single 24 kWh owner getting a new 40 pack. The originals only get refurb 24 kWh packs.
 
Thanks, that's good to know. I suspect I currently have a Wolf pack, so hopefully the replacement will at least be a more heat-tolerant Lizard. Interestingly, the Nissan dealer said it was an $8,000 replacement. I thought new 24kWh packs were going for $5,500 these days. Guess I'll find out.
 
The price went up a while back. Now it's roughly in the $8k range.

I don't remember a single 24 kWh owner getting a new 40 pack. The originals only get refurb 24 kWh packs.

Eh? Nissan has always reserved the right to use refurbished packs, but other than replacing bad cells rather than whole packs, they have not used refurbs in North America. Why? Because the cells usually degrade fairly evenly, making it likely that a 9 or 10 bar refurb would have to be replaced again under warranty.
 
Great to know! Before I bought the car, at least two individual modules had been replaced by the dealer. This time Nissan decided to replace the entire pack rather than individual failing modules again.
 
DIYev said:
My 06/2013 is currently at the dealer awaiting a warranty battery replacement. Based on initial estimates, I won't know the outcome for a couple of weeks.

Just got the car back from the dealer. They first told me Nissan would split the cost of a new pack 50/50 with $4k out-of-pocket for me (and tried to push me toward buying a used car), then I pointed out that mine should still be covered by the 96 month warranty. The dealer then told me Nissan would replace the entire battery pack under warranty.

In the end, Nissan and/or dealer only replaced Control Assembly B (293A0-3NF1B) plus seals and charge balanced the two marginal modules. The SOH must have been reset with the controller replacement as it is now reading >99% instead of <81% in LeafSpy. And the 2G TCU is reporting as <off> in LeafSpy, so the dealer must have disabled it electronically while it was in for the service.

Based on the in-service date of my car, I have about 4.5 months left on battery warranty, so I will be watching it like a hawk...
 
Balancing modules isn't going to work. The dealership is not honest. You may need to either escalate this with Nissan or find an honest Leaf-certified dealership.
 
I'm glad you said that. I dug through some papers I had gotten from the dealer when I bought the car and realized that the same two modules were a problem in July of last year (before I bought the car). Needless to say, I've learned a lot since then. So why Nissan's tech line told the dealer to charge the same modules that had been the problem before rather than replace the pack that had already had work done is beyond me. Either way, the person who I'd been working with at the dealer also thought this didn't make sense and gave me the number so I can escalate with Nissan. As to the honesty of the dealer, I am getting the impression that Nissan North America/tech line is making more of the decisions, but hard to say...
 
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