Wanted: Info on Future Battery Pack Replacement

Owner of a 2014 Leaf with I believe a 24Kw battery pack, currently showing 11 bars with a full range of 84 miles. Have yet to purchase a Leaf Spy to apparently learn even more about the current condition of my existing battery.

Having said that, I am a very "forward thinking" individual and since we enjoy our Leaf, sadly I know the day will come some time in the future
when the range on our degrading battery will cause us to start looking for a replacement. A few questions looking ahead. Would appreciate
anyone with solid knowledge to reply with information that we and all other older Leaf owners can rely on.

#1) Who else besides Nissan currently offer a reliable, trustworthy replacement solution for our 24 Kw battery packs?

#2) When replacing the original battery back, regardless of from whom, is it possible without any consequences to upgrade to a 30Kw battery pack?

#3) I have seen a few threads about one company who for a few years has let everyone on the Forum know that they are working toward being able to provide a reliable solution to just getting a new battery from Nissan? With the number of EV's expected to increase much more than they were in the past 5-8 years, is it reasonable to assume that 5 years from now there will be more companies trying to, and able to capture the market of folks like us older Leaf owners who obviously are going to need to replace or upgrade our original batteries?

#4) Is it possible and even likely that 5 or more years down the road that we older Leaf owners will have trouble even replacing our smaller 24Kw battery packs because the majority of newer, and soon to come EV's will all have larger, more technology based batteries?

In Summary, I ask these questions as a person who really is concerned that 5 years or so from now when I need to replace my battery pack that I am not going to find myself behind a rock and a hard place wishing that I got rid of my Leaf before it was too late.

Thank you in advance. I know that there are a lot of very knowledgeable folks on this Forum and I am hoping to get the full story on what owning an older Leaf might look like, challenges and all, 5 or more years down the road. :?:

Battery capacity is measured in kWh, not “Kw".

2) Nissan at the moment provides no path to upgrade from a given size battery to a larger one than the car came with. Reasons given to the press were at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=511898#p511898. More posts on this at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=491774#p491774.

3) Maybe… but in 5 years, the value of a 24 kWh Leaf will be pretty low, esp. the older you go. Worn '11 and '12 Leafs to maybe 7 or 8 bars remaining aren't worth much more than $4K.

Given folks weren’t really jumping on $5500 (when it was that) + tax and labor for a new 24 kWh pack and now it’s gone up to somewhere north of $7K to as much as $8.5K, do you think the audience will be large enough for a company to at least breakeven (need to cover all their costs) on whatever price they choose?

4) Yes.

Why would you need to replace it in 5 years or whenever? We have no idea where you're located so we can't guess how quickly the battery will degrade. We also don't know your use cases/range autonomy required (how much city and/or highway driving on a single charge) and how much of it will be in freezing or below temps.

Can you update your location info?

My battery is 5 years old and is going strong. At 10 years old I expect that it will be limited to around town or powering something that isn't a car.

Forget the 30kwh battery I'm going for the 62kwh.

I'm totalling betting that muxsan or the Canadian outfit will solve the problems between the battery and car canbus.

cwerdna said:

Battery capacity is measured in kWh, not “Kw".

2) Nissan at the moment provides no path to upgrade from a given size battery to a larger one than the car came with. Reasons given to the press were at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=511898#p511898. More posts on this at https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=491774#p491774.

3) Maybe… but in 5 years, the value of a 24 kWh Leaf will be pretty low, esp. the older you go. Worn '11 and '12 Leafs to maybe 7 or 8 bars remaining aren't worth much more than $4K.

Given folks weren’t really jumping on $5500 (when it was that) + tax and labor for a new 24 kWh pack and now it’s gone up to somewhere north of $7K to as much as $8.5K, do you think the audience will be large enough for a company to at least breakeven (need to cover all their costs) on whatever price they choose?

4) Yes.

Why would you need to replace it in 5 years or whenever? We have no idea where you're located so we can't guess how quickly the battery will degrade. We also don't know your use cases/range autonomy required (how much city and/or highway driving on a single charge) and how much of it will be in freezing or below temps.

Can you update your location info?

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Thank You for the suggestions, and I have just updated our location.

To answer questions about our planned use of our Leaf... Currently 30k miles and 11 bars. Our use will be 100% non-highway driving. We use the car 4-5 times a week with local trips, the furthest one being 60 miles round trip twice a week. Currently charging 4 times a week using a 3.3 kWH 240v charger at home, to 90-95% capacity (for our longest trip only).

We drive with the ECO off all of the time, and since our purchase I am showing that our power usage is 4.4 to 4.6 miles/kWh. As far as Winter or cold weather driving goes, we will seldom if ever use the Leaf if the temperature is below 40 degrees or above 85-90 since we have other nice cars that we can also drive.

I believe this should mean our battery will last a long time, but still my purpose of the original post I guess is to know now that my options on re-freshing and putting in a new battery are still going to be very limited regardless if its 5,6 or 8 years down the road.

Again, thanks for your helpful insight.

As far as Winter or cold weather driving goes, we will seldom if ever use the Leaf if the temperature is below 40 degrees or above 85-90 since we have other nice cars that we can also drive.

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Unless you don't get enough range in Winter, the Leaf is great in Winter. You can heat it before you leave home, most Leafs have heated front seats and steering wheels, and the battery weight helps with traction (if you use snow or aggressive all-season tires). If you have an SV or SL, it has a heat pump-assisted heater that gets good range in milder Winter temps.

Amazing1 said:

Thank You for the suggestions, and I have just updated our location.

To answer questions about our planned use of our Leaf... Currently 30k miles and 11 bars. Our use will be 100% non-highway driving. We use the car 4-5 times a week with local trips, the furthest one being 60 miles round trip twice a week. Currently charging 4 times a week using a 3.3 kWH 240v charger at home, to 90-95% capacity (for our longest trip only).

We drive with the ECO off all of the time, and since our purchase I am showing that our power usage is 4.4 to 4.6 miles/kWh. As far as Winter or cold weather driving goes, we will seldom if ever use the Leaf if the temperature is below 40 degrees or above 85-90 since we have other nice cars that we can also drive.

I believe this should mean our battery will last a long time, but still my purpose of the original post I guess is to know now that my options on re-freshing and putting in a new battery are still going to be very limited regardless if its 5,6 or 8 years down the road.

Click to expand...

Cool. Charging rate and max station output rate (https://www.clippercreek.com/three-things-determine-ev-charge-time/) are measured in kW, not kWh. You did get your miles/kWh units correct.

60 miles roundtrip on a single charge will get dicey as the battery degrades, esp. if it gets too cold.

Unfortunately, you mentioned Georgia, which sounds like a hotter part of the US. Degradation in your part of the US will be significantly worse than in milder climate (e.g. Seattle area and cities where it doesn't get hot like the city of SF).

Yes, you might want to replace the big HV battery or the car once the car's no longer suitable for your use cases. Not sure when that'll be. If you can charge at your destination(s) or along the way (check Plugshare), that's help extend the car's range autonomy.

People have asked Nissan corporate official for an upgrade path to a larger battery. Who knows if Nissan will change their mind and if the HV battery prices will be reasonable?

Back to question 3, I live and work in Silicon Valley so my views may be a bit ummm... colored by what I see. And, my employer pays very well. We used to have lots of Leafs at my work. For awhile, Leafs were a pretty big proportion of on the EVs + PHEVs at my work. Now, the proportion is much smaller and are lot of other models showing up. I guess that some of them were leased and returned or they sold in favor of something else. Tesla is decimating everyone else in terms of US EV/PHEV sales (https://insideevs.com/news/373812/ev-sales-scorecard-september-2019/). Seems like most of the new (to my work) EVs/PHEVs showing up are Model 3's. We have an internal registry where we're supposed to put in car make, model, color, plate #, work email, etc.

Numerous folks who had Leafs (or other short range EVs) have gone w/something else. Two folks on my street who leased Leafs got Bolts well before me. I know another guy who had an '11 Leaf (not sure if he still does) but got a Bolt long ago. Someone else at my work leased a Leaf but now has a Bolt. Another guy who had a Focus Electric ended up also getting a Model S. He left the company though. Someone else who was leasing a Fiat 500e now seems to have a Model X and BMW i3 REx in their household (they're fricking nuts if you ask me from a reliability POV). Another guy was also leasing a Fiat 500e (wife mostly drove it) now has a Bolt.

Will there be a sufficient audience w/24 and 30 kWh Leaf owners w/a car that has little value once it has degraded too much to want to spend big $ on a battery, even if there were an upgrade path available? Unclear to me... This is against the backdrop of 40 and 62 kWh Leafs + all sorts of other EVs being available, new and used.

I don't use free public L2 charging much any more and the place that had 8 public free stations now only has 3 handles open for the public. Over time, I sometimes became the lone Nissan there. At one point, GM vehicles would dominate there (Spark EV, both gens of Volt and Bolt).

We had been planning on replacing our 2011 battery, but after reading about the cost of other basic repairs, now we are leaning towards getting rid of the car when something breaks. (As well as the poor insurance coverage for a new pack) The car hopefully will last a few more years for my wife's roundtrip commute of 15 miles. Currently getting 30 miles of range.
One example Break Cylinder https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=21203

https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=572598#p572598 is even worse in terms of a repair cost. '11 and '12 Leafs with 8 bars or less aren't even worth that repair cost and spending $8K on new battery doesn't suddenly boost the value of a working '11 or '12 Leaf by $8K.

And, if you blew $8K on a new pack and the car gets totaled, unfortunately, the used market and insurance doesn't seem to properly take into account battery condition vs. value. You likely won't get $8K more for it (if anything) vs. a degraded used Leaf w/similar mileage but many bars down.

At some point it will be possible to have 30 and 40kwh used packs installed for maybe $5-6k. It's already being done, but not commercially. A member named Mux is starting to market the hardware to make it possible, but not in North America - yet. If it can be done for the 40kwh packs I wouldn't bother with the 30kwh unless it was a genuine 12 bar capacity battery.

And supposedly, there are some folks in Quebec that have gotten 40 kWh packs to work on 24 kWh cars via an intermediary device (https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=567928#p567928). I don't know the details.

cwerdna said:

And supposedly, there are some folks in Quebec that have gotten 40 kWh packs to work on 24 kWh cars via an intermediary device (https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=567928#p567928). I don't know the details.

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Véhicules électriques Simon André

They have a success with 30 and 40 kwh. They begin to test with 62 kwh batteries. Physical dimensions seems the bigger challenge.

https://www.facebook.com/ve.simonandre/videos/679638779227574/UzpfSTgwNDE4MTE2OTpWSzoxNjkxOTc4OTkwOTM4MDg1/?multi_permalinks=1691978990938085&notif_id=1574111710848647&notif_t=group_highlights

ydrape said:

cwerdna said:

And supposedly, there are some folks in Quebec that have gotten 40 kWh packs to work on 24 kWh cars via an intermediary device (https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=567928#p567928). I don't know the details.

Click to expand...

Véhicules électriques Simon André

They have a success with 30 and 40 kwh. They begin to test with 62 kwh batteries. Physical dimensions seems the bigger challenge.

https://www.facebook.com/ve.simonandre/videos/679638779227574/UzpfSTgwNDE4MTE2OTpWSzoxNjkxOTc4OTkwOTM4MDg1/?multi_permalinks=1691978990938085&notif_id=1574111710848647&notif_t=group_highlights

Click to expand...

Thank you! That video was posted recently!

I was told about not only the increase in height but also reduction in ground clearance on the Plus in Jan 2019 at CES: https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=545740#p545740. So, it's not all that surprising that the battery is measurably taller.

^^^
On the above, they posted a video of a 62 kWh pack mounted and connected to a '15 Leaf w/their CAN gateway box.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=422869405075183

They claimed it L2 and "L3" charges fine and they showed a Leaf Spy screen. They didn't say how it drives and how it behaves as it's closer to dead though.