When I bought my LEAF in 2011, I fell in love with it. Great pickup, almost zero maintenance. Unsuitable for long trips, but great for errands around town. And with a 5-year warranty on the battery maintaining "approximately 70% of battery capacity", I should be covered, right?
Wrong.
As my car approached the 5-year expiration date, with 22,000 miles on the odometer, the car was charging to approx. 62 miles - well short of 70% of its original 102-mile range. Disappointed, I brought the car in to have the battery replaced. At the dealer (Glendale Nissan) I was told, "OK, we need to update the car's operating system anyway. Leave it here, we'll check it out."
When I went back to pick it up, the service consultant told me, "There are still 9 bars on the dash displaying battery capacity. Unfortunately, you don't qualify for replacement." But worse: after a full charge the available distance displayed on the dashboard had magically increased to 72 miles. Either Nissan Service had enhanced my car's battery capacity, or the software "update" had tweaked the car's operating system, Volkswagen-style, to show more range than was actually available!
After purchasing the Leaf Spy app (which plugs directly into the car's maintenance port) I discovered the car had 64.8% of battery capacity remaining (182 GIDs). So I went back to Nissan Service and showed them their bar display was wrong - remaining capacity was well below 70% - and demanded the new $5,500 battery to which I was entitled. "But it's not below 9 bars," I was told. So I demanded to talk to the Service Manager. "But it's not below 9 bars," he said.
In two consecutive calls to Nissan America Customer Service I tried to explain. "Because your 'bars' don't correspond to any physical property they're useless to consumers for evaluation purposes," I said. "I purchased the car based on the battery's capacity not falling 'below approximately 70%' of original capacity." Both times I was told, "But it's not below 9 bars."
Despite my original enthusiasm for the LEAF (and reading comments of others with the same experience), I'm entirely turned off by Nissan's obvious deception and refusal to abide by the terms of their warranty. I would never consider buying another LEAF, and encourage others to look at the numerous other options available.