Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs

I really enjoyed talking to all the other bar-losers last night as I cried into my alcohol (just kidding, no crying occurred, only angry laughter). What a nice group of people.

Here's the one important thing I came away with from the meeting: the only consistent factor across drivers was the intense Phoenix heat. Charging patterns, driving habits, miles driven, etc. were different across the board. These cars are not some kind of strange anomaly, and after seeing this group, I am 100% confident that all Phoenix cars will suffer this fate.

Sadly, I would not even lease a Leaf in Phoenix after this meeting, since it's apparent that losing 30%--or more--of your capacity within even the three-year lease is quite likely here. They are still telling him, by the way, that his loss is normal.

It was great meeting you also, loser! :lol:

Francisco, welcome.

1) 6 and 7 temperature bars seem to be the norm out here in the hotter months. Yes, people have seen 8... and I think higher also!

2) Without tipping our hand to Nissan in a public forum, yes, some Phoenix owners have been working with lawyers and other people/agencies.

3) Last night's meeting in Phoenix... we laughed, we cried, we punched our fists through walls. We filmed with KPHO CBS 5 for their follow-up story, which should air soon. We measured GIDs on a few cars, including Scott's car with 3 lost bars (see my posts since last night).

Sorry I couldn't make it last night, everybody. I work weird hours.

I did, however, e-mail personally the reporter and gave her "the evidence" I had on my 2011 with a lost capacity bar - including a Nissan service report indicating my car lost one capacity bar after 10-1/2 months and 10,200 miles and that Nissan termed such loss "normal." She was very quick to reply.

Let me know if I can help or further support your efforts in any way.

jspearman said:

Sadly, I would not even lease a Leaf in Phoenix after this meeting, since it's apparent that losing 30%--or more--of your capacity within even the three-year lease is quite likely here.

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Well, that's why we only did a 2-year lease, but that's admittedly of little consolation considering the 2 and 3 bar losses being reported after a little over a year. However, our piece of mind is giving back the car at lease end. I wish affected owners had the same option.

Nissan offered me $21,000 for my 2011 LEAF. I think someone else was offered $18K in Phoenix from a different dealer? NADA was saying upper $25K with dealer resale in the high $20's. I felt fortunate to get $25K from someone else.

If Nissan is saying the car is "normal" why aren't they buying them back at market value? They have been claiming limited supply is a factor behind low sales. How about increasing supply with 400 "normal" LEAFs in the Phoenix area?

Nissan or a dealer made those offers?
I thought Nissan had not reacted to the complaints. If they are offering buy backs--and low-ball prices, that adds a new dimension.

please clarify.

thankyouOB said:

Nissan or a dealer made those offers?
I thought Nissan had not reacted to the complaints. If they are offering buy backs--and low-ball prices, that adds a new dimension.

please clarify.

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Sorry for the confusion. It was a local Nissan dealer.

shrink said:

Nissan offered me $21,000 for my 2011 LEAF. I think someone else was offered $18K in Phoenix from a different dealer? NADA was saying upper $25K with dealer resale in the high $20's. I felt fortunate to get $25K from someone else.

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The numbers have been falling like a rock. We also heard last night that at least one dealer in Phoenix WILL NOT buy used Leafs. We were told that they cannot get any money from them at auction. We were even told about a few Leafs that were shipped to CA and sold and all they did was recover their shipping costs.

If anyone is interested in shopping his/her Leaf around, I'd be very curious to see whether anyone would offer more than a 6-pack of Dr. Pepper for the car.

opossum said:

[We were told that they cannot get any money from them at auction.

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Actually, the dealer that offered me $21,000 said the same thing. They tried to sell a used 2012 at auction, but could not and it was back sitting on their lot.

It's a very depressing situation. I find myself wondering how many more inland CA owners would be in the same place now if we'd had a typical summer last year and were set up for another this year. It would also be very enlightening to know just what the temperature mean average is for this condition to become evident.

OrientExpress said:

Herm said:

OrientExpress said:

Now there has been an argument proposed that "Nissan botched its testing badly" for hot weather. I think not, and here is why. They have been doing hot weather testing for quite a while, but most likely using a 100 year high temp average for the hottest area of the US.

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Ahh, the old Global Warming excuse.. its ironic that Leafers are fighting GW and just took one on the chin.

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Not an excuse at all, just a fact. This year is the hottest it has been in the US since records have been kept. This is an unprecedented year climate-wise, and stuff is going to have issues, especially things whose performance is related to the temperature of the environment it has to operate in.

I would suspect that every manufacturer of equipment that is temperature sensitive is re-evaluating their design criteria.

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The heart of the issue is indeed testing and neither global warming or selective statistics are relevant. Statistics only show us a clustering of data around a specific variable--ambient temperature in this case--and it is okay to dig deeper on that. And any idiot with a thermometer or access to weather.com can tell you that Phoenix is 100+ in the summer and always has been. In terms of technology it shouldn't matter if it is 5-10 degrees hotter than last year, last decade, or 10,000 years ago. If Nissan engineers were smart they would have designed the pack to handle temps a healthy margin above the hottest they were likely ever to face, but if they chose not to (e.g. cutting the TMS to save costs) then they still would have known the consequences and likely marketed accordingly. For us living in hot areas we know and expect to replace our $80 12V car batteries once every 2-3 years for they are not designed to handle heat. We do not expect to replace our $20,000 traction battery under the same terms.

The complaint here is that Nissan seems to have NOT tested these cars sufficiently in hot areas. I think we know this implicitly because look at how much care they took with cold regions. We saw Leafs driving on top of frigid mountains, we saw cold-weather packages, we saw literature on the affects of cold temporarily reducing capacity, we saw a deliberate lock-out of all states with sub-freezing weather during the roll-out. Did we see Leafs driving for months in Death Valley? Did we see hot-weather packages? About the only thing we know they tested is baking a battery in a paint room for 24-hours at 120F+ because they specifically warn you not to do that.

I think this has taken them by surprise. I think it is the tip of the iceberg and by the end of summer we may see the list double or triple. Losing 20-35% capacity in one year is not under any definition except perhaps Nissan's "normal" for average usage. It would be like a 30MPG ICE car suddenly dropping to 20MPG after a year. No one would accept that. There is no justification for it. The truth is that either they were aware of it and didn't disclose for fear of hurting sales--unlikely in my view since whatever they gained would be lost in future lawsuits and trust in the brand. Or more likely they were not aware of it which means lack of testing.

OrientExpress said:

2K miles/Mo. is truly an edge case and any vehicle operated that much in such an extreme environment would experience some degradation of its systems. 25K miles/yr. is taxi/law enforcement/delivery van miles.

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You're really blowing smoke here to cover the fact that ANYBODY who loses 35% when they reach 25K miles, whether it takes them 1 year or 2 years or 3 years to get there, is going to be VERY unhappy with this loss.

25K miles/year is not the issue. Already losing 35% capacity at only 25K miles is the issue.

If you want to make an issue out of capacity loss due to time passed, then it's actually the other way around. This owner is actually minimizing capacity loss due to time passed because his battery is only 1 year old. So any capacity loss due to time passed is the minimal factor here, and capacity loss due to miles driven is the more significant factor in this case. But losing 35% at only 25K miles is still unacceptable.

In soliciting capacity loss info from other Leaf owners, this was an interesting comment I got today...

"Just made my call to NOGASEV and Dealership. Service advisor at dealership told me he could not report the issue of my second bar lost to the region service manager until I bring the vehicle in and the LEAF tech do some test on it. They had no time available before august."

Just got this from Scott. Do all of us really need to make yet another phone call? Maybe someone can just share with this person the newly expanded wiki tables? I have been feeding information to Vicki to expand those tables today.

"Nissan customer care just called. She said that if anyone is having battery capacity loss problems they should call her. (name redacted by request)"

opossum said:

"Just made my call to NOGASEV and Dealership. Service advisor at dealership told me he could not report the issue of my second bar lost to the region service manager until I bring the vehicle in and the LEAF tech do some test on it. They had no time available before august."

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Leaf Owner: "How do I report a battery capacity loss problem?"
Nissan: "You have to bring the vehicle in so we can test it. We are eager to attend to any possible problems with the Leaf."
Leaf Owner: "When can I do that?"
Nissan: "Perhaps next month. We will get back to you on that."

Nissan: "We only have 5 complaints about early battery capacity loss."
Reporter: "Have there been any additional complaints of loss of battery capacity?"
Nissan: "Not a single one."

Sure seems like the Phoenix Nissan dealers have, pretty much, abandoned LEAF owners over this issue (not buying used LEAFs and not offering service on the LEAF until August).

Stoaty said:

opossum said:

"Just made my call to NOGASEV and Dealership. Service advisor at dealership told me he could not report the issue of my second bar lost to the region service manager until I bring the vehicle in and the LEAF tech do some test on it. They had no time available before august."

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Leaf Owner: "How do I report a battery capacity loss problem?"
Nissan: "You have to bring the vehicle in so we can test it. We are eager to attend to any possible problems with the Leaf."
Leaf Owner: "When can I do that?"
Nissan: "Perhaps next month. We will get back to you on that."

Nissan: "We only have 5 complaints about early battery capacity loss."
Reporter: "Have there been any additional complaints of loss of battery capacity?"
Nissan: "Not a single one."

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OUCH!

Weatherman said:

Sure seems like the Phoenix Nissan dealers have, pretty much, abandoned LEAF owners over this issue (not buying used LEAFs and not offering service on the LEAF until August).

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It may come to pass that the problem of selling Leafs in Phoenix without adequate disclosure will solve itself. The next step is that the dealers won't bother selling or leasing the Leaf in Phoenix, not because of some official Nissan policy, but because they don't want to deal with the problems.

Stoaty said:

Weatherman said:

Sure seems like the Phoenix Nissan dealers have, pretty much, abandoned LEAF owners over this issue (not buying used LEAFs and not offering service on the LEAF until August).

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It may come to pass that the problem of selling Leafs in Phoenix without adequate disclosure will solve itself. The next step is that the dealers won't bother selling or leasing the Leaf in Phoenix, not because of some official Nissan policy, but because they don't want to deal with the problems.

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You may well be right. Of course, that doesn't help those who already have their cars, and it should be Nissan that's taking this step rather than the dealers, but at least it prevents anyone else from getting screwed.

Stoaty said:

It may come to pass that the problem of selling Leafs in Phoenix without adequate disclosure will solve itself. The next step is that the dealers won't bother selling or leasing the Leaf in Phoenix, not because of some official Nissan policy, but because they don't want to deal with the problems.

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Maybe. But right now it seems some Phoenix Nissan dealers will SELL LEAFs, but they will not BUY LEAFs. That's a massive double standard in my book!

at 35% loss that battery is essentially worn out, spent, by industry definition.

I called and left a voicemail for Jessica, but got no response. Wanted to see if we could provide a link to the table of owners with capacity loss. I pointed her to the Wiki just in case.