Independent tests of the degraded LEAF batteries confirm it

[acensor]

http://insideevs.com/all-the-results-from-the-largest-independent-test-of-nissan-leafs-with-lost-capacity-not-instrument-failure/

Interesting carful extensive detailed road tests that Nissan could have done but didn't confirm the claims.

Nissan's latest response seems to be "we'll, yeah, maybe you really did get a lot more loss of range that you might reasonably have expected was reasonable to expect from how we sold the car, but that's probably because you drove the car more than it was reasonable for us to expect and faster than it was reasonable for us to expect."
IMO that could be part of the truth.

Bottom line for the hot weather (and even not-so-hot like mild San Diego) is Nissan is not going to help them out if they get very disappointing degraded range unless a court forces them to.
Some who have leases are in a little better position as they can (and some have) with modest loss turn in their leased car and lease or buy a newer one with hopefully better luck with the newer one with supposedly better batteries.

Alex

 

[MLucas]

I've never been happy with the way Nissan has handled this problem. I feel they have done a great disservice to wider public acceptance of EVs and soured relationships with their customers. So far, it seems MMC has done a much better job of handling warranty claims. Another +1 for Mitsubishi.

 

[HParkEV]

I've never been happy with the way Nissan has handled this problem. I feel they have done a great disservice to wider public acceptance of EVs and soured relationships with their customers. So far, it seems MMC has done a much better job of handling warranty claims. Another +1 for Mitsubishi.

Nissan has sold over 27 thousand Leafs in the US, versus just over 1500 Mitsubishi i-MiEV's. Plus the average Leaf is about a year older than the average i. I would not jump to conclusions about the superiority of Mitsubishi's handling of warranty claims, or the superiority of one battery technology over another, as we may still be disappointed in the future.
I know that I'm going way out on the limb with this EV, and its technology is far from proven in the long run. I sure hope that Mitsubishi will do a better job of standing behind their product than Nissan does so far, but we are not far enough into this game to make any conclusions yet.

 

[alohart]

Nissan has sold over 27 thousand Leafs in the US, versus just over 1500 Mitsubishi i-MiEV's.

Mitsubishi has sold over 30,000 i-MiEV's and their Peugeot and Citroën cousins worldwide.

Plus the average Leaf is about a year older than the average i.

The i-MiEV was first sold in 2009, so the average age of the i-MiEV is probably as old or older than that of the Leaf.

I would not jump to conclusions about the superiority of Mitsubishi's handling of warranty claims, or the superiority of one battery technology over another, as we may still be disappointed in the future.

That may be true, but we do have a lot more i-MiEV history than you seem to think with no significant reports anywhere in the world of battery problems like those experienced by some Leafs. The battery chemistries are different which could be in our favor. But maybe there haven't been as many i-MiEV's exposed to high ambient temperatures for as long since there are few places in the world where i-MiEV's have been sold that experience the high ambient temperatures of the desert southwest of the U.S.

 

[HParkEV]

Nissan has sold over 27 thousand Leafs in the US, versus just over 1500 Mitsubishi i-MiEV's.

Mitsubishi has sold over 30,000 i-MiEV's and their Peugeot and Citroën cousins worldwide.

Plus the average Leaf is about a year older than the average i.

The i-MiEV was first sold in 2009, so the average age of the i-MiEV is probably as old or older than that of the Leaf.

I would not jump to conclusions about the superiority of Mitsubishi's handling of warranty claims, or the superiority of one battery technology over another, as we may still be disappointed in the future.

That may be true, but we do have a lot more i-MiEV history than you seem to think with no significant reports anywhere in the world of battery problems like those experienced by some Leafs. The battery chemistries are different which could be in our favor. But maybe there haven't been as many i-MiEV's exposed to high ambient temperatures for as long since there are few places in the world where i-MiEV's have been sold that experience the high ambient temperatures of the desert southwest of the U.S.

I was talking specifically about the US market, as both the US warranty details and the operating conditions in Arizona/Texas are pretty unique compared to the rest of the world. I would really like to put an Arizona i-MiEV that spent at least two summers there (like most of the affected Leafs) against a new one in order to assess how much damage there is in an i-MiEV battery in those conditions, and how Mitsubishi would deal with a complaint resulting from degraded range. I suppose there are very, very few i-MiEV's around in Arizona, and they would mostly have one summer worth of use on them, which is probably the main reason why we don't seem to hear of any problems.
Those thousands of i-MiEV's and i-On's and c-zero's sold in Japan or Norway that you speak of, are not really pertinent to this issue. How many have been sold in Phoenix and have gone through two summer seasons? I think 0, maybe we will have a few units meeting those conditions by September.

 

[Vike]

An interesting discussion, but I think we have some reasons for optimism.

• Nissan tied itself to a specific battery technology by buying a battery maker years ago. Mitsubishi's battery chemistry is arguably better for EV use, having been developed more recently in partnership with an independent battery specialist (this is the least of my concerns, but still worth mentioning).
• Nissan puts its batteries in a sealed box with no active cooling (air or liquid) - its "passive cooling" just means heat escaping from the surface of the box, with a fan "stirring" the air inside the box; high outside temperatures greatly reduce the effectiveness of this approach. Mitsubishi circulates cabin air through the battery pack, allowing it to benefit from the vehicle's climate control and mitigating some of the effects of high ambient temperatures.
• Nissan stacks batteries on top of each other, exposing upper batteries to even more heat; Mitsubishi doesn't, arranging batteries in a single layer with different orientations.

I'm not dismissing HParkEV's concerns, as we are indeed early in the game. But the points noted above gave me pause when considering the LEAF. If our cars aren't expensively orphaned by a failing Mitsubishi (let's all root for the Outlander PHEV!), I'm hopeful they can provide good service for a normal automotive lifespan.

 

[MLucas]

We have quite a few southwest i-MiEV owners with over a year of ownership on this forum and so far no one has reported degraded battery issues yet. With Nissan, the problem started to appear within the first year of ownership, that is what freaked them out. They expected battery degradation but not to this degree within the first year of ownership. Nissan chose to ignore the problem and blame it on the owners, but one of the Leaf forum members reported that he drove his car minimally and still had the problem.

HParkEV - I agree with you that we all have to wait and see how this churns out over the next five years. Many of us are in the first year of ownership and have not had one single problem with the car, something the Leaf owners wish they could say. Everything from instrumentation problems, recalls that make things worse, light colored seat fabric that looks terrible after its first year, CarWings problems, etc. What problems have we had? Two cars with bad cells that MMC has repaired as quickly as possible, a few radio problems due to an incorrectly installed fuse, some quibbles over the fob and some bad 12v batteries. That is it, nothing else.

I do know that even if MMC folds up and goes home, I can probably replace my batteries on the open market since the cells are basically the same form factor as to what is available right now. Can't do that with a Leaf, if Nissan decides that EVs aren't worth producing anymore ( remember the Infiniti LE has been cancelled ). Now Nissan wants to get a $100 bucks out of its customers every month to lease their next battery - stop paying and Nissan will take it back.

I'm sticking to my gut feeling, Mitsubishi got this EV market segment nailed from day one. A simple, fully functional EV with real world range at an affordable price with all the modern safety features including active stability control (didn't have that in my Nissan Versa).