I think the comparison with the e-Golf is viable, however VW has not made nearly as many Leafs globally as Nissan has, so the widespread reports would be lower than with the Leaf, since there are not as many e-Golfs out there as there are Leafs.
That's a fair point. Still, I think that if the e-Golf was experiencing the same rate of premature aging that the Leaf is, that we would have seen some complaints about it.
You failed to highlight that the 2018 40kWh pack has newer chemistry again to assist in heat protection, however the verdict is still out on how effective this will be over the long run as we don't yet have any significant history for this pack. Have to wait a couple more years to see how it hold up.
I don't follow news of the Leaf that closely. Have they already switched to the LG Chem cells?
I also "failed to highlight" what is being called "Rapidgate", which is newer Leafs reportedly showing even faster fade that older ones. Nissan claimed that was just a calibration problem, but those of us who have been EV fans for years remember very well that Nissan's first reaction to a surprisingly frequent complaint about premature battery fading was to claim it was just a calibration problem. That turned out to be a lie.
Also you failed to mention that even though we have cases of pack issues with the Leaf, the amount overall is relatively small versus the number of delivered Leafs on the road globally - over 340,000 Leafs sold since 2010 and even if we look at 1% issues, that is only 3400 world wide.
Kenneth, I appreciate that you are a staunch supporter of Nissan and the Leaf, but you are literally the
only person I've seen trying to claim that this problem isn't widespread. If it wasn't widespread, then it wouldn't be seen as a serious problem. You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but it's an outlier opinion. Leaf forums are chock full of reports of premature battery fading. Yes, we see some reports of people with no premature fade at all, but those are certainly not the majority of comments on the subject.
There are recalls for all other manufacturers that dwarf this number alone. So let's put this into perspective. And I believe the issue rate to be lower than 1%. Otherwise, we would have had a recall or more mass reports of pack failures, than the few that we see posted on forums and the like.
That reads like an apologia straight from a Nissan press release. All Nissan has to do is to define a high rate of capacity loss as "normal" to avoid having to replace a significant percentage of battery packs under warranty. And that is exactly what is happening; just note all the Leaf owners who report that they took their car in for service to complain about premature fading, inquiring about replacement under warranty, and were told by a Nissan service department that such fading was "normal"!
It's not like there is some government regulatory agency with oversight of battery pack fading. The NHTSA is concerned about safety issues in cars, but this isn't a safety issue.
Also, the problem with premature battery fading is common and well documented. The data is there for anyone who wants to look at it:
(Sorry for the small size of the graphic; viewing a larger size requires registering at that forum.)
We can argue till doomsday about what does or doesn't constitute "premature" battery capacity loss. But to claim the problem is being seen by 1% or less of Leaf owners, is denying reality pretty strongly. One only has to look at the chart above to see that there is a startling range of capacity loss over the same distance driven. And that's the problem: That there's no consistency to the amount of capacity loss in the Leaf battery. The numbers are all over the place, unlike what we see with other EVs. There's no "bright line" between "normal" loss and "premature loss of capacity", but we can clearly see that a significant group of Leafs -- not merely 1% -- are experiencing premature loss as compared to the norm.
If you really want to learn about the problem, then you can read some or all of the 7941 (!) posts to the "
Capacity Loss on 2011-2012 LEAFs" thread at the My Nissan Leaf forum. Needless to say, that's a very popular thread; one does not normally see thousands of posts about a single subject at the My Nissan Leaf forum!
Plus, like all the other BEV manufacturers, Nissan has a warranty for the pack as well so I would believe that the vast majority of any issues reported would have been dealt with - maybe not as smooth as others would like - but nonetheless handled.
Yes, and it would be interesting to know what percentage of Leafs have had battery pack replacements under warranty. But Nissan isn't going to give us that figure, now are they? Nissan's response to customer complaints was first to deny it's a real problem, then to dismiss it as a few outliers, then to belittle the problem and pretend it's not important. If we want info on how widespread the problem actually is, then we have to look to real-world reports from actual Leaf owners.
