The terrible and unexpected cost of Nissan Leaf ownership
Nissan Australia is at it once again, doing all it can, seemingly, to trash the reputation of electric vehicles and trying really hard to bone future Leaf customers. Apparently…
Another first-generation Nissan Leaf owner in Australia has been slugged with a high battery replacement bill just seven years into the Leaf ownership experience.
And don’t think for a second this is an anomaly, it’s happened before. Here’s the $33,000 backstory to Nissan Australia’s battery replacement faux pas >> from just last year.
This report is about a nice, ageing, eccentric, and seemingly avuncular dude named Michael Albert Dryer, who bought a 2012 first-generation Nissan Leaf. According to Mr Dryer, the Leaf never got more than 120 kays on a charge, despite the brochure promising 170. But that’s okay, he loved it.
Today, though, seven-and-a-half years down the track, Mr Dryer says he cannot drive more than 20 kilometres from home on the company’s recommended 80 per cent charge. Jesus, that wouldn’t even get me to the nearest gentlemen’s club without having to re-charge, en route, so to speak.
He’s disappointed in the company’s arrogance, but he kinda still loves the car, perversely. EV dudes can be like that. It’s a religion, of sorts.
Where I hope you will be slightly interested is that I have it in writing from Nissan themselves that they consider it NORMAL that these cars should be roadside furniture after paying $56,000 for them 7.5 years ago! I have a hard copy of a report done by them on the traction battery that includes the fact that I could not have cared for the battery more than I did. They also admit in writing that they feel protected and authorised to behave this way by Australian Law and the ACCC!
-Michael Dryer
Okay, so the back-story here is that the first-generation Leaf has a major design defect in that there’s no active cooling system to protect the battery, so charging it and discharging it effectively just kills it over time - something Nissan quaintly views as an operational characteristic of the car, not a defect.
Nissan Australia seems to agree that Mr Dryer’s Leaf’s battery is rooted, however, because they’ve offered him:
A replacement Lithium-ion battery, further subsidised to the amount of $5,000. (Nissan notes that the cost of a replacement battery has already by subsidised from $33,000 to $10,000 under the battery-swap programme).
That’s a poorly proof-read direct quote from the Nissan Australia so-called Customer Experience Department.
I’m compelled to point out that the cost of lithium-ion batteries has dropped by 85 per cent in the past decade. $33,000 for a battery is the kind of pricing Jeep would be proud of >>.
Apparently they are being so damn magnanimous because:
...you have been a strong advocate in the EV space, and we are particularly appreciative of your investment in the Nissan brand. As such, we would really like to come to an arrangement to keep you in the brand. Please bear in mind, however, that the factors listed above has informed the amount of support that the business will be comfortable to extend to you. It is a fine balancing act, and I am grateful for your understanding in this respect.
So that’s still a $5000 repair on a car that’s been a depreciation disaster and would be lucky to be trade-able for $10,000 today, despite costing nearly $60,000 in 2012.
Legislation to stand on
According to the ACCC, legislation guarantees that products must...
...do all the things someone would normally expect them to do [and] match descriptions made by the salesperson, on packaging and labels, and in promotions or advertising
In the official Shitbox Leaf brochure from 2012, Nissan says, of the battery:
“To ensure reliability, the Nissan Leaf’s large-capacity lithium-ion battery uses manganese positive electrode material, a plentiful resource that has a stable crystal structure. The battery cells are laminated to simplify the structure and optimise cooling capability.”
-Nissan Australia
So, if I’m a reasonable consumer looking to spend $56,000, I’m taking away: Big battery, stable structure, optimised cooling.
Pretty much all bullshit. And, of course, once you’re a customer, Nissan says:
The Lithium-ion battery, like all lithium-ion batteries, will experience gradual capacity loss with time and use, and we dispute that the lithium-ion battery has failed prematurely in this case. Gradual loss of capacity is a normal battery characteristic as experienced with cell phones and laptops.
-Nissan Australia
Except of course that it’s not a cellphone or a laptop - it’s a $56,000 car, and car-buyers aren’t expected reasonably to understand battery chemistry, charging dynamics and cooling system design deficiencies any more than they are expected to understand hydrocarbon chemistry if they buy a conventional car.
Nissan then goes on to cite the owner’s manual and what it says about battery capacity - a document that is not available to car owners until after purchasing the car. And isn’t it interesting that the Leaf brochure - which is designed to entice the would-be car buyer - does not mention battery capacity reduction over time in any location that I could find.
If I bought a $56,000 car, regardless of its propulsion system, I’d probably want it to take me more than 20 kilometres from home, reliably, seven years down the track. That’s not ‘gradual reduction’ in the battery capacity - it’s Chernobyl. Especially as the battery had been well cared for and charged as per recommendations, which Nissan does not dispute.
If this is a normal operational characteristic of the car, it completely erodes the Leaf’s claims to sustainability. If a Leaf is essentially a throwaway car after just seven years - what a preposterous waste of resources. Ditto, if you need to feed it a new battery in that timeframe. Should’ve bought a Prius.
Nissan just did a global brand redesign, which would have cost them big bickies, to “signal a fresh horizon”. Perhaps it’s just virtue signalling.
If that is the case, then it makes the Leaf brand an absurdly cynical exercise in environmental hypocrisy. From ‘new’ to ‘landfill’ in just seven years because - economics and design deficiency. You can’t have it both ways - it cannot be green and have that kind of expected life. It just cannot.
In light of the above, Nissan’s position is that gradual capacity loss is normal in lithium-ion batteries and heavily influenced by a multitude of factors including external environment, temperature, usage, charging habits, driving habits etc. As such, there has not been a breach of the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.
-Nissan Australia
Unfortunately for Nissan Australia - battery physics is not the basis for consumer law claims. Reasonable durability is based upon what a court determines, and the standard is the durability expectations of a reasonable consumer.
So: should a reasonable consumer expect a car costing $56,000 to take them more than 20 kilometres from home reliably at seven years of age? It’s probably an easy argument to win. Especially as the brochure never warned anyone about likely range reduction over time. Oops a daisy.
Nissan, of course, settled (for $24 million) a class action lawsuit comprising almost 19,000 Shitbox Leaf-owning plaintiffs in the USA - despite maintaining that the suit had no merit. Go figure.
Here’s an excerpt from that now-settled lawsuit:
Before purchase or lease, Nissan failed to disclose its own recommendations that owners avoid charging the battery beyond 80% in order to mitigate battery damage and failed to disclose that Nissan's estimated 100 mile range was based on a full charge battery, which is contrary to Nissan's own recommendation for battery charging.
-Humberto Daniel Klee, et al. v. Nissan North America, Inc., et al.
The elephant in the room here is of course that consumer law compliance is the absolute minimum conduct a consumer like you should expect from a carmaker. They should do better than just that, because you can shop elsewhere to buy your next EV >>.
Being committed…
Carmakers like Nissan have yet to cross the bridge of discovery where they might see, on the other side, that trying hard to retain you as a customer, by delivering beyond expectations makes sound long-term economic sense.
They’re still stuck at ‘what can we get away with?’ Sadly. Screw you over, and hope to land someone else next time. Seems like short-term thinking to me, straight out of the Mercedes-Benz playbook >>
This is about commitment, too. If you spend $56,000 on a hi-tech toy like the 2012 Nissan Leaf, at that time you are making a hell of a statement about commitment. Putting your money where your mouth is, literally.
Commitment to the new tech. Commitment to sustainability. Commitment to the future. Commitment to energy security and cleaner air. Whatever. It’s $56,000 worth of commitment by you. It’s not a game. It’s a lot of money for you, the purchaser.
Would it not therefore be impossibly excellent if the carmaker matched your commitment - by committing to you for the long haul? By doing more than you expect. By not negotiating over a major problem such as this, in the manner of a plea-bargain. Just by not being arseholes about it might be a big step up, in many cases.
On page two of the 2012 Shitbox Leaf brochure Nissan assures you (quote) “We share that passion.” (Of - quote - “driving towards a zero emissions future”.)
Unfortunately, like so many seductive promises made in the modern societal cesspool, this one lasted roughly as long as it took the company to cash Mr Dryer’s cheque.
The Ford F-150 is popular in the United States for a reason, it’s not just a cultural icon and a comfortable truck, it’s highly functional. There’s a reason American pick-ups are gaining traction in Australia.