Batteries not included- Buyers of Nissan's Leaf Electric Vehicle Will Lease Power Pack

Businesses prefer to lease sometimes, I think for cash-flow reasons. Perhaps Nissan is thinking of them ?

Private individuals also lease due to cash-flow problems, but their root problem is debt. I cannot see this group fighting to put down the $20+ k for a car that becomes a paperweight when the lease goes up in price, or a payment cannot be made.

 

IMO if the batteries are going to outlast the car then that doesn't say much for the car. What happens when Nissan decides to pull the plug & stop offering batteries? Owners will have a $25000 lawn ornament and a screwing even GM would be proud of.

 

Gotta agree with that. If I can only lease the batteries, then I would only lease the car.

From the linked article:

How in the world is this car selling for anywhere near 25 grand WITHOUT batteries? You'd figure a car with no engine and no batteries would sell for significantly less than that, regardless of federal and/or state rebates.

 

I couldn't agree with you more completely!

 

Welcome to real world of EV. It is EXPENSIVE. Awesome hybrids, otoh, much more reasonable ;-)

 

You're right. If autos like this don't receive generous tax incentives, they will sink like a rock in the ocean. Then, we'll all be wondering why a bunch of Saudi Arabians attacked us again.

Let's just spend the money on the front end this time. Wars are so much more expensive.

-Brad

 

I too, don't like the lease idea at 1st blush. At the Santa Monica & Irvine CA events, the same disbelief was stated by others that I over-heard. When it was stated that sale price doesn't (or at least there's an 80% probability that it "may not") include the cost of the battery, folks first comment was (making a frown and large eyes) "WHAT?!?"

A lease typically costs about the same 'value' of what you'd pay for something if valued over a smaller / amortized time frame, less than the whole ... whether it's a whole car ... an apartment / house or jet plane. The fact that I don't like it, or other prospective customers don't like it doesn't seem to bother Nissan. Nissan marketing apparently feels that they can overcome folk's knee-jerk reaction / negativity ... and before folks can follow-up their, "WHAT?!?" with a, "Well FORGET IT then ... I'm not going to buy one !!" ... Nissan feels they can explain away the negative aspect well enough that prospective buyers will buy one anyway.

I don't think so IMO ... but we'll see.

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I realize EV's are expensive, but that's usually because the battery is expensive. If Nissan is taking the battery cost out of the purchase of their small car, how does their car end up costing anywhere close to 30 grand? I mean, you can buy a small car WITH a gasoline motor and all the expensive stuff associated with it (transmission, exhaust, etc.) for under 20 grand.

 

I am guessing they are looking at Tesla, Karma Fisher and the waiting list for Aptera and figure there is huge pent up demand from the early adopters and they can charge what ever they want. Same with the lease.

I personlly do not like leasing cars, but I certainly would not buy PART of the car and lease the rest!

 

Exactly! The whole cost of an EV is the dang battery!

 

This is very very very slick marketing. They've taken a negative and turned it into a positive.....very nicely done.

What no maker can tell any buyer right now or probably next year even is..'How long will these new Li-Ions last?' They just don't know yet. They can't warranty them like they can the NiMH batteries.

This is a bad thing.

So make it a good thing, a positive attribute. Use the very positive views of the NiMHs in that they do last a long, long time and state that the batteries ( Li-Ions in this case )are likely but not warranteed to outlast the vehicle ... and we want them back. We don't want them scrapped somewhere, they're too valuable ( which is true ).

Now it depends on what the lease cost will be for the battery pack. If the monthly lease payment is significantly higher than the monthly fuel bill right now then this will be a hard sell to the general population.

 

This is an exceptionally bad decision (IMHO). The last thing I would want to have is a life-of-car obligation to the manufacturer. I would never lease a car and I certainly would not lease s piece of a car! People defend Nissan because it avoids future maintenance, but they could also do what Toyota did and just give a 10 year/100k battery warranty instead. If the price is really $30k plus a $150/mo perpetual charge for a battery on a car that with a 100 mile range, I think Nissan has a massive loser on it's hands!

In any case, it certainly makes our decision on how to best replace our two Prius cars next year. The Leaf went from near the top of the lust to completely off the list with thus crazy charge-you-twice battery scheme. What a shame.

 

It's just amazing they are looking at $30,000 for this vehicle without the batteries. Where is the cost? For that much money I'll pickup one of theses Porsche 356 kit cars already made electric:

 

This is exactly what I expected would happen, I've anticipated this. Get accustomed to it.

Now, the next step, which I also came to ~15-20 years ago, is that to make EV's feasible on a large scale generic pack swaps and recharge stations will become the norm. This will make the effective range sufficient for long highway trips. Packs will come in several modular form factors for different needs/vehicle classes. You will in essence pay a fee for each charged pack and the spent one will go on the rack for recharge. This will be equivalent to a gas stop. You will not own a pack, but in one fashion or another will be leasing it (either from manufacturer, charging station, or some other entitity whether on a monthly or per charge or combo basis.)

 

Well, I've been anticipating buying a Nissan Leaf as soon as it comes out. However, I'm not going to spend $25K or so on a vehicle and then have to lease a battery on top of that. I agree with what others have said here. I would expect the cost of the vehicle to be closer to $10K without a battery pack.

If the price ends up being cheap enough for the car, I would imagine you might start seeing 3rd party companies producing battery packs for it much like you see in the world of laptop computers.

Myself, I'd probably buy the car and then build my own battery pack.

 

Now, to infuse a bit of life into the battery / lease issue. Here's an article from "Wired" dot com, giving me a different slant on a battery lease, and maybe others might want to consider. In short, they complain that battery management fails to utilize the car's HVAC system, as our prius does. In stead, they just use fan circulated air to keep batteries cool:

In Race to Market, Nissan’s Electric Car Takes Shortcuts | Autopia | Wired.com

Now, is that really an issue? Consider the RAV4-EV. It's cooling system is simply fan circulated air. Many of them have gone well over 100,000 miles. But when the RAV4-EV battery pack finally falls under 70% of original ability to hold a charge? Consider this dialog from a RAV4-EV owner:

" ... I don't know if you find any of this interesting but batteries number 8 though 13 with the lowest impedance readings are all in the row that is the nearest to the fans. They would be the first to get the cooler air as the air is moved through the pack. So it appears Toyota should have had even more airflow then the current system. Regardless of ambient temperatures if enough air was moving though the pack you would see more uniform wear readings on the batteries. The batteries that are on the other end have the highest impedance readings. The modules that are next to the outside of the pack did better then batteries side by side. This also makes sense as these batteries heat up they would heat the battery next to them. The ones on the outside are not exposed to additional radiant heat. ..."​

Bottom line, over engineering will kill a project. Look at the Aptera. They've continued to miss production deadlines due to re-engineering. Foul up with insufficient engineering, and you kill the EV's reputation. But, if your battery is leased? And it fails early? That's not so bad. Something to think about.

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Sure, you get a new battery - unless the company has so many of these problems that it folds and is not there when you need it. Further, people with leased batteries will not give them the care that they would if they were responsible for them.

As an EV owner, I would not give a plug nickel for a battery which had been used by anyone else. Just one run down to "empty" (the car won't go any more) can cause permanent damage to a battery and that is the first impulse of a new EV owner.

I will own my batteries and I will take care of them in the way I know how to!

 

Well for that matter, you can never buy a used EV, as "you never know" what the battery history is. For that matter, you can never know whether you got a battery pack that were not as great / reliable as some other pack, so it gets greater resistance around 70K ... instead of 100K miles.
Same thing holds true for a used ICE car purchase ... "I'll never buy used, because some people never change their oil". But we don't throw out the idea of used car sales, right? Bottom line, you can alway find a gloom & doom aspect as to WHY we shouldn't move forward, or go with the flow. Good news is that ECU's now days have the capability to record histories of charge, discharge, cooling temps, operating ranges, etc. So for the folks that refuse to follow directions & make a ritual of running their charge down to nothing ... I'm certain that warranty provisions will be made for those kinds of folks ... and their remedy will be different from folks that do things right ... just like in an ICE car.


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