[Brian G]

I fail to see how Nissan can argue that you don't have battery degradation.

What is a battery? It is formed by a group (battery) of cells.

If a cell degrades then by definition the battery has degraded, because a battery is the sum of its cells. I would have no issues arguing that in the County Court! Do you have legal insurance with you household policy?

 

[Brian G]

Im so sorry but I'm quite drunk!

I may have missed it but have you posted Leafspy read of your cells at low SOC, we can then tell if you have a weak cell.

I myself had this and had it replaced - 2 in fact by Nissan with no questions asked and a really good service.

This differs from general pack degradation.

Can you post a Leafspy of the pack so we can have a look?

Definition of an alcoholic... someone who drinks more than their Dr.

 

[Mark I]

4 - Using an EV with a failed cell is bad for the remaining cells as they are put under a lot of stress having to compensate for the failed cell - this will lead to premature battery failure so should be repaired as a matter of urgency.

I'm not sure that sentence is true. The failed cell does indeed limit the charge which can be stored in the whole battery, but except that it may run hotter than the others and affect the cells right next to it, the others are given an easier time, not a tougher one.

As far as I know, the LEAF and e-NV200 batteries use 96 192 cells, as 48 "modules" in series, each module of 2 cells 4 cells, two pairs in series, each pair being two cells in parallel. If one cell fails completely so that it neither charges nor discharges, the capacity of the battery is halved, because all 48 modules 96 cell pairs carry the same current. The other 47 modules are only being run at half current, so less stressed. [edited to correct my initial mis-reading of the diagrams]

(The cell packs which use many small cells in parallel for each module, rather than two large ones, are less disastrously affected by any single cell failure. But that's not a LEAF.)

Your thoughts / support / kind words are welcome

I hope you get Nissan to repair your battery either under warranty or under instruction from the Ombudsman. Firstly, it's only fair to you; and secondly, it will set a valuable precedent. Good luck!

 

[Snaxmuppet]

I fail to see how Nissan can argue that you don't have battery degradation.

Totally agree but that is the issue I have with EV battery warranties. It doesn't warranty against premature failure - It warrants against degradation of capacity of the whole battery of more than 30% (capacity down to 70%) overall. There is no mention of individual cell degradation or failure. It is really a warranty of minimum capacity towards the end of the warranty period... not a warranty for premature cell failure. That just isn't covered AFAICS.

 

[Brian G]

Totally agree but that is the issue I have with EV battery warranties. It doesn't warranty against premature failure - It warrants against degradation of capacity of the whole battery of more than 30% (capacity down to 70%) overall. There is no mention of individual cell degradation or failure. It is really a warranty of minimum capacity towards the end of the warranty period... not a warranty for premature cell failure. That just isn't covered AFAICS.

So if you run out of miles at 65% of the original stated mileage you would have a claim? You wouldn't know whether one cell is the issue, the battery has failed the 70% test as far as you are concerned. It is only cos we know how to look inside the battery that we know a cell has failed....

 

[Tokyodrift]

First thing you can realise, if you want, is that Nissan makes it possible to see individual module failures, something you can't notice with other car makers without proprietary software that only they have access. I don't think it's good idea to use this tool to get back at the manufacturer, you are punishing Nissan for transparency and Nissan can easily take it away on next models.
How can you know if Tesla has a bad cell? Take out battery pack and measure modules one by one.... not joking.

Tesla Shopper Gets $15,000 Model S Due To One Faulty Battery Cell

Tesla Roadster repair center Gruber Motors has a new Tesla repair to isolate and replace bad cells. This can save people a ton of money.

insideevs.com

I think that you can try to force Nissan to repair one module but we need more info to understand the extent of degradation, car mileage, number of quick charges.
Nissan can reject based on terms and conditions of the warranty.

Battery cells just fail, statistical reality.
Manufacturing defects? Depends, if the car did 60.000 miles and that one cell was fine for 60.000 miles, can you still call it manufacturing defect? To prove it, you would need to analyse cause of failure and it could be as simple as impurity in raw materials. Making perfect cells each time is possible but too expensive, so need to work with tolerance. Most battery warranties covers battery pack, not each cells and this calculation includes statistical bad cells.

I think that the true scam here is they're trying to charge you 2.4K for a repair that is worth 0.5K. I think you would be less angry if the repair cost was reasonable, 2.4k isn't reasonable and for that I'm with you.

If I were you I would replace module myself or discuss your issue with Cleevely, they have experience doing such repairs, will certainly charge you much less than 2.4K.

 

[Brian G]

The replacement of a cell is a repair of the whole battery. I once had that explained by a Judge when arguing that a benefit claimant wasn't entitled to a new central heating boiler. The retort was that he was entitled to have the cost of repairs to his heating system. The replacement of a part is the repair to the whole.

So the whole is faulty.. the battery is not doing what it should do? Hence it should be repaired under warranty.

 

[Bydandie]

If you car has telemetry, Nissan may well have known the cell has been failing for some time, possibly even before you did.
Of course, whether the Nissan mothership will have made that information available to your dealer is another matter altogether.
Might be worth a data protection act / GDPR request to Nissan Motor Company Ltd to ask them when the faulty cell on your vehicle was first known to the telemetry.
Personal Data Request - Customer Service | Nissan UK might be a good staring point. Request ALL your data.
Then from that data, you may be able to see when the battery health started going wrong, and if it was before any missed service, then you could prove beyond doubt that it wasn't the lack of dealer servicing that caused it.

GDPR doesn’t work like that, you would be able to request all customer records - but it’s unlikely that the car ones would be linked to the customer record, it would only be linked to the car one.

 

[KenB]

If the car still shows SOC 70% + (or whatever the warranty fig) how can anyone have a warranty claim. If i was judge i would ask does it or does it not have 70% SOC as worded by the warranty, everything else is irrelevant.

On a ICE engine one cannot claim a defect if one of the compressions is down a bit only when something goes bang.

Sorry i think you are just going to have to pay for it or live with out. You could P/E. A garage would just send it to auction. How about car wow etc.

 

[CampGareth]

On a ICE engine one cannot claim a defect if one of the compressions is down a bit only when something goes bang.

It has gone bang though, a part of your drive train has failed and is taking the car's range with it. How would an ICE manufacturer handle a piston not firing due to a defect? Not a perfect comparison since that'll affect power and fuel economy but it's a non-fatal degradation.

 

[graaaaaaavy]

The "bar" system keeps it simple - the first bar is 15%, the remaining are 7% each. So typically the first bar goes at about 85%. This is fairly well known and documented.

The warranty is about battery pack degradation as measured by these bars. Given how comparatively primitive the Leaf battery system is with having only passive cooling and with heat being the big killer of batteries, the number of warranty claims is generally pretty low. The batteries have proven themselves to be surprisingly robust in general.

The Leaf Spy data should tell you which cell(s) is/are failing and it's usually pretty damn obvious. Massive difference in voltage compared to all other cells when fully charged is the giveaway.

This thread Advice….to repair a cell or to change the car has an example of such data, and covers a cell failure similar to what you're having. It also has a "happy ending" as the dealer paid for the repair, although this was a resold vehicle so the situation is slightly different. However, if you're the original owner I would really be talking to Nissan GB or the dealer about a goodwill repair or hefty contribution.

The bar system is "simple" but so simple to be almost meaningless - you say it's well documented these figures, does Nissan provide them? if so a link would be very welcome - as a layperson who's just bought a new car I shouldn't have to reverse engineer the software to understand how these bars work.

All other gauges in the car are linear so why are the battery bars the exception?.

If you had read my full post (I know it's long!) you would see that I have found the failed cell - Nissan have diagnosed & admitted it has failed & after many pleas with Nissan and the dealer they have refused to offer any help at all leaving me no recourse but to involve the ombudsman.

Thanks for your reply any way - the better this is understood the better.

Dave..

 

[Tokyodrift]

It has gone bang though, a part of your drive train has failed and is taking the car's range with it. How would an ICE manufacturer handle a piston not firing due to a defect? Not a perfect comparison since that'll affect power and fuel economy but it's a non-fatal degradation.

First we need to see evidence.
Easy to say Nissan refused this, or that, let's see Leafspy reading, car mileage, number of quick charges.

OP is accusing Nissan of doing firmware updates to get out of warranty claims, while those of us who have applied update can confirm that range and capacity was restored and maintained through update.
I think OP getting carried away and making claims without base, let's see some evidence, it takes 1 minute to upload here.

If car has 80.000 miles, OP can write to Nissan to thank them for building such reliable batteries, 80k miles on 30kWh pack is equivalent of 160.000 miles on 60kWh pack, 240.000 miles on 90kwh pack.

 

[graaaaaaavy]

Sorry but this makes no logical sense to me.

How can a warranty cover wear and tear of a component but not an actual failure of the component ? That's backwards if anything. Sounds like a fob off to me.

I'd like to agree with you but I have to point out it's not necessarily the case that an individual cell must have an obvious manufacturing defect to fail. One thing that can lead to cell failures is excessive operating temperature. Every cell will have some manufacturing tolerance making some cells more sensitive to failure by overheating than others, but any cell can fail if run sufficiently hot sufficiently often.

Furthermore in a Leaf where there is no battery cooling system to equalise temperature of the cells (let alone cool them) there can be deltas of as much as 10-12 degrees or more between the hottest and coldest cells, and this can be the difference between a cell suffering a failure or not. In a Leaf the hottest cells are usually in the middle of the rear bank.

It's well established that these rear cells fail a lot more often than any others, and the reason is they get the hottest. At some point the cell with the worst tolerances (but not actually defective) which is running the hottest will fail before any other cells. This failure may occur in response to one specific incident where the car was driven hard and/or rapid charged to a very high temperature until the hottest and/or weakest cell failed. From that point on you have a bad cell that may not have gone bad had it not been subject to that particular circumstance.

If you let us know what cell number is the weak cell someone can probably look it up to see if it's in the rear bank.

I'm acutely aware of the risk of high temperatures as I've just done a 160 mile trip yesterday with two rapid charging stops and despite trying to drive slowly for economy the hottest cells in the pack were up to 52 degrees after the second rapid charging stop, and that is not good for them.

However I would argue that Nissan bears some responsibility for the risk of inducing a cell failure due to high temperatures by (a) not providing any kind of cooling system, allowing heat to build up in the rear bank of cells in particular and (b) not adequately throttling the charge rate when the cells are too hot - the 30kWh model will still cheerfully charge at the full 46kW when the cells are at 52 degrees. This is NOT ok for the cells, and any Leaf that is put through this situation on a regular basis is going to see cell failures sooner rather than later IMO.

I agree with most of your other points and wish you well with your proceedings. Someone needs to take Nissan to task on this issue of battery warranties and call their bluff, as an 8 year warranty which they will try to wiggle out of despite a clear failure of an individual cell is no warranty worth having.

Wording the warranty based on the number of bars shown on the dashboard is a very sneaky ploy IMO especially when a firmware update was released for the 30kWh model to increase the reported SoH and restore prematurely missing bars. The cynic in me can't help but wonder if the firmware update is specifically to skirt responsibility of warranty battery replacements, as they can just update the firmware to unlock more of the bottom end buffer to inflate the range and SoH figure to see it out just past the 8 year warranty. (Moving the goal posts, basically)

There really needs to be more government oversight on this stuff if the public are to have any faith in EV batteries and their battery warranties.

The battery is still the most important and most expensive part of an EV, and also the thing that is going to wear out or fail first, in most cases, as things like motors etc will outlast the useful life of the car in the vast majority of cases. Checking the battery health (with Leafspy) is the number one important thing to check on the car before buying.

The good news is that a an out of warranty cell swap of an individual cell on a Leaf is a relatively easy job for an Indy EV specialist like Cleevely. Although I haven't done a Leaf I have done a cell swap myself on my previous Peugeot Ion, on my driveway no less... The Leaf is a bit bigger and heavier so would require a bit more in the way of mechanical support but is fundamentally the same process as it does not have any complex liquid cooling system for the battery, making dropping the traction battery relatively straightforward, and the cell modules come apart easily.

So if at the end of all this you can't get any joy from Nissan you can still expect to get your car repaired at a reasonable cost by a competent Indy.

Thanks for such a complete reply.

The failed cell is 46 according to Nissan's CVLI diagnostic. This agrees with leafspy (I will add screenshot to original post if I can).

I would say Nissan bears all the responsibility of the cells overheating to such a degree that even within normal tolerances under normal operating conditions the battery essentially destroys itself!

I have completed 119 quick charges fairly evenly spread over 5 years and 57,000 miles. The most heavy QCs I have done in a day is 2 - this has happened maybe 6-8 times in total & would have been interspersed with breaks. I may have done 2 & half in a day once!

Last time the car was serviced, the report gave me full marks for the way the battery was being looked after.

So this is definitely pretty standard operating conditions. Either the cell is poorly manufactured or the car is poorly designed - surely these are the only 2 options?

I will surely end up using an independent specialist to do the work if Nissan don't have a change of heart but I agree with you that this is a really crucial thing to get right in terms of the take up of EVs. I've been banging on at my friends for years to take the plunge and repeated the reassurance that "you don't need to worry about the battery, they last for ages and have an 8 year warranty anyway". I feel embarrassed to not have to tell them that it's essentially BS.

The EV remains one of the most important technological tools to transition to anything like a renewable economy - this kind of stuff is what will kill it as the basic technology is sound.

Thanks again, Dave..

 

[graaaaaaavy]

Im so sorry but I'm quite drunk!

I may have missed it but have you posted Leafspy read of your cells at low SOC, we can then tell if you have a weak cell.

I myself had this and had it replaced - 2 in fact by Nissan with no questions asked and a really good service.

This differs from general pack degradation.

Can you post a Leafspy of the pack so we can have a look?

I'll add the leafspy data to the original post if I can.

Nissan have diagnosed & accepted the faulty cell. Unfortunately they have taken no responsibility.

 

[Tokyodrift]

Thanks for such a complete reply.

The failed cell is 46 according to Nissan's CVLI diagnostic. This agrees with leafspy (I will add screenshot to original post if I can).

I would say Nissan bears all the responsibility of the cells overheating to such a degree that even within normal tolerances under normal operating conditions the battery essentially destroys itself!

I have completed 119 quick charges fairly evenly spread over 5 years and 57,000 miles. The most heavy QCs I have done in a day is 2 - this has happened maybe 6-8 times in total & would have been interspersed with breaks. I may have done 2 & half in a day once!

Last time the car was serviced, the report gave me full marks for the way the battery was being looked after.

So this is definitely pretty standard operating conditions. Either the cell is poorly manufactured or the car is poorly designed - surely these are the only 2 options?

I will surely end up using an independent specialist to do the work if Nissan don't have a change of heart but I agree with you that this is a really crucial thing to get right in terms of the take up of EVs. I've been banging on at my friends for years to take the plunge and repeated the reassurance that "you don't need to worry about the battery, they last for ages and have an 8 year warranty anyway". I feel embarrassed to not have to tell them that it's essentially BS.

The EV remains one of the most important technological tools to transition to anything like a renewable economy - this kind of stuff is what will kill it as the basic technology is sound.

Thanks again, Dave..

Thank you, now we have more data to work with.
One cell failed at 57k miles with only 119QC and 17.5kWh remaining is poor performance but it can happen.
IMO you will waste time fighting Nissan via ombudsman, if I were you I would ask for goodwill from Nissan because quoted repair cost is not in line with work to be performed which is half day's work. If they refuse, contact Nissan headquarters in Yokohama via letter (not e-mail) to members of management.
Now, fortunate part of story is that bars should drop quickly from now and most likely your car will meet warranty requirements soon.

We need Leafspy readings fully charged and low battery level.

Have you tried contacting Cleevely? How much do they quote?

 

[graaaaaaavy]

Really sad to hear of this woeful tale.

I have always known that the battery warranties with electric cars are not fit for purpose. I only know of one person successfully getting a battery fixed/replaced under warranty and that was me! My Leaf 30 had low range from day 1 and I push my dealer to fix it. In the end Nissan technical helped diagnose a battery fault and they agreed to swap out the battery entirely. This happened in the first month from new. Attempts by others to claim under the battery warranty that I have been aware of have failed.

I believe that this is an endemic issue with EVs. The wording of any warranty I have seen has always been pretty vague and imprecise leaving a lot of wriggle room for the manufacturer to reject claims. It is often only when capacity drops to below an overall percentage, typically 70%, that the battery warranty kicks in and that means that it is possible to have a faulty battery delivering 71% of what it should be delivering, from day 1, and it is not covered under the terms of the warranty. This is certainly the case with the Kia EV battery warranty and IIRC it was the same for the Nissan warranty with the Leaf. IMO this is totally unacceptable. If you take delivery of a new car you would expect that the full capacity should be warrantied with a sliding scale to allow for normal/expected degradation based on time/miles/charge cycles. This is not the case.

I wish the OP the very best and hope that it gets sorted for you. On a more general note, I would like to see battery warranties reviewed by the ombudsman (or other official body) with the objective of ensuring they are revised to be fair. Right now IMO they are grossly unfair and I suspect that there are many others that know they have a faulty battery but as the overall degradation is still above the threshold they cannot claim.

Thanks for the words of support.

I tend to agree about battery warranties in general & have mentioned to the ombudsman that I consider this case wider than my individual situation.

I don't really see the logic from Nissan's point of view either - they're a leader in EVs, it won't cost them much to sort it out & I would now be saying "what a good company" to you all.

I really find the warranty wording quite cynical.

Dave..

 

[graaaaaaavy]

If the car still shows SOC 70% + (or whatever the warranty fig) how can anyone have a warranty claim. If i was judge i would ask does it or does it not have 70% SOC as worded by the warranty, everything else is irrelevant.

On a ICE engine one cannot claim a defect if one of the compressions is down a bit only when something goes bang.

Sorry i think you are just going to have to pay for it or live with out. You could P/E. A garage would just send it to auction. How about car wow etc.

I'm afraid I can't afford to do this. I'm still paying for the car from new. I bought it with an 8 year battery warranty. I expect the battery to be free of defects for 8 years.

I accept some normal degradation but the battery has developed a major fault - a failed cell.

The car doesn't perform to the level I need it to, continuing to drive it will damage the rest of the good cells, repair has been quoted as £2400+ which I can't afford and the car is worth less than I owe on it at this point.

It shouldn't even be an issue as i bought a car with an "8 year battery warranty" for this very reason!

Dave..

 

[graaaaaaavy]

First we need to see evidence.
Easy to say Nissan refused this, or that, let's see Leafspy reading, car mileage, number of quick charges.

OP is accusing Nissan of doing firmware updates to get out of warranty claims, while those of us who have applied update can confirm that range and capacity was restored and maintained through update.
I think OP getting carried away and making claims without base, let's see some evidence, it takes 1 minute to upload here.

If car has 80.000 miles, OP can write to Nissan to thank them for building such reliable batteries, 80k miles on 30kWh pack is equivalent of 160.000 miles on 60kWh pack, 240.000 miles on 90kwh pack.

OK - maybe read my post a little more carefully.

I specifically said that I am NOT saying Nissan have used firmware to get out of warranty claims, but they "could" which is not ideal.

If the warranty was based on an actual % state of health which is available to the battery management system, there would be no discrepancy. What I am saying is the "health bars" obfuscate the ability to assess health & warranty status properly.

I will add my leafspy data to the original post - I didn't add it originally as I couldn't find the image.

You're right, I missed to include the mileage (57,500)

I'm not an idiot though, I have looked after the car well, not taken to unreasonable quick charging or "topping up" & Nissan's own service report gives me full marks for looking after the battery.

 

[Tokyodrift]

I'm afraid I can't afford to do this. I'm still paying for the car from new. I bought it with an 8 year battery warranty. I expect the battery to be free of defects for 8 years.

I accept some normal degradation but the battery has developed a major fault - a failed cell.

The car doesn't perform to the level I need it to, continuing to drive it will damage the rest of the good cells, repair has been quoted as £2400+ which I can't afford and the car is worth less than I owe on it at this point.

It shouldn't even be an issue as i bought a car with an "8 year battery warranty" for this very reason!

Dave..

Unfortunately the car doesn't meet requirements of warranty yet, but almost.
I believe degradation has to be down to less than 16kWh to go down to 8 bars, I think you're almost there.

Keep in mind that SOH has to be maintained for certain amount of time to drop each bar, I noticed that if car is inactive, bars don't drop as fast.
On 24kWh model 8 bars is 14kWh.

I have 2015 30kWh and 11 bars with now about 79% SOH and about 22kwh useable.

In addition to the standard three-year/60,000-mile Nissan warranty, roadside assistance and 12-year corrosion warranty, the Nissan LEAF is covered by the Lithium-ion battery warranty for five-year/60,000-mile for Nissan LEAF 24kWh and eight years/100,000-mile for Nissan LEAF 30kWh . Also covered, capacity loss when the battery health goes below 9 bars of the available 12 on the vehicle’s battery capacity gauge

LITHIUM-ION BATTERY STATE OF HEALTH GUARANTEE ** - 30kWh, 40kWh & 62kWh Battery

8 years warranty or until 100,000 miles

** The Nissan LEAF & eNV200 lithium-ion battery state of health guarantee protects against battery capacity loss (less than 9 bars out of 12) as shown on the in vehicle capacity gauge for a period of 8 years / 100,000 miles* for 40 kWh vehicles and 8 years / 100,000 miles* for 30 kWh vehicles and 5 years / 60,000 miles* for 24kWh vehicles. For LEAF flex customers, the battery state of health guarantee applies for the duration of the battery lease.

Car Warranty | Car Warranty Cover | Nissan

Discover Nissan car warranty coverage and ownership benefits. From roadside assistance to maintenance plans, explore the perks of owning a Nissan vehicle.

www.nissan.co.uk

I'm also not big fan of bars system, smells like trickery, why not just say XX% SOH?

 

[graaaaaaavy]

I fail to see how Nissan can argue that you don't have battery degradation.

What is a battery? It is formed by a group (battery) of cells.

If a cell degrades then by definition the battery has degraded, because a battery is the sum of its cells. I would have no issues arguing that in the County Court! Do you have legal insurance with you household policy?

Hopefully it won't come to that but I'm struggling to see how they can cover themselves.

I read somewhere on in my research - can't remember if it's The New Car Code or Citizens Advice - "It's not all about the small print" - This is my new mantra