Great Expectations!

Earlier my "Mob Mentality" Post got attention but still people felt I was somehow not showing enough compassion for the AZ owners which is not true at all.  Its the people who are hurting the EV movement based on Nissan's actions and not the product (Nissan's actions or inactions do suck A LOT!)  that I have issues with especially when their LEAFs are performing they way they should...or are they?  what is exactly what people were expecting the LEAFs battery pack to do after 20,000 miles?

I tried to set up a thread to examine that question exactly and unfortunately it turned into a thread of "well, i will be ok as long as i dont lose more than X% over the remaining 18 months of my lease" or  " as long as I dont lose more than X%, this will have worked out very well for me" thread.  iow, it would appear that most had not really thought about it much at all.

well, actually i am sure most did think about it at least a little but simply forgot about it.  It is easy to see that because like me, they were overly excited about the anticipation of delivery and I have to admit the furor over battery degradation mechanics is not unlike the furor over changing delivery dates and conflicting information (none of which came from Nissan since they were telling us NOTHING way back then as well)  and Nissan simply makes the issue 10X worse but not saying anything. they are worse than Toyota is about new product intros or what they are doing about various fixes and I didnt think anyone could be worse than Toyota.

But, one of the reasons I started the thread to see what people's expectations were was because I could not really remember mine.  after 18 months and 20,000 miles i hit my first ever 281 GIDs and i kinda readjusted my thoughts about what i "wanted" to expect.  I eventually had to go back to my journal (ya, i keep one but mostly because it has info in it i need to remember and i found that its easier to find because i only have to remember the approximate time of the data i want to remember)  and what i found was shocking...

I reasoned that Nissan told us to expect 20% after 5 years and 30% after 10 which told me that the rate of degradation after the break-in period of higher rate loss was 2% a year right?  10% additional degradation in the 2nd 5 years so that was easy, so the only thing i really had to figure out was how long does that initial degradation period last?  well, i guessed two years but also said I would be nearing 14% degradation!!

ya see, i took years to be same as 12,000 miles. after all, its alway 5 years or 60,000 miles or 3 years or 36,000 miles right?  so, i figured after 24,000 miles (which i am 987 miles from as of now)  it would be 14% and i figured it by saying

year one= 10% (remember, its faster at first)
year two= 4% (slows down)
year 3-10= 2% per year to 10 years, 30%.

makes sense does it not?? I have to admit I am glad i was thourough in explaining my logic because that 14% about knocked me over when I found it.

soooo, hmmm.  now, i will say that i had no signs of degradation, at least no "permanent" signs of degradation although i suspect i have lost about 2-4% and that has happened rather quickly.  a check of my records shows a 278 GID reading at 22,446 miles which is not all that far in the past.

now wondering if my degradation curve will speed up to say 10% over the next few months, then taper to 6% over the next 12,000 miles and then settle in for the long haul at 2% a year??

sounds weird but Tony Williams had a brand new LEAF that showed no signs of degradation then suddenly lost 10% and it happened so fast he was caught completely by surprise and that is probably not an easy thing to do. Tony is a pretty sharp dude.  He has dissected every gauge, every number, every volt and every mile his LEAF has gone.  add to that his pilot training which requires him to have a level of observance beyond the casual man.

Either way, i have to adjust my expectations a bit i guess.  so if in a cooler climate, we get a "bonus year" (or two?) where we dont have to worry about degradation.  wow, that would be nice.  wondering what AZ'ers will say when they find out i probably got one of their bonus years along with mine?

Either way, it will be very interesting to see how my pack stands up over the next 5,000 miles or so and just in time for Winter! how lovely