Oct 20 2017
Nissan LEAF Fail – Driver Left on Side of Road First Day #nissanfail #leaffail

True story.

Person goes into Nissan dealer, sees a Nissan LEAF 2013, used less than 30k miles, in great condition.
Buyer: How far can you I drive this car?
Salesperson 100 mile range no problem.
Buyer: Can I drive from Palmdale to Burbank which is 50 miles each way
Salesperson: no problem
Buyer drives off with Nissan LEAF. Drives to Burbank first day, makes it to office, no problem, even plugs in on a trickle charge, and gets close to 80 miles of range when he starts to head from Burbank to Palmdale, he gets maybe halfway and the car runs out of charge, drive is left stranded and has to call for roadside.
Where was the failure here? It sure seems like the dealer failed to adequately explain range, and all the various variables that affect range of electric cars.
The dealer was able to put the buyer into a Versa which was probably the best choice from the start.

Nissan has a problem with properly training sales people to prevent this sort of failure in the process. As it is a Nissan LEAF can be purchased for under $10,000, which situations like this will surely not help.

Disclosure – I am an original Nissan LEAF owner, purchased the 2011, got it in 2012, lost range to about 50% in less than 4 years. Nissan refused to replace the batteries which had engineering flaws, lost power in hot climate conditions, or repeat L3 charging. then there is speculation there was a software update to manipulate the battery levels. After having a car that was pretty much useless to drive from Burbank to Pasadena round-trip without charging, after a few repeated L3 charges, the battery capacity dropped to the “required” level and Nissan replaced the batteries with “new and improved” batteries, which are showing signs of degradation after less than a year.

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