If you are an early adopter of EVs, and you happen to purchase a 2011 Nissan LEAF, then you are starting to feel the impact of battery capacity loss. The Nissan LEAF has the worse track record of any of the EV vehicles made when it comes to battery capacity loss, and the 2011 is the worse of them all.

What causes the battery loss is not precisely known, but Nissan claims how you charge, how often, with which charging capacity, can impact.

There have been two class action lawsuits regarding this issue with Nissan, and both have apparently been settled, to the satisfaction of some owners.

When you take your Nissan LEAF into the dealer for a “battery check” they provide a very simple report. Where if Nissan properly trained and equipped service dealers then they could run better reports for consumers, Paying $100 for a piece of paper that is pretty much showing me the dash is useless. But in our case that is what the Nissan customer reps requested.

The 2011 Nissan LEAF is now 4 years old and enter the 5th year that has a battery warranty of 60,000 miles or 5 years, whichever comes first.

Nissan could very easily provide a diagnostic to show what the AHr, Ampere-Hours rating is. In my case I don’t know what mine is, but there are ways to find out.  Apparently the 4th bar drops between 41.7 and 43.5 AHr.  Some owners report dropping at 43.4 AHr.

Our range has been dropping as we wait for the 4th bar to drop.  It is only a matter of time, but will the 4th bar drop after the 5th year, 60,000 miles?

A four bar loss and the P3227 software update are required

Nissan is hedging its bet that it will and they will not have to replace the battery. This is a bad move on their part as that the likely hood of me ever buying another Nissan or recommended it to anyone is slim to 0%.

Take a look at some of the complaints from other Nissan LEAF owners on the safercar.gov website.