Well for my Leaf owning friends some great news.
A new battery and adaptor kit for 2011/2012 Leafs will set you back $5250 plus the old battery - which takes about 3 hours labor at a Nissan dealer to put in. Now I've been lucky to have minimal degradation - no bars gone at 37.5 K miles. Still I'm noticing some difference and I won't be surprised if I lose a bar of my 12 bar battery capacity indicator this summer.
Nissan has also states that this is the 'lizard' battery. That rocks - a reformulation that is less worrisome in the heat. Maryland is not the deep South but we do get some 100+ degree days. So the second life of the replacement battery won't be cut short by a bad heat wave.
Also Nissan will recycle the batteries. We have all speculated on the fact that they are very useful in a second life as an off the grid component and Nissan does not rule that out as the first part of the recycle process. Just another nail in the coffin of naysayers who claim the batteries are toxic and not able to be recycled. Generally the pattern seems to be parroting big oil talking points that are patently false for lithium batteries. Lithium batteries are much more environmentally friendly then lead acid or nickel cadmium models of yesteryear.
Awesome that my bells and whistles Leaf has the option to greatly extend its lifespan and continue to drive past gas stations for years to come.
Recently Bob Bruninga an EE teacher at the Naval Academy ( and EV'r) was having to school a few folks who clearly were reading off the 'big oil' mudsheet of misinformation. While I've hit this topic before for today I'll just link to Bob's great website for the facts:
http://aprs.org/EV-misinformation.html
Happy Electric Motoring my friends!
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