When Does A Nissan Leaf Battery Need To Be Replaced?

You can learn a lot about a product’s anticipated lifespan from its warranty. For instance, a powertrain warranty of five years or 60,000 miles is frequently offered with a Dodge Ram truck (with a combustion engine). Dodge has a very high level of confidence that it won’t have to shell out much to cover car repairs in the first five years even though the truck will survive considerably longer than that. A

For a Nissan LEAF, the battery guarantee is 8 years or 100,000 miles. When compared to the 5 years Dodge covers on their trucks, 8 years does not seem like a long period. 8 years suddenly sounds a little better. A

Also to be considered is the fact that an EV battery’s lifespan can vary somewhat from person to person. Every automobile will gradually lose available range due to battery deterioration, but the problem won’t surface until it limits you. Think of the LEAF in that regard. The useful life of a 2015 Nissan LEAF with an initial EPA range of 84 miles may be shorter than one with a range of more than 300 miles. A

Are EV batteries covered by warranties?

The engine and transmission are two of the most pricey parts to replace in a combustion engine car. It is the battery pack in EVs. Many people who are thinking about getting an EV as their next car may ask if the battery pack is covered by the warranty. What is the lifespan of battery packs?

Battery packs for the 2011-model Nissan Leaf are covered by warranties for eight years or 100,000 miles. That seems pretty fantastic when you consider that the Ram truck engines only come with a five-year warranty.

Battery deterioration must also be taken into account. Over the course of ownership, any EV’s available range will decrease. The 84-mile range of a 2015 Nissan Leaf, according to Recurrent, would get shorter with time. With a range of more than 300 miles, it has a far shorter lifespan than a battery pack today.

Nissan will replace the Nissan Leaf’s battery pack if its capacity falls below 75%. An estimate of the battery’s price is $4,500. A 24kWh battery replacement, including labor expenses, costs roughly $5,500, according to Nissan user forums.

Should I buy a new or used Nissan Leaf battery?

Another excellent query is this one. Which battery should you choose—new or used? It depends, is the answer. It largely depends on how long the battery pack you wish to buy will last. Consider purchasing a used battery pack if it is a nice battery pack with few kilometers on it and is still relatively new for its age.

You should stay away from a battery pack if it is old and still has a low mileage. As we previously stated, automobile batteries degrade with time, and if the battery pack is older than ten years, then it has likely lost half of its original capacity. Your Leaf’s range will be incredibly low as a result. However, you will continue to pay for the battery pack and receive nothing in return.

It would be wiser to get a battery from the dealership for this reason. Spending additional money on the battery pack is possible. However, it comes with a warranty, and the battery will last for at least 10 years before another repair is necessary.

Additionally, if you’re looking to buy a Nissan Leaf that costs more than average and has an outdated battery If you don’t want to find yourself in a money pit, it’s wise to think about lowering the price. Buying the automobile for less money will provide you negotiating power if you ever need to replace the battery.

Cost of a Nissan Leaf battery replacement

Up until the Tesla Model 3 passed it a few years ago, the Nissan Leaf was the most popular electric vehicle on the planet.

It’s hardly a performance vehicle, and most people would concur that they didn’t buy it for its looks. But it’s a cheap runaround, providing inexpensive travel for people who live in cities or small towns.

Well, it’s inexpensive up to the point where the battery starts to fail. You’ll need some new ones after that. And that is costly. quite pricey.

The price of a Nissan Leaf battery replacement is the subject of this article. It can cost between $4,000 and $6,000 with reconditioned batteries or between $7,000 and $12,000 at a dealership.

How Durable Are Nissan LEAF Batteries?

Owners of Nissan LEAFs, like owners of all electric vehicles (EVs), should be worried about battery longevity because the battery is one of the most crucial parts of any EV. Because smaller batteries are charged more frequently, they typically have a shorter lifespan.

The first generation LEAF could lose about a quarter of its capacity after five years of use or 50,000 miles, according to a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists. This implies that it might lose its ability to keep an adequate charge after ten years of use.

Thankfully, more recent LEAF versions have upgraded batteries with more capacity.

Nissan executives now think that the Nissan LEAF battery pack could outlive the vehicle itself and survive for decades. They might be recycled or put to use again, like in a solar energy storage system that powers a house.

Why changing a Nissan LEAF battery is so difficult

The first Nissan Leaf was the only mass-market electric vehicle available when it was released over ten years ago. Virginia residents Mike and Karen Lawrence acquired one as soon as they could because they were concerned about the environment and wanted to back up their words with deeds.

It rarely needs service beyond a checkup, so it’s not a pain in the neck, she said. “Without a motor and the oil change, which we do not have to do since there ain’t none,” she added.

The battery is the only issue with the automobile. A completely charged battery could travel up to 100 miles at initially, but over time, that distance decreased. The car can only travel 45 kilometers at the moment on a single charge.

Old batteries require more frequent charging because they deteriorate and retain less energy. Nissan offered a replacement battery that the Lawrences could purchase, but it would cost $8,000, which is more than the car is currently worth. In search of replacement batteries, they joined a lively online community of Nissan Leaf aficionados.

This is a typical issue with Leaf owners and battery technology in general. The lithium-ion battery, which can cost up to one third of the price of the vehicle, is often the most expensive component of an electric automobile.

Lithium-ion batteries are the result of many years of research, and they helped three scientists win the 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. They are essential to increasing the usage of renewable energy and power everything from computers to smartphones to automobiles. Investing in battery technologies is popular right now. But before batteries can power larger cars and last longer, there are still scientific issues that need to be resolved.

On a very basic level, lithium-ion batteries function as follows: Lithium ions go in and out of the positive and negative ends of a battery as well as back and forth in a liquid. When lithium ions move in one direction, the battery is charged and energy is stored; when they move in the opposite direction, the battery is discharged and the energy is used to power anything, like an automobile.

However, according to Gene Berdichevsky, who worked on a solar car project in the early 2000s as an undergraduate at Stanford, it took a lot of effort to make lithium-ion batteries function in a car. He claimed that most people weren’t as concerned about batteries then as they are now.

He claimed, “They were an afterthought.” People tend to overlook the fact that the battery played an equally significant influence when discussing how the present portable electronics sector was revolutionized by semiconductors.

When ought the battery in a Nissan LEAF to be changed?

How frequently should a Nissan Leaf battery be changed? Every three to five years, but to ensure that it’s performing at a high level, you should have your battery tested naturally for voltage drops.

What occurs if the battery in a Nissan LEAF dies?

What is more distressing than range anxiety? The guy who kept you engaged during the Scrapheap Challenge series, Robert Llewellyn, claims that range annoyance is worse since it makes you want to run out of battery.

You might wonder, “Why the hell would I want to do that? Not you. Robert wanted to simply demonstrate what occurs when your Nissan Leaf runs out of electricity so you would know what to anticipate if it did.

Yes, Robert just decided to drive his first-generation vehicle “leap of faith” only to discover what it’s like to run out of “fuel” in an electric vehicle. Here is the alternative to what happens when a typical car runs on fumes before stopping, which some of you may be familiar with.

Almost 90 miles later, the dashboard displayed a low-energy warning. However, the car kept acting normally, exactly as if its battery was fully charged. For almost 7 miles (11 km), past the “—” range indicator, the dreaded turtle lit up and caused the car to slow down.

If you’ve never heard of it, the Nissan Leaf enters “crawling” mode, which is indicated by a yellow turtle symbol on the instrument panel, when the battery is about to entirely drain.

When in turtle mode, the Leaf won’t drive faster than a safe pace of 32 mph (51 km/h), and it will continue for almost a mile before…

To tell you when it will stop, the Leaf won’t produce any jerky motions, unlike a combustion engine that has run out of gasoline. When the electric motor is no longer receiving power, the automobile will begin to coast until its inertia is lost.

Don’t worry, turn on your signal, and look for a safe place to stop if you ever find yourself with the turtle on your dash and the car stops keeping a consistent pace. If you don’t want to get out and push the car, wait until there is a vacant spot to pull into before applying the brakes.

Call roadside assistance or a friend to tow you to the closest charging station or your home so you can plug it in right away. Additionally, avoid totally draining the battery on a regular basis; some owners reported a decrease in range after doing so a few times.

How long does the battery on a Nissan LEAF last?

Depending on where you are and what you do, you’ll receive a specific timeline for your car. Extreme heat, frequent recharging (such as twice or three times a day), and city driving all hasten the battery’s depletion. The Nissan LEAF was designed to endure as much of these typical battery killers as possible, so you would have to be very rough on your car before you saw a significant change.

The Nissan LEAF was designed to travel up to 107 miles a day on a highway without recharging (depending on the model you choose.) You may travel up to 90 miles in even the busiest metropolitan traffic without having to worry about running out of juice. The battery will eventually lose power, but the amount of mileage you obtain will steadily decrease. The erosion will probably only have a minimal impact on you because the ordinary American will travel significantly less than the daily maximums. When you take care of your car, the Nissan LEAF battery should last between 8 and 10 years.