EV battery lease or purchase?

[Simon]

An electric car will be relatively new so is unlikely to have such issues and would be bought through a dealer who would check that and give a warranty. More than that you can't do on a second hand car as at the end of the day they are all pop luck to a degree.

As things stand I am going to lease a car from ONTO for a few months and see how I go as I presently spend the same cost as the lease on my petrol guzzler anyway and my father needs another car and has always had his eyes on mine. When I know more about driving electric and my work situation is ore secure I'll start making more permanent plans about what I drive and where I live.

[f4eru]

Electric: 1/3 the maintenance cost. 1/4 the "fuel" cost (very country dependant)

[m3vuv]

I THINK THE LEAFS BATTERY ISSUES ARE DOWN TOO POOR THERMAL MANAGEMENT!? sorry for the caps,didnt realise it was on caps lock.

[Simon]

Yes, this is why the i3 costs more, water managed and after 5 years no battery degradation at all.

[Simon]

Well I am leasing a car through ONTO. Yea the business model is great but I don't recommend the company. They have been useless. I was delivered a car that had broken aircon and I had to take a half day off work to deal with it even though this was a defective from "new" vehicle. So the gas all leaked out again and all they could talk about was a maintenance appointment while I kept telling them to do as they pleased but it would not involve me once again taking their vehicle that has a manufacturers defect under warranty to the dealer again. Not my vehicle, manufacturing defect, not my problem. Manufacturer should come out on bended knees begging forgiveness with a replacement and re-release the car when they had brought it up to spec.

Ever since I had the car it had a couple of odd instances of not going the same way as the mode setting or slipping "out of gear" into neutral when first starting or had other "funnies". I then had a third instances where the car positively went in the direct opposite direction to the mode setting with a passenger in the car. after 5 days of chasing they gave me a date for a replacement which was 10 days after they became aware of the issue. Week later it shut down the drive train whilst I was going down hill when I switched from normal drive mode to re-gen braking drive mode. I braked with the hydraulic brakes to stop it and had to turn it "off and on again" as it would not get out of neutral.

Once the replacement arrived I realized that the behaviour of the two cars was quite different and the new one is actually quite drivable unlike the old one that I never really felt comfortable with even when it was not having issues. A week later after I wrote to them explaining that I think I have ended up with a prototype car and have informed the VCA/VDSA, no reply from them. The old vehicle is still stuck at my employers premises, no idea what they are doing - hopeless.

ONTO is just an office, everything they do is via contractors so they are unable to react to stuff like this. They have never actually seen or touched any of the vehicles they have delivered.

[sandalcandal]

Sounds like a real pain. Good ideas are useless without the right people to execute them.

[Simon]

I can imagine it is a cut throat market to be in but really they have gone too far. Calling support or emailing is useless, they just can't help. When they suggest head office call me back and I say yes please no one does. Hopeless. They say you will always have a car that is less than 2 years old so they have to find a way of getting rid of the cars after 2 years with up to 60'000 miles on the clock or they are in turn leasing from the manufacturer who will also have the same problem.

But then the company is a collection of 7 companies with only one director and one of the companies as director to all the others and so in reverse. I don't know why this is necessary and assume some tax dodge when he is at the point of having names like, onto tech 1, onto tech 2...... onto tech 5 and then 2 other companies.

[sandalcandal]

I can imagine it is a cut throat market to be in but really they have gone too far. Calling support or emailing is useless, they just can't help. When they suggest head office call me back and I say yes please no one does. Hopeless. They say you will always have a car that is less than 2 years old so they have to find a way of getting rid of the cars after 2 years with up to 60'000 miles on the clock or they are in turn leasing from the manufacturer who will also have the same problem.

But then the company is a collection of 7 companies with only one director and one of the companies as director to all the others and so in reverse. I don't know why this is necessary and assume some tax dodge when he is at the point of having names like, onto tech 1, onto tech 2...... onto tech 5 and then 2 other companies.

Sounds like a royal mess. I wonder if those shenanigans are required to sustain the product/service at their price point or this owner is gutting the business idea as much as possible to get the most money in their own pocket.

[Simon]

Well they obviously told the manufacturer who sent their contracted breakdown service. Guy showed up and said that if it would drive he had to leave it and and it had to be driven to a dealer. So I showed him the email they sent me saying that the car would be collected by a breakdown vehicle due to the safety issues. I was the one that actually told them this was necessary and that no one could be asked to drive it without being made aware of the issue at which point any hire driver would refuse.

I rang them to tell them what had happened and they said they did not know what they were going to do but said they would work something out. Since I told them I think this may be out of a proto batch no contact from them.

[fcb]

It's not from a prototype batch of Leaf's.

1. Manufacturers don't release prototypes to the general public, they can't be certified easily - they get donated to museums or crushed. Too much hassle/liability.
2. Leaf Gen2 was 2017 and your supplier stated <2yrs old. So aside from point 1, your vehicle isn't older than August 2019??

Nissan got alot wrong with the Leaf Gen2 - talk about clutching defeat from jaws of victory.

[coppice]

Nissan got alot wrong with the Leaf Gen2 - talk about clutching defeat from jaws of victory.

I realise the Leaf Gen 2 isn't the greatest of cars, but it disappeared from sight so quickly after its release I have heard almost nothing about how it really works out for people. It takes real skill to sink a product that badly after the high profile of the Gen 1 model.

[Simon]

It's not from a prototype batch of Leaf's.

1. Manufacturers don't release prototypes to the general public, they can't be certified easily - they get donated to museums or crushed. Too much hassle/liability.
2. Leaf Gen2 was 2017 and your supplier stated <2yrs old. So aside from point 1, your vehicle isn't older than August 2019??

Nissan got alot wrong with the Leaf Gen2 - talk about clutching defeat from jaws of victory.

Who said it's a leaf? made by a company in the same group so maybe shares some problems, and I won't be touching another car from any of the group.

I am aware that manufacturers do not release prototypes - not intentionally but this car always felt very odd and unpolished. The replacement car is very different in control and so much better, in fact perfect but registered just one month later. So either a major update happened right after the first one was produced or something has gone wrong. There is a difference in the default instrument panel layout compared to all the ones I see in reviews. I have come across a review of the same model on youtube that unlike all of the others has the same instrument layout as the first car I got. Coincidentally the reviewer described the poor usability of the brakes exactly the same way I would on that car.

The replacement has very different brake behaviour as it does accelerator behaviour. My limited knowledge of how these things work is that one does not just get up one day with a bee in their bonnet to "fix that pesky accelerator and brake". It's something that would have been carefully considered with management approval and external bodies would need to be notified of the changes after retesting.

When I worked on a radiator cooling fan speed controller (glorified signal generator) at my last job it was a mammoth task for a company that had never gone for VCA registration to get that approved by the VCA due to the paperwork, FMEA and having to submit design and BOM information. Even a change in software has to be notified we were told.

[nctnico]

So basically the first car you got needs a software update. Nothing out of the ordinary with relatively young cars. The brakes work just fine, it is the accellerator and regenerative braking control loops which needed more polishing.

[Simon]

So basically the first car you got needs a software update. Nothing out of the ordinary with relatively young cars. The brakes work just fine, it is the accellerator and regenerative braking control loops which needed more polishing.

One does not "just" update the drive train software.  And one really, really "just does not!" put an unsuspecting member of the public in a car that behaves erratically and dangerously! The dealer did do some update to the satnav/multimedia screen but that is completely different from the drive train which I believe also holds an instrument panel layout setting of it's own which is not necessarily in sync with the setting in the drive train or other onboard computer so they conflict because the manufacturer could not even master the concept of 2 way communication between 2 systems, no wonder they can't even do a motor that goes the right way!

They have gone to great lengths to make a software clutch, yes that's right. That thing that automatics tried to hide from the user and electrics simply don't have? this manufacturer went to great lengths to recreate one that is not there and ballsed it up proper on the first car that would lurch off from a standstill to 5mph so you were left controlling the car in forwards or reverse manoeuvring with the brake as the car tried to drag itself in what ever direction was set (most of the time). So if you were say parked by the roadside in a line of cars and had to shunt up and down to get out it was rather scary as you would easily hit another car. On one occasion I had to use one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake.... This aspect of the car in itself was perhaps to be considered dangerous, I don't know what expectations there are and who tests these things. Clearly they knew it was really bad and the replacement is totally different. I mean months of work may have gone into these changes. I can't believe anyone in their right mind would release a car like this.