Nissan Offers Expanded Warranty Coverage for Leaf Batteries

Recently Nissan announced it will replace some of its Leaf’s poorly performing batteries and also expand the warranty coverage for 18,000 US owners.

Almost 18,000 Leaf owners complained of battery capacity loss and poor performance in their vehicle’s lithium-ion battery. Therefore Nissan decided to replace those batteries and also extend the warranty coverage.

“With this action, Nissan becomes the first and only manufacturer in the automotive industry to provide limited warranty coverage for battery capacity loss for electric vehicles,” said Andy Palmer, Nissan’s executive vice president, in an email to owners.

The new coverage, effective this spring, will apply to all 2011-2012 Nissan Leaf vehicles and will protect against capacity loss in batteries that fall under 9 bars of the maximum 12 bars which are displayed on the Leaf’s battery capacity gauge. If some of the Leafs’ batteries will fall under nine bars before 60,000 miles, the automaker will repair or replace the batteries. This year Nissan has sold 8,330 Leafs, down 4.5% from 9,679 vehicles in 2011.

“We are trying to improve the precision of the battery capacity gauge that displays remaining capacity in the Leaf’s electric vehicle battery. Our actions today are intended to put customer minds at ease regarding the topic of battery capacity loss,” Palmer said.