this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025
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Disagree, they are exactly the type of EV we should be building: inexpensive, enough range for around town, pretty dependable. The first couple model years had crappy range, but the later ones were fine.
What Nissan needed was to expand the EV product line. Ideas:
Don't compete on range at all, that's R&D you don't want to deal with. Just make great cars for urban and suburban use.
They weren't dependable is the problem. There were a lot of problems with early deterioration of the battery, supposedly from not having very good temperature control on the battery pack.
Sure, and battery deterioration is largely only a problem if you don't have much range to begin with. They put larger batteries in after a year or two, which largely solved the problem for the intended use case: around town car.
But that's also why I mentioned reliability and price should be the focus. They're not going to be leading R&D on better battery range, so they might as well focus on a niche.
Range anxiety is not an illegitimate concern though. Sure I probably don't need that capacity more than maybe once every year but what about when I do need it?
How am I supposed to be able to drive halfway across the country to see my family every Christmas if my car only has 150 miles of range and it takes 4 hours to fully recharge. That's going to turn a 3-hour road trip into 10 hours if we have to stop and wait for it to recharge. My problem with the leaf was that it had hardly any range at all so that problem was massively exacerbated.
It's great in a multi-car household where the other car is something with a bit more range but as you're only vehicle you better hope that no family emergency crop up.
To be clear I would have the same issues with an ICE only had 150 miles of range but in some ways that would be better because it "recharges" faster.
Hence why I focused on vehicle classes more common as a second car. We have two cars, and one never goes further than 100 miles in a given day.
That's the niche EVs should focus on, especially while battery tech makes >400 mile range impractical. I think Nissan (or any car company) could do quite well focusing on the second car market.