Nissan Leaf battery warranty upgraded

[Trakar]

Nissan Leaf battery warranty upgraded in US, first to cover capacity loss

Nissan has announced that it is going to offer a bit more security to Leaf owners than soothing words and lemon buybacks when it comes to degrading battery capacity. In a note published on My Nissan Leaf (and available below), Andy Palmer, Nissan's executive vice president, writes about a new enhancement to the "warranty coverage of the battery system that powers the Nissan Leaf."

In short, if your Leaf is losing battery capacity – here defined as dropping lower than nine bars in the first five years or 60,000 miles – Nissan will "repair or replace the battery under warranty with a new or remanufactured battery to restore capacity at or above a minimum of nine bars."...

Read rest of article at: Nissan Leaf battery warranty upgraded in US, first to cover capacity loss

The battery life is a reasonable concern with current generation rechargeable batteries. Not that the current batteries are horrible, but even the best systems are going to make you spend $10(+) grand at least once a decade. I imagine leasing will be a much preferred option for most all electrics.

 

[Oddball]

Good thing all those shit batteries aren't an environmental hazard, or anything like that.

 

[Old Rocks]

Now Oddie, dear old dumb ass, they are no more an environmental hazard than the present lead acid batteries that we have in our present cars. You really think they are just going to throw away the lithium in those batteries? Do they throw away the lead acid batteries?

And why the resentment toward the development of EV class batteries? Perhaps you wish us to go back to horese and buggies?

 

[Oddball]

Uh-huh...Except that there are, what, a dozen of them in a Leaf?

And how's the environmental situation around the cadmium mining and processing operations in Canada, eh?

 

[Old Rocks]

Cadmium mining in Canada? And that has what to do with the Lithium ion batteries in the Leaf?

 

[Oddball]

I'm sorry...How's the environmental situation around the lithium mining and processing turning out?

Not so hot, I hear.

There are additional environmental concerns related to those rare earth metals, like those used in the magnets of hybrid batteries. In recent years, rare earth metals like lithium have been imported almost exclusively from China, which was able to lower its prices enough to monopolize the industry [source: Strickland]. One of the reasons China could sell lithium so cheaply was because it widely ignored environmental safeguards during the mining process. In the Bayan Obo region of China, for example, miners removed topsoil and extracted the gold-flecked metals using acids that entered the groundwater, destroying nearby agricultural land. Even the normally tight-lipped Chinese government admitted that rare earth mining has been abused in some places. A regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China went so far as to tell The New York Times, "This has caused great harm to the ecology and environment"

HowStuffWorks "Pollution Caused By Building a Hybrid Car"

But I guess if it's just a bunch of little yellow people on the other side of the Earf ******* up their environment, it's all good...Just as long ans you think you're doing the whole world a big fat favor.

 

[Trakar]

I'm sorry...How's the environmental situation around the lithium mining and processing turning out?

Not so hot, I hear.

There are additional environmental concerns related to those rare earth metals, like those used in the magnets of hybrid batteries. In recent years, rare earth metals like lithium...

Rare Earth Metal, Lithium? I don't have a lot of faith in the credibility of any source that calls lithium a rare earth metal.

...But I guess if it's just a bunch of little yellow people on the other side of the Earf ******* up their environment, it's all good...Just as long ans you think you're doing the whole world a big fat favor.

There's twice as much in Chile as there is in China, no one is forcing anyone to mine anything, but I do agree with you that the US ought to consider the conditions of production, labor and the environmental impacts in all products that they allow to enter this country's markets. Taxing those products to a level sufficent to account for those unaccounted externalities seems appropriate. I congradulate the insightful suggestion.

 

[Old Rocks]

Were we to put tariffs on what they produce in accordance to the environmental damage they do producing it, we would see that damage diminish rapidly. For you see, we have more lithium than most people believe, right here in the US of A.

Western Lithium

Now we are identifying more calderas of this age and type. All found so far look like very good prospects for lithium production.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1755-1315/3/1/012002/pdf/ees8_3_012002.pdf

 

[Old Rocks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/b...ract-lithium-from-geothermal-plants.html?_r=0

A start-up company will announce on Wednesday that it is beginning commercial operations at a factory in Southern California to capture lithium from existing geothermal energy plants, a technology it says has the potential to turn the United States into a major lithium exporter.

The plant, built by Simbol Materials near the Salton Sea in the Imperial Valley, will also capture manganese and zinc.

 

[Trakar]

Were we to put tariffs on what they produce in accordance to the environmental damage they do producing it, we would see that damage diminish rapidly. For you see, we have more lithium than most people believe, right here in the US of A.

Western Lithium

Now we are identifying more calderas of this age and type. All found so far look like very good prospects for lithium production.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1755-1315/3/1/012002/pdf/ees8_3_012002.pdf

Ooops, quoted wrong post, oh well.


Yeah its widely and commonly distributed throughout the crust at around 60ppm, rich lithium mineral deposits are somewhat more rare, but even now, demand is at best moderate. Until relatively recently the two largest uses (outside of thermonuclear weapons) were as a ceramic glaze component and in lubricating greases. It isn't that the us doesn't have sources, its that the current market price and level of demand do not reach the break-even where developing and exploiting domestic caches of the resources reaches the point where a profit can be generated in the investment necessary to tap those resources.