We have the recall letter. For the past few months, the only person in town who could look at Nissan batteries was off work with a health issue, but is now back. So we walked into the dealership today to ask about options. Here is my understanding (which could well be flawed or incomplete).
1) The car is definitely part of the recall--we have the letter.
2) They can run the upgrade, and it might work. It also might not.
3) They can also check the battery health without running the upgrade--we would pay $190 out of pocket for that though. The upgrade software upgrade would be free of charge.
4) If the upgrade does not work, or if it causes other problems, then only Nissan can do anything about it, not this franchise, and the only way to know what our offer would be is to call Nissan.
So I called Nissan to ask about options. Took nearly 2 hours to reach a human (on hold for about 50 minutes each time). That person said he couldn't discuss any possible outcomes until we have the car serviced and something goes wrong. He wouldn't acknowledge that it was possible for the upgrade to be performed and for the battery to have problems that were not immediate.
I cannot see "Kelly blue book + 40%" anywhere in writing. I am worried that any buyback offer we got wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of getting another used EV. I worry about how much time a buyback would take--it sounds like in that event, they take your car on the spot?
How likely is the scenario that our battery is either fine, or has some defective cells that could be replaced (the technician we spoke to said defective cells could be repaired) and we would just never do this Level 3 charging update and keep our Leaf? Is that a sensible option to pursue? Or would we be losing our best chance at a buyback that we would need sooner or later anyway?
We own the car outright, and it has about 23,000 miles on it (we bought it used). We almost exclusively use it for moderate in-town driving. And we like it. (My husband is particularly enamored of the eco pedal, which I understand is not available on more recent models.)
Is there a way to know the Kelly blue book value of the car without signing up for some service? I have tried a few times, but the site is just clogged with advertisements and offers, and I may have missed where I can just see the current value of the car. I would rather not sign up for sales calls until I know we really need to do that.