There's an old saying that
There's an old saying that goes: "Batteries don't die, they're murdered." The idea that you can forget about cooling these batteries and just replace them later is flawed and counterproductive. A big reason some people switch to an EV is to get away from the culture of consumption. Every battery manufactured for a Nissan Leaf will die and have to be replaced. What happens to it then? Landfill? Or is there some other chemical process to recycle it? Either way it's an ecological mess and expensive to rectify. Used batteries from GM and Tesla on the other hand are regularly resold after the car they were in is retired. These are put to use in datacenters, grid power backups or, gasp, other cars; all because someone made the decision to protect that asset by cooling it. To me, that alone is a huge deciding factor on which manufacturer should get my money.