To Leaf or Not to Leaf...

I got the chance to drive a Nissan Leaf yesterday and was surprised at how quick it was and not bad drive wise. I did some looking and you could pick up a newer one for cheap. Does anybody here drive one?

Ohboy, here we go.

This is Tom's latest obsession, and he drove one earlier in the week. He'll be in this thread soon. Try not to encourage him too much... that guy does not need more cars.

Where does he get it from?

Margie

OMG OMG OMG I drove one on Monday it was awesome!

Right now I'm deep in Leaf-shopping hell, which is a lot like a statistics class. I'm mapping out all of my normal driving routes with charging added, and comparing range/battery degredation/speed/temperature charts to figure out how many bars I can afford to be missing.

It's awesome!

Anyway, here's what I've learned:

1. You want a 2013+ model. They're more likely to have quick charging and a DC fast charger, they have better "Lizard" batteries, and they don't have that awkward hump behind the rear seats.

2. I can afford a 2011-2012 model. They're the ones that are absurdly cheap. The newer ones are only stupid cheap.

3. Buy an SV or SL. For faster charging and cruise control.

4. Nobody will know if they have DC fast charging when they list their car on the internet. But it's easy to tell: DC fast charge cars have three orange wires coming from the charging port to the inverter under the hood, but normal cars only have one. It's easy to tell, even in blurry Craigslist photos.

5. Battery degradation is a real thing. But I'm not sure I care. It makes them cheap.

I think I'm going to pick up a POS 2011, since my commute is only 5 miles each way, and I have plenty of gas cars if I want to go on a long trip.

In reply to Tom Suddard:

only 5 miles, you could just ride a bike....

GRM GRM GRM, that means fab up your Own Charging station to mount on Back And Head to San Francisco Non-Stop...... remember the Old road test's with a Bicycle tire mounted on the bumper ? make one a charger/ solar/wind, or I like Gas so a tiny Chainsaw motor, was talking the other Day with some Folks at the GAS Station, they MIS-Calculated from Downtown Atlanta. they Did make it TO the Mountains, I would think they needed an extension Cord but didn't ask!

I have to agree that I was impressed with just how much the Leaf I have driven didn't suck. If I worked just a little closer to home, or was allowed to charge at work, I'd strongly consider replacing our Fit with a lightly used Leaf.

And it's not just Leaves that are stupid cheap for the age and mileage. All of the <100 mile range BEV's are. So if you want a car with a little more personality and a little less practicality, there's the 500e...Get the eSport package and call it an Ebarth.

In reply to Rumnhammer:

I have a comfy road bike (actually is a Miyata, keeping with this site's theme) that I ride to work, too, but no shower here and Florida temperature and humidity mean I don't ride to work as much as I'd like to. Besides, I drive lots of other places, too, and a bike doesn't carry car parts very well.

Here's what my bike commute looks like: And here's what the bike looks like these days:

Me, my dad and my brother each daily-drive an EV. Cost of ownership is very low, and maintenance issues are few. These are solid cars and a workable primary vehicle if you don't have to travel far each day; each of us have a spouse whose vehicle we use for longer grips. My parents have had their '13 Leaf SV for 3.5 years and its range is down about 15% from new due to degradation.

Personally I've been waiting for the price of off-lease BMW i3s to come down. The i3s are a lot quicker and more nimble than a Leaf (though they have a lot more quirks). The i3's range-extender option is great because it means that battery degradation isn't as big an issue as it would be in a pure EV.

What EVs do you all have?

Oh boy, I have the bug for one of these too! But, I'd have to park it down the street so wife didn't see it. Sonehow, she thinks four cars are somehow enough already!

From all the research I did, and talking to folks on the smart forums, it appears that MB financial has dropped the requirement that a 2nd owner buy and pay for the Battery Assurance Program.

One new owner called MB financial and was told he does not have to pay for it. He took his car to an MB/smart dealer for service, and they serviced it without batting an eye.

So maybe you should think about an electric smart as well.

I have been, but the BAP thing scared me off. Good to know it may be going away.

My dad drives a 2013 Leaf SV, my brother drives a 2013 Leaf S, and I drive a 2015 Kia Soul EV. I've driven my dad's car a bunch, and the other BEVs I've driven for comparison are the Ford Focus Electric, BMW i3 EV and REx.

We've found our EVs to be perfect for Commuting from the Atlanta suburbs to the city and back. EVs get to use the HOV (carpool) lanes which eases traffic frustrations. Charging at home is easy and Georgia Power offers a special EV electricity plan with super low overnight rates. The small size of the Leaf and Soul make help make them nimble, yet they still have adequate space in side for hauling kids or hauling stuff.

I had a 2013 Leaf SL before it was destroyed by a hailstorm. Had it for about a year and put 15k miles on it. It had all the bells and whistles. I LOVED that car and still miss it. It feels faster than it really is, simply because it has all of it's torque available from literally 0 "rpm". From 0-30 it'll make you grin every single time you hit the gas. From 30 on up, it's pretty unremarkable. Not bad, but not special. The driving experience is very gas engine car like, except for the utter silence. That takes some getting used to.

Heated seats and steering wheel are standard. Mine were leather, and I loved them. The heated wheel was a bit funky. It would get super hot, then shut off and refuse to turn back on for a good while. Apparently, I'm not the only one who had this complaint, but Nissan didn't have a fix for it. The GRM fix is to just shut it off before it gets too warm and cycle it off/on.

You could one foot drive it if you had no traffic behind you and weren't in a hurry. That was kind of fun to do. On my commute home, which was rural country roads, I knew when stop signs were coming up. It was fun to try to time it and let off the gas at the right spot to make the regen braking stop the car right at the stop sign. But don't do that if there are cars behind you, they won't be amused.

Handling is nothing to write home about, but is light years better than the Prius. It's competent enough. Back seat is plenty large enough for 2, hatch is a decent size.

Battery degradation is a real thing, but I didn't have mine long enough to experience it. With a new battery, range will be from 60 miles on a very cold winter day to 100 if you drive very carefully on a warm sunny day.

Very sadly, the Leaf can't fit my current needs of 120 mile round trip daily. If it did, I'd have another on in a heartbeat. We built our current home 2 years ago and I had a 220 line installed in the garage specifically for an EV. As soon as there is one on the market that's as affordable as a 2 year old Leaf that can reliably make 150 miles on one charge, I'm all in. Praying for a very steep depreciation curve on the Bolt.

The very sad fate my poor Leaf met...every panel was beaten to hell, windshield, headlights/taillights, etc... What really sucked is that hail like this is rare in PA and we had just moved offices 3 weeks prior, and at the old office I was in a covered parking garage...

I have driven a 2013 Leaf SV since new. It's a great car, exactly the right tool for the job it's capable of. Unfortunately I will be selling mine in a couple months. I'm moving about 40 miles from work, and the Leaf won't handle that in Winter.

I don't have the DC quick charge option and haven't missed it at all. No DC charge stations in metro Detroit until recently, and the ones there now aren't cheap.

It's been reliable except I had my heater replaced twice under warranty. I think the 2013 is a little susceptible to this from reports online but it's been 2 years now with the current heater and I think they updated the part.

Anyway I have loved driving mine. I don't have even 5% battery degradation. It has 33k miles on it and I don't expect to get more than $8,000.

I haven't driven one, but its at the top of my list if I need to replace my car. My car is just too cheap to give up

Coworker had one and they had about a 30mile commute each way. By the end of 2 years the car would no longer make the trip without charging during the day. They loved the car but the batteries are crap. This coworker it was his wife's car mainly and she is an engineer at Qualcomm and was also part of some obsessive data downloading thing that Nissan was doing where they graded how people drove and she always got the "high scores". This was also in San Diego which is arguably some of the mildest weather in terms of temperature changes in the country.

They replaced it with a Volt and have been much much happier and have nothing but good things to say about the Volt

Jaynen wrote: Coworker had one and they had about a 30mile commute each way. By the end of 2 years the car would no longer make the trip without charging during the day. They loved the car but the batteries are crap. This coworker it was his wife's car mainly and she is an engineer at Qualcomm and was also part of some obsessive data downloading thing that Nissan was doing where they graded how people drove and she always got the "high scores". This was also in San Diego which is arguably some of the mildest weather in terms of temperature changes in the country. They replaced it with a Volt and have been much much happier and have nothing but good things to say about the Volt

If she was truly using it ideally in an ideal climate and still had that issue, I suspect she got a rare lemon. That's not at all the norm for Leafs. The battery degrades as all do, but not at that kind of a rate. They just got unlucky and had a defective one.

I had a 2013 SL for two years. Unassailably efficient, and really neat, but a lot like driving a cell phone. Not entirely in a bad way.

The top-view parking camera was probably its neatest trick. I mean aside from bumping our electrical bill a guesstimated twelve bucks a month for about the same driving that'd been running us ~$250 gassing a WRX. The heated steering wheel behaved exactly as Klayfish describes, and I still miss it.

Nipping through traffic, it would squirt where the WRX would still be in lag. I think Klayfish described the dynamics well. Not particularly fun, but not painful.

Mode of driving plays a HUGE role in actual range. It hates plowing through the wind at 60mph. Stop and go, and you can noodle around town for 100 miles easy.

The A pillars are stupid. Seems like every third time my SO and I were driving together, whoever was the passenger would have to point out a pedestrian the driver missed because they were completely obscured. Good thing we had the same commute.

BUT, it was a huge pain to take out of town. It was incapable of making the gap from the last quick charger to SO's sister's home in Kennewick. Even my folks, only 111 miles away, was a minimum two-stop, more like three-stop trip. Which took it from ~2 hours to ~4 hours, because the chargers aren't ideally located, or right next to the road.

If they're stupid cheap and you've got parking enough and other cars for road trips, it's a great around town car, as appliances go. The efficiency is pretty beautiful. And I still remember braking to a stop in the WRX later the day of the Leaf test drive, and just feeling like some crime against thermodynamics was being perpetrated as I turned all my momentum into heat and brake dust. Watching the "gas" gauge go up when we drove down a hill must've been the greatest party trick the sales guy ever had.

Klayfish wrote:

Jaynen wrote: Coworker had one and they had about a 30mile commute each way. By the end of 2 years the car would no longer make the trip without charging during the day. They loved the car but the batteries are crap. This coworker it was his wife's car mainly and she is an engineer at Qualcomm and was also part of some obsessive data downloading thing that Nissan was doing where they graded how people drove and she always got the "high scores". This was also in San Diego which is arguably some of the mildest weather in terms of temperature changes in the country. They replaced it with a Volt and have been much much happier and have nothing but good things to say about the Volt

If she was truly using it ideally in an ideal climate and still had that issue, I suspect she got a rare lemon. That's not at all the norm for Leafs. The battery degrades as all do, but not at that kind of a rate. They just got unlucky and had a defective one.

You may be right but it was a big turn off for them. They got a really early one because Qualcomm and Nissan were working together so maybe they were improved also?

Oh, and see how you do before installing an L2 charger at home. I was so sure I'd need one that we bought one at the same time as the car. We never installed it. Once you make it home, overnight is virtually always enough time to fully recharge on 110. When you need to charge quickly is when it's holding you up between points A and B, though I'm sure folks who make multiple longer trips out per day from home might not find this to be true. Still, definitely make sure you get a car that can quick charge. Without that, the carriage turns into a pumpkin 'til the next day, right?

Whats the charge rate of the slowest leaf charging available on a 2011? I drive 20-30 miles/day, tops.

I daily an e-golf. I love it. I previously leased a Volt. Another perfect commuter but the golf is ... a golf. It's considerably more fun to drive. They will be dirt cheap used in a year or so.

Do you get any Fiat 500e off-lease cars down there? They have been popping up in NJ. They're sooooo cheap at auction that dealers must be transporting groups of them out here. They are apparently a hoot.

For DIY, the Leaf is probably the best choice though. IF you have any problems, there are a lot of them out there.

Klayfish wrote:

Jaynen wrote: Coworker had one and they had about a 30mile commute each way. By the end of 2 years the car would no longer make the trip without charging during the day. They loved the car but the batteries are crap. This coworker it was his wife's car mainly and she is an engineer at Qualcomm and was also part of some obsessive data downloading thing that Nissan was doing where they graded how people drove and she always got the "high scores". This was also in San Diego which is arguably some of the mildest weather in terms of temperature changes in the country. They replaced it with a Volt and have been much much happier and have nothing but good things to say about the Volt

If she was truly using it ideally in an ideal climate and still had that issue, I suspect she got a rare lemon. That's not at all the norm for Leafs. The battery degrades as all do, but not at that kind of a rate. They just got unlucky and had a defective one.

+1 that's definitely not normal. That level of wear should take at least a decade under those conditions.