Buying a "cheap" second hand EV?

k6chris

Looking at second hand EV and there seem to be a lot of 3,4,5 year old options at around £8k - £9k. Most common seems to be the Nissan Leaf 24kw model, which has a very low usable range of 60-70 miles. As the daily run around that would be OK and fuel costs would be lower. What things do I need to think about? How long might such a car last? Is a 4 year old EV more or less risky than a 4 year old ICE?


Thoughts and insight please!

foxy-stoat

Any car any age is a risk - you have some warranty on a newer car, EV or ICE.

Theres a few 9 year old Leafs with 70,000+ miles for sale on autotrader so I would assume the one your looking at has a chance it will see 2025 and beyond.

DrEskimo

k6chris wrote: »

Looking at second hand EV and there seem to be a lot of 3,4,5 year old options at around £8k - £9k. Most common seems to be the Nissan Leaf 24kw model, which has a very low usable range of 60-70 miles. As the daily run around that would be OK and fuel costs would be lower. What things do I need to think about? How long might such a car last? Is a 4 year old EV more or less risky than a 4 year old ICE?


Thoughts and insight please!

I have much more experience and knowledge with the Zoe's, but I know the one thing you would want to do is get a Bluetooth OBD dongle and download an app called LeafSpy so that you can get an accurate measure of the batteries State of Health (SoH). The Leaf's do have a battery health indicator on the side of the State of Charge (SoC), which is done using 12 bars. However this doesn't give an accurate depiction of the SoH.

Leaf's opted for a certain battery chemistry designed to promote longevity over density in order to preclude it from costly battery management hardware. However it didn't work all that well, and battery degradation on the Leaf's are typically higher than that on basically any other EV. I know even some very early Zoe's for example have seen very little degradation, even with mileage as high as 200k miles.

Also worth bearing in mind that the older EV's (24kWh Leaf and 22kWh Zoe's) only had a 5 year warranty on the batteries, whereas these were extended to 8-years on the newer models.

In terms of risk, I personally opted for a 2year old 41kWh Zoe (battery owned) as I knew I would still have 2 years left on the car, and 6year left on the battery. I can also extend the warranty on the car for a modest yearly fee (~£300) until the car is 10years old. That means over 6years, the whole car could be under warranty.

I am less concerned with the battery, and more concerned with the car and drive-train to be honest! Not many Zoe owners are brave enough to run without a warranty on the car. Not sure if the Leaf has similar common issues as the Zoe....

almillar

Nissan Leaf 24kw model, which has a very low usable range of 60-70 miles.

You should do better than that outside winter. Take that as your worst mileage.

Lots of stuff the same as ICE. These cars still have suspension and tyres, for example. Leafs have a battery indicator in the dash I think, with 12 bars in them, and people talk about being down to 11 or 10 bars. This is a very rough indication of battery health. If you want to go advanced, get an ODB2 bluetooth reader (the very same one works on DrEskimo's Zoe!), and the Android app Torque Pro (there's a free version to try with first if you want), and it can tell you more about the battery SOH (State of Health) very accurately. Above 95% would be great, below 90% might make you think twice. I think your budget is just about reaching 30kWh Leaf prices, and I would push for that to be honest.

Because there are so many Leafs on the road, parts shouldn't be a problem, and indies should be getting familiar with them, able to work on them and even help out with specialist repairs.

[Deleted User]

The main issue with older Leafs was the suspension, see if it's been sorted out. There is a relatively cheap as I recall but probably needs doing on 7+ year old ones.

Other than that check the battery health and there isn't much else to go wrong.

ElefantEd

Our first Leaf, a 24kwh Gen 2, had done over 120,000 miles when we traded it in, it had just lost its second bar (out of 12) of battery, range was about 75 miles when driven normally - you can always get more range by driving slower.

[Deleted User]

Most people vastly over-estimate distances. They think the next town over is 50 miles away when it's more like 20.

So my advice is go on Google Maps and put in a few journeys, see how many miles it really is.