2013 Nissan Leaf, anyone have any personal experience?

seatbeltnoob

I'm in London, do about 30-40 miles a day at most, typically 25.

Have lamp post charging points popping out everywhere. Electric vehicles appeal to me for their low running costs. I drive about 10,000 miles a year and total I spend on petrol every year is around £2000-£2500.

Nissan leaf is quite appealing, the 2013 models go on autotrader for £5000ish.

I understand that these will inevitably need replacement batteries at some point and that's reflected in the price. I have seen US sites quote prices for a brand new battery at $3500US. So it doesn't seem like a massive expense. Once you've got brand new batteries - if you look after it, dont constantly fast charge you culd probably get another 10 years out of it. Nissan has quoted price of £3920 after a £1000 rebate of your old battery. So you get proper manufacturers brand new battery fitted at a fair price; https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/nissan/89694/nissan-leaf-battery-replacement-to-cost-4920

What are your thoughts?

ElefantEd

We bought a 2013 Leaf when it was a few months old. It served us faithfully for 120,000 miles, after which the batteries had degraded a bit, leaving the real life range at about 75 miles. Our usual journeys at that point were 50 each way, so we traded in for a newer model with a larger battery. But if I were only doing 25-40 miles a day, and could reliably charge it each day (if needed) I would have kept it. The rest of the car was still in extremely good nick, well constructed and nothing ever went wrong. Apart from tyres and windscreen wipers every so often it didn't need any maintenance at all (well, the physical brakes needed a bit of attention occasionally as you don't use them very much). It saved us a huge amount of money, fuel is obviously much cheaper, VED is zero and running costs are also very low - there isn't much to go wrong.

You would save the £5000 cost of the car in 3 or 4 years in cheaper fuel alone. Personally I wouldn't bother with new batteries unless the range of the existing ones was really low.

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seatbeltnoob

[DELETED USER] said:

The Leaf is a great car. You won't need new batteries in its lifetime unless they are faulty. Just get a decent one with 11 bars left on the battery health and don't worry about it.

One thing I would say is that if you don't have a charger at home it work it's a bit of a risk to rely on public charging. What if you can't charge one night because someone else is using it?

Yes, I think it's important to research. I dont have a drive I can charge an EV but there's more and more charging points popping up.

Also whether nissan will fit a bigger capacity battery on a vehicle that came with smaller packs. IIRC there are 3 different battery packs for the leaf 30, 40 & 62kwh.

If the motor and other electrics are fine, then it might be worth buying a 2013 leaf and fitting the biggest battery pack on it when the range becomes useless.

Ectophile

If there are faulty cells in the battery pack, there's now a small number of independent specialists who will replace individual cells in a pack with ones scavenged from scrapped Leafs.  That will cost a lot less than buying a brand new battery pack, and will bring it up to the state of health it was in before the individual cells failed.

It's even possible to fit the higher capacity pack from a scrapped later model Leaf to an earlier one, if you're willing to pay.

seatbeltnoob

Ectophile said:

If there are faulty cells in the battery pack, there's now a small number of independent specialists who will replace individual cells in a pack with ones scavenged from scrapped Leafs.  That will cost a lot less than buying a brand new battery pack, and will bring it up to the state of health it was in before the individual cells failed.

It's even possible to fit the higher capacity pack from a scrapped later model Leaf to an earlier one, if you're willing to pay.

I read about that, problem is it's not easy or cheap for an independant to open up the battery packs and go through each individual cells and test them, and spot replace them. You may save on parts, but the labout will be huge. 

If you look up pictures of a leaf battery pack it seems like a sealed metal box that sits on the floor pan. So the whole pack needs to come off with all the interiors out and then the technican needs to do the diagnostics.

Add to that, unlike laptops (which might have 6 cells) cars have thousands and because of that they are balanced charged they don't start failing unevenly, they all degrade similar amounts over the course of time.