I Bought the Cheapest Ev, a Used Nissan Leaf
Posted4 months agoActive4 months ago
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The author purchased a used Nissan Leaf as their cheapest EV option, sparking a discussion on the pros and cons of EV ownership, charging infrastructure, and the used EV market.
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They are also heavier, so need different set ups in order to handle decently.
But, that's why they look so different.
Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Yes EVs have excellent 0-60, but that's just because they have a great launch. Even doing a 5-60 pull removes the EV advantage. Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
There are some good traits to EVs but, outside of launching hard in street car trim, performance is not one of them.
It's not M5 BMW hard, but it's hard. I guess that if you have a performance variant then maybe it would be.
Yes. Some people are binary drivers, regardless of drivetrain. But a very responsive EV, especially something like a Tesla Performance trim in sport mode or F-150 Lightning in sport mode, with an unskilled driver can definitely make you seasick. Most drivers who can modulate the pedal do just fine, though.
The only real problem with Teslas is that they don't have an option to go without one pedal driving. Some drivers really aren't suited for 1PD, frankly.
It is noticeable, though.
> Yes EVs can keep their weight low, but it's a lot more weight to deal with.
Define a lot? It's a few hundred pounds, excepting pickups.
> Starting from highway speeds? EVs start to look real slow.
Maybe a Leaf or a Bolt. But I would be happy to put my Model 3LR or F-150 Lightning up against something like a Camaro SS or Mustang GT from a highway roll -- I'll still win.
Most people don't take their old Toyota to a race track, so they don't need their Leaf to beat a Lambo either.
The instant 0-30mph is the biggest advantage in day to day driving.
What the market wants is cars that are cheap to drive, practical and fast. While there are people wanting to make a statement with their car I can't believe that's a majority. The overwhelming amount of cars in my city belongs to the cheap/practical category.
I've found myself taking a second look at a bunch of ICE cars recently as they've all started trying to copy elements from electric car design...
The first gen leaf got a lot of commentary about this "EV look" and the contemporary Nissan Note had a similar front end. And then both got 2nd gens that evolved similarly.
Their Juke could be an overinflated Leaf at a glance etc.
Wikipedia photos:
1st gen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:2005_N...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:2017_N...
2nd gen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Note#/media/File:Nissan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf#/media/File:Nissan...
Even with the benefits of EV packaging, manufacturers chose to make them “different” on purpose, which really put off the vast majority of buyers. Tesla had so much success because they were practically the first manufacturer to make something look somewhat normal and have good stats.
Now, BMW finally learned and has their 4 and 5 series EV cars share a common platform with the ICE. There is no physical difference in style other than the front grill.
* Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable
* Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards
* Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars
This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.
TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars.
Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.
Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs.
Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.
> The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM
is the same statement as:
> following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite
Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous.
Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.
Maybe they should do both.
They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.
As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.
You THINK you're driving long distances every day and you THINK charging is a massive hassle where you have to drive to a Charging Site and wait for the car to charge for HOURS.
When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning.
And when the infrastructure is properly built (yay Finland), you can get a week's charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW chargers along with a fleet of Level 2 (22kW) chargers.
The only times I need to actively think about charging are over 200-250km day trips (my old Ioniq EV has a WLTP of 300km on a warm summer day). And even then the kids an dogs need a bathroom break anyway and I need to walk around a bit to freshen up. 20-30 minutes gets us 100-150km of charge (old car, slow charging) and we're off again.
Right, but I should buy a house with a garage first.
>> charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW
Unless you do groceries in unusual time, those chargers are occupied. Will you wait in line then?
We get 230V/16A from a bog standard outlet, three phase is triple that.
A couple of weeks later I went on holiday. I wouldn't be able to charge where I was stopping, and there were no chargers within 15 miles. I kept my diesel.
So what, that's something you find out once that your electric installation is shoddy enough to most likely be a fire risk (because the charger plug has a thermal protection built in!), fix it and then you won't have that problem again. And as the Leaf should have 150 miles worth of range, you still should have way more than enough range on the battery to do two days worth of commute even if you suddenly find out the trickle charge didn't work.
Indeed... but now, think of the price difference between a small-ish commute EV and a chungus EV or ICE. Easily tens of thousands of dollars, that's a lot of days worth of rent.
> Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.
That's extremely fucking rare to happen. In the eventuality your reservation can't be filled, you'll usually get upgraded for free. Personally, got upgraded from a small VW Golf class to a VW Phaeton once, plus a day for free. And automatic, no stick shift like the Golf.
Not having any rental cars is very common in my experience. I'm often renting in smaller cities though (like the rental car place just a couple miles from my house), I've never heard of problems in big tourist destinations or large cities.
E.g. a family with two cars, where the smaller car is preferred because it's easier to park in the limited space available in a European city.
That is probably why the american road trip is a dying animal. Past a days drive you are coming way behind just flying straight there.
Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting.
Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE.
As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
The EU minimum is 20 days annual leave per year.
Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.
Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+?
EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
This was the very first mass-market electric car, with only minor tweaks. It's not surprising that it's a bit rough around the edges. That's part of why they're cheap second-hand (along with the fact that the 3rd gen, which actually is a proper redesign, is coming out this year).
If the model gets even minor updates, manufacturing is happening right now, the car is either good enough or new enough in general, and we cannot use old as negative quality.
Electric motors existed before the combustion engine, and people keep talking about "rapidly evolving area", while the only thing that is rapidly evolving and specific to EVs is the power source. A battery, to be precise. It is all about battery, and nothing else.
Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.
There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.
> What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.
Either way, the car is 6 years old. At this rate the battery will still be pretty fine when it is 15 years old and ready for retirement.
Never charging it above 80% is not worth the hassle. It is like never using your left hand for the fear of hurting your left hand. You are crippling your car by overthinking.
The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.
Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.
The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Edit: He bought used.
> You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.
> The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.
Coming in too hot, friend! The headline, and opening line, is that it is a used EV.
I'm happy with that.
the artile is a guy who drives his cars 'into the ground' - he wouldn't care about value he cares about how long it will run.
[1] chassis+body+suspension basically a car without powertrain and interior trim
Even then, most individuals don't buy new cars. Most of the cars on the used market come from company cars, rentals, leasing...
You can lease a used Tesla Model 3 for $5k/24mo. Say the used Leaf was $15k, it would need to be worth at least $10k in 2027.
> There is no 'play/pause' button. Anywhere. At least not on the steering wheel or the display area. You have to go into the music section on the entertainment display, then press the software play/pause button. That's dumb.
My new to me 2023 Honda Odyssey has the same stupid issue. It's my first vehicle with a touch screen, and I have a lot of trouble hitting the pause button especially when I'm trying to mute it because I need to pay extra attention to the road. WHY is there not just a Play/Pause button on the wheel!? Or at least a physical button on the dashboard.
i hate it too
Also, this is my last Nissan. I have been thoroughly disappointed with the super buggy and laggy head unit in this thing and it is apparently a common theme for Nissan.
My 2016 Ford with CarPlay was rock solid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuling_Hongguang_Mini_EV
"In 2020, the Mini EV had a price starting at US$4,162, and topped out at US$5,607 for a fully loaded model, making it China's cheapest electric car."
There are 20A 120V circuits too! Called NEMA 5-20, one of its prongs is rotated. You plug that into a receptacle where one of the slots is T-shaped instead of straight. And it's standard practice for EVs to draw 80% of the maximum current, so 16A it is. I see this plug in larger machines in the office, like a large photocopier or a large vacuum.
220V has a real advantage in boiling water fast in traditional kettles though (I used to live in china and they were twice as fast as the ones in America). It is almost worth getting a 220V outlet in a kitchen just to support fast water kettles.
Battery management on Zoés is fine ; it doesn't have the overheating problem that plagues the Leaf and the VW e-Up in particular; it doesn't have the "very slow charge when cold" problem of many cheap EVs with LiFePO4 batteries, though it charges up quite slowly (10-80% in 50 minutes).
Someone I know recently bought a 135HP 52kWh Zoé without CCS-2 and 22kW AC charge for 7500€. That's a real bargain, it'sequivalent for all practical purposes (but long travel) to a brand new 30000€ R5 :)
The software is pretty shit. Lagging and annoying. But apple/android play stops that.
As a car its smooth, quiet, and fast if you need to be. The only annoyance driving wise is that it doesn't have adaptive cruise control, and the reverse/drive/neutral switch always returns to the middle, so you can't tell what mode its set to without looking at it
The second hand market for EVs is getting pretty interesting. There are lots of EV owners that are replacing their EVs every few years and because of all the growth over the last 10 years, there are now quite a few fairly nice EVs on the second hand market. Many are typically still under drive train warranty. For example, the model 3 has only been on the market for about eight years and it came with eight years of warranty on the drive train. So, most of the second hand ones would still be under warranty. And most of the EV market only started growing after that. So this is true for many second hand EVs.
And car batteries don't seem to spontaneously stop working right after the warranty expires either. So the risk is fairly low. They'll eventually degrade. But if you can pick up a car for a few thousand and then drive it for another 5-10 years, who cares? The fuel savings alone pay for the car after just a few years. Add the savings on maintenance and you are basically in the plus.
Gordon Gekko would buy it, break it into its constituent parts and sell them off for £5,000.
The average car journey is 8 miles. Being an average with a finite lower limit of 0 it is skewed higher by the people who for various reasons drive long distances.
You don't need a 1,000 mile range to get to the shops at the end of the street. It helps, but not that much.
So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
For people who just want a dedicated commuting vehicle used EVs with 80% battery are a pretty good option.
You are an extreme outlier, you should wait until the technology develops further. To use your parlance, no need to screech about people clutching their pearls at you.
This has different impacts depending on your local gas to electricity price ratio.
It's his weekly and monthly longer trips that complicate matters but in many jurisdictions he'd still be saving enough to make it worthwhile.
Not to pick on you personally but I think it speaks volumes about the type of people who make up HN community that I can come in here with a fairly narrow and niche critique of a product (inflexibility basically), hedge that comment with a "but it's still good for a lot of people" statement and a bunch of act like I'm dismissing the entire product category and then act like completely tangential things disprove that. It's like I've offended a religion.
> So yeah, I'll keep driving rusted out minivans that make people clutch their pearls.
These antagonistic statements are unnecessary and the reason you are being downvoted.
It's easy to forget the budget issues faced by many families when you're not facing that constantly yourself, but it's basically an existential consideration for a not insignificant proportion of the population.
You're circa $1700/year more expensive in fuel with your minivan[1] than with a comparably sized EV.
Your 5 hour / 300 mile journey takes around 30 mins more in the EV end to end (time spent stationary at a charger somewhere near the mid point of your route). Equiv of driving at 55mph average vs 60mph average over that time. I'd happily use the time to drink a flask of tea i brought with me and then go for a comfort break.
[1] assuming $4.80/gallon in a 25mpg minivan, vs an inefficient EV that only averages around 2mi/kwh at $0.30/kwh. Obv the 1700 excludes servicing, tyres and depreciation
I read a blogger say a 40-mile trip is exceptionally log for him, so why worry about EV range?
Meanwhile we put 160 miles on our EV yesterday doing ordinary errands that all got stacked on the same day. 100+ mile days happen a few times a month for us¹.
That 160 miles is 65% of our 0–100 range, or 108% of the 20–80 range. And we have a level 1 charger, so it'll take 26 hours in the driveway to recoup that charge.
¹ In my area a normal daily commute is 30–40 miles round-trip. Throw in some extra errands, or two people sharing a car, and you don't have to be an outlier to routinely have 100+ mile days.
However, I think the point of the GP is that the number of people who say this is their typical experience is going to be larger than the number of people for whom it actually is their typical experience.
By that I mean: your story is quite common in discussions like this, both online and offline. Yet, if the mean distance is 8 miles, and we know it's going to be skewed high due to the 0 bound, it can't be all that common.
To be honest, I'd be curious to see the median here.
https://raleighnc.gov/planning/services/city-profile
Remember that you would usually charge at home so you start every day with a full battery.
You want to keep batteries roughly in that range to maximise their lifetime health. That doesn't mean the battery will explode if you do otherwise once in a while e.g. you charge limit the car to 80% for your daily drive and before a big trip you charge to 100%.
Route planners will generally keep you in that band anyway because charging speeds fall off a cliff as charge exceeds 80~90% (depending on the manufacturer's usable % standard), and it's rarely worth wasting 30mn charging to full to save 5~10mn extra at the next stop (the same occurs to a lower extent at very low states of charge, plus you want some spare, so the lower 10% are generally treated as a reserve).
Huh? The car isn't doing that for you? Prius hybrids sure are (the old ones using NiMH batteries tried to keep charge between 40% and 80%).
An EV can do that how exactly, refusing to run? Mugging the elderly for loose kWh?
It's really not a hassle at all. What's a hassle right now is finding a charger, as there aren't enough fast ones along the trip, but I've had the car for a year and have never needed to do a trip that long yet.
I've read/heard about this innovation coming to the market in six months every few weeks for about ten years and it has never materialized. There are continuous, slight and consistent improvements to battery technology which add up over time, but none of the wunderwaffe battery technologies ever materialized into the market and produced any huge jumps.
Oops. My work daily is the same Leaf, my personal car is a '95 1.8 Turbo Miata. The Leaf suffers.
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