Nissan Leaf used - what to look for?

itsme1284

Hi all
In interested in buying a Nissan Leaf its a 142 uk import already on Irish plates.
It's a tekna model so has all the extras.

Asking price is 14000 euro, would this be a too good to be real price. What should I look out for with a uk import.
Have no expirence with electric cars, thus will be our first one.
Any info or help in this would be great.

k123456

Seems a bit expensive, if you have time , can be imported cheaper from UK
A year older Tekna, low mileage Gen 2 , for 7700 stg on 
https://speakev.com/

jelutong

Am I correct in thinking that VRT is zero on the Leaf? Would make sense to import one if that's the case.

k123456

k123456 wrote: »

Seems a bit expensive, if you have time , can be imported cheaper from UK
A year older Tekna, low mileage Gen 2 , for 7700 stg on 
https://speakev.com/

Not a Tekna but a good price anyway.

KCross

itsme1284 wrote: »

Hi all
In interested in buying a Nissan Leaf its a 142 uk import already on Irish plates.
It's a tekna model so has all the extras.

Asking price is 14000 euro, would this be a too good to be real price. What should I look out for with a uk import.
Have no expirence with electric cars, thus will be our first one.
Any info or help in this would be great.

You could probably do a bit better on price than that. Depends on the spec (not just Tekna).

e.g. Does it have 3.3kw or 6.6kw charger. Does it have one or both charging cables. Do you have a battery report so you can see how many quick charges it has had and what state the battery is in.

I'd recommend you at least look at the UK prices and then make your decision on what a reasonable price is for the same car here.

Take a read of my experience of doing that here:
--- http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=99372631

itsme1284

KCross wrote: »

You could probably do a bit better on price than that. Depends on the spec (not just Tekna).

e.g. Does it have 3.3kw or 6.6kw charger. Does it have one or both charging cables. Do you have a battery report so you can see how many quick charges it has had and what state the battery is in.

I'd recommend you at least look at the UK prices and then make your decision on what a reasonable price is for the same car here.

Take a read of my experience of doing that here:
--- http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=99372631

Hi all thanks for the replays.
It has a 3.3kw charger I would say I could get it for 13200 which is prob the most I would pay for it.
How would u get a battery report and find out how many fast charges it has had.

KCross

itsme1284 wrote: »

Hi all thanks for the replays.
It has a 3.3kw charger I would say I could get it for 13200 which is prob the most I would pay for it.
How would u get a battery report and find out how many fast charges it has had.

Either get Nissan to plugin to it or get someone with an OBDII dongle and the leafspy app to connect to it.

What part of the country are you in? Someone on here might be able to do that for you. It only takes a minute.

itsme1284

KCross wrote: »

Either get Nissan to plugin to it or get someone with an OBDII dongle and the leafspy app to connect to it.

What part of the country are you in? Someone on here might be able to do that for you. It only takes a minute.

Hi I'm in Limerick

Fast charges on the 142 won't have a major impact and Leaf Spy readings can vary by anything up to 7-8% + or - depending on the usage the car gets, leafs used a lot report better battery health than those that do little mileage.

The Reason is unknown, but it's likely if you see a Leaf that reports 93% battery health could very well have 98% and more.

Here's my recent Leaf Spy screen shot shown 100% battery health. I have others showing 94%. Battery capacity on delivery was about 65.x AH at it's peak it showed 67.x AH and now back to 65.x. I have not seen 67.x Ah in some time. So one really doesn't know what to make of this.

Kennypants

Interesting to see that these battery reports are not 100% reliable.

As I'm hunting around and doing my "research" (which is mainly eating chocolate and watching YouTube videos) I'm seeing conflicting accounts of what to look out for in a used Leaf battery.

Some say (Robert Llewellyn) that it doesn't matter what the battery has been through; that you can use fast chargers all the time for ever and ever because a Cornish taxi has been doing it for ever and ever and you should all stop worrying.

Others say that you have to be careful, that some batteries have been diddled to give falsely-high readings, that you should avoid ultra-low mileage Leafs because they have been sitting idle for months, and so on; and you'll get home and your car will only do 50 miles on a charge and you'll be crying and your wife will be crying and your children will be crying and Santa will be dead.

Is it unwise to buy a UK car over the phone sight unseen? You can usually get away with this with this on ICEs as long as you buy main dealer approved used. It seems though, that Nissan UK are as clueless as I am when it comes to EV care and maintenance. Good grief, if they don't even know whether their own car is specced with a 6.6 kW charger, and if Leaf Spy gives different reports on Wednesdays and Thursdays, then what hope does the typical gormless buyer have (i.e. me)?

Broadly speaking, what are one or two things to watch out for, battery-wise? Or will it be grand and should I stop worrying? I'll be buying a '14 or '15 model, all going well. Looking at low mileage too.

Well my leaf spy is up to 67 ah now like I had seen around 30,000 Kms.

Who's to say the U.K Taxi would not have got to 200,000 kms and 90% capacity with less fast charges ?

Either way the 2014+ battery is proving to be pretty robust.

Kennypants

I'll likely be buying '14+.

I reckon that I'll be safe enough, unless there are major red flags.

I'm sure a 2014 will be just fine judging by how my battery is performing and I do drive the leaf on, 100-120-130 Kph over my 135-140 Km commute.

fulhamc

Be aware car must have over 6000KM of clock or you have to pay VAT.

BoatMad

I would not buy any leaf sight unseen , you need to leafspy the battery.

Lithiums batteries as a general comment , like to be used, and deteriorate faster if left idle particularly at very high or very low states of charge. They have two major degradation modes

Usage cycles and life span. Unlike say Nickel metal hydride for example Li have a given lifespan due to internal parasitic action , then they have a given usage cycle limit. This is the most controversial as result is still ongoing and anode consumption chemistry plays a big part in variation.

The short answer is the older the battery is and the more it's used all contribute to its capacity decay , the problem is judging how much.

Scottie99

Personally I'd hold off and try and get a 30kw with a 6kw charger. I think Nissan have or will stop building 24kw Leafs. Try stay ahead of the curve for now..

BoatMad

Scottie99 wrote: »

Personally I'd hold off and try and get a 30kw with a 6kw charger. I think Nissan have or will stop building 24kw Leafs. Try stay ahead of the curve for now..

Good idea but in effect they came in early 2016 so you'll be waiting 3 years to get reasonable ex-PCP ones.

Personally I'd buy a 2014 + one before that , that generation battery is very good and doesn't suffer the hotter battery issues that the 30kw suffers , making it better for high quantity fast charging then the 30 kw in my view.

Scottie99

BoatMad wrote: »

Good idea but in effect they came in early 2016 so you'll be waiting 3 years to get reasonable ex-PCP ones.

Personally I'd buy a 2014 + one before that , that generation battery is very good and doesn't suffer the hotter battery issues that the 30kw suffers , making it better for high quantity fast charging then the 30 kw in my view.

Agreed. It really depends on the OPs budget but I'm sure they'll be a ðemo or other available somewhere in the UK.

Leafs used a lot show higher leaf spy results than those that sit and the reason is unknown.

So any leaf spy data can be off by 7-8%, if it's a 2014+ I wouldn't be too worried about it.

A battery is deemed end of life at 70% capacity, how long it takes to reach this is depending on some conditions, Nissan will have taken care of some but other factors are against it like time itself and others not really worth getting into now.

As batteries get larger in Kwh they will be cycled a lot less but because they are a lot larger 70% will still make them very usable.

Judging by my leaf spy data after nearly 2 years and 54 K Kms I wouldn't be too worried about it just drive it but one thing I would advise is when not using it, don't keep it above 80% charged and the lower usually the better and charge it when you need it. Usually around 30-70% is a good range to keep the battery and when you need to use more then use it.

I have 2 laptops at home with 70 % capacity after 7-8 years, LI Batteries seem to hold this capacity for a very long time, the first 30% is lost a lot faster. But batteries have improved a lot in this time. If they had been used a lot more in the last few years then maybe they would have less capacity.

isnottheword

Scottie99 wrote: »

Agreed. It really depends on the OPs budget but I'm sure they'll be a ðemo or other available somewhere in the UK.

There will - but it's too early - will still be expensive. Need to be minimum 2.5 years old before you start to see value.

Could take a different tact. Go with a 24kW 2014 gen 1.5 for smaller money - skip the 30kW - and go for the next gen when it comes out at the right price point (ergo, the move from 24 to 30 might seem significant now - but it's still far from ideal).

itsme1284

Hi all
Thought I would give an update on my purchase.
I bought the Nissan Leaf top grade with spoiler solar panel, 3.3KW charger 24Kw battery. 18000 miles.
Bought for 13300 euro. Car will be doing 40km a day. Happy with the purchase so far.
Thanks to everyone for the advice

isnottheword

itsme1284 wrote: »

Hi all
Thought I would give an update on my purchase.
I bought the Nissan Leaf top grade with spoiler solar panel, 3.3KW charger 24Kw battery. 18000 miles.
Bought for 13300 euro. Car will be doing 40km a day. Happy with the purchase so far.
Thanks to everyone for the advice

What year?

itsme1284

isnottheword wrote: »

What year?

142

isnottheword

Best of luck with it. Come back and let us know how your EV experience pans out in the coming weeks.

ngodima

Used Nissan Leaf Shocker!
I have had a 2012 Leaf for the last 2 years. Idyllic you'd think. You need to know a few facts. The HV guarantee expires this January. The cabin heater unit was removed from Hv warranty last year. The first cold day of this winter I learned a very hard lesson. The cabin heater failed and killed the dc dc converter(12v battery charger). The car wouldnt go into drive and I had to have it towed home. The first car thats ever left me high and dry in my 45 years of car ownership.
Then came the real pain. Nissan are covering 50% of the cost of parts. My 50 % plus labour and vat is looking like 4500 euro or thereabouts. If it had happened in Feb 17 it would be 3000 more. The pain doesnt end there. The car has been in the garage for a month now. A week to diagnose and after 3 weeks, no expected delivery date for the dc dc converter yet.
So if youre considering buying a used leaf I would suggest doing your homework around the unbelievable cost of replacement parts. Another factor is the incredibly high devaluation rate, thus car was close to 30k new and should be 15k now but the trade in is 7k if youre lucky.
So from my experience, be sure to understand whats covered in the warranty as the car ages. I personally am so jaded now I wont even look at any vehicle that has anything to do with batteries.

isnottheword

ngodima wrote: »

Used Nissan Leaf Shocker!
Then came the real pain. Nissan are covering 50% of the cost of parts. My 50 % plus labour and vat is looking like 4500 euro or thereabouts. If it had happened in Feb 17 it would be 3000 more. The pain doesnt end there. The car has been in the garage for a month now. A week to diagnose and after 3 weeks, no expected delivery date for the dc dc converter yet.

I have to say that this is one of my main concerns. I have always used independent mechanics - never mail sdealers! They screw people over for repairs in any event by and large. However, there getting so little maintenance work out of Leafs generally that you'd wonder if they will gouge when they get that rare opportunity to do so.....


My hope would be that a few independents would start to pop up once momentum picked up in the EV market - but we are a long, long way from that just yet. :-(


I'd be interested to see what feedback you would get if you posted your experience on the UK-based speakev.com support forum. More membership on that site - and would be interested to see what people make of the costs you've been faced with (i.e. are nissan uk dealers gouging to the same extent).

ngodima

isnottheword wrote: »

I'd be interested to see what feedback you would get if you posted your experience on the UK-based speakev.com support forum. More membership on that site - and would be interested to see what people make of the costs you've been faced with (i.e. are nissan uk dealers gouging to the same extent).

I did so. I dont think the service centre is doing the damage. I costed the parts at a different nissan oarts outlet and they tally. The one fact that I dont get is that I found the same parts on US sites at half the price. The service manager kept saying "thats america" which I dont quite get.

isnottheword

ngodima wrote: »

I did so. I dont think the service centre is doing the damage. I costed the parts at a different nissan oarts outlet and they tally. The one fact that I dont get is that I found the same parts on US sites at half the price. The service manager kept saying "thats america" which I dont quite get.

Have you costed them in the UK or elsewhere in Europe? I'd raise the issue on the IEVOA Facebook page. There are German/Dutch/Belgian/French contributors there (based in IE) - that could check pricing on the continent.

I'm gutted to hear your experience - and would be sick for a month if I found myself in that position with my Leaf.

It could be a rip off Ireland affair. Perhaps Nissan IRL are saying to themselves - this is the only way we can mug them in aftersales! (given there's so little in the way of maintenance on EVs generally).

ngodima

The speakev.com lads had some good tips. From next year I will NOT panick if something goes wrong. I have the odb device and will download the spy app so I will have some chance of detecting a problem. I have downloaded the workshop manual that is pretty specific. I have not researched new parts prices outside ireland, but it looks like as more older leafs get scrapped, second hand parts should be easier to source. If you can isolate the fault, most objects appear to be modular. The cabin heater is over 7 hours labour to replace - that might require removal of the dashboard. I feel confident I could have replaced the dc dc converter as its a bolt on, but does require draining the coolant and uncoupling the brake lines. Bottom line, if the dealer cost of repair becomes greater than the resale value, it cant hurt whatever I do.

isnottheword

ngodima wrote: »

I have downloaded the workshop manual that is pretty specific.

Can you PM me a link?