The official "I got my Leaf" thread

[golfcart]

Congrats on the 2012... looks like u got a great deal.

 

[HornsKeith]

Delivered to us last month from Maryland:

2015 SV w/ premium. 0 down, $198/mo for 36 months, 12k miles per year. Quite happy with it so far.

We're liking the All Around View more than we expected to.

Keith

 

[gregn]

Morning all,
Not sure if this is still relevant. I picked up a 2016 Leaf SV last week. My commute is 60 miles round trip from Montpelier VT to near Burlington. So far this car is wonderful. Plenty of charging options around. A real pleasure to drive too. Perfect for the Vermont back roads with the speed limit being 50 mph. I find the interstate ok as well.
Glad to be part of this.
Not sure how to post a picture. Using a phone at the moment.

 

[inphoenix]

Morning all,
Not sure if this is still relevant. I picked up a 2016 Leaf SV last week. My commute is 60 miles round trip from Montpelier VT to near Burlington. So far this car is wonderful. Plenty of charging options around. A real pleasure to drive too. Perfect for the Vermont back roads with the speed limit being 50 mph. I find the interstate ok as well.
Glad to be part of this.
Not sure how to post a picture. Using a phone at the moment.

Congratulations. Did you lease or purchase? Mind sharing your numbers?

 

[Mctufts]

Hello,

I have a 62 mile round trip commute every day, mostly on the highway, and just recently decided to purchase a used 2014 Nissan Leaf S w/ the Quick Charge Package and w/ about 26000 miles on it. It was a lease return, purchased and likely driven in the LA area based on the Carfax and otherwise, for an used car, looked pretty new. It had 12 bars of capacity when I bought it and upon checking with the Leafspy after buying it, my stats were as follows: AHr: 60.97, SOH: 93, Hx: 93.75, GIDs: 262 on full charge, 18 QCs, and a little over 12200 L1/L2s. I bought it for 10,999.

After buying it, I had some buyer's remorse because I really started to learn more about the inevitable battery degradation. I was therefore initially quite concerned that when the battery finally started to degrade and iI started to lose bars, that I would start having a hard time making it to work and back without having to charge in between (currently uses about 66 percent of the capacity to cover the 62 miles round trip so it's fine now), at least by the time it had dropped 2 bars. However, I just recently confirmed that I'll be able to trickle charge using a 120 V outlet during the day while at work so that before heading home everyday, I'll be back at a full charge. Knowing this, I haven't been as concerned about degradation and I have been very happy with my purchase!

 

[gregn]

Congratulations. Did you lease or purchase? Mind sharing your numbers?

Lease. My credit is a mess so they had to finagle numbers. In Vermont they took $9800 off for tax and incentives though.
I'm pretty likely going to keep this car after the lease ends. I'll end up passing my Honda Fit to my daughter so my miles will definitely go over. From what the salesman said Nissan likes to sell the Leaf to the lease holder at the end rather than trying to sell 3 year old tech so they are likely to make a generous offer. This comes from a salesman so many grains of salt I expect.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

Congrats to you, and gregn from VT. Charging at work is great. I'd much rather leave work fully charged as that's when I run all my errands and other driving needs. Going into work, I only need a relatively small charge level to get there and it's mostly downhill.

 

[jelagin]

Just brought mine home yesterday!

2015 SL
Premium Package
Pearl White
6800 miles
$17550
60 month financing at 0%

Loving it!

It looks like I'll need to call Nissan to register Carwings - the registration keeps kicking back my VIN. Does that sound correct?

 

[ElectricRed]

Bought a used 2015 SV with Quick Charge LED package.
$13,995 + fees.
15.7K miles
It was a lease return that was bought in Texas. This is will be my commuter for my 60 mile round trip commute with a Level 2 charger at work.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Not sure how to post a picture. Using a phone at the moment.

Us a web photo sharing site like Photobucket, and use their link code pasted here to link an image - preferably a thumbnail clickable link - to your post. Large images, especially when there are more than one, tend to mess up the page loading for DSL (and dialup) users like me.

 

[Craigs]

I've been lurking here for about four months. Trying to pick up any tips I can on buying a used Leaf. I finally made the plunge on April 29th and bought a 2013 SV with QC package and navigation. I walked in to a used dealer called, Platt Auto of Gladstone, Oregon (a suburb of Portland- I highly recommend them). They specialize in used electric cars and had 64 Leafs in stock. I gave Greg Platt a list of nine parameters that I wanted for my car with number one being a SOH of 92% or greater. I thought this might be a little unreasonable, but gave it a shot anyway. Greg came up with a list of ten cars that fit most of my parameters and then handed the list to his salesman Ray so he could check the SOH of the ten cars with his Leaf Spy app. The first car had a SOH of 92% . Which I thought was really good for a 2013, but the 2nd car had a SOH of 98% so I said I want to test drive that one. I ended up buying it for $12,620.. It's Ocean Blue, has 18,000 miles and is like new! I know that price is high compared to other deals on this forum, but Oregon has a very robust charging infrastructure with about ten QC's within ten miles of my house. We also have the West Coast Electric Highway which actually consists of three north-south corridors from WA to CA with QC 's every 50 miles or less so all in all, used prices seem to be a little bit higher here. One of my parameters was that the car had to have a build date later than 5/31/16. The build date on my car is 12/13, which begs several questions: Weren't the 2014's being made by then? Isn't there only one production line in Smyrna? What's the difference between a '13 and '14?
Here's some other data from Leaf Spy: Ahr=63.34 Hx=97.29
When I looked at the CarFax, I could see why the numbers are so good. The car was originally sold in Bellingham, WA (70 miles N of Seattle). It sat on the dealers lot for only one month (Jan. '14). Then it sat at Platt Auto for 43 days in March and April. When I test drove it the SOC was only 52% so it looks like the battery was always treated right.
I'm disabled because I had a stroke when I was 42 so I don't have to worry about a commute, but one of my kids has a warehouse 62 miles away with a couple of free QC's close by so he'll be using the Leaf a lot.
My utility doesn't have TOU, but they do have a renewable energy plan which I've been on for awhile because the cost has come down to almost the same as the regular plan. I pay eleven cents per kwh with all my power coming from hydro and wind.
I'm extremely happy with my purchase!

 

[apacheguy]

If paying cash is it reasonable to expect $8 K off the MSRP for a 2016 SV? I've seen this happen on the forums, but unsure if this is the exception rather than the rule.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

If paying cash is it reasonable to expect $8 K off the MSRP for a 2016 SV? I've seen this happen on the forums, but unsure if this is the exception rather than the rule.

2016 sales are slow, you could probably get $10k off, maybe more at the end of the month.

 

[DNAinaGoodWay]

I've been lurking here for about four months. Trying to pick up any tips I can on buying a used Leaf. I finally made the plunge on April 29th and bought a 2013 SV with QC package and navigation. I walked in to a used dealer called, Platt Auto of Gladstone, Oregon (a suburb of Portland- I highly recommend them). They specialize in used electric cars and had 64 Leafs in stock. I gave Greg Platt a list of nine parameters that I wanted for my car with number one being a SOH of 92% or greater. I thought this might be a little unreasonable, but gave it a shot anyway. Greg came up with a list of ten cars that fit most of my parameters and then handed the list to his salesman Ray so he could check the SOH of the ten cars with his Leaf Spy app. The first car had a SOH of 92% . Which I thought was really good for a 2013, but the 2nd car had a SOH of 98% so I said I want to test drive that one. I ended up buying it for $12,620.. It's Ocean Blue, has 18,000 miles and is like new! I know that price is high compared to other deals on this forum, but Oregon has a very robust charging infrastructure with about ten QC's within ten miles of my house. We also have the West Coast Electric Highway which actually consists of three north-south corridors from WA to CA with QC 's every 50 miles or less so all in all, used prices seem to be a little bit higher here. One of my parameters was that the car had to have a build date later than 5/31/16. The build date on my car is 12/13, which begs several questions: Weren't the 2014's being made by then? Isn't there only one production line in Smyrna? What's the difference between a '13 and '14?
Here's some other data from Leaf Spy: Ahr=63.34 Hx=97.29
When I looked at the CarFax, I could see why the numbers are so good. The car was originally sold in Bellingham, WA (70 miles N of Seattle). It sat on the dealers lot for only one month (Jan. '14). Then it sat at Platt Auto for 43 days in March and April. When I test drove it the SOC was only 52% so it looks like the battery was always treated right.
I'm disabled because I had a stroke when I was 42 so I don't have to worry about a commute, but one of my kids has a warehouse 62 miles away with a couple of free QC's close by so he'll be using the Leaf a lot.
My utility doesn't have TOU, but they do have a renewable energy plan which I've been on for awhile because the cost has come down to almost the same as the regular plan. I pay eleven cents per kwh with all my power coming from hydro and wind.
I'm extremely happy with my purchase!

Platt Auto has a good reputation here. Congratulations.

 

[remarquian]

If paying cash is it reasonable to expect $8 K off the MSRP for a 2016 SV? I've seen this happen on the forums, but unsure if this is the exception rather than the rule.

2016 sales are slow, you could probably get $10k off, maybe more at the end of the month.

I dunno about that.

I'm in Denver, and trying to buy a '16 SV. I'm finding dealers willing to drop up to almost $4,000, with $4000 cash for financing through Nissan. So $8K is doable. I'm hoping they're going to bump up the Nissan financing cash to $5,000 @ memorial day.

But you are right, sales are way off.

 

[mcdavidbranson]

I just bought 2013 model from my local dealer !
I'm loving it !

 

[jkline]

2012 SL. 22K miles. 11 Bars. $9k. Paid cash. 400 miles on it in two weeks, saving me $100 in ethanol free fuel I normally burn.

I'm loving the car. Some peeves however:

Ridiculous efficiency tree and some dash displays are pointless.

GPS mapping system is worthless on so many levels-- Nissan should have just provided a free Garmin.

Heads up Display needs an off switch. Besides programming, it really isn't necessary for my needs.

No spare tire or room for one. I live in a part of the world with bad cell coverage and few humans. What would be a 10 min inconvenience will turn into hours of inconvenience.

The horn sounds like an asthmatic sheep's bleat. Somebody should be flogged.

12 volt battery that will likely need a monthly trickle charge.

The 110 charger. Couldn't the brainiacs at Nissan devise a 110 charger that had two plugs, instead of the single, that would use both outlets of a single receptacle, thus getting a 220 charge time?

I'm sure most of these have been discussed in detail here.

 

[LeftieBiker]

Unless you have receptacles with two circuits in them, one for each outlet, and both unused, your suggestion would not work.

No spare tire or room for one. I live in a part of the world with bad cell coverage and few humans. What would be a 10 min inconvenience will turn into hours of inconvenience

There is room for one if you sacrifice cargo space like I and some others have done. There are several topics on how to add a spare. My advice after almost three years of having one is "Use the smallest compact spare donut that will work, unless you get lots of flats."

 

[inphoenix]

The horn sounds like an asthmatic sheep's bleat. Somebody should be flogged.

Welcome to the world of EVs and to this forum. Thanks for the chuckle. I have no idea why and how would someone know what an "asthmatic sheep's bleat" sounds like, but they did a really bad job with Leaf's horn.

You can look into EVSEupgrade for 110/220 charging. I guess Nissan just wanted to save money on that. Oh BTW, most of us are nice and helpful folks around here but there are some "self appointed officers" that will tell you that "It's an EVSE, not a charger".

 

[BudT]

We just bought our new 2016 SV (dark blue) two days ago and we're very happy. We live in Boulder county, Colorado and purchased from Boulder Nissan. After the $8k off from Nissan and local incentives, we still have the state of CO refundable tax rebate and federal tax credit coming our way next year, which makes the car affordable.

Our charging infrastructure is decent near our home and daily areas, but I still plan on installing a 30A Level 2 EV charging system here at home soon. We have a PV system on the house, so charging during the day while we're producing is a no-brainer.

My wife and I are happy with the Leaf so far. All of the features and operational aspects are fairly intuitive to us. I'm looking forward to playing with data from the car (I'm a data neRd), and am considering getting LeafSpy and a Bluetooth OBD-2 interface.