Buying a 2012 Leaf?

Hello! I am new here, just getting immersed in the Nissan Leaf world. We're considering buying a 2012 used Leaf for $7k. Is this a good deal? It has some hail damage, only 22,000 miles, and has 12 bars on the battery. My husband works from home, and so the car will be mainly used taking the kids to and from school and activities, and going about 30 miles away once a week. We have a reliable 2015 Kia that we'd use as our main car. We're getting rid of a 14-year-old beater Saturn, and it just seems like for $7k and a car that will be driven daily but only around town, this might be a great option.

What should I know before jumping into this? What questions should we ask?

$7k might be a bit on the high side for a '12 but it kind of depends on your market. Nissan made quite a few improvements going from model year '12 to '13 and even improved the battery more for Leafs made after 3/'13, mostly improving battery degradation over time and in hot climates. I have both a '12 and '13 and really prefer the '13 but the '12 does have a few positives as well, most notably better build quality as it was made in Japan vs US made for later Leafs. The older Leafs also used magnesium for many of the body panels vs steel for US made Leafs.
When you say 30 miles, are you talking one way without 1/2 way charging or round trip? If RT you should have no problem, if one way things could get iffy when you start losing battery health bars or need to use heat which really sucked the juice on older Leafs. Also things like a strong headwind could make a 60 mile RT difficult to make, really with any 24kwh Leaf.
IMO the Leaf is the perfect second car, use your ICE vehicle for longer trips and the Leaf for everything else. It's kind of how I use my Leafs although I use my '13 (with full bars) for work with anywhere from a 5 mile RT to 60 mile RT and other than in the very cold or strong headwinds, it works great!

Sorry, I meant 30 miles round trip, not each way.

We decided to get the car! I'm very excited. It's mainly my husband's car, but I might have to steal it from him from time to time. My commute is only 4 miles each way, and his is 0, but he has to do the school pick up (about 2-5 miles a day). It just made a ton of sense for us as a second car, since neither one of us has a long commute and we just don't put a lot of miles on our cars. We'll use the Leaf as our driving around town car, and use the Kia on weekends when we tend to go further from home.

This forum has been a huge help and I feel like I've learned a ton about these cars in a few days!

SLourdes said:

Sorry, I meant 30 miles round trip, not each way.

We decided to get the car! I'm very excited. It's mainly my husband's car, but I might have to steal it from him from time to time. My commute is only 4 miles each way, and his is 0, but he has to do the school pick up (about 2-5 miles a day). It just made a ton of sense for us as a second car, since neither one of us has a long commute and we just don't put a lot of miles on our cars. We'll use the Leaf as our driving around town car, and use the Kia on weekends when we tend to go further from home.

This forum has been a huge help and I feel like I've learned a ton about these cars in a few days!

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It should work great for you then. I think you'll find the Leaf being the most used car in your family and only be using the ICE vehicle for longer trips or when someone is already using the Leaf. It's the way we started out and eventually got a second cheap Leaf(our '12) although we still paid $500 more than you for our 10 bar car, but it was over a year ago.
If you live in a colder climate(and need the extra range which you might not need) I'd suggest getting one of the DIY heater OFF switches from Thor on this forum. Without it you need to run the heat whenever you have the climate control ON(and it's cold).
Oh I see your from MN, in that case if you think you'll ever want to drive across town(60ish miles RT) in the winter I'd really check into the switch, only takes 30 min?? to install. Otherwise running the climate control to defog the windshield will bring on the energy hog heater, dropping your range by 10-20 miles.