Help with buying decision..

There is a 2017 Leaf SV at the local dealer with 12k+ miles listed at $17,800.

There is another 2017 Leaf SV with 32k miles being sold by its owner (car fax is clean, he has been commuting 80 miles round trip to work) for $16k. He tried to trade his for the 2018 but they lowballed him, suggested he sell privately. Battery checks out fine as well.

Assuming the dealer would accept $17k and the private seller will accept $14.5k, which car would be a better choice? Both are grey, SV and look identical.

Your advice is appreciated.

Whichever has the better battery. Be aware that the 30kwh battery version made in 2016 and 2017 has an issue with rapid capacity loss. Not every single car is affected, and Nissan has issued a software fix that seems to work with some, but not all of them. So the battery health is very important. Find out if either has had the update. If one has a high SOH (92+% with no update, that is likely the better buy. If the update was done recently, then the SOH reading may not be helpful - unless it is low.

Can you update your location info via your user name in the upper right > User Control Panel > Profile tab? That way, we don't need to ask in future posts/threads or do sleuthing to deduce it.

What are your daily driving needs in terms of miles? How much city vs. highway? Will you have the ability to charge at your work/destinations?

For context as to what Leftie's talking about re: 30 kWh packs, see http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=541513#p541513. I honestly have not been following the news much post-fix on 30 kWh packs since I don't care much (am unlikely to ever get a 30 kWh Leaf) and due to lack of time/other priorities (in life, busy day job, etc.)

I do generally agree w/Sage further down in that thread that 30 kWh cars post-fix need to be tested. Something similar to a steady speed range test like Tony did during the '11 Leaf Phoenix capacity loss fiasco (https://web.archive.org/web/20160113132627/http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=228326) of 30 kWh cars showing high SOH and all capacity bars vs. ones w/several bars gone (if any exist now) and lower SOH coupled w/charging tests (e.g. measuring the # kWh needed to fully charge a battery from equivalent states of charge).

A problem w/the above is collecting the vehicles to do a range test at the same location. One would probably want some from mild climates (presumably battery is in better shape) and some from blazing hot climates (e.g. Phoenix and some of the 4-bar loser areas).

At least the charge tests could be informative but there are variables like battery temperature and how low to start from. Ideally, the starting charge point should probably be VLBW, turtle or somewhere in between.

Just so you know, depending on where you are, you can get a new 2019 for about that much after incentives and rebates. I just got my new 2019 SV for $18.5K and I didn't even negotiate that hard.

rabbitrabbit said:

Just so you know, depending on where you are, you can get a new 2019 for about that much after incentives and rebates. I just got my new 2019 SV for $18.5K and I didn't even negotiate that hard.

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That is a very good price.
If I knew I could get one for that price, I might have gotten a 2019 SV, instead of getting a used 2015 for $11K...
But I think LEAF is cheaper in NE than in NW.

rabbitrabbit said:

Just so you know, depending on where you are, you can get a new 2019 for about that much after incentives and rebates. I just got my new 2019 SV for $18.5K and I didn't even negotiate that hard.

Click to expand...

'19 SV for 18.5!!!!

“just so you know, depending on where you are, you can get a new 2019 for about that much after incentives and rebates. I just got my new 2019 SV for $18.5K and I didn't even negotiate that hard.”

Details please- I was negotiating for a 2018 in CT for about the same price but could not use the utility company rebate of $5,000 with other incentives, so I pulled the plug.