2015 LEAF as a light duty farm vehicle

Hi all,

I've been searching this forum for information and have found lots of good stuff, but I still have some unanswered questions, so here goes...

My lease is nearly over, and I got my steeply discounted purchase offer. And I had a truly crazy idea - could I use the LEAF as a light duty farm vehicle?

I have a small farm, and I've been considering getting something like a Polaris Ranger EV as a second utility vehicle. But with the purchase offer on my LEAF...it would be way cheaper to buy the LEAF and try to make it work for my needs. We have a tractor for truly heavy duty stuff, and an F350 dually for hauling livestock, and a Polaris Ranger gas engine utility vehicle for medium duty stuff, but I'm always looking for ways to go more green, and running the gas engines for daily chores that an EV could do really appeals to me.

I found a lot of good info in the forum on towing, so it sounds like pulling ~800lbs wouldn't be too much to ask of it. We've already been using the LEAF to haul feed from the store, so it's more than capable for that purpose.

What I haven't found is related to suspension and tires. I've seen several people post up about lowering kits for their LEAFs, but I haven't seen any information about raising them up to get more clearance. In particular, an adjustable suspension, where I can raise it for off road, then lower it back to normal for on road, would be ideal. Does anyone have any thoughts/ideas/links for something like this? Ideally, I'd like to purchase a kit that's a plug-in install without any custom fabrication.

And as for tires, for light duty off-road driving on pastures with decent traction - but still reasonable for road driving - what would people recommend?

The suspension is real simple, so any competent suspension shop (the ones that work on jacked-up pickups) should be able to slap something together.

I would take out most of the interior and remove the doors for farm use (unless it's cold in your area).

Towing a small trailer around the farm should be easy.

Tires are easy.

I don't think the idea is that crazy at all. Would give a new purpose to some of the severely degraded cars.

Sorry I don't have answers, but have some other considerations that might help.

What are the minimum diameter rims that would fit around brakes? A higher aspect-ratio tire will be useful for this purpose.

I'm sure you could come up with a way to mount rails to the load floor and back of the back seats to get a sliding bed of sorts. Done right, it could almost be a dump bed! Just make a frame for a set of plastic tubs or an old cargo carrier.

The things you mention with hitch and suspension lift and a manufactured bed would meet the needs of most UTV users I see around this area.