Used 2012 Leaf

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

dougcpa

Member
Joined
Aug 9, 2016
Messages
15
I normally wouldn't consider a 2011 or 2012 due to the battery and heater, but recently a used one came on the market in my area that just had the battery replaced by Nissan under warranty. It is an 2012 SL model and they are asking $9,500. Price doesn't seem too bad to me considering it has a brand new battery.

I was wanting to stick with a post March 2013 model so I could get the 6.6kWh charging and heat pump, but this seems like it could be a pretty good deal.

I still have range concerns, my one-way commute is 32 miles. I live in the midwest, so we get some hot summers and some really cold winters. We do have level 2 charging at my office that is rarely used by anyone else. I'm probably more concerned with range on cold days when I have to run the resistive heater. I do plan on trying to pre-heat the car at home while charging in the morning.

Any thoughts or concerns I should consider?
 
My biggest concern would be workplace charging. It's great that you have L2 available. But can you guarantee that it will be there during the winter months? You will not be able to make your round-trip commute without it.

Other than that, the 2012 Leaf could be a good fit for you.

Edit: By "be there", I don't mean that it will disappear on you ;) I mean to say that it will be functional and available. In a few years from now, will more of your coworkers have purchased EVs? Will there suddenly be competition for a few chargers? What is the probability that they will be out of service for some reason? Or unreachable behind a snowbank? Do you have alternatives on your route? Even a public L2 along your route would be good in case of emergency.
 
The On/Off switch won't help the OP since he/she mentioned the use of heat. I doubt turning it off during a midwest winter is an option most would consider except for emergencies. And the most likely emergency in my mind is getting to work and finding the charger unavailable. At that point, the battery is mostly depleted, and even turning the heat off won't get him/her home.

Pipe insulation is interesting. How much does that actually help? And will it still have any heat left if the car has been sitting outside for an entire work day?
 
Living in the Midwest I can say that Thor's heater mod switch was really helpful to me. With it, it allows me to chose when to allow heat or not(or even reduced heat), something that without the switch the only way to control the heat most of the time is turning off or on the climate control, something that generally doesn't work well due to window fogging. Even with the switch the my '12 heater seems to not work nearly as well as my '13S(still resistive heater but no water/antifreeze to slow the process down and as mentioned by Leftie Biker I believe the '13's and on have more/better insulation).
I guess if you could get the '12SL with the new battery(I'm envious of you) and it was several thousand dollars less than a '13(even a S) it might be worth it to you. As for the range, on my '13 on the most bitter days my range was ~40 miles with mild heater use, 32 would be totally doable but it would be a must for you to charge at work. Note since the '12 has only a 3.6kwh charger, expect only about 15%/hr or a bit or about 6+ hrs from near empty. A '13 with 6.6kwh charger would be under 4hrs with a 27.5a max EVSE, a bit over 5hrs charging at 20a.
If you get a "S" model make sure it has the 6.6kwh charger. Most sold in the Midwest had that option, not sure about Southern cars....
If you get the '12 figure on spending a little on the heater mod switch as well as LeafSpy or if you want to try and track down something like LeafDD or similar permanent type gauges.
 
+1 for Tor's heater mod switch and LeafDD (or equivalent). They definitely add miles to an older Leaf (like mine)!
 
GetOffYourGas said:
My biggest concern would be workplace charging. It's great that you have L2 available. But can you guarantee that it will be there during the winter months? You will not be able to make your round-trip commute without it.

I work in a large-ish office park, there are six L2 chargers at our building and about a block away another 12 spread around some of the other office buildings. So if for some reason all 6 were offline at our building, hopefully some of the remaining chargers spread around the office park will be operational.

Also, the 2012 model I'm looking at has the quick charge option and there is a grocery store about a mile from my work that has a quick charge station. There are no quick charge stations in our office park though.

So I'm not too worried about charging station availability.
 
dougcpa said:
GetOffYourGas said:
My biggest concern would be workplace charging. It's great that you have L2 available. But can you guarantee that it will be there during the winter months? You will not be able to make your round-trip commute without it.

I work in a large-ish office park, there are six L2 chargers at our building and about a block away another 12 spread around some of the other office buildings. So if for some reason all 6 were offline at our building, hopefully some of the remaining chargers spread around the office park will be operational.

Also, the 2012 model I'm looking at has the quick charge option and there is a grocery store about a mile from my work that has a quick charge station. There are no quick charge stations in our office park though.

So I'm not too worried about charging station availability.

Perfect! I think you will be very happy with a 2012 Leaf.
 
LeftieBiker said:
If you plan on upgrading the heating system, with both the On/Off switch and piping insulation, it could work.

Insulation? I just got my 2012 Leaf, are there some easy insulation mods to be performed on the Leaf?
 
Back
Top