Our search for a second Leaf.

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Nords

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 11, 2018
Messages
47
Location
Oahu, Hawaii.
We’ve driven our 2015 Leaf for six months and we love it. Thanks again for everyone's advice from that thread!
(https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=27408 )
It has more than enough range for our retiree lifestyle, and it hauls everything we need it to haul. We also enjoy the free charging (from our photovoltaic array), the free parking (all over Oahu and at the airport) and the HOV lane.

We’re thinking of buying a second Leaf. Our second Prius is dying of the same issue that affected our other Prius, and it probably has a month or two left.

I’d appreciate any advice on our options among three model years.

I've read LeftieBiker's buying guide, of course. We’ve bought used from private sellers for over three decades, and we’ll pay cash. We’ll also run the usual CarFax check and we’ll do a LeafSpy scan with the test drive.

Our second Leaf would be used even less than our first Leaf. It’ll spend its life hauling longboards to the beach (with a Thule roof rack) at speeds below 60 MPH, and it’ll never do more than a 60-mile round trip. (No range anxiety.) It’ll only drive about 3000 miles/year but we’ll try to keep it until the battery capacity kills the range. The only other feature we care about is air conditioning. We don't care about color, decor, audio, navigation, or even whether the backup camera works.

Our three choices:
The 2014 model that’s lost a bar of battery capacity. It’s at 37K miles and the seller wants to buy a bigger car. $9000. There's a bit of concern over the Wolf Pack 24KWhr battery longevity but it seems adequate for our needs.

The 2015 model that doesn’t show a battery-capacity photo and has 43K miles. It’s listed at $11,200. The seller seems frustrated with lowball offers but indicates that they might take $10K. (Because we have cash?) They’re selling the car to buy a house.

The 2017 model that’s at 13K miles and claims a range of 125 miles. (Is that still a 30 KWhr battery pack?) $14,000. The seller is leaving the island.

All three options will satisfy our needs, subject to good titles and LeafSpy scans. The 2017 model is more than enough and its higher capacity would ideally give us a longer overall lifetime, but our current 2015 Leaf is already filling that role. Our initial reaction is to take the 2014 Leaf for $9000 and run it into the ground.

I've checked the TSBs and the other model-year concerns, but please let me know if there's emergent news. Are we missing anything else in our analysis?
 
The current situation with the 30kwh packs appears to be that some of them are good and some are not. If the 2017 has 12 bars left without the BMS update having been done, then it is likely the best candidate. If it has had the update within the last few months, then it's an unknown quantity - unless it is already losing bars, in which case it's a known bad pack.

It really comes down to how much range your second Leaf will need. How much under 60mph will you be driving it those 60 miles? You obviously don't want a car that will only just make the trip now. I will say that you don't want a car with 11 bars to start.
 
LeftieBiker said:
The current situation with the 30kwh packs appears to be that some of them are good and some are not. If the 2017 has 12 bars left without the BMS update having been done, then it is likely the best candidate. If it has had the update within the last few months, then it's an unknown quantity - unless it is already losing bars, in which case it's a known bad pack.
Thanks. I'll ask those questions.

LeftieBiker said:
It really comes down to how much range your second Leaf will need. How much under 60mph will you be driving it those 60 miles? You obviously don't want a car that will only just make the trip now. I will say that you don't want a car with 11 bars to start.
My typical surf session (2-3 times per week) is a 32-mile round trip with a change of 456 feet of elevation each way. One stretch of that is on a highway with a 60 MPH speed limit, and I'm only on there for about four miles. Everything else is 25-50 MPH.

6-7 times per year I'd haul a longboard on a longer 60 MPH drive (over to Kailua or Kaneohe) with an 18-mile stretch (each way) on H-3.

I guess it's a contrast between the 2014's 11-bar cigar-butt battery (good for a few more years of puffs) and a long-term investment in the 2017's 30 KWHr battery (as long as the car's air conditioner doesn't start leaking refrigerant). The $5000 savings for the 2014 might not be worth the hassle with the battery life.

Either Leaf will be our cheapest driving experience of our last 40 years because we're not dealing with fuel costs or maintaining an internal combustion engine.
 
60 mph does not sound fast but I have no idea what the Cd of the car is with boards on the roof.

OP ? Can you share consumption data ?
 
Is there an issue with leaking refrigerant in the later Leafs? Unless the 2017 is an S, it uses a sealed electric heat pump, and they seem very reliable. So do the A/C units on the S, for that matter. I'd say that unless the 2017 has a clearly bad pack, negotiate for that. Even it is down one bar with no update, it will give you more range.
 
SageBrush said:
60 mph does not sound fast but I have no idea what the Cd of the car is with boards on the roof.

OP ? Can you share consumption data ?
I don't have any experience with hauling longboards on top of a Leaf. I'm doing it on a Prius, and I know how to handle the rack and the longboards on a Leaf, but I've never done it on a Leaf and I don't have any data.

When I have the Thule rack (without longboards) on the roof of a Prius, there's a very slight reduction in MPG... maybe 5% at the most. Of course with longboards stacked on the Prius' roof rack then I'd have more drag, but I've never tracked that data.

LeftieBiker said:
Is there an issue with leaking refrigerant in the later Leafs? Unless the 2017 is an S, it uses a sealed electric heat pump, and they seem very reliable. So do the A/C units on the S, for that matter. I'd say that unless the 2017 has a clearly bad pack, negotiate for that. Even it is down one bar with no update, it will give you more range.
This is good to read, because if there was an issue with older Leaf A/C systems then we'd be starting to learn about it.

I've always had a refrigerant leak by the time that our air-conditioned cars were 10 years old, and I guess my A/C attitude has always been "when", not "if". If a 2014 Leaf developed an A/C leak in 2024, well, the battery was getting old anyway and we already had an extra $5000 growing in the car fund. But if Leafs have not shown any tendency toward A/C problems over the years then spending extra for a newer vehicle makes better sense... and it has the extra range.

We're waiting to hear back from the sellers with VINs (for CarFax reports) and to set up test drives.
 
There are occasional resistance (aka "PTC") heater failures, but they are mainly around 2013. It would still be wise to make sure the heat comes on almost instantly, and is hot. Make sure that the Master warning light at the top of the main dash screen isn't on, indicating stored trouble codes or an ongoing malfunction. The usual checks for flood damage (moldy smell, stained carpet, a "water line" in the car, or even water in the cargo area well that looks like it should hold a spare tire) apply to the Leaf as well. Just a wet passenger side front carpet may indicate a disconnected or leaking A/C condensate line. And of course the car should drive like new. If it feels loose or tracks oddly, suspect crash damage somewhere...
 
LeftieBiker said:
There are occasional resistance (aka "PTC") heater failures, but they are mainly around 2013. It would still be wise to make sure the heat comes on almost instantly, and is hot.
I've read the owner's manual and the forum's threads about heaters, but would a heater failure cascade into any other part of the car's systems?

The reason I ask is because I can't remember the last time I turned on the heat in one of our cars here, and we're usually the last owners before the cars are towed away for parts. If I had to even turn on a windshield defroster, I'd have to pull off the road and hunt for it.

If a heating system broke and didn't threaten to catch fire then I wouldn't even miss it.

LeftieBiker said:
Make sure that the Master warning light at the top of the main dash screen isn't on, indicating stored trouble codes or an ongoing malfunction. The usual checks for flood damage (moldy smell, stained carpet, a "water line" in the car, or even water in the cargo area well that looks like it should hold a spare tire) apply to the Leaf as well. Just a wet passenger side front carpet may indicate a disconnected or leaking A/C condensate line. And of course the car should drive like new. If it feels loose or tracks oddly, suspect crash damage somewhere...
Yep. Water damage is much more common here.

If I saw a Master warning light then I'd hope that LeafSpy would log the codes for further research... and for price negotiation.
 
I've read the owner's manual and the forum's threads about heaters, but would a heater failure cascade into any other part of the car's systems?

Not generally. You might get a blown high voltage fuse from a shorted heater, but I can't recall any cascading failures, just some appear to be that but aren't, from a weak 12 volt battery...
 
LeftieBiker said:
I've read the owner's manual and the forum's threads about heaters, but would a heater failure cascade into any other part of the car's systems?

Not generally. You might get a blown high voltage fuse from a shorted heater, but I can't recall any cascading failures, just some appear to be that but aren't, from a weak 12 volt battery...
Thanks. I've been watching the 12v battery in our 2015 Leaf to see whether it'll start causing trouble after its fourth birthday, but it seems to be much better behaved than a Prius 12v battery.

-----------

Our search for a second Leaf might take a little longer than we thought. There’s not a screaming hurry but we hope to find one in the next 3-4 weeks.

The 2014 sold while we were asking about it. That’s as old a model as we’re willing to consider, and we’ll keep an eye on the ads for another chance. On this island of 1M people it’d probably be difficult to find another 2014 with high battery capacity and low mileage.

The 2017 has a clear CarFax report on its VIN, but I noticed that the dashboard photo shows only 11 bars on the battery instead of 12. It could be a situation like this thread:
https://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?t=27539
I don’t know if LeafSpy would show the actual capacity (without the car’s BMS software update).

The seller turns out to be the second owner, and he’s let the registration and safety inspection lapse. He bought it in February 2019 at 10K miles and then put another 2500 miles on it, but he never renewed the April registration or did the May safety inspection. He says he’s a space cadet and he’ll take care of it. He's moving off island soon and I hope that means he'll follow up.

Once he has the car street-legal for a test drive then we’ll look at LeafSpy and whatever records the first owner had.
 
The 2017, IF it has lost one bar AND hasn't had the BMS update, sounds like a good candidate. Hawaii is hot, so a 1 bar loss in 2 years isn't unreasonable. The car should still have much more range than any 24kwh Leaf. If it had the update, then maybe 6 months has to pass before you can get an accurate idea of what shape the battery is really in. Given your situation I'd be focusing on that car. Offer a wad of cash significantly but not insultingly less than the asking price once you have enough info on the battery.
 
^^ I agree with this. A LEAF that starts out life with a 30 kWh battery seems like a sweet spot for an inexpensive commuter car.
 
LeftieBiker said:
The 2017, IF it has lost one bar AND hasn't had the BMS update, sounds like a good candidate. Hawaii is hot, so a 1 bar loss in 2 years isn't unreasonable. The car should still have much more range than any 24kwh Leaf. If it had the update, then maybe 6 months has to pass before you can get an accurate idea of what shape the battery is really in. Given your situation I'd be focusing on that car. Offer a wad of cash significantly but not insultingly less than the asking price once you have enough info on the battery.
Thank you, this is very good to know.

I'm probably making poor comparisons to our limited experience. Our 2015 Leaf's battery is perched at 88% SOH and nearly 15,000 miles and perhaps it's about to lose its first bar, so I would've expected a 2017 model (two years newer, only 12,500 miles) to be in slightly better shape. But yes, the 2017 will probably always have more range than our 2015 regardless of bars, and either EV has more range than we need.

From a used-car buyer's perspective, I've found that space-cadet sellers can be painful to work with... yet they discourage the other buyers who'd be bidding up the price. They also become very flexible on price as they approach their last day on the island. Especially for a stack of $100s.

And we still have the third seller if this one falls through, as well as whatever comes on the market during the rest of the month. Even after that we have the used-car dealers to work through, although that's a different type of pain.

The more I think about it, the more I like becoming a two-EV garage. Even if a hurricane or earthquake destroys Oahu's electric grid, our photovoltaic inverter has a limited ability to produce 1500 watts of power (during daylight) without being connected to the grid. That's way better than depending on bicycles, dwindling gasoline supplies, and walking.

It'd be a bonus to never do spark plugs or oil changes ever again...
 
^^ All EV is wonderful :D

The Europeans and Chinese are moving to an EV future much faster than the retarded Trumper USA, aided in no small part by their willingness to buy small cars. The VW group is gearing up to produce a 20k Euro, 37 kWh air cooled BEV.

That sounds like an almost perfect commuter car, and it will last. Now that I am retired I don't think I will bother to replace my second car (LEAF) when it dies but if I change my mind this spec car would fit us to a Tee
 
It looks like we're buying the 2017 Leaf on Friday, the day the seller is leaving the island.

The car is in good shape. The seller renewed the registration & safety check before we drove it, so that's fine now. The first owners put less than 10K miles on it in two years, and he's only had it since February (another 2500 miles). LeafSpy says the SOH is 81.90%, which confirms that the car has lost its first battery bar. It's had seven QCs (at Nissan dealers) and 394 L1/L2 charges.

The seller had owned a 2013 Leaf but its battery had degraded to a range of 60 miles, and he says that with the 2017 he no longer felt range anxiety. His long-term plan was to keep the 2017 for years and drive it into the ground, and he doesn't seem particularly happy about selling it.

He had no idea whether the car has had the update to the BMS. We didn't see any paperwork on it (he saved everything from the first owners) but we'll check the VIN with the dealer for that and any other TSBs. The car had no warning lights on the dashboard and no codes on LeafSpy.

He was a little surprised to learn about OBD-II readers and LeafSpy. He was more interested in the tech than worried about it, so I doubt he was neglecting to mention any problems. He's not a car person but he really enjoyed its low operating expenses and did most of its battery charges at his workplace for free.

It's the baseline S model. He's also had several other offers, so $14K turned out to be the right price (at the high end of our KBB & Edmunds values). There might even have been a bidding war, but we're the first buyers to offer cash and we're willing to let him keep the car until he leaves.

The Leaf roof is different than our old Prius roof, so our old Thule rack mounts won't fit the newer Leaf. I'll either have to buy new mounts or buy a new rack.
 
^^ Losing ~ 10% of battery capacity a year is harsh. It may be that actual loss is less and the car is misreporting but you will not know that until the car has been 'fixed' and a couple months elapse. If the loss is real and continues, the car will not meet your requirements 2 years from now.

Your other choice to figure this out now (which I would do in your shoes) is to drive the car down to a lowish SoC and then charge up to 90+ percent on an EVSE that reports metered kWh. This is the definitive way to measure usable battery capacity.
 
^^ Losing ~ 10% of battery capacity a year is harsh. It may be that actual loss is less and the car is misreporting but you will not know that until the car has been 'fixed' and a couple months elapse.

Yes, that's a big loss. Hopefully the BMS update will do more than get the BMS to misrepresent the SOH for a few months. Do you know if the owner let the car sit at 100% for long periods? That would be my guess, and my advice is, of course, don't do that. Charge in the morning if possible, and time the charges to stop at 60-80%, if that's all you need.
 
We’ve had the Leaf for a week, and it seems mechanically fine.

SageBrush said:
^^ Losing ~ 10% of battery capacity a year is harsh. It may be that actual loss is less and the car is misreporting but you will not know that until the car has been 'fixed' and a couple months elapse. If the loss is real and continues, the car will not meet your requirements 2 years from now.
Your other choice to figure this out now (which I would do in your shoes) is to drive the car down to a lowish SoC and then charge up to 90+ percent on an EVSE that reports metered kWh. This is the definitive way to measure usable battery capacity.
LeftieBiker said:
Yes, that's a big loss. Hopefully the BMS update will do more than get the BMS to misrepresent the SOH for a few months. Do you know if the owner let the car sit at 100% for long periods? That would be my guess, and my advice is, of course, don't do that. Charge in the morning if possible, and time the charges to stop at 60-80%, if that's all you need.
Both owners seem to have driven the car only once or twice per week and recharged the battery to 100% every time, no matter how little they discharged it. This week I managed to discharge the battery to 14% and actually got the warning, then recharged it to 100%. (13 hours on the L1 charger.) We’ll keep discharging it down below 40% (or further) before recharging it above 90%, and we’ll see if that helps its capacity.

I’m searching for at least one new key fob (and preferably a second for a spare).

The second owner had the Leaf for six months, and he only decided to sell it because abrupt life changes convinced him to leave the island. In retrospect, the only thing he did with the car was losing the second fob. While we were signing over the title we searched the car and found not only his sunglasses (that he’d “lost” months ago under the driver’s seat) but also the reading glasses of the first owner. We even found the key number plate (for the car’s key ID), which the second owner didn’t know about.

I found the first owner’s e-mail address among the dealer’s paperwork. (He said he'd also left the island and didn’t want his reading glasses back.) He claims he turned over two fobs to the second owner, but we didn’t find the missing one anywhere in the car. I sat in the car (without a fob) and tried to turn it on, and it can’t sense a fob in the car. I crawled through & under everything while vacuuming it, and it looks like the second fob really is gone. That means we’re searching for a replacement second fob, and perhaps a third for a spare.

Other details:
- I used LeafSpy to shut off the backup beep and to disable the door auto-lock.

- Next week I’m getting Leaf feet for my Thule roof racks (which currently have Prius feet). Our local surf shop says they have that kit.

- We added another 420 watts of photovoltaic panels to our rooftop array. (Used panels at $1 per watt.) We’ll watch that for a few months to get a handle on our use, and then we’ll buy more panels if we’re not at net zero. We used to spend about $500/year on gas.

What’s the best way to get two more fobs and have all three programmed to the Leaf? Do I buy a specific type of fob (new or used?) from eBay or a dealer? Can I program the fobs myself (using the car’s electronics or LeafSpy) or do I need to give my fobs (wherever I bought them) to the dealer for their special equipment?
 
We’ll keep discharging it down below 40% (or further) before recharging it above 90%, and we’ll see if that helps its capacity.

Unless you really, really need the full range, don't recharge it above about 70% - 80% at most. Even 90% would be better than 100%.

On the mainland it's not that hard to get fobs from Ebay and have them programmed by a locksmith who does a lot of car keys, for a couple of hundred dollars. Where you are, you may have to use the dealer - maybe using genuine Nissan fobs bought new from a wholesaler online. Expect to pay about $300 for the programming, plus the cost of the fobs. On the bright side, you should only need one new fob.

I was returning my 2013 Leaf for the end of lease turn in (after 5 years on a 2 year lease). I found my "lost" prescription sunglasses in the forgotten-by-me eyeglass holder in the ceiling. Leafs must like to collect eyeglasses...
 
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