2 Years In

[philipscoggins]

Well, today's my 2 year anniversary with my 2012 LEAF SL & it's as unseasonably cold as the first day I bought it!

My experience... I notice I'm over the thrill of flooring it and getting the smooth acceleration that was the extreme thrill of the LEAF for the first year or so.
I have a longer commute than the LEAF is made for. Around 75-90 miles/day on average (single parent 3 kids & work). When the weather is nice I can do that with a full charge in the morning, L2 when I go home for lunch and hopefully an hour of L2 before I pick up my high schooler about 6pm. During the winter, with conservative heat, I arrive at work with about 6kWh of charge remaining & the building owner let's me L1 charge until lunch. I've discussed installing a L2 charger at work next winter and reimbursing him with voluntary donations to cover my "parking" in the spot with the charges (Tennessee you can't resell electricity).

Stats
53,536 miles
168 QCs
2898 L1 & L2s
Ahr=53.28
SOH=81%
100% charge=219 GIDs

By my math 281GID-219GID=62 GID lost. 277 GIDs usable of the original 281 means 1% of battery is 2.77GIDs. So I have lost 22.38% of my battery capacity even though I have only lost 1 capacity bar. I should mileage out of the battery replacement warranty in a little less than 3 months.

I do love driving electric & can make the 150 mile round trip to Nashville using free Nissan quick chargers along the way. Blink has crazy prices on L2 charging in Tennessee, it has risen from $1/hr to $2.50/hr (billed by the seconds now). With my stock 3.3kwh charger on the 2012, that sucks pretty bad.

To compensate for my capacity loss my miles/kWh has been steadily rising. During warm weather I average 5.1 m/kWh but with our unusually cold November I'm only at 4.5 m/kWh so far this month.

I wasn't able to use very much of the $7500 tax credit that many were able to count as a discount on the car, I wish I'd understood how I could have leased my car, let Nissan take the $7500 and then bought out my lease, to bring down the price. But hindsight huh?

I don't think my LEAF will meet my needs for too much longer & I'm WAY upside down in it, something like $10,000 so I will have to deal with it for a little while. I do love EVs, but don't think Nissan has won me over with brand loyalty, so I can't guarantee my next car will be a LEAF, but couldn't imagine going back to buying gas.

My favorite things about the LEAF. Never having to stop to buy gas, preheated car, silent drive & still just cool factory of owning a fully functional car that's all electric.
Least favorite things. I HATE the recycled fiber interior, I've tried to take care of it, but with 3 kids, it looks horrible after 2 years & nothing I've found cleans it. The RSS feeds have never worked consistently & I haven't been able to send a google maps trip to my car in forever. And of course battery degradation. I understand 26,768 miles/yr is a bit higher than average and I have quick charger a lot, but I've never gone over 7 bars on the battery temp (in the summer I start out at 6 bars during July & August) so I like to think I'm not cooking it too badly.

Going into my 3rd winter, I'm not looking forward to it, I am a bit tired of freezing toes & blankets for the kids. I ran a payment calculator for a Model S the other day & I could handle the $500 monthly payments, but the $62,000 down payment was a little beyond my ability :shock:

Charge on!

 

[mkjayakumar]

Thanks for detailing your experiencing.

At a high mileage of 26K miles per year, not sure if leasing would have done you much good. Even with a two year lease you would have gone over around 22k miles and with 15c/mile that would have cost you $3300... or maybe, given the high depreciation. Not sure

 

[JeremyW]

If you're a bit handy you may consider insulating the heater unit, hoses, and reservoir. Search the forum for others who have done it.

 

[philipscoggins]

@mkjaykumar - I meant, you can lease a LEAF from Nissan, they take the $7500 off the price and then you immediately turn around and buy the car out of lease. I've seen several people on the forum over the last couple years say they've done this. When I purchased my car I didn't realize how the tax credit worked until I went to do my taxes. In my non-tax-guy lingo It's more like a deduction than a credit. It will take the amount you owe in taxes down $7500 but it you only owed $1000 in taxes you won't get a check back for $6500.

@jeremyW - I remember something about that now that you mention it... Thanks, I'll go look it up

 

[forummm]

Some other people on the forum have posted about using indoor portable propane heaters. The emissions are supposed to be safe for closed vehicles. They can cause some fogged windows.

 

[dgpcolorado]

With your high annual mileage it might be best to put in a new battery for ~$6000 and keep the LEAF going. And the new battery should lose capacity more slowly than the old one, so better range for a longer time.

 

[philipscoggins]

I've considered the replacement battery, but I'm afraid I'd be in the same boat 2 years later & I'd really like to have the 6kWh charger & heatpump heater.

I'm trying to hang on long enough to get a newer model with those options. I have a great dealer in Nashville, they have my info and are supposed to contact me when I can get a newer model for the same payments.