PaxEmilia
Member
Hi All, PaxEmilia here. It's about time to replace my old '97 Civic (OK, past time to replace it) and I really want to go EV for my next car. My friends have a Leaf and love it. I've been browsing what's available in my area. Buying a new SL or SV is more than I wanted to spend. I'm starting to think that for my car usage, I might be better off getting a 2011 or 2012 model with some battery degradation- I've seen some with 10 bars for sale for <$10,000- rather than a 2015 S, which some local dealerships are starting to offer deals on as the 2016 models are coming out. I am hoping somebody could give me a sanity check and point out things I might not have considered. Here's my situation:
-This would not be the only car for our household, so I'd have an ICE car available for stuff outside the EV range
-My typical daily travel is <15 miles, on city streets. If I'm running errands, it could get up to 20 mi. Wild crazy errands, maybe 30 mi. Normally I might take the highway for those but surface street routes are available.
-I live in Texas. It is hot. I do not have a garage. I will need A/C, and the battery's gonna degrade no matter what. (Entropy, man. It's a jerk.)
-At home I currently have one convenient 120V outlet outside. It is on the same circuit as 3-4 indoor outlets. Said outlets are used for small kitchen appliances (coffee grinder, food processor, etc.), an LED light strip, and in December, some strands of LED Christmas tree lights. I expect I'd charge overnight so it's really only the holiday season that might cause me to be drawing current elsewhere at the same time I'm charging.
-There are quick charge stations at a grocery store less than a mile from my house, and a couple other spots not too far from my usual routes.
So, I could get a car with a degraded battery and a quick charge port rather for much less than a brand-new car with a brand-new battery and no quick charge port. Also, the pre- 2013 models don't seem to have reports of the strange brake problems that have hapened with the later cars. So a likely scenario seems to me that I could get a pre-2013 Leaf with battery degradation on the cheap and get features that I couldn't get with a brand-new S model, have enough range to meet my needs for a couple years at least, shell out for a brand-new battery when the range loss becomes inconvenient, and still pay not too much more total than used Leafs with better batteries are going for now. (And depending on warranty dates and such I could have a shot at the free battery-replacement sweepstakes.)
Is this starry-eyed pie in the sky thinking? How well have the components besides the battery been holding up over time? Am I underestimating how fast the battery will continue to degrade, or how much of the charge will go to the A/C?
Oh, and I have an iPhone. Is there an app besides the full LeafSpy Pro that I could use to check the used vehicles I'm looking at?
-This would not be the only car for our household, so I'd have an ICE car available for stuff outside the EV range
-My typical daily travel is <15 miles, on city streets. If I'm running errands, it could get up to 20 mi. Wild crazy errands, maybe 30 mi. Normally I might take the highway for those but surface street routes are available.
-I live in Texas. It is hot. I do not have a garage. I will need A/C, and the battery's gonna degrade no matter what. (Entropy, man. It's a jerk.)
-At home I currently have one convenient 120V outlet outside. It is on the same circuit as 3-4 indoor outlets. Said outlets are used for small kitchen appliances (coffee grinder, food processor, etc.), an LED light strip, and in December, some strands of LED Christmas tree lights. I expect I'd charge overnight so it's really only the holiday season that might cause me to be drawing current elsewhere at the same time I'm charging.
-There are quick charge stations at a grocery store less than a mile from my house, and a couple other spots not too far from my usual routes.
So, I could get a car with a degraded battery and a quick charge port rather for much less than a brand-new car with a brand-new battery and no quick charge port. Also, the pre- 2013 models don't seem to have reports of the strange brake problems that have hapened with the later cars. So a likely scenario seems to me that I could get a pre-2013 Leaf with battery degradation on the cheap and get features that I couldn't get with a brand-new S model, have enough range to meet my needs for a couple years at least, shell out for a brand-new battery when the range loss becomes inconvenient, and still pay not too much more total than used Leafs with better batteries are going for now. (And depending on warranty dates and such I could have a shot at the free battery-replacement sweepstakes.)
Is this starry-eyed pie in the sky thinking? How well have the components besides the battery been holding up over time? Am I underestimating how fast the battery will continue to degrade, or how much of the charge will go to the A/C?
Oh, and I have an iPhone. Is there an app besides the full LeafSpy Pro that I could use to check the used vehicles I'm looking at?