Rwm
Member
Since April I've been considering getting a leaf. Due to exorbitant local dealer costs and my frugal nature not seeing eye to eye, I decided a day off work was worth it to save a whack of dough.
Thanksgiving monday (CAD) last week I went from BC to WA to check out used leafs.. I knew I wanted an SV for the cruise control, heat pump, DC fast charge, and not as much for its good looks! Since I'm frugal I figured I'd be getting the cheapest $8000 (USD) 2013 SV I could find... well, the SV selection was more sold than I expected, and it was getting late in my shopping day, so I decided an extra chunk of change would be well spent in jumping into a pricier 2015 at $11,650. (for comparison, that's $16k CAD, vs dealers here asking $22-26k for 2015 SV!)
I was diligent enough to order a Carista OBD dongle and purchased Leafspy Pro back in April in my earlier round of local shopping. I was however not diligent enough to check to make sure all was working well on the leafspy front. Upon deciding on the car I then attempted to check the battery and much to my (un) surprise, it wouldn't pair. Guys at the dealership were great however and used their phones to pair to my dongle and confirmed battery was indeed in good shape. I still have yet to figure out why my &^$#* leafspy PRO wouldn't work, but their leafspy LITE would! I say &$#*( because that was my first ever purchase on itunes after having an iphone since the first one came out!
(Side adventure - I rode my KTM 690 enduro for this shopping trip. homeward bound at dusk my taillight shook itself loose - again. Took another couple freezing cold hours to track down parts at this late hour but in the end I made it home without getting rear ended...)
I'll give some more details in a thread I'll write in the canadian section about importing USA to canada. For now I'll say that I spent a fair bit of time planning and checking my documents ahead of time. Whether or not it paid off I'm not sure because someone might half-ass it and still get through just fine. After my trip to select the car, it took a 7 business day wait before I could import it.
That brings me to today... took the Amtrak from vancouver to everett VERY early this morning and picked up the car and by 11 I was on my way north with my new car! Fully charged, I made it to Bellingham (Wilson) Nissan to make use of the DCFC. WOW. What a great feeling to see that charge go flying up from 10% to 50% by the time I figured out how to download/refresh charge locations in the map around my home. In all I left it for the full 40 mins up to 90%. There's a coffee place nearby and the staff at the dealership were friendly and happy to chat about the leaf. I recommended they do a better job advertising online to canadians - if i'd bought in bellingham rather than everett i would have been home by now! I digress again. It was a pretty relaxing stop, until I realized the US vehicle export office closes in an hour. A needlessly stressed drive ensued. Short version- I made it to the border by 3pm, and spent most of my time figuring out where the heck to park and where the heck to go. I spoke with no less than 6 US border guys to direct me, and drove through areas I probably would have been shot at if they heard me coming! By 3:45 I was free and clear (of both US export and CAD import!) on the other side. After a long careful drive trying to squeeze every possible km from that KwH, I got to vancouver with 40km left on the GOM so finally I got to punch the gas.. It's adequately fast but definitely not as fast as I expected given the common remarks of its acceleration off the line. Mind you I'm used to playing on a 65hp 330lb dirt bike and everything's relative.
She's now parked on my back lawn plugged into the wall behind my house. (ETA for 120v charge: 18h!) Next step is to figure out a proper charging setup, because parking on the lawn isn't going to last. I spent another hour this evening playing with the systems and am pretty happy to find nissanconnect/carwings is working no problems.
Actually the NEXT step is federal/provincial inspections, but I'm not there yet. Unfortunately I noticed a major gouge in one tire sidewall so looks like I'm going to be getting new tires real soon. Manyana...
Thanks go out to Marqus (sales) and Ray (leafspy support) at Everett Nissan, the whole deal went pretty smooth because of them. Also thanks to Kai and Carl at Wilson Nissan for helping me pass the time waiting for my QC. Despite not buying my car there, Kai took some time to walk me through some of the on-board computer stuff.
And thanks to the guy at walmart who probably saved my life helping me find the MOST obscure shelf in Walmart which held all the KTM repair parts!
Thanksgiving monday (CAD) last week I went from BC to WA to check out used leafs.. I knew I wanted an SV for the cruise control, heat pump, DC fast charge, and not as much for its good looks! Since I'm frugal I figured I'd be getting the cheapest $8000 (USD) 2013 SV I could find... well, the SV selection was more sold than I expected, and it was getting late in my shopping day, so I decided an extra chunk of change would be well spent in jumping into a pricier 2015 at $11,650. (for comparison, that's $16k CAD, vs dealers here asking $22-26k for 2015 SV!)
I was diligent enough to order a Carista OBD dongle and purchased Leafspy Pro back in April in my earlier round of local shopping. I was however not diligent enough to check to make sure all was working well on the leafspy front. Upon deciding on the car I then attempted to check the battery and much to my (un) surprise, it wouldn't pair. Guys at the dealership were great however and used their phones to pair to my dongle and confirmed battery was indeed in good shape. I still have yet to figure out why my &^$#* leafspy PRO wouldn't work, but their leafspy LITE would! I say &$#*( because that was my first ever purchase on itunes after having an iphone since the first one came out!
(Side adventure - I rode my KTM 690 enduro for this shopping trip. homeward bound at dusk my taillight shook itself loose - again. Took another couple freezing cold hours to track down parts at this late hour but in the end I made it home without getting rear ended...)
I'll give some more details in a thread I'll write in the canadian section about importing USA to canada. For now I'll say that I spent a fair bit of time planning and checking my documents ahead of time. Whether or not it paid off I'm not sure because someone might half-ass it and still get through just fine. After my trip to select the car, it took a 7 business day wait before I could import it.
That brings me to today... took the Amtrak from vancouver to everett VERY early this morning and picked up the car and by 11 I was on my way north with my new car! Fully charged, I made it to Bellingham (Wilson) Nissan to make use of the DCFC. WOW. What a great feeling to see that charge go flying up from 10% to 50% by the time I figured out how to download/refresh charge locations in the map around my home. In all I left it for the full 40 mins up to 90%. There's a coffee place nearby and the staff at the dealership were friendly and happy to chat about the leaf. I recommended they do a better job advertising online to canadians - if i'd bought in bellingham rather than everett i would have been home by now! I digress again. It was a pretty relaxing stop, until I realized the US vehicle export office closes in an hour. A needlessly stressed drive ensued. Short version- I made it to the border by 3pm, and spent most of my time figuring out where the heck to park and where the heck to go. I spoke with no less than 6 US border guys to direct me, and drove through areas I probably would have been shot at if they heard me coming! By 3:45 I was free and clear (of both US export and CAD import!) on the other side. After a long careful drive trying to squeeze every possible km from that KwH, I got to vancouver with 40km left on the GOM so finally I got to punch the gas.. It's adequately fast but definitely not as fast as I expected given the common remarks of its acceleration off the line. Mind you I'm used to playing on a 65hp 330lb dirt bike and everything's relative.
She's now parked on my back lawn plugged into the wall behind my house. (ETA for 120v charge: 18h!) Next step is to figure out a proper charging setup, because parking on the lawn isn't going to last. I spent another hour this evening playing with the systems and am pretty happy to find nissanconnect/carwings is working no problems.
Actually the NEXT step is federal/provincial inspections, but I'm not there yet. Unfortunately I noticed a major gouge in one tire sidewall so looks like I'm going to be getting new tires real soon. Manyana...
Thanks go out to Marqus (sales) and Ray (leafspy support) at Everett Nissan, the whole deal went pretty smooth because of them. Also thanks to Kai and Carl at Wilson Nissan for helping me pass the time waiting for my QC. Despite not buying my car there, Kai took some time to walk me through some of the on-board computer stuff.
And thanks to the guy at walmart who probably saved my life helping me find the MOST obscure shelf in Walmart which held all the KTM repair parts!
