Maintenance on a Nissan Leaf lease

[rajanm]

Hi everyone,

We're on the brink of leasing a Nissan Leaf. It would be for 3 years with a 7000 mile per year limit. We've been offered maintenance for an extra £21 a month. This includes all of our servicing, breakdown cover and tyre replacement for worn tyres only.

I'm debating whether this extra cost is worth it. I read somewhere that you can simply delay the first service by a few weeks which would mean I could avoid the third service, making the non maintenance option much more cost effective. Does anyone have any thoughts/experiences of this?

 

[danelo]

With that little bit of driving you will not need any maintenance on the Leaf. Of course, the Leaf does have brakes, struts, coolant, tires, etc. that would need some work at some time, but in three years you will not need any of that. Seems like the dealer is just trying to get more money out of you.

What type of service are they saying you may need? What exactly do they mean by a worn tire? All tires wear down but I doubt they are paying for 4 new tires. Tires should not be worn out by 21000 miles.

 

[Drew21]

As danelo said, in 3 years/21K miles (or less), you won't need any maintenance outside of:

1) cabin air filter (easy to do yourself).
2) maybe wipers and windshield washer fluid (again, easy).
3) regularly check air pressure in your tires and rotate tires once/year (also easy, but many don't have the tools); I also check over my brakes and suspension each time I rotate the tires.

At the three year mark, I would be doing other stuff like a brake fluid replace and flush (I actually do it every two years), but if you're turning in the car let someone else do that.

If you don't want to do anything yourself, maybe a monthly fee is worth it to you. If so, I would have them specify exactly which services are covered in writing. For example, if I was paying a monthly fee for "maintenance" they better not charge anything, including parts cost, for simple jobs like replacing the cabin air filter, replacing the wipers, or rotating the tires.