Leaf as short tripper

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Voltaire

Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2021
Messages
7
Hello.
I've searched around and don't seem to see this topic addressed directly, so here goes.
Both of my daughters will be at the same high school next year, and my wife and I are already salivating at the idea of big sis driving little sis to school.
I feel like a 2011 or 2012 Leaf with a severely-eroded battery would work great for this application. School's four miles away. So, eight-mile round trip. Any reason why I shouldn't do this? Looks like a 10-year-old Leaf can be had for ~5k.
Do you all feel like I'm assured of at least, say, 20 miles of range for one that old? I kinda like the idea of them not being able to go that far from home before they run out of juice.
I'm in the San Diego area, so a local car shouldn't have any winter worries.
What would be really cool is to charge it with solar. I have visions of putting some panels on my patio cover and charging a battery during the day which could then be plugged into the Leaf overnight to get enough of that sweet, sweet sun juice to get to school and back.
Of course, this car's name must be Ryan ... or maybe Erikson.
 
An older LEAF is good for short trips, but don't expect to charge it overnight from a battery bank charged by solar. Even if you already have the solar panels, a battery bank large enough to charge a LEAF would cost more than the LEAF. If the battery has only 50% of its original capacity, it would require about 13 kWh to charge from empty. The roundtrip to school without any other driving would require about 3 kWh to recharge.
 
My wife and I went for years on our failing Leaf battery (one month past warranty replacement) in SD, with her 15 mile round trip commute. Even enough to get to the Y after work, max 30 miles in a day. We would get about 10k per year on the car, and with our solar system on the annual billing cycle the cost was about $125. (You just missed the EV week stuff here, but there's plenty of info online) The big unknown is when the car will stop working because of the batteries Internal Resistance. We got lucky that Nissan had tempoarily reduced the price on battery replacement, or we would have scrapped the car. It is probably worth it to look for one with a battery that has been replaced, but be careful about cars with a reset battery, a long road test will expose them.

Do read the Used Leaf Buying Guide thread.
https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=26662&p=538030
 
Thanks for linking my guide, solartim. I wanted to add that, while the OP wouldn't be able to fully charge a degraded Leaf daily via solar power as noted, it should be quite possible to get enough of a charge daily (assuming substantial battery storage) for their very modest range needs. It's much easier to charge at 120 volts than 240 with non-grid systems, and requires virtually no additional modifications to the system - just 110-120 volts at about 1300 watts, on a 15 amp circuit. With the right EVSE and solar setup, 120 volt, 16A charging (requiring a 20A circuit) may also be possible.
 
Sounds like a good EV for that usage, OP

Leftie is correct about the money angle for PV/battery. The much better idea if you can swing it is to take this opportunity to install a large PV system for your home/cars.
 
Unless you live in an off-grid home why not just sell your solar power to the local utility during the day and then buy it back (probably for less $) at night to charge the car?
 
goldbrick said:
Unless you live in an off-grid home why not just sell your solar power to the local utility during the day and then buy it back (probably for less $) at night to charge the car?
Those days of arbitraging PV production are fading fast, but it is still the best value going even if the night time rate is more expensive than PV hours. E.g., my DIY PV array cost me 80¢ a watt. I estimate 1.7 kWh/watt annual production and about 50 kWh lifetime production ... for 80¢. Even if the utility only paid me 1/5 the value of night time electricity in a TOU net metering setup, my PV setup would generate clean electricity for my night time use at 8¢ a kWh.

And of course few people shift 100% of the PV generation to the night time, so the weighted PV value is quite a bit higher. This approach of building PV for the entire household and cars works out the best for all concerned. More clean energy, at the lowest cost.
 
Thank you all so much for the extremely-interesting posts. It seems that my biggest concern with buying an old Leaf with an original battery will be that it might just stop charging all together due to internal resistance.
Is this factor something that can be reliably measured? I suppose if it was at one level at one point, that's no guarantee that you won't get to a non-functioning point very quickly.
 
We used our original battery from 2011 until the IR caused the big red battery light in Jan 2020. Did not try to see how much longer we could go in that condition, just got lucky that batteries were discounted at that time, or the car would have been donated or scrapped. Range at the end was barely 30 miles, which was fine since my wife worked 8 miles away and the climate in SD did not require heat.

I might be able to dig up the old leaf spy data, but not sure if I still have it.
 
Voltaire said:
...
I feel like a 2011 or 2012 Leaf with a severely-eroded battery would work great for this application. School's four miles away. So, eight-mile round trip. Any reason why I shouldn't do this? Looks like a 10-year-old Leaf can be had for ~5k.

i had a similar situation and my daughter drove a 2012 with 8 bars left for over a year with no problems; now i'm driving it with 7 bars and still getting 40 to 50 miles on a full charge.

i think it is a perfect application and you can't beat the price.

i don't have solar, but wouldn't put the girls in a situation where the car wasn't ready to go in the morning--school is more important than trying to save a few cents on the already low charging cost vs price of gasoline for an ICE car.
 
I found my last log file from before the battery fault. It is about 6 - 8 weeks before. The values I see are
GIDs 131
SOC 95
SOH 46.6
Hx 25.04
Odo (km) 114633 (71,230 miles)
 
Hello.
I'm back to considering a LEAF purchase for the short-trip use that I originally described at the start of this thread.
We have one here in the area for sale with 167k miles for $2,250 which is said to have 25 to 30 miles per charge.
That seems a decent price, but I'm leery about picking one up with so many miles.
I guess the seller was using it for the exact same purpose that I intend to use it for: A short-trip school-and-back ride.
Looking at the last post in this thread from Solartim, I guess I could use a port scanner of some sort to look at the values he posted:
I found my last log file from before the battery fault. It is about 6 - 8 weeks before. The values I see are
GIDs 131
SOC 95
SOH 46.6
Hx 25.04
Odo (km) 114633 (71,230 miles)

But I have no idea how I would know whether or not one of those values indicates imminent battery failure.
I also see that there has been a recent advent of DIY battery replacements, so maybe that would be a possibility if we did have a failure.
Really what I'm most interested in is not putting my kids in something that's going to up and shut down half way to school, possibly causing a traffic accident.
Is there a mileage range that you all would feel comfortable buying, and am I right in assuming that something with 167k miles on the original battery is too much of a risk?
 
Odometer mileage is generally secondary - or tertiary - on an EV, but once you pass 150k miles I think it does matter, because of wear and tear on the drive components over that many miles. I'd look for one that has passed 100K miles, because that dampens the price, but with less than, say, 130k miles. Again though, the condition of the battery and drivetrain are what matter most.
 
71k miles shouldn't be an issue unless the car is in a rust-prone area. I'd be most concerned about the cell balance when the SOC is low. A single low cell will trigger Turtle mode and if that happens while driving you're stuck.

Another thought is that if this is a 2011-2012 there are many differences from 2013+ Leafs. I don't know if or how that would affect a battery replacement in the future. Also, the cabin heating element in the 2011-2012 is different and more problematic (IMO) than the later version.
 
What year Model is the Leaf?
The only indication I've seen in this forum all these years of imminent battery failure is individual cells failing in voltage faster than the others or rapidly declining SoH in the battery (of all the cells). That means you would need to take daily readings of this Leaf battery to get a sense of that before you could make any decisions. Going by the information you posted, it must be an older generation Leaf with the older battery chemistry. As a long SoH, if it is a stable decline, you won't need to worry about a sudden loss of driving power unless the battery was below the 6% state of charge range where the weaker cells really start to take down the capacity to cause turtle mode or emergency shutdown to protect the battery. :)

Voltaire said:
Hello.
I'm back to considering a LEAF purchase for the short-trip use that I originally described at the start of this thread.
We have one here in the area for sale with 167k miles for $2,250 which is said to have 25 to 30 miles per charge.
That seems a decent price, but I'm leery about picking one up with so many miles.
I guess the seller was using it for the exact same purpose that I intend to use it for: A short-trip school-and-back ride.
Looking at the last post in this thread from Solartim, I guess I could use a port scanner of some sort to look at the values he posted:
I found my last log file from before the battery fault. It is about 6 - 8 weeks before. The values I see are
GIDs 131
SOC 95
SOH 46.6
Hx 25.04
Odo (km) 114633 (71,230 miles)

But I have no idea how I would know whether or not one of those values indicates imminent battery failure.
I also see that there has been a recent advent of DIY battery replacements, so maybe that would be a possibility if we did have a failure.
Really what I'm most interested in is not putting my kids in something that's going to up and shut down half way to school, possibly causing a traffic accident.
Is there a mileage range that you all would feel comfortable buying, and am I right in assuming that something with 167k miles on the original battery is too much of a risk?
 
Thank you everyone for your help.
We ended up buying a 2014 S model with 49k miles for $5k. Dash display lists 82 miles at nearly full charge.
I had planned to charge it using the 120v charger from 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. when our area has the cheapest rates.
As previously stated, we will only use about 2 kwh per weekday, so trickle charging overnight should be more than enough to get the job done.
But I've hit a strange quirk in that this car's built-in charge timer only allows you to set a charge stop time but not a charge start time.
This is a strange omission, though I understand that it has something to do with how Level 2 chargers work.

I've got a few Wyze wifi smart plugs around that I thought I could use to turn the charger on at midnight then off at 6 a.m.

But the 120v charger has a quite-thick heavy duty cable, which draws 12 amps.

Though the smart plug is rated for 15 Amps, I'm a bit nervous running this much power through for hours at a time.

Anyone try this or have another recommended method for starting charging in a 2014 Leaf?
 
If you want to only charge off peak, I suggest that you set the charge timer for 6:00 AM so that the car will stop charging at that time. You could use your "smart" receptacle by setting its start time to midnight and its stop time to 7:00 or 8:00 AM so that it does not interrupt charging current. The 15-ampere smart receptacle should be able to handle the 12-ampere continuous charging current, but check during the first few charges to make sure it does not get hot. Since charging current will ramp up after power is switched to the EVSE (charging unit--electric vehicle supply equipment), the smart receptacle should handle switching the power on without issue. There is a good chance that the smart receptacle will fail if it interrupts the full 12-ampere charging current so you need to have the LEAF's charge timer stop charging before the smart receptacle switches power to the EVSE off.
 
The 120V EVSE that came with the Leaf puts roughly 1.2kW into the battery. If you only use 2kWh per day and you want to keep the SOC in the mid-range (as usually recommended for battery longevity) you could adjust the start or stop time as GerryAZ mentioned so it only replaces as much energy as you need on any given day. I wouldn't obsess over it but if it's easy to do it's a good practice to run the car near the middle of SOC instead of always at 80-100%.
 
Thank you for the excellent advice.
We will try to stay in the mid range. Battery longevity seems a worthy quest.
 
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