The official "I got my Leaf" thread

mihird said:

We just took possession of a 2021 Nissan Leaf SV Plus with the larger 62Kwh battery. We are loving it! We returned the 2018 40Kwh SV which was up on its lease..

The 200+ mile range makes it a decent day tripper in a 400 mile radius....certainly expands the day tripping horizon from the smaller 40/30/24Kwh batteries...

This is our 4th Nissan Leaf in the family. We started leasing from 2013 model (24Kwh), then had a 2016 (30Kwh), then a 2018 (40Kwh) and now a 2021 (62Kwh)...our local dealership has been leasing us the SV models at the same price point from 2013, so when they offer to simply swap out the lease end with a new larger battery, the offer is irresistible..each time...

The leases have averaged us about $350/month for 15,000 miles/year with $0 down, either through state subsidies, or direct $0 down offer from dealer...

Makes me a loyal Nissan customer, I guess

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Congrats! just wondering, do you find yourself coming anywhere near 15,000 miles/year with any of your Leafs? Now maybe it's easier with a larger capacity Leaf but I just couldn't imagine getting anywhere near that with either of our 24kwh Leafs, it would have to be actively charging anytime we weren't driving it and even then with our '12SL that only has a 3.6kw/h charger I don't think we could make 15k/year miles. We probably drive less than most but average ~6k/yr on our Leafs, now if we could use them cross-country on our 1000 mile trips or even cross-town 100-mile trips we'd be putting on more miles but for now we have to use our older Prius for those kinds of trips.
One more thing, most of the leases I see are for 10k maybe 12k miles/year even though I know the average driver is now doing closer to 15k/yr, do you know if your lease would have been much less if it were say 12k miles or even 10k miles/year?

I 'renewed my vows'. We had a 2015 SL and sold it to buy a 2019 M3. When my Lexus died (GASP!), I bought a 2018 SL Plus in 4-21. So now we have 2 EV's. But I'm retired, and my wife has been working from home for the last year. Neither car is driven much. My wife wants to work another year, and insisted I get another car, in case she is called back in. I never thought of the M3 as a luxury car until I drove the new Leaf. I'd forgotten how basic it is - while both cars sell for $45k. (as the Leaf felt luxurious after a test drive in a Bolt).

A few questions - The key fob doesn't have bluetooth, does it? When I lock the car with the remote, return, it is unlocked. Or, it's locked. I don't hear it unlocking as I walk up to it. I'm guessing it is somehow not locking correctly? (I'd love it if the car recognized the fob. The Tesla is so nice, unlocking and activating the car via the phone's BT.
And the ProPilot seems complicated! I'm sure I just have to get used to it, but reading the manual is confusing. With the Tesla, and basically 2 controls, we understood how everything worked after a 15min test drive. I'm guessing it's not that complex, and I will figure it out, with practice...
Thanks. I'm sure I'll have more questions in a week. Where can't I ask? At the Nissan dealer. They know very little about the car!

jjeff said:

mihird said:

We just took possession of a 2021 Nissan Leaf SV Plus with the larger 62Kwh battery. We are loving it! We returned the 2018 40Kwh SV which was up on its lease..

The 200+ mile range makes it a decent day tripper in a 400 mile radius....certainly expands the day tripping horizon from the smaller 40/30/24Kwh batteries...

This is our 4th Nissan Leaf in the family. We started leasing from 2013 model (24Kwh), then had a 2016 (30Kwh), then a 2018 (40Kwh) and now a 2021 (62Kwh)...our local dealership has been leasing us the SV models at the same price point from 2013, so when they offer to simply swap out the lease end with a new larger battery, the offer is irresistible..each time...

The leases have averaged us about $350/month for 15,000 miles/year with $0 down, either through state subsidies, or direct $0 down offer from dealer...

Makes me a loyal Nissan customer, I guess

Click to expand...

Congrats! just wondering, do you find yourself coming anywhere near 15,000 miles/year with any of your Leafs? Now maybe it's easier with a larger capacity Leaf but I just couldn't imagine getting anywhere near that with either of our 24kwh Leafs, it would have to be actively charging anytime we weren't driving it and even then with our '12SL that only has a 3.6kw/h charger I don't think we could make 15k/year miles. We probably drive less than most but average ~6k/yr on our Leafs, now if we could use them cross-country on our 1000 mile trips or even cross-town 100-mile trips we'd be putting on more miles but for now we have to use our older Prius for those kinds of trips.
One more thing, most of the leases I see are for 10k maybe 12k miles/year even though I know the average driver is now doing closer to 15k/yr, do you know if your lease would have been much less if it were say 12k miles or even 10k miles/year?

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I easily average 15,000 miles a year (actually 16,300ish~ non COVID) including 2 24 kwh LEAFs. If you don't drive that much then you don't drive that much. For many it simply depends. Most people my age do little but work and home. Shopping on weekends, usually local if they live in town like me. But when the weather clears up, I am usually going somewhere to hike, sightsee or simply try out new restaurants I've heard about.

But "hard to drive that far?" Definitely not the reason.

DaveinOlyWA said:

I easily average 15,000 miles a year (actually 16,300ish~ non COVID) including 2 24 kwh LEAFs. If you don't drive that much then you don't drive that much. For many it simply depends. Most people my age do little but work and home. Shopping on weekends, usually local if they live in town like me. But when the weather clears up, I am usually going somewhere to hike, sightsee or simply try out new restaurants I've heard about.

But "hard to drive that far?" Definitely not the reason.

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I guess it depends on your driving conditions then. We keep our older Prius for really one reason(well it's much more cargo space is also a plus) and that's for distances our 24kwh Leafs can't make without a lot of finagling or at all. Mainly across town 40 miles one way or out of town 500-1000+ miles and doing that we average about 6k miles on the Leaf and similar on the Prius, if we had a spacious(mostly in cargo) PHEV that could do our 30-40 mile RT in town driving and also our longer out of town trips we could get down to 1 vehicle that would mostly be used in EV mode but have the potential for our longer trips. Maybe if in MN we had a better-charging infrastructure we could get by with a larger battery BEV but most like the Bolt are way too cramped and have limited storage and others are just too expensive and still lack the ability to go in many areas of Canada(ONT) we like to. No for us our next vehicle is going to be a RAV4 Prime which I'm hoping will be the best of both worlds.
Your Leafs must have a 6.6kw charger and you must also have a robust L2 EVSE, both of which help immensely on quicker turn arounds from charging to driving and back again.

jjeff said:

DaveinOlyWA said:

I easily average 15,000 miles a year (actually 16,300ish~ non COVID) including 2 24 kwh LEAFs. If you don't drive that much then you don't drive that much. For many it simply depends. Most people my age do little but work and home. Shopping on weekends, usually local if they live in town like me. But when the weather clears up, I am usually going somewhere to hike, sightsee or simply try out new restaurants I've heard about.

But "hard to drive that far?" Definitely not the reason.

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I guess it depends on your driving conditions then. We keep our older Prius for really one reason(well it's much more cargo space is also a plus) and that's for distances our 24kwh Leafs can't make without a lot of finagling or at all. Mainly across town 40 miles one way or out of town 500-1000+ miles and doing that we average about 6k miles on the Leaf and similar on the Prius, if we had a spacious(mostly in cargo) PHEV that could do our 30-40 mile RT in town driving and also our longer out of town trips we could get down to 1 vehicle that would mostly be used in EV mode but have the potential for our longer trips. Maybe if in MN we had a better-charging infrastructure we could get by with a larger battery BEV but most like the Bolt are way too cramped and have limited storage and others are just too expensive and still lack the ability to go in many areas of Canada(ONT) we like to. No for us our next vehicle is going to be a RAV4 Prime which I'm hoping will be the best of both worlds.
Your Leafs must have a 6.6kw charger and you must also have a robust L2 EVSE, both of which help immensely on quicker turn arounds from charging to driving and back again.

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Ah quite the contrary; I only use a 24 amp EVSE but I have a 62 kwh battery pack. During the work week, my normal contingency range is 75 miles for unexpected emergencies. On weekends it can be less but usually because I am parking at the end of a long driving day

I 'renewed my vows'...
And thanks for all the helpful answers, folks! Is this site very active?
Stupid me, it didn't take long to realize the fob does have (wifi?). Otherwise, it would just be a mechanical key.
My next trick will be to sync the car with the phone. It may be a while before I will feel confident enough to leave the key at home. I'm still not sure if the car is locking, or staying locked. In need to not have the key on me, to test it.

I've been lurking for a couple weeks, but it's time for formal introductions.

My wife and I have a 2020 SV+ w/ technology package and absolutely love it! It's her daily driver and her commute is ~60miles round trip.

The best deal in our area was a silver car, and neither of us care for silver cars.

So... we had a color change wrap applied this week!

I'd like to introduce Gengar!

A short video showing the color change
https://imgur.com/UiQrNVv

Fun wrap. If you don't mind me asking, how much does a wrap on a Leaf cost?

Gorgeous! I am looking at something similar with mine if I decide to buy it.

DougWantsALeaf said:

Fun wrap. If you don't mind me asking, how much does a wrap on a Leaf cost?

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Lots of variables, but our wrap was just over $3k out the door. This was with 3M 2080 series vinyl

DaveinOlyWA said:

Gorgeous! I am looking at something similar with mine if I decide to buy it.

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If you push the go button would love to see some pictures. Lots of Leaf's out there, but not as many with fancy colors!

Finally got my sonar yesterday. An EchoMaster unit, with the dual-bar-graph display, custom installed, with the display module mounted atop the rear starboard headrest (using a strap-on bracket I designed and fabricated myself).

In that position, the display is visible in the rear-view mirror (in the upper starboard corner of the rear window) and looking over my shoulder (in which case it lines up with a point just past the upper starboard corner of the rear window, which is much less strain on my neck than the more central locations I'd used with sonar displays on my Camry).

Still to come: a donut (probably upright, on the port side of the trunk), and a portable GPS navigator (probably mounted on the starboard side of the console, by the 12V power socket).

I don't have it yet, but next week I'll be picking up a Brilliant Silver 2021 SV 40kwh Leaf that I'm leasing, with Tech and Protection packages, and cargo cover. My first mod, which I recently performed on my SL, will be to render the rear edge of the cargo cover non-lethal, using foam pipe wrap. I could have spent more to lease an SV+, but having driven both versions I prefer the lightness and quickness in normal driving of the 40kwh cars. We have the SV+ for longer trips or drag racing.

hbquikcomjamesl said:

Finally got my sonar yesterday. An EchoMaster unit, with the dual-bar-graph display, custom installed, with the display module mounted atop the rear starboard headrest (using a strap-on bracket I designed and fabricated myself).

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I looked up EchoMaster and they make a lot of products. Would you share the model you have, or maybe a couple pictures of your setup? I'm really intrigued by what you described.

G3NG4R said:

I looked up EchoMaster and they make a lot of products. Would you share the model you have, or maybe a couple pictures of your setup? I'm really intrigued by what you described.

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You asked.

The sensors and control unit are a PS-TRUCK (no idea why, except that it's maybe less expensive); the display unit is a PA-DISPLAY.

Here are the two starboard sensors.


The display unit, mounted on my custom bracket, strapped to the starboard rear headrest, from the front and the back
Sonar 3 by James Lampert, on Flickr

jjeff said:

Congrats! just wondering, do you find yourself coming anywhere near 15,000 miles/year with any of your Leafs? Now maybe it's easier with a larger capacity Leaf but I just couldn't imagine getting anywhere near that with either of our 24kwh Leafs, it would have to be actively charging anytime we weren't driving it and even then with our '12SL that only has a 3.6kw/h charger I don't think we could make 15k/year miles. We probably drive less than most but average ~6k/yr on our Leafs, now if we could use them cross-country on our 1000 mile trips or even cross-town 100-mile trips we'd be putting on more miles but for now we have to use our older Prius for those kinds of trips.
One more thing, most of the leases I see are for 10k maybe 12k miles/year even though I know the average driver is now doing closer to 15k/yr, do you know if your lease would have been much less if it were say 12k miles or even 10k miles/year?

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My wife has a daily fixed commute of 66 miles round trip for 200 working days of the year...so yes, we will put the 15,000 miles/year easily...
I can tell you one thing....we end up putting more miles on the Leaf as the battery gets larger.....with shrinking range anxiety on a larger radius....the Leaf becomes the preferred vehicle on increasingly more trips.

On the previous 2018 150 mile range Leaf, we ended up putting roughly 18,000 miles/year...when you do the math, paying the mileage overage at 15c/mile make more sense than trying to run a gas car, so, we don't worry much about mileage overage...

The 2018 150 mile range Leaf at the time of lease return had almost 54,000 miles on it...but was still returning a healthy 130 miles of range on the battery. We could have literally used that car all the way to 150,000 miles on the odometer...

Cinnabar said:

I picked mine up on Sunday from Premier Nissan in San Jose. It took about an hour and 45 minutes, which was great. I told them I needed to be out of there by 2:00 pm, and they easily made that deadline. It was a pretty painless experience. I wish I would have gotten a bit more for my trade in and the really pushed the extended warranty very hard, to no avail.

Took the car straight downtown for the dinner and the Shark's game and then home after the game. I had many miles to spare.

Drove into work today and the 32 mile commute ate almost half the battery. I will trickle charge today and have plenty of juice to get home. I miss my carpool lane stickers all ready, and look forward to getting the new white stickers in 6-8 weeks. I will hopefully have some flexible hours until then!

I am also seeing more Leafs on the road. It looks like their deliveries are finally ramping up.

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It’s my 10th anniversary of picking up my LEAF. It is still my daily driver. I have 81225 miles on it, and still have all the bars on the replacement battery. It’s been a better car than I could ever have imagined, and very inexpensive to own and operate.

Cinnabar said:

It’s my 10th anniversary of picking up my LEAF. It is still my daily driver. I have 81225 miles on it, and still have all the bars on the replacement battery. It’s been a better car than I could ever have imagined, and very inexpensive to own and operate.

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Consumer Reports has an article this month on the least and most expensive 2011 models to have owned. The LEAF tops out with "Cost at 10 years: $0".

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-repair-maintenance/least-and-most-expensive-cars-to-keep-on-the-road/

Though the first-generation Nissan Leaf EV didn’t get pulses racing with driving excitement, it cost owners almost nothing to keep running and earned top reliability scores.

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jlv said:

Cinnabar said:

It’s my 10th anniversary of picking up my LEAF. It is still my daily driver. I have 81225 miles on it, and still have all the bars on the replacement battery. It’s been a better car than I could ever have imagined, and very inexpensive to own and operate.

Click to expand...

Consumer Reports has an article this month on the least and most expensive 2011 models to have owned. The LEAF tops out with "Cost at 10 years: $0".

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-repair-maintenance/least-and-most-expensive-cars-to-keep-on-the-road/

Though the first-generation Nissan Leaf EV didn’t get pulses racing with driving excitement, it cost owners almost nothing to keep running and earned top reliability scores.

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That has certainly been my experience. Even after 10 years, I don’t think the general public realizes how different the cost of ownership of EV’s versus ICE cars is. I expect the Tesla Semi to really be a big difference maker in that regard.

Picked up a silver 2017 SV.
65,000 and 75% SOH and 10 bars.
Great car, amazed and how quiet and smooth it is, should do all of my daily driving for several years.
I'm really hoping I get a battery replacement in a few more years/miles, shouldn't be to difficult.

Having bought a strictly generic owner's manual case, I wanted to make it somewhat less generic.

And I spend my Saturdays docenting at the International Printing Museum. With access to printing and typesetting equipment.

So I bought a blank embroidery patch, and printed it, by letterpress:

leafpatch by James Lampert, on Flickr

I used an ink that should fully set.