"Well, that escalated quickly."
Our daughter & son-in-law visited over the holidays. The 2006 Prius drove fine for a few days but then on 30 December began misbehaving again while they were out & about.
For you Navy vets, it was fun to see two lieutenants carry out the immediate actions for “loss of remote indication” and then figure out their backups. Of course when they returned to the garage they immediately shut down the engineroom and filed a CASREP for assistance.
So on 31 December we accelerated our search. On 2 January we bought a 2015 Leaf S (the base model) with 13,298 miles. It was listed on Facebook Marketplace at $15K, which in our ZIP code is a Blue Book value in the range of $11.3K-$15.6K. I think we were one of the first people to contact the seller.
CarFax says the Leaf was shipped from Nissan to Oahu’s King Windward Nissan in mid-2014. In August 2014 they leased it to someone who then paid for shipping to Kauai (?!?) and drove it for 7900 miles through July 2018. They returned it to King at the end of the lease. (Which meant they paid to ship it back from Kauai.) King detailed it and eventually sold it to the second owner last October.
The only events that CarFax recorded during the lease were for annual registrations and safety checks, along with a Lihue dealer’s “electrical system checks” at 5000 miles. Nissan’s corporate database says there are no recalls or campaigns.
The seller (the second owner) has lived here for a few years with his son. He says that he’s had a change of life plans and is returning to the Mainland. He enjoyed the car and it looks like he took good care of it for two months. He commuted daily and says he recharged mostly L1 (110v). He managed to drive it nearly 5400 miles over 84 days, though, so it went an average of 65 miles/day.
Its battery has all 12 capacity bars, of course, although I couldn’t get the LeafSpy app to work with my OBDII reader for more details about the battery’s health. My iPhone connects with the code reader over Bluetooth for our Prius but not with the Leaf, so LeafSpy never picked up any data. We’ve ordered a LeafSpy iOS compatible OBDII code reader (a LELink 2) and should have that in a week or two.
The car is pristine and the auxiliaries look good. There’s not even any red dirt under the hood. The 12v battery (factory original) is due for replacement but everything else is squeaky-clean.
After a test drive, we offered to buy it for the seller’s $15K price with a certified check. He had already closed his local bank accounts and said he’d prefer cash. We drove to our credit union and withdrew a stack of $100s. (We also triggered a Currency Transaction Report, which was fun.) He offered us his driver’s license for ID (we took a photo) and he signed over the title. We drove him home to the address on the car’s title. It all seems legit.
Unless he was exploited by the dealer, this looks like a great car. I've noticed that when I press or release the accelerator I can hear a faint "click" or a light "thunk". I think it's a drive train shifting on a mechanical spline, or a drive chain on the shaft, or a bearing in either the motor or the axle. It sounds more normal than symptomatic, and I'm only hearing it because the rest of the car is so quiet.
The Leaf owner's manual seems to assume that we've installed a L2 240v charging system on the garage wall, and it discourages L1 (110v) charging. I don't know why it would... submarine batteries do better with slow charges and get nasty hot when you do a fast charge. Maybe it's just the length of time that it takes for the car to charge on L1.
The Leaf has more hauling volume than our Prius-- it has a really deep well in the Leaf's entire back section because Leafs don’t carry spare tires (or jacks or lug wrenches). I bet we could haul an entire washing machine. I’m a little skeptical about driving it without a spare, but it has a pressurized can of "flat tire sealant" and a 12v air pump. 3 out of our 4 flat tires in the last decade have happened in our garage, though, so we can cope.
The registration & title transfer was only $10 but when the old registration expires in July then we'll have to pay $340 annually. That's still $40 cheaper than our Prius. In Hawaii we also get 2.5 hours of free parking at state or county spaces (but not private lots) and we get to use the HOV lane anytime we want. We might also get an insurance break, although that might only apply to portions which we don't bother to carry (collision, theft, comprehensive).
Driving the Leaf is an interesting learning experience. I've driven the same Oahu roads for nearly 30 years... to the beach, to the grocery store, to Costco. We've been driving them in a Prius for 10 of those years, and I've optimized my driving for high MPG with gentle acceleration. I know where to let a Prius coast, where to accelerate, and where to touch the brakes. It's all become muscle memory.
But with the Leaf in ECO mode (a good thing around here), I'm re-learning those habits. I can use the dashboard display to feather the accelerator and manually let the Leaf coast, but the Leaf's cruise control maintains speed going downhill as well as uphill. (No coasting downhill like the Prius.) The Leaf decelerates (regenerates) more quickly than the Prius, so I have to get closer to intersections or turns before I take my foot off the accelerator to slow down. (I hardly ever use the brake.) On the other hand we never expect to really push the Leaf’s battery range (we'd use our other 2005 Prius for that) so I'm not exactly wasting the battery's health.
I really enjoy driving it, but I'm not going to get to do that very often. It's definitely my spouse’s car. (When our daughter & son-in-law were visiting, it somehow became our daughter’s car.) Luckily the Leaf is plenty roomy in the back seat.
Spouse has informed me that our Leaf is now “the clean car” and will not be subjected to seawater, sand, or surf wax. I'm apparently never going to be allowed to load a longboard in it, so that cargo question has been rendered moot. I’ve moved the roof rack to our 2005 Prius, which is definitely qualified to be “the beach beater”. That car only has about 54K miles and will probably give us a few more years.
After extensive discussions, we gave away our 2006 Prius. A local military family understands the issues with the dashboard display and the rest of the car's failing parts. They're only on island for another year so they're happy to take the risks or to fix it on their own. I gave them every opportunity to change their minds and say "No thanks", but their gearhead friend says there's really no downside for them. They've already transferred the title & registration.
I'm still figuring out how many more solar panels we'll need for our photovoltaic array. We've only charged the Leaf's battery a couple times in the last week. We'll get a better feel for our driving habits during the next month but I'm guessing that I'll still need at least 400 more watts.
I never expected to buy a used car this quickly. It’s been our easiest car transaction in nearly 40 years.