The first thing I’d do is join the MyNissanLeaf forum and read this guide from LeftieBiker. I don’t know anything about the guy but he wrote a good overview of the Leaf history. He’s also comfortable with discussing options and alternatives.
https://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=26662Disclaimer: My spouse and I bought used Leafs last year when our Priuses started to die. We’ve had our 2015 Leaf since January 2019, and it had only one owner who regularly commuted 50 miles. We’ve had our 2017 Leaf since July 2019, and it had two previous owners who abused/neglected it with commuting & pleasure mileage. (Party-hauler car. Idiot #2 owner. Long story.) It had higher mileage than our 2015 and had already dropped one bar in 2018.
We’re retirees who drive each Leaf about 3000 miles annually. Most of our drives are 40-50 miles between charges, although we’ve occasionally gone up to 80-90 miles.
Hawaii is the perfect climate and range for a Leaf. (I’ve never used the heaters or defrosters.) Ours spend most of their time in our garage. We recharge them from our home’s solar panels (for free) and we’ve installed a 240v system in our garage for our convenience. We occasionally recharge our cars at a shopping center (L2) and rarely at the dealer’s CHAdeMO DC charger.
Leafs do not have spare tires. They come with a can of sealant and an electric air pump, which will (hopefully) get you to a shop for a new tire. You’ll want to have a jack and jackstands at home for a tire which slowly leaks flat overnight. (Let’s not get into how I learned that.) Some Leaf owners buy a fifth wheel/tire to stow in the back along with a jack. A few owners make their own fancy plywood compartments that look like Nissan factory gear.
You might also want a portable jumpstarter & tire inflator in your garage for weak 12v batteries or slow leaks. We use an old Powerstation PSX3 monthly (for the tires) and every year or two (for a dead 12v battery surprise).
If you’re a surfer, I can carry a 10’0” longboard in the passenger compartment but (depending on the board) might have to remove the center fin. Thule makes a great roof rack and I’ve hauled four longboards at once (with a fifth in the car).
On the other hand I am considering an older Leaf which could cost much less, low maintenance, and has great reliability.
The thought also occurs to me that with ~9k rebate between federal/state/local incentives, buying a new EV might be a valid option too.
I’d check whether any of those rebates or incentives apply to “new” Leafs which are actually resold from the dealers after warranty returns or early-termination leases. In Hawaii, rebates/incentives only apply for a new Leaf’s first registered owners.
State legislatures have recently realized that electric vehicles don’t pay gasoline taxes. Many states are considering surcharges on EV registrations, or shifting to a mileage-based registration fee.
Of course we owners of used Leafs still have the advantages of our local laws like free parking at meters, free parking at the Honolulu Airport (up to 30 days), and unlimited use of the HOV lanes. But your savings there will depend on how often you use metered parking or airports.
My commute is 25 miles each way (highway, heavy traffic) and my new workplace has free car charging (can’t be 100% sure yet how much competition there is for those spaces). Otherwise I would charge in my garage (don't have & may need to install 220V)
You’ll want to watch your workplace’s receptacles to see who’s using them every day, or what time of day you’d have your turn. I’ve read of a number of employees who’ve used 100-foot extension cords through their office windows or the building lobby. A few posters on that Nissan Leaf forum have mentioned ways to (legally?) tap into the wiring of lights in the parking lot or other power sources to add more 110v receptacles.
Charging at 110v from the Leaf’s provided Level 1 equipment is perfectly satisfactory, as long as you have the time for it. A 24-Kw battery pack may not fully charge overnight if it was drained too deeply during the day and plugged in too late in the evening. If you have power interruptions overnight then next morning you may discover that the car didn’t resume charging after the power came back on.
Your city or electric utility might offer discounts on Level 2 EVSE kits. We got a “free” $600 240v Juicebox from Enel X as part of a three-year HECO pilot study:
https://evcharging.enelx.com/store/commercial/juicebox-pro-40-commercialOf course we still had to pay for the 50-amp circuit breaker & receptacle installation. There are also receptacle adaptor kits for electric dryer 240v receptacles but many of them do not conform to code. It depends on the maximum current draw from your Leaf versus the ratings of the receptacle and the circuit breaker.
Is it practical to do a 50 mile round trip in winter in a Leaf I can get for <10k (probably 2012-2014)?
I’m probably disqualified to answer this question. However I’ve read of a number of cold-weather Leaf owners who charge the battery to 100% and then pre-heat the Leaf (and maybe the seats) while it’s still on the charging cord.
Is it worth the bump up from ~7k to ~9k to get a 2014 rather than 2012?
Is it worth it to go to 2015 because of better battery chemistry and range?
I think it’s worth going with a 2015 over a 2014, and with a 2014 over anything older. You might find an exceptionally distressed seller (or a car with cosmetic damage) but otherwise you have a strong risk of only getting the last few puffs off a cigar butt. If you have reliable & available charging every 30 miles then you might not care how old the battery pack is.
That guide on the MyNissanLeaf forum will give you more perspective.
Ideally I wanted to try to get an OB2 dongle to really check the battery health with Leaf Spy app if I can get it in time. At a minimum I’ll see how many bars it has.
Check the forum to make sure your OBD-II reader is compatible with your smartphone/tablet. For example LELink makes one of the few that works with an older iPhone:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0755N61PW/I would not buy a used Leaf without getting a full LeafSpy readout. It not only gives you a comparison to the bars display but also gives you an idea of how close you may be to losing the next bar.
Of course LeafSpy also gives you a full code readout to show the seller, who may not have known that the car has issues.
The LeafSpy software is very handy for configuring the car’s backing beeper, its pedestrian sound effects, and other tweaks.
-How good should battery health be? Would you buy a car with 11/12 or 10/12 bars?
Sure. Our 2015 just dropped to 11 bars last week. When we bought our 2017 with 11 bars (confirmed with LeafSpy), we checked with the dealer to make sure the battery-management software was updated/patched. That car’s battery just dropped to 10 bars last week but it still estimates 90-100 miles after a full charge.
(I’m sure it’s a coincidence that both cars dropped a bar during the same week... after sitting in our garage for a month during travel followed by seven more weeks of social isolation. Even before COVID-19 we were only driving each car 2-3 times per week.)
The Leaf’s estimated mileage range depends on how it was driven before the last charge. This tends to annoy the crap out of my spouse when I’ve driven her car, because the next battery charge after I’ve driven her car gives her a much higher estimated range which isn’t realistic for her more aggressive driving style.
-Does the car need a DC fast charge port?
Only if you’re in a screaming hurry. The DC charger heats up the battery quite a bit, and routine DC-powered charges have been shown to shorten the battery’s life. LeafSpy will tell you how many times the car has been charged by L1/L2 or CHAdeMO.
The 110v charge is the gentlest way to charge the battery, provided you can leave it plugged in for the time it needs. Overnight might not be enough time in some combinations of cold weather, a discharged battery, and plugging it in late in the evening before an early-morning departure.
-Speed of the on board charging (slower charger pre-2013)
-Probably need the heat pump in a cold/wet climate... Points to the 2012s being too old.
These are good reasons all by themselves to avoid anything before 2014, and the cars probably have plenty of other issues by then.
Changing the coolant on a hybrid or an EV can be tricky. It requires some skill & experience at suctioning out all of the old coolant and then venting all of the air bubbles from the new coolant’s refill. If the owner did their own or (even worse) has never had one done, then the inverter might have a shorter life due to inadequate cooling. You’d want to have that checked by a mechanic before you buy.
I’d worry about high mileage (especially over 100K miles if the owner can’t document a change of the coolant) and the age of auxiliary equipment like the ventilation blower or the air-conditioning compressor.
You’d still want to check a Leaf’s brake shoes and CV joint boots. Cars with regenerative braking systems tend to have brake shoes last for over 100K miles. We had that experience with our Prius brakes (including a teen driver) and we expect to have the same performance with our Leafs. CV joint boots depend on the road surface and how many potholes they’ve been through.
Between our solar panels and gasoline prices, as well as less maintenance/repairs, we expect our Leafs to pay for themselves before their main batteries die.