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I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#651

Post by zeristor »

rsolva wrote: post #312

Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for sale outside of Norway (I only see them here!), but it is the perfect car for 95% of our mobility needs. I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €…

eUp sounds like the ideal name for a car built in Yorkshire.

No doubt running on milky tea.

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#652

Post by aacid »

rsolva wrote: post #312

Small, cheap electric cars are the best! Fun to drive, easy to maintain. I own an VW eUP 2015 model which costed me €4000 used. I do not know if they where for sale outside of Norway (I only see them here!), but it is the perfect car for 95% of our mobility needs. I drive it to work every day (where I can charge it for free). I drive it to Oslo and can park/charge almost anywhere around town for really cheap, about €…

Currently in the process of obtaining vw eup, I'm little bit nervous if I'm not doing a mistake but this thread gave me some comfidence. Thanks

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#653

Post by lubosm »

When we moved, my wife was looking for an electric scooter to get to the train station for a commute to work. When we considered the weight and practicality in bad weather, we found new Dacia Spring 2023 model for 14,000 € in sales. It's a game changer since we charge it exclusively at home for about 1 € per 200 km range. There is virtually no maintenance. Having a VW Passat diesel for longer trips, we cannot be happier.

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#654

Post by globular-toast »

pornel wrote: post #626
globular-toast wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your strategy for scrapping a car? I find people grossly underestimate the cost of car ownership mostly due to cost of maintenance and repairs at the end of life. It's so easy to keep bleeding parts and labour for longer than is economical.

EV motors typically outlive the rest of the car. Leaf is old enough that there's a whole cottage industry of battery repairs, replacements, and repurposing them for solar energy storage.

I assume you mean the batteries? What do people use the motors for?

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#655

Post by rsynnott »

floxy wrote: post #342
rsynnott wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems with this car are all around the battery pack (though honestly these problems are a little exaggerated). The battery pack is, for practical purposes, a 15 year old design. This car is no longer made. When it was being made, it was the only electric car you could buy with such an old battery pack design. Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.

I got 42% off of the MSRP when buying a new 2025 SV+.

Yeah, I think this is the only way the could sell them, at this point, with the 3rd gen about to come out. Though, where did you even buy it? I vaguely thought they had stopped making them entirely last year in preparation for the third gen (and if I go to Nissan's website it just offers me a third-gen).

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#656

Post by j1elo »

epolanski wrote: post #639
j1elo wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would 30 minutes by car become 1.30 hours by public transport. My city has "great" public transport. It's been appraised multiple times, which I guess means that average public transport must be worse than what I've grown up with. I take 20 mins by car from home (in an outer neighborhood) to my workplace (in a central area), 55 mins otherwise. When you consider roundtrips, it adds up (and if we add a middle sto…

How praised the public transport of your city is irrelevant. What matters is how close/connected you are to it, and it to your workplace. Trains don't have stop lights nor traffic. They don't care about rush hour. They are always going to be the fastest connection to a city center. I live 4 minutes by foot from the Colonna Galleria train station, in a village 30 kilometers outside Rome, Italy. The train to Termini (R…

> Leaving work at 5:30 can easily cost you 2 hours in your car.

Woah yeah that changes the calculations, I had a similar situation before, andof course I preferred the subway by far. But you know, it depends. I work late into the evening and when getting out of the office, the streets are empty. So it's a hard sell for me to use a transport option that will cost me 1 hour of my already short free time before bed. But everyone's situation is different, that's why I am in favor of keeping all options open.

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#657

Post by [deleted] »

marcusb wrote: post #335
bryanlarsen wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people regularly drive 500 miles. The question is, how many drive 500 miles without 15 to 30 minutes of stopping? That I suspect is the small number. Doing so is illegal for commercial drivers in many jurisdictions, for darn good reasons. It's downright dangerous.

As I said before, “citation please.”

[deleted]

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#658

Post by sillyfluke »

marcusb wrote: post #274
shrubble wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not an outlier for a lot of people in the USA or the western part of Canada.

Citation please. It takes over seven hours to drive 500 miles non-stop at 70mph. I’d love to see a credible source that documents “a lot” of people are routinely driving this far in their personal vehicles.

It seems 90% of people in the US travel for the holidays[0], in europe its around 70% [1], pretty easily searchable. The person you were replying to didn't use the word "routinely", you yourself added that word. It's bad form. If I'm doing 4-5 round trips over 500+ miles a year with a family I for one don't want an added hour, hour half to the trip each way every time. It's a legitimate thing to look at when deciding to buy a car.

[0] https://newsroom.aaa.com/2024/12/year-end-forecast/

[1] https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/how-...

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#659

Post by me-vs-cat »

bapak wrote: post #529
geerlingguy wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$17k minus an extra $2k added to my Camry's trade-in value, and it's eligible for the $4k used vehicle EV tax rebate at the end of the year. So out the door $15k with 36k miles and 94% doh battery, I was satisfied with the deal. At the end of the tax year I'll have paid $11k for the car, effectively. I tacked on the price of the CHAdeMO adapter mentally to the price I offered, since I knew I'd want it for the one or…

> I'll have paid $11k for the car, effectively. No you have not. You have paid $11k + a whole working car to get that one. I also can get a new iPhone every year "for only $500" if you consider the real price being "only $500 plus a year-old perfectly-working iPhone"

His trade-in car was a long way from "year-old perfectly-working".

Looking at $13k (which excludes his $2k trade-in), I'm left wondering if my own conditions are favorable for switching to EV.

Re: I bought the cheapest EV, a used Nissan Leaf

#660

Post by floxy »

rsynnott wrote: post #655
floxy wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got 42% off of the MSRP when buying a new 2025 SV+.

Yeah, I think this is the only way the could sell them, at this point, with the 3rd gen about to come out. Though, where did you even buy it? I vaguely thought they had stopped making them entirely last year in preparation for the third gen (and if I go to Nissan's website it just offers me a third-gen).

Bought it at my local Nissan dealer back in June.
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