Been wondering if a first gen Nissan Leaf would make a decent commuter car. My main concern is the battery pack's lifespan. I get the impression that most 2011 and 2012 cars are down to 40 mile range, but that later ones aren't as bad. Does anyone have any figures on how many miles the batteries can get before needing a replacement?
I was wondering how expensive is it to replace a battery? I went to car-part.com and I see batteries are $2k-$5k, used!
I guess the answer is...very expensive!
Did a bit more searching, and it seems most are at about 75% capacity by 50,000 miles. And a new battery is about $5500 with core - or used to be a few years ago. This isn't looking good.
Is 70% or so the lowest the battery gets , or do high mileage ones get down to 20-30%
californiamilleghia said:Is 70% or so the lowest the battery gets , or do high mileage ones get down to 20-30%
100% capacity is only 84 miles. I'm not sure how you can put enough miles on the battery to run it down to 20%. But it appears capacity drops until either the control unit or the driver refuses to use the battery. And I don't know if that drop off is exponential or linear.
We bought Tom's 2012 Leaf last summer with 10 bars of battery (it having gotten a new battery under warranty in 2018, based on the sale thread):
We just lost another bar of battery life sometime this spring or summer (I don't drive it much, so I don't know when it happened). The car is still reporting ~72miles of range, same as it did last summer. We've put ~8000 miles on it the past ~10months? With an energy cost around a $100 dollars? I think, rough math based on our $0.02109/kWh... and the fact that we tend to put 12-15kWh back into the pack each night, five nights a week, fifty odd weeks a year?
The good news on degradation, is that if the battery is showing pretty low miles (at least 2020 to 2021), the price reflected it... ala this video:
Another good video series from this spring was done by Lynn at Darbin Orvar:
Lots of good info and numbers in that series.
I figure in a couple years, when the winter range gets to be too low... we'll either have me start driving the Leaf as a daily and get a newer EV with better range. Or, we'll get in line about swapping in a newer/larger pack.
ymmv, etc
I saw one of these on the street the other day, when I realized that I haven't seen one in the wild in years. It's a clear demonstration of how far the technology has come in only a few years.
In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :
Is that really your cost per kWh? It's about a dime around here
In reply to Karacticus :
Ah, shoot, I misread the tarrif document... since that's easier to grab for me than actually logging in and viewing a bill. Looks like it's 6.5719c/kWh for the first 800kWh a month... afterwhich it goes down? I think sticking with 6.5719c/kWh is probably fine for this example. And it doesn't include the a $7/month basic charge. Let's say it's 800kWh/month... that would work out to a total rate of 7.4469c/kWh. So, why don't we say 7.5c/kWh?
If that's the case, and it's 15kWh from the car per day... then it'd be $281.25 for the last 10 months of usage... or say $337.5 for the year.
Compared to 24mpg for 9600miles in a year, and $4/gallon around me (which is a reasonable, if low, average for around me this year)... would be $1600 in fuel cost. So, we're saving at least $1200/year with this car. So, we could 'pay-back' a $5500 replacement pack in a tad over 4 years? Not that we'd particularly look at the math that way.
Also, these are just "off the cuff" estimates. I could be wrong on the kWh usage... since that seems to work out to {0.5kWh/mile}? Dunno if that's realistic or not (remember, it's not my car, and I don't get to look-at/drive it all that often.)... and as Karacticus has pointed out, I sometimes look at some forms too quickly. [edit 08/25: took the Leaf to pick up pizza tonight, and using Sleepywife's key, the car was reporting 4.1miles/kWh... or double what I was figuring above? So, I reckon $250 for a year of battery refills is probably a reasonable ballpark for a years usage.]
Really, though, the main drawback to the first generation of Leaf is how much energy the resistive electric heat draws. If there was a way to convert the heating to a more efficient heat-pump setup... that'd go a long way to making the car a more comfortable year-round economical transport.
Wow your energy prices are cheap! Ours in southeast Michigan is more like 17 cents a kwh.
Around here being able to get in the carpool lane alone adds a lot to a full EV ,
I heard there was a good business in buying Leafs at 70% battery and selling them in areas where 40-50 miles range was more than enough for around town and you were never going to use that in a medium size town .
I guess it also mattters what electric costs in you area ........
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