TLDR version - what do you know about the current generation leaf with the 40kw battery - 150 mile range?
Like everyone else, we started adding up what we spent on gas over the past few months and were horrified. We have 4 kids, and we do a ton of in-town running back and forth to school, sports, activities, etc. Our vehicles aren't horrific gas guzzlers, they probably average 20 MPG or so with our mix of in-town and highway (all get 25 MPG or better on a long trip, so that's not the issue). There was one night last winter where I added up my mileage between 2PM - 9PM, and I drove something like 60+ miles, never exceeding a 5 mile radius from our house. Sadly, that night probably wasn't much of an outlier. I did a big, complicated spreadsheet at the time (when gas was $3.47 a gallon for regular - the good old days) and came to the conclusion that adding another car in the name of fuel economy didn't make a whole lot of sense. I was looking at used first-gen Volts and the 2nd gen Prius at the time. I updated the spreadsheet and modeled in a new Leaf, and it could literally pay for itself with gas savings over our other vehicles.
My wife was looking up incentives, and found $2k in state funds on top of the $7500 EV tax credit that's still available on some brands. There's an additional $1k on the table to help offset the cost of a charger, wiring, etc. Long story short a base Leaf S is about 28k delivered (plus tax, title, reg) and the total rebates and tax incentives on the car alone are about $9500. We have one kid who'll be driving next year, and another 18 months after that, so adding a fourth vehicle is likely something we'd be doing over the next few years. If we're adding a fourth car to the fleet, one with minimal maintenance needs would be great, so an EV fits that profile better than most of the alternatives.
I work from home, and my wife and I split the daily running chores. There are times when we're both on the road at the same time, but the majority of the time one of us is home while the other is running around. Realistic mileage numbers would probably be 50 miles per day, all within a 30-40 mile radius. The vast majority of our mileage is within 10 miles of our house, and we have 3 ICE vehicles that can make longer trips if needed, so that isn't a concern. We could easily charge in our garage overnight. The agreement would be that my wife and I would share the car, and drive it as much as possible to improve savings.
We went to a local Chevy and Nissan dealer on Friday. We checked out the Bolts and liked them, the rear seat has a lot of room, but it wasn't very comfortable. Because of the battery recall, we couldn't drive one (I know I would like it), but they were actually busy replacing batteries as we speak. There's a $2k state incentive on a new Bolt, and the prices on the '22 models are dropping in anticipation of the cost cut on the '23 model. I had the feeling they were itching to sell them once the batteries were replaced.
We checked out a used '22 Leaf base model with 700 miles on it and really liked it. The back seat is tighter from a legroom perspective than the Bolt, but the trunk was much larger, which is a huge plus with kids who always have either a book bag or a sports bag with them. We took it for a test drive, and both really liked it. The intention is that this will save us some gas money, save some wear and tear off our other vehicles, and give us an extra car a few years down the road when we have two of our kids driving. Plus, it's a proof of concept of the whole EV thing for us, and it would give us better electrical service in the garage, which is never a bad thing.
The three big disadvantages of the Leaf I can pick out are the range on the base model is much lower than the Bolt - 150 mile range vs. 259, the Leaf uses the older CHAdeMO interface for Level 2 rapid charging on the road, and the battery is not liquid-cooled. The last two I discounted pretty quickly because I can only see us charging on the road once in a blue moon. Basically, the car would never leave a 50 mile radius around our house, so even though the range would be more limited in the winter, I'm not overly concerned from a range perspective, even factoring in the battery degrading over time. The base model doesn't have the heat pump, so I know range will drop a lot in the colder weather. The next model up is about $8k more and offers more range, a heat pump, and more features, but the financials don't make sense for our use case.
TLDR - What do you know about the current generation Leaf, and would you recommend one for our use case?
