Sell your car for free with Carwow: bit.ly/Sell-Your-Car-For-Free...
Mat’s got his hands on one of the cheapest electric cars in the whole of the UK, and he’s about to find out just how the performance & range of the car has changed from when it was first released.
The car’s a first-generation Nissan Leaf, and Mat bought it through Carwow for just £1,500. When it was first released it would have cost from around £21,000, and that even included a £5,000 government grant! So even though it wasn’t the most expensive car when it was first released, there’s no denying Mat managed to pick this one up for a bit of a bargain!
As new, the Nissan Leaf came with a 24kWh battery pack that was good for a claimed range of up to 124 miles. It also had a single electric motor that drove the front wheels only and was able to put down 109hp.
The question is, with the maximum claimed range already relatively low, will Mat have any chance of reaching his final destination? And what exactly will happen when the car finally runs out of charge? You’ll need to stick with Mat and see for yourself!
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:18 Range Test Start
08:45 Design
10:32 Interior
12:35 Boot
13:22 Range Test Cont.
14:31 Battery Health
19:39 Range Test End
Sell your car for free with Carwow: bit.ly/-Sell-Your-Car-For-Free-1004
I have not even a car 😅 im 8...
No thanks, if I'm gonna sell my car, I expect to get some money for it. Technically, "selling something for free" isn't really selling, that's just giving it away.
The Nissan Leaf looked good,@@zlozlozlo
EVs are still rubbish
@@zlozlozlo Glad you said it 😂
The most unrealistic thing on this video is the fact RAC actually showed up within 12 hours!
I agree, Years ago I broke down in a company car and we had 5 star cover. After many calls to their head office the tow truck finally turned up 10 HOURS later. They then said I could not have a loan car which was part of our package because all the depots had closed for the night.
Strange that - the few times we have called them out - they have been with us within the hour.
Your talking rubbish
@@simony2801 sure; with a fleet of over 60+ vehicles, all “benefiting” from RAC breakdown cover through our fleet insurance, I’m pretty sure we have a good hand in experiencing their p*ss poor performance. Over the past 8weeks, we’ve needed 7 recovered for different reasons, and the FASTEST RAC have ever arrived is 5 hours!
@@MrMainty1 They probably prioritise consumers over companies. Also, did you miss the part where he said he pre-booked?
The car's original price was 24,000 pounds AFTER government subsidies, which means the actual cost of the car was about 30,000. And now you can buy it for 1,500. That is a 95% loss in resale value. CRAZY!
But it like a super cheap for a reliable, shopping car.
This is the earliest model of relatively new tech, and one of the worst implementations possible. Teslas from just few years later tend to level off at ~80-90% of their original charge, with ranges starting at ~250 mi.
@@robertgworek2497 50km on full charge isn't reliable by definition.
@@thimblemunch24 60 miles is not equal to 50km.
Yes but your current pairing the cost of at least 10 times more for the Tesla it's not worth it
So the car’s estimate at the beginning was pretty much spot on - it said 59 and you got 60.
On a full charge.
@@tooyoungtobeold8756 That's why Leaf drivers drive at 50 on the motorway !
The most shocking thing about this video is the calling the RAC and it still being daylight when they turned up!
They prebooked them, it said so in the Video
It probably was the next day
Your sarcasm is not grounded. in the last 20 years, I called RAC maybe 4 times and I have never waited more than 1 hour.
@@5084204 5 hours for me the last time
@@5084204 damn, wtf do you do to your cars?
The cheapest "anything" in the country probably won't be a good indication of what you can get if you go to the used market in general.
Except in this case it was. Car prices deflating is a ticket to some decent cars at reasonable prices, for a change
@@PJWey EV's are. EV's with little range left.
Especially when it's using battery technology from over 10 years ago, in an industry that has rapidly progressed in the last 10 years.
@@WIImotionmasher The tech it's using is actually older. As they used already old battery tech in that car. We are not talking Tesla's here. As the 2013-14 Tesla's are only down 2/3 of their original prices at most.
Matt failed to mention it only cost £3.75 at current kWh price to fully charge it.. If you work close to home or just do the school run 2x a day this would easily do you 5 days without charging. People need to realise it’s a town/ city car
£1.80 at 7.5p per kwh if 24kw battery
That's it, I'm not a EV owner mainly because I live in the Dale's but if I lived in the city and only did a few miles a day this wouldn't be a bad buy
@@cuprashoe Even the Yorkshire Dales has EV charging.... at least there is at the community owned petrol station in Hawes, North Yorkshire.....
bro i put petrol in my city car once a month how the hell can you argue for electric under any circumstance
@@raduf.3873 My EV does the equivalent of 230+ mpg and an do 0-60 mph in 3.8 seconds. Can your city car?
Few things as an ex-Leaf owner (2015 version): • I think the 124 range you mentioned, was the "rated" range, which is about as reliable as the range-o-meter in the dash. I had the Tekna (top spec at the time) and I used to get about 90 miles safely with normal driving style. • The range-o-meter was affectionately known as the "guess-o-meter" in the community. It bases the range of current driving so the estimate changes wildly as you drive. • I opted for the Tekna model as it had a heat pump for the climate, other models had a resistive heating system that would eat battery! • The map in the car used to make me chuckle, especially as I used to potter over to the Trafford Centre a lot and it had the "Manchester Ship Canal" listed as "Manchester Shit Canal" which was classic as there is a sewage works next to the motorway as you went over it. • It uses a CHAdeMO rapid charging connector which in the UK is getting harder and harder to find. CCS2 is the standard now and CHAdeMO has been phased out a lot over the past years. Honestly, when I had the car I loved it. I made some videos on it including charging at rapid stations. When my finance finished I switched to an ICE Ford Fiesta after it and really missed it, but at the time the then "new" Leaf was ridiculously expensive. These days I am in a Model 3 and soon a Model Y as well and it is night and day. Driving down to London I look at the services I use to have to stop at in the Leaf and remember the stop start nature, now the range of the Tesla is longer than I would drive without a break. It was a great car, I used to love the acceleration especially at traffic lights with a Police car next to me, setting the speed limiter to 33MPH and flooring it, I did about 30k miles in it with no charger at home (lived in an apartment block at the time) and I still look back on the car as a great car. If you bought a used gun metal grey Tekna Leaf with a reg of MK65 KDN, congrats - that was one mine! :D
Its GOM, Guess-O-Meter
Actually CHAdeMO charging is increasing and is a real advantage. No-one is making CHAdeMO cars anymore, but they're still being installed (not in every case, but there are more every year) so the ratio of cars to chargers is getting better all the time, unlike for most electric cars. I've pulled into busy charger stations with huge queues for CCS, and got a charge straight away.
But the range meter was spot on ??
I’ve still got my 2014 Leaf. The battery is down to ~100 km but that usually gets me through a week of driving to work and running errands. The only thing I don’t like is that the telematics don’t work anymore so I can’t pre-condition the cabin while plugged in before leaving. Also, living in Canada where car thefts are on the rise but it’s almost 200 km to the next city, it’s not a vehicle many thieves target. 😅
The early leafs had the worst battery chemistry, and no thermal management. Undoubtedly fully charged to 100% after every trip. Both of which killed the battery much quicker than more modern ones.
Yes and also they have very few high voltage cells instead of many low voltage cells, which is cost efficient when producing but not very well for long term life of the batteries.
The same thing will be said about today's wonder EV's in 10-15 years as well. This, of course, means that your 1-3 year old EV today will be just as worthless in value in less than a decade as this Leaf.
@@markmonroe7330 not if you buy a NIO, then you will just upgrade your battery.
@@markmonroe7330 Depends. The battery tech today is vastly superior to 10 years ago, which means a modern EV should hold its capacity/age less than an original Leaf so you'll have way more capacity left both in percentage terms but also because it had more to start with. Unless there's a dramatic shift in tech, such as solid state batteries that double the range and lower the weight or something, you won't see nearly as much crap around. Sure they will still have lost capacity, but you're average 300 mile Tesla Model 3 will still be able to do 3/4 times the range of this leaf.
@@markmonroe7330 incorrect battery chemistry has changed significantly in the last 10 years, new batteries have cars running high mileages ie over 250k with minor degradation kzhead.info/sun/p8eDormqp5GPmqs/bejne.htmlsi=lYJXhkG3QlRRIgf_ and this will only improve. Also ICE cars also degrade over time ie they have huge hp losses, their mpg decreases yet no one seems to think that is news worthy.
The problem is, the sort of people that would want/benefit most from a £1500 EV are also the sort of people that probably don't have anywhere to charge one at home. They're utterly useless for anyone living in a flat or with communal parking, and next to useless for anyone with on street parking, all left at the mercy,expense and inconvenience of the public chargers.
Add first time drivers to that list and shared housing, in a future where potentially two parents already have an electric car, so what at a minimum a first time driver you will have 3 cars plugged into house electrics? Never mind siblings etc. Can a house even support that amperage, no idea? My house 5 cars currently 6 people living here no way we could all be plugged in at once, running cables across the road. Also charging a car with no driveway, theyl be cables running across the street everywhere. I think its looking like carbon neutral combustion or hydrogen is clearly the way!
99% of people with £1,500 won’t ever get an EV well not for at least 20 years. This video is stupid.
@@mgproryh the car has only 15kwh of capacity. That's just 10 hours at 1.5kw. That's a very low load for any domestic electric supply.
Yes, easily @@mgproryh
@@ISuperTed No, but your comment is stupid, altho I don't mean that is a nasty / flame-y way. This tec is hurtling down the pike at us, and in 5 years all sorts of cheapy used-car EV deals will be out there. In 2030 the Chinese will be making wonderful 500-mile range EVs for under-$10k new price. So the MG4 you bought in 2024 for 16K GBPs will be worth a fraction of that. The sub-1500 GBP crowd - of which I have been a proud member so many times - will have lots of choice.
I have a 2016 Nissan leaf, it still averages 80 miles to a full charge, not that it matters in the slightest because it's used to take me 10 miles to work, to do the school run and the occasional run to the next town (20 ish miles away) I can't remember the last time I fully charged it. Charging it at home on a time of use tariff it costs about 2 / 2.5p a mile to run. Even if the battery lost 1/4 of its capacity it would still be perfectly usable. And even after that it's got enough capacity to be given a second life as a home battery storage.
Yep can't agree more and the story gets even more compelling with EV's with much more range and a better BMS. For most people they will be good for 20 years+
I own a 2018 Renault Zoe (which shares some parts with the Nissan Leaf) and was leasing the battery for 100€ a month. Last year I asked if I could purchase the lease, and it only cost me 3500€. All in all it cost the same as if I bought the battery with the car originally. After 5 years and 66000km, I've lost about 8% capacity.
I still have one of these, alongside my Kia EV6. Its not a long range, but fine as a city commuter. Costs virtually nothing to run, and if you can buy them for £1500 thats less than an electric bicycle.
I'd take the electic bicycle
@@ybergikthe car has free road tax. I would always take a car over a bicycle. Unless they start sorting out decent cycling routes.
@@chrishart8548even then... Rain.
@@ybergik Of course you'd take the electric bike, because getting pi$$ed wet through is fun, isn't it?
Well there's more cost involved, like insurance for the car, bike doesn't have that
My 2013 Leaf still has >80% original capacity and does most things it did when new. The biggest issue is that the tech has moved on massively, and with it peoples expectations.
How many miles more or less?
You must live in a cold climate. In places like Florida, the Leaf's of this era all died due to Nissan's decision not to cool them.
@@aussie2uGAwell seems like it turned to be a costly decision for Nissan.
The problem isn’t the range decline but that some battery’s cells sometimes go short what requires immediately needs repairing
So did this one but after full charge only 54 miles range.
In 2019, I bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf with a bit over 30,000 km on the odometer. It initially had 11 bars of battery health, which decreased to 10 bars by the time I sold it. I drove it for 1.5 years, covering approximately 10,000 km. During the summer, it offered a range of 100-120 km, while in winter, the range dropped to 80 km. Unfortunately, in Germany, the purchase price was 10,000 Euros, and I sold it for 6,700 Euros. Nonetheless, it served me well for my daily round trip of 28 km to work, and I could easily charge it using a standard Schuko plug in my garage. I appreciated the ability to schedule preheating for every day of the week, and the rear camera proved to be very useful. Additionally, I utilized LeafSpy for monitoring purposes. Overall, it was a great car, but I decided to switch to a Tesla Model 3 Performance in 2021. 🙂
I have exactly the same model. Have had it for 3 years. Use it for my commute to work 20km round trip. Only charge to 80%. Recharge 2x Week at home in the garage. Super comfortable to drive. Zero maintenance. We have another car for longer trips but mine is perfect.
Thank god I was worried about you for a sec
zero maintenance? you think your table with wheels doesn't need maintenance on its electronic components? who are you trying to fool?
@@zedeco i mean my mom has had a third hand (or second hand i dont remmeber) toyota yaris and she never had to actually take it to maintenance except for the legal checkups that a car needs to go through every now and then, that fucking thing is invencible
@@TARmeow it's a Toyota, they are known for durability, but even then they need maintenance and i guarantee on checks ups they do maintenance before its goes through check-up, other wise it wouldn't pass the check-up, it happens to my car and i pretty much doubt that your mother car doesn't do maintenance.
@@zedeco Name the maintenance required on the electrical components of an EV. We'll wait.
A neighbour has one of these, the range nowadays is around the 60 mile mark. He says its fine for his commute and he treats it like his phone-plugs it in every night, and its ready to go.
why tf do you have a scam link on your profile and having that as ur pfp commenting on a carwow video, weird ass
shh bot
Most people don't drive that far in two days. When I first got my Leaf I was lucky if I drove 85 miles in a week. That changed when it became my work vehicle. But in domestic use it only needs two or three charges a week at most and that's only if I'm making irregular long journeys. Domestically I can travel as little as 6 miles in a day. 90% of the time I drive less than 24 miles in a day. But, if I need to I can still get anywhere in the UK because the infrastructure is SO much bigger and better than it was when I got my Leaf and new providers are still serving early adopters who have Chademo.
I've had a 2012 leaf for 7 years, sure it doesn't have great range, but I didn't buy it for a lot of range, I bought it for my work commute, and it's doing that great. I have replaced the main battery a few years ago with a second hand 2016 24kw leaf battery and it's still going ok. The car is like driving a go cart and I honestly like it better than driving my wife's brand new Atto 3. (yea, the Atto 3 has a lot more features and range). I personally will never go back to fossil fueled cars.
@@trevorberridge6079 you are like most of uks drivers Drive a few miles to work and back home Drove a couple of miles to supermarket and home Drove few miles to the gym and home Most people are like you Doing about 30 miles per day , usually a lot less So a EV would suit MOST people , they just won’t admit it Obviously some people haven’t got a drive to charge it at home I personally have never ever bought a house without a drive Can pick up a 3 bed semi with driveway for 130k in the north east
I swear that at first I was reading the licence plates as "Big Nope" 😂😅🤣
That's a lot better than what _I_ was reading.
😂
That's a stretch mate
11:03 CD? WoW that's an incredible extra luxury that modern cars don't have anymore. I ❤ it
There's no soul in SD card players. No skipping when you hit a pothole, no swapping disks tucked into the sunvisor
Some extremely useful info regarding batteries: There are 3 main different battery technologies that were at some point or another used in EVs. Li-Ion, Li-Po, LiFePo4. The market right now is almost if not completely exclusively using Li-Ion batteries due to their small size and light weight. Basically Li-Po are the lightest and smallest, but also have the worst charge cycle count (how many times you can charge the battery 0-100% before it is considered "bad"). LiFePo4 have by far the superior charge cycle count, but are quite bigger and heavier. So the happy middle ground is Li-Ion. Many times used in this 18650 or 21700 cell form factor. That Nissan Leaf, might have been using Li-Po batteries just by seeing those pouches and how they got swollen. Generally you can expect up to 100-300 cycles out of a Li-Po, 300-1000 out of a Li-Ion and 1500-6000 out of a LiFePo4 battery. What is a charge cycle really? In theory it is the sum of the partial charge cycles (for example 40-100, 15-100, 50-100, 95-100, these four charges would be 2 full charge cycles, because they sum at 200% of charge need). But that's not the whole story. A battery is happier if it's SoC (state of charge) doesn't fall below 20%. Most importantly it's way happier if it doesn't stay below 20% for extended periods of time (not charging it for a day or two...). It's also happy if it doesn't stay at 100% for extended periods of time. So, if you make sure that the battery isn't close to those extremes, you can extend these charge cycles quite considerably. So, for example a Tesla battery of the last year, should have some Li-Ion cells capable of 1000 charge cycles (impressively high for Li-Ion, best on the market). If tesla engineers make sure their reported SoC is slightly different to the real SoC of the battery, making sure to stay away from those extremes, the battery can last up to 3500 smaller charge cycles (25-90%), which is up to 2500 full charge cycles instead of just 1000... 3500 charge cycles is roughly 10 years somebody might say. And that's pretty much the case if someone totally drains their car daily. However,I don't believe tesla puts so relaxed extremes to their batteries (because they would lose advertised range that way...), so I think it's more like 2000 cycles of 10-90%. Roughly 6 years for daily draining. Realistically you will use all the battery every 2-3 days if you drive a lot, so... 12-16 years? Something like that. Is charge cycle count the only consideration when talking about battery life? No... Battery ageing occurs no matter what, it's just faster if the battery is empty or full. For a Li-Ion battery you can expect 10-15 years of battery life no matter how much you take care of it. So. What does it mean for a battery to die? In the world of Lithium batteries, a dead battery is a battery that is below 80% if its original capacity. Why is that? Basically from 100% to 80% the battery again curve is a straight line, slowly going down in a straight line as the years or the charge cycles pass. However at 80% of its original capacity, this straight line becomes a more and more aggressive curve. That actually means that after that 80% point, the ageing of the cells occurs faster and faster and faster. You might need 10 years to go to 80%, but you will need 5 years to go to 60%. 2 years to go to 40%. 1 year to go to 10%. That's just an example, but these numbers are almost accurate. So basically, your battery is still ok at 85%. At 80% starts the downhill and nothing can stop it. So, what does that mean for the Nissan Leaf? First of all, the car already has a kind of bad battery technology if they were using Li-Po cells. So, I assume the 100-80% window closed at around 8 years of use at best. Secondly, the battery that now is at 65-70% is considered dead. You can expect month by month to see a slight reduction in mileage. In the next ~2-4 years, the battery will completely die, unable to do much of anything. Are 1500£ worth it? Meh... Idk... The car works and it's electric... It might not pay itself because there are too few charge cycles remaining... I mean, for 1500£, you get an electric scooter with less range, so... Yeah. It is kind of value for money... I might would have bought this or something similiral and try to fit my own batteries somehow 😃 That would give me 15 full years of way better range... They only bad thing is that these things have lots of factory locks and stuff... I'd really love to be able to put my own batteries on any of the EVs... Imagine having a second full battery in the trunk... Imagine doing that on a new car. 1000km of range. Anyways. These were some nice info for Lithium batteries.
Thanks so much for sharing, this is really helpful! I've also heard that you don't have to worry so much about charging LFP batteries all the way to 100%, at least compared to the other two types of chemistry. And that a heat pump really makes a difference for range, especially in the winter time
Cost of new battery= new Nissan 😂😂😂
= cost of German car options
= cost of Rolls Royce button
You understand you also have to pay for the work hours?
DANKPODS NUGGET!
Why would you buy a new battery, when refurbishing the existing battery would cost around the same as fitting a clutch in an ICE car? It seems you've not heard of battery pack refurbs.. There are already EV specialists doing this work. You just didn't know anything about them....
£1500 bargain. I owned one of these for 3 years, first car I bought online but wasn't paranoid like an Ice car. Was faultless. £22 per 1000 miles. Never saw turtle mode. EVs don't suit all but was great for us.
Much rather have a naturally aspirated V8, V10 or V12
@@markgt894what in the heck are you talking about lol these cars are the gas equivalent of an i4 1.5L,id rather not hear that thing at all
So you're saying a V12 Lamborghini would be better than a Dacia Sandero? Wow.. what a revelation, you should let the world know of this fantastic discovery @@markgt894
@@markgt894what are you trying to prove with this comment? Absolute moron.
Not when they're 10 years old
I had a 2013 Nissan Leaf for many years, and it was one of the best vehicles I ever had. Yes, the range sucked, but the 70 miles was all I needed to get to work, go to the store, and then come home. More and more apartments these days have charging spots - I had charging at home AND at work during this period. It only costed me $7k, and my $100/month payment was about was I used to pay JUST FOR GAS. The only maintenance it needed over its 10 years was tires a couple times, and the 12v battery died one winter. ($100 replacement) I eventually sold it for nearly what I paid for it.
So you didn't actually win financially? You were paying off the car, which by your own admission cost the same as your fuel used to, PLUS charging costs. 😂 So if anything you were paying more to run it. And I don't believe you sold an EV for near what you paid, "many years later".
@@CadillacDriver hello bozo
@@josefish5193 Another internet tough guy, spitting insults from behind your internet safety shield.
@@CadillacDriver are you regarded
@@CadillacDriver 😂😂😂😂😂😂marry me cadillacdriver
Head over to Geoff buys cars where one Renault owner was quoted £11,000 to fix the heater and another £9000 to fix the charger.
£1,500 in Australia would be around $3,000 AU. The problem here is that second hand car's are still pretty expensive. The cheapest second hand LEAF. I could find in Victoria was $13,000 which translates to around £6,500. For that sort of money I'm sticking with a cheap ICE 4 cylinder which won't give me range or charging anxiety. Car's are way overpriced here in Australia
Car wow ripped off the seller here These still sell for about 4K in the uk
You think Aussie car prices are expensive… Wait til you see how much cars cost in Singapore
I think that some used Australian Leafs are shipped over from Japan.
Leafs are more expensive in Australia than they are elsewhere because they are imported. We have a Nissan factory in the UK so we don't pay the higher prices.
@@boyasaka The cheapest on Autotrader (one minute ago) is £2000. 81000 miles though. I'm not sure if age or use is the biggest factor in battery degradation though. Every Li-ion battery that I have had fail has been through not being used. At the opposite end of the price range electric cars are depreciating badly in the U.K. because all the tax benefits are for leasing a new one.
My 2014 Leaf, with 240.000km with around 70% SOH. Clocks daily 75km, with no problems and still some electrons left for a few more km, so a great commuter.
if it was German combustion car it would be broken down by then
never had such a problem with my petrol car I don't even check the range 🤣😂😂😂😂
@@Flackoknowsinteresting, you should probably have your engine serviced…
@@hassyg4083not really.
has it still any warranty left?
Yeah, i have a friend that bought one of these used recently. He is very happy with it. He charges it nightly and most all days he drives less than half of the 60 mile range. If he has to drive further he just takes his wife’s car that day. Its a specific use for shorter commutes but if for a few k you can get a car that does all your local driving without needing gas, its a good deal.
With every car I ever owned, I always exceeded 44 000 miles in about 4 years. To me, buying a car that is useless within after 44 000 miles, is ... Crazy!
A bit of silicon spray for the slow moving windows can create wonders.
Work
WD40 does the trick too. And sometimes just cleaning them with a rag and a little stick will do it too
until dust gets in it. now you have a scratchathon
Why would you even have to ?!
Why would you even have to ?!
9 bars in a LEAF doesn’t mean it’s got 75% left, it means the SOH is somewhere between 66.25 and 72.5%
Exactly this. The degradation on the battery means the range is compromised. Most likely due to rapid charging too much.
@@kitcht probably, either that or it’s just because it’s a very early LEAF (made clear by the light colour interior and intrusion into the boot from where I believe the inverter / charging electronics are). The very early ones were known to have pretty terrible batteries and they were quickly changed. The later 24kWh batteries appear to be the most robust of the earlier shape LEAF’s as the 30kWh is known to degrade quite fast especially if rapid charged a lot.
Yep, its a non-linear gauge.
@@kitchtnope. The Leaf battery declines with age, regardless of charging history….
@@gary3074- The difference between “perfect” and “terrible” charging behaviors will determine whether your battery lasts 3 years or 20. This is according to several really detailed studies on the topic. Not only that, but the Leaf is especially sensitive to your charging habits, because it has no thermal management.
It's good to know how these hold up over time, so thank you for running this test
this was a very very long video to show that the battery degraded 30% in 10 years, that the battery expert simply reads the data provided by the car anyway, and that the range indicator surprisingly is spot-on. could've been a 2 minute video.
Degraded 30% from an already overstated range in a mere 2 years (worth of driving @44k miles).
I was remembering that the early Leaf's only had an effective range of about 80 miles at least here in the US. So, an 11 year old car that now has 60 miles, I don't think is terrible for 1500 quid. For an around town car, I think it is a great deal.
Its awful. I can get a Mercedes A class, with 32k miles on it, and it wont be mouldy inside. Its a car for doing run arounds, and school runs yeah? What about when the child says their school won a sports match or got entered into a karate competition and its in the next county over? Or have gone off with the scouts and you get a phone call saying they fell and broke an arm? If you are getting a car, get one that you can throw all the neighbours kids into and take them to an event, get one that you can drive across the country should a friend be in a medical emergency, get one that can fit all the kids gear in, get one that you can drive a few towns over to pick up a cheap sofa you seen online. I live in a city so I got a 1L petrol car that is very small, but it can still fit two adults or 3 kids in the back, and I spend 90% of my time actually cycling instead of driving. I drive in very bad weather, or when I have to go places outside my cycle limit. I also drive places to go for a walk. My car is topped out on the motorway going at the speed limit, but I can actually make it to the scenic areas on my day off and spend the day out. The limit of this thing isnt 59, its 30 mile. I need to find a charger to get home then. Its the whole point of the minivan being a family car, because it does everything a family can need in one vehicle.
@@geroutathat Different people different wants and needs. I am not familiar with the London inner city charges, but can your car(s) get through those without any fees? That is one possible reason to own a car like this. It is small nimble has reasonable power and can ignore metro rules. But again everyone has different wants and desires. I see people on the road in cars I would never own, but doesn't mean that I would tell them never to buy it. I do have to admit the leaky window is a bit of a pisser.
Old Nissan Leaf, is an original and very early EV. The battery is small at 24kWH but has very little of the new battery protection tech that is in the newer EV's. At £1500 it is a great run around, where you can charge at home overnight. You should try this with a 4 or 5 year old EV and see how good that is.
So basically all these Leaf's and similar EV's from that era are now useless - how's that "eco-friendly" in any way if all those resources were spent only to make cars with a service life of 10 years?
@@cikuuzis The car paid off its emissions debt within a year (assuming all energy for charging was from fossil fuels). 10 years of operation is very eco friendly.
I have the earliest Nissan Leaf (2011) and the vehicle has been great for my particular use case of short trips only (ride motorcycle for long trips). In the 13 years of ownership so far I've spent about $1500 in total maintenance. The car's range at present is around 60-70 miles depending on how you drive it. I've babied the battery (garaged, never leave it fully charge for more than a few hours, usually leave it around 50-80% SOC). The only serious expense that cost me was last year replacing the coolant pump for the electric motor ($1100). Other than that I've replaced the accessory battery 3 times, key fob battery 4 times, and one flat tire). Best buy for me when I got it then getting a free home charger and $12.5k in subsidies off the list price.
The Nissan LEAF satnav tells you the distance to your destination as the crow flies. The actual road distance is displayed when you start driving or accept the route? I can't remember as it's years since I had my LEAF.
We ran a 24kh leaf for 6 years covered 56K miles. Even when we traded it the battery health was 11\12 bars and range was approx 90 miles in summer / 70 in winter - cost buttons to run other than tyres and brake pads and I replaced the front discs as the standard Nissan / Renault ones are cr@p . Great car for local trips if well priced 😊
The EPA estimated range of a 2013 Nissan Leaf was 75 miles. Not sure where the 124 mile range came from.
These guys are in the UK area; completely different range rating system, and their miles are NOT 1:1 with ours.
Imagine having a distance measurement unit completely divorced from reality
The WLTP range was 124 KM! Not miles.
@@jacobcarlson4010The difference is so small that in practice, it makes no difference unless you are a surveyor or scientist. That said, it's about time all of you backwards yokels moved to the metric system.
What? UK miles are different than US miles? I just looked it up and US miles are exactly the same as UK miles. Gallons are different.
Usualy, the older models BMS gets lost and goes fast to 0, but then drives for the the rest of the missing range. I had exactly the same with my Renault Zoe, I had to empty it until full stop and then recharfe to full, reset the BMS and the problem was fixed.
Nissan Leak
These are my favourite type of videos, especially with "old" electric cars, great idea!
But then they should get their facts right, but here they didn't.
@@salipander6570you gotta explain that or your comment is just a troll. As far as this is concerned, the second hand ev's are infact rubbish just like the second hand electronics market.
@@FirestormX9no, it depends what EVs you're talking about. Early leafs? Yea probably. Anything made in the last 10 years? Probably quite fine.
@@Cyrribrae yea.. just as much as anything made now as well. Absolutely the same. And if you're one of the Elon musk followers then I can just say that may God guide you on a better path. Amen.
Imagining driving around permanently with the fuel light on though, would get tiring fast
There are good reasons BEV batteries and their management got FAR better over time. The average US commute is roughly 25 miles, which is TINY compared to the range of the typical modern BEV.
You'll get used to it quickly, especially if you drive the same routes all the time. For example: I know my commute (45km) costs about 15% charge with the current weather, so last week I left home with 20% state of charge and arrived with 4% without ever thinking "will i make it? . The range is a lot more predictable than a petrol car that's low on fuel. Having said that, you don't want this car if you make 30+ mile trips all the time. It's fine for
Let’s face it looks useless, your range of 60 miles was full on a full charge, using the 10:38 recommended 20-80% charge would leave a real world range of 36 miles
Awful hateful things
😂😂
Mine is 2014 it had 1 bar loss on battery status when we got it 5 years ago - that has not changed it has the same battery status now - our range is 60 miles in the winter and a bit more in summer we love it.
the range is not linear to the capacity, sadly. but on the leaf it is very easy to replace the cells and increase the capacity and range, as there are many places they have specialized on this (I hope one day this is also available for zoe)
The damp smell is because you darent run the heater because of its effect on the range. Condensation over years means... damp. Mine is the same, even with the black spots on the seatbelts.😂
And in my petrol cars, I run the A/C all the time with no worries on range. In the winter, the A/C acts as a dehumidifier with heat. And cools in the summer. My oldest car is now 14 years old, and I've serviced and repaired everything myself since new on all my cars. There are no issues on any of them even after 14 years. I would have an older car from 2005 but had to get ride of that due to ULEZ. Only time I need to take to a garage is for MOT, AC regas, wheel alignment and tire replacement as all that needs calibrated equipment that is not practical to buy for a few cars at home. All other repairs are possible at home with petrol and it works as good as new after so many years. That can't be said for EV
@@teddy6888 I do not agree on that AC thing. I used to do Lisbon to Porto in Portugal in the summer, some outrageous 40 degree celcius, it would take the car some 25€ of diesel to reach 30km north of Porto, making it a total 360km (223 mile) range trip driving at 120kmh (70mph) (mostly), this in the winter. In the summer, as soon as AC was needed, it would munch more 10€ of diesel, making it 35€, if I wanted to reach Porto (or Lisbon in the way back) still alive and not cooked by the southern european summer sun. AC will take a toll on the overal car consumption and is no joke on a 2.0l diesel engine, In the summer my cost with fuel would go up by a noticeable amount, sometimes more 30 to 40€ in general, all because I was using AC more than not. Nowadays EVs can do that trip in one charge that will cost you about 5€ with the AC on, you reach your destination still with charge like some 10 to 15% and can charge it while having lunch, sleeping or working. About repairability, in that regard you are right, but the trend is the same all over, from computers to cars...I can service my diesel car, at home, easily. Can't say the same about the EV. But, new ICE cars follow the same trend, it is almost impossible to repair a Mercedes at home, they even have hidden batteries that will lock the car if you dare to disconect the main one. My take on this, keep your old cars running for as long as possible, because the future ir bleak for both EV and ICE.
Haven’t you figured out to run the heater while charging using the Climate timer? Pity….
@@teddy6888 well I've replaced a ball joint and brake pads on the leaf myself. There's not really much else to do on it...
Most overtaken car after a 3 wheeler just slowing down the traffic everywhere 😂
I bought my Citroen Picasso for £900 and I don't worry whether it's gonna break down because it's incredibly reliable. I also don't have to worry about making it to my destination because of dodgy battery management systems in the car, I don't need a charger installed at home and my maintenance costs are a lot lower than people might think, about £6/week covers MOT and servicing, £27/month road tax and £360/year insurance (what a scam eh!! they value the car at £300) so I can drive it and forget about it🤣
We have 2013 leaf, It’s the BEST car we have ever owned, does all our local trips, cost eight grand 10 years ago only spent £740 on servicing in all that time plus MOTS (which it’s never failed) we do about 8000 miles a year £2.50 a week in charging over night. Battery health 86% after 81k, we love it ❤
I have a 2013 Leaf in Sri Lanka.Most of the cars of similar age and mileage in Sri Lanka have less than 50% of it’s battery left by now(Mine barely managed 30 miles when i bought it lol).It’s probably because the hotter climate coupled with the fact that the thing doesn’t have an active cooling system for the battery unlike almost every other ev.So i swapped in a 30kWh battery pack and it runs like new.Btw mine has that exact same issue with the front window motors lol.As you said it’s a fun little thing to drive and i love it.And considering it’s the first remotely affordable mass produced ev, i think it’s holding up pretty well.
How much did it cost you to swap the battery pack, in dollars or euro?
@@Kraven83 about 5k USD.
They definitely work as a low cost short-run city car, but limited use if your work journey paterns are longer or more random
The last time I went to Sri Lanka, the rental cab I took was a Toyota Prius hybrid, the near noiseless engine was just amazing. The driver told me the car starts off in electric mode, then the engine kicks in whenever power is required. The dashboard had a console that showed the whole process. Hybrids are amazing, I think these are the future, and Toyota seems to have gotten the game plan far ahead of their rivals..
@@arbjful In Oxford, the taxi cartel Royal Cabs have been using prius exclusively since 2012. They operate their own mechanics and used tire vendors to lower overall TCO and every hybrid is racking in 150k-200k miles. Toyota really made them well, very few engine issues too.
59 miles is about as much as my car will do when the fuel warning light comes on.
40kmiles car should still be like new. my mum recently got low miles micra 40k and 2005 the engine like new very quite very smooth and still has full range and as very low miles gets done as long stay on top rust mum my said it out live her, 40k miles cars really on beaded in and has easy another 20 years if not more if keep on top rust. 40k miles in this ev its knackered in my eyes more than useless. my i20 done 100k 2011 and it only just had its first big cost a new clutch what was only £500, and timing chain if i don't change it in the next 5k miles but am currently looking for another car just waiting on payment a timing chain replacement as the chain tensioners can fail just over 100k-120k but some say 140k but that £500 job and car be good for another 100k miles as it burns very clean and don't drink oil so its pretty healthy engine and £500 maybe a tad over is great cost to save healthy engine. and had 4 years very reliable and can sell it more than paid for it private or about the same in exchange
Conversely my Mazda 6 ran out of diesel on the A11 while the trip computer said it had 125 left. It never got anywhere near the official consumption, while on many of my cars I’ve beaten the figures. In defence it was more fun to drive than anything like that had a right to be and a lot quicker than expected.
This is a 2013 car that's 11-12 years old, it doesn't matter that it's done 40000 miles, it could have done 20 or 80 it would still be getting old and tatty. I don't think 60 miles out of a car that could do 80 in 2013 is that bad give it a break. Also we have no way of knowing how long this one could last, maybe a year, maybe 10 🤷
@@timscott3027 And my 30 year old Opel still doing the same miles when she came out. EVs are the 4 wheeled iPhones.
Your crew has the new Countryman, very nice 😅 I still haven’t gotten used to the brand new design of it!
I like my Ioniq 6 lease with free charging. Higher end model, AWD, 0-60 - 4.3 sec. $369/mo, $3k due, 24k lease miles, $.20/mile over. Replacing 2019 CTS that I was paying $250/mo on with gas in the range of 200-250/mo. Haven't sold the CTS yet, but after driving it to work again recently, I prefer the Ioniq 6, no contest. Only thing better on the CTS is the sound system. One of the easiest things to upgrade.
When I owned a Leaf I plug in every night at home. I had a routine 30km consistent commute, and when I sold the car on it had 125,000 KM with plenty of life left 11/12 bars. It's not a road trip car but for it covered all my city driving entirely, without ever stopping to charge during the day. Perfect for families who want a second car to get off of gas, and cheap as heck to buy.
I stick £45 in my BMW 3series diesel on a Monday morning and don't need to do any "recharging" all week either as six UK gallons will get me 340miles a week which is my weekly commute My car takes approximately 5 minutes to refuel and it doesn't need a chargepoint at home... diesel is available at every supermarket or service station Plenty of little cheap reliable runaround ICE's for £1500 without the range anxiety and lifestyle restrictions. EV's are still mainly using fossil fuels to generate the sparks
@@TheComputec It's almost like you don't realise that almost all EV drivers owned ICE cars before or they still do. We do know, you know.
I've taken my 24kwh 2015 Leaf 437 miles to Edinburgh, around the city and back again totalling 890 miles in two days. It IS a road trip car if you allow for charging time on the way. That time was very useful for toilet stops, rest breaks and getting a bite to eat. Occasionally I would have more charge in the car than I needed by the time I'd done what I needed to do at that stop. And on the way back I was able to take 3 hours off of my charging time as I became familiar with how much charge I actually needed. I've been to Brighton, Kings Lynn, Southend, Harrogate, Farnsbrough... there's nowhere I've wanted to go that I couldn't get to. When I get the time I still plan to go to Edinburgh again with my 77% SOH and I also want to go to see friends in Liverpool and Coleraine in Northern Ireland. I've planned the trips out every year to see how much easier the infrastructure has made it, so I know I can do the trips with little worry.
@@TheComputec1. Your diesel car wastes 70% of that fuel heating air instead of moving the car. This means the electricity can be entirely coal powered, and still much better for the environment. 2. You don’t need a “charge point”, you can just plug it into an outlet. Leaf plug charges at just 10A. 3. Plugging it in or out takes about 5 seconds and you don’t need to drive to a useless gas station. 4. Diesel is funding Putin and other dangerous autocrats. 5. Diesel releases even more NOx emissions which literally poisons people, which is why they are banning it in cities.
EV cars fooled into it then try to justify their conditioning
Super informative video.. Always wanted to know how it would be to own an old EV.. Grand job Mat and the crew.. ❤
This is worst case scenario. Newer EVs are much better to buy used and their batteries last much longer
From someone who is programming Battery Management Systems for a living: On a cheap EV, I would suspect a short development time for State Of Charge and State Of Health calculations. Getting this stuff right is not easy, so the computer repeatedly makes wrong guesses and (luckily) corrects itself after it has noticed that the previous guess was wrong. Cell age affects a few important characteristics of the cells, making predictions very difficult.
And then you have the dendrite formation, a real battery killer.
I had a 2013 Leaf Tekna (the late 2013 upgraded version with LED lights and a few other stuff) that I sold last fall. It had done 105 000 km and still had 12 bars of health. The LeafSpy app showed that the actual health was 86% so just about to lose a bar. It still did 130 km in the summer. Only reason I sold it was the poor winter range and I had a regular need to drive 2 hours there and back, so the car just wasn't keeping up.. That being said I really loved that car. 5 years of ownership and it was such a comfortable and good ride. I replaced it with a cheap 2010 Ford Fiesta 1.6 TDCi and that has been such a downgrade in every conceivable way, except range. Full tank of diesel can get me at least 800 km away from home. My next car is likely gonna be a 2018-2020 40 KWh Nissan Leaf Tekna as I wanna go back to the reliability and comfort it has to offer.
Buying a Nissan leaf like this is in 2024 is like going on ebay and buying an old VHS video recorder with a fully wired remote control
And then comparing it to the convenience of 4K streaming
I guess you wish that all 1st generation Nissan Leafs were taken off the road?
@@joelaw728And what do you think will happen to a 10-year-old Tesla? Lol
'cept the VHS would still play your videos. Where do you think the 2024 Milk floats will be in 10 years?
Nissan Leaf is still a modern EV, isn't a horse and cart
I think the takeaway here is how quickly EV batteries have advanced in 10 years. When you think this car didn't start with much range, has much older battery tech, old battery management system and as far as I am aware it is a passively cooled battery. I'll be curious how current EVs fair in a decade. I think though if you have a new driver or someone who only drives to the shops or local friends, £1500 with dirt cheap servicing and £3.50 to fully charge to do 50-60odd miles, it's not as bad as you'd think
Stuff like this is what drives me insane about all the naysayers tearing in to EVs declaring they are all fatally flawed and will never work. Of course you'll never match a century of development and infrastructure. But just look at how far things have come in ten years, hell their are premium cars less than 5 years old that are being left well behind because of how fast the technology is moving. E.g. The Jaguar I-pace, a perfectly solid and usable car yet left in the dirt by a steadily lengthening list of newer (and often cheaper) cars.
@@Jarrik32 I agree, technology advancement in cars is accelerating at pace. Not to pick on the I-Pace but the issue for that car is reliability often nothing to do with the battery, like weak windscreen seals and onboard electrics like tailgate issues, software recalls dont help either mind..but people tear into the EV's due to these issues, again nothing to do with the actual battery, more level of build quality..
at that charging price it’s still about £70 to do 1000 miles, that’s comparable to a Diesel engine
Yeah advanced to the point where 100k evs could maybe do about 250 miles between charges, woopdedoo, I can drive to the other side of Europe in my 320d
@@user-fm3pw4jk2x. I run small 1.5 diesels, average mpg 60. I would get a full EV but the distances needed by me would make it unviable
As someone who owns a 2012 Nissan LEAF my battery is also at about 70% and my experience has been similar. I bought it in May 2022 with about 92K kms and have had no issues with it as it approaches 122K km. Range is an issue, but for in town daily driving it can’t be beat!
I had a 2015 leaf for 6 years, was super reliable, and took me to work and back for free. When i got hit and totalled, i got more than i paid for it. Just had to make sure i didnt forget to plug it in.
I hope the point of repairability of the battery comes more into focus during tests. With new ev cars, it's really difficult to find out how complicated a repair would be.
Hyundai Canada just tell you to scrap the car and buy another (and that is on the Ioniq 5).
There are Tesla tear downs on KZhead. Their battery packs are easily replaced (if you have the right equipment) with a couple of hours work (and a spare ten thousand if you have more than 100,000 miles on the car (otherwise it is a warranty repair)).
@@allangibson8494 oh and you know.. a $15000 lift 😂
@@6Sparx9 Tesla are currently just charging $10,000 (with recent price drops on battery packs) for a 60kWh pack (installed)…
@@allangibson8494 given that 60kwh Tesla's are more or less unheard of, that means it's actually $12,500 for the 75 and $14,200 for the 85 (assuming linear pricing, which makes sense since fitting a 60, 75, 85, 90, or 100 battery is basically the same as a process). Which basically means the new battery costs the same as the car itself - so it's functionally a write-off.
My vacuum cleaner has the same problem. Really annoying….
Bruhhhhhhhh😂😂😂😂
I had one of those. At least you can buy reasonably cheap replacement batteries for mine.
Swapped mine out to drill batteries!
Just plug in a couple of AA batteries, should double the range.
@@ScottPCis the batteries engine car can do engine swap?
the range changes depending on the driving,,,, pulling away, hills and so on. did you fast charge it? do you own the batteries? google maps is not set to fuel saver and you cant change it to fast or short, the small battery leaf did 65m from new and the bigger one done 100 plus. i was looking at getting one for 4 or 5 grand a couple of month ago but i do 32m a day just for work and i do not think the grid will cope with people charging cars every days. i will be sticking to my D2 for a while lol
Kudos. Still standing after 10 years. Seen Kill Switch. Great fx that looks great today. The FPV aspect is very good. Must have been quite hard to pitch this. Respect
This car has to be put in a museum as the symbol of "range anxiety"
Love the Leaf. I've got a 2014 24kWh with 80k on the clock and it still on full SOH, and will do 80 miles on a warm day, can carry 4 people and a decent amount of luggage and it's very comfortable. Cheap motoring if you don't need the range or if you have the luxury of it being a second car.
People justify these things as if they are ancient cars - it's only 10 years old 😂. An ICE of the same age has no compromise on using as 'just a local commuter'.
But then an ice car costs £1000s in fuel, £100s in servicing and kills people with asthma. But hey, why compromise?
@@noggintube A 10 year old car costs much more to run as a "local commuter".
@@Stubbari re-read my post. I'm saying it doesn't have the compromise of solely being used as a local commuter. It can do everything needed, whereas a 10 year leaf is pretty much stuck as a local car. I agree that's ok if all that's needed, but it's an expensive item to do just that.
@@noggintube Ah, I totally misinterpreted what you were saying.
If you do get a battery lease car then the battery is still under guarantee - so once it drops below a certain level , then you can get it repaired , under warranty,
Imagine that the gas tank of your car would shrink every day from day one, getting smaller and smaller, until it has no capacity for gasoline. This is what having an EV is like. I don't get why anybody would buy these things.
That literally happens with ICEs as well? They get less efficient with time. Not as much as EVs, but my point is, you are playing dumb imagination games.
How long does an ICE car last before it’s worthless? 7 years? EV’s last longer than that.
@@AlanTov Bollocks!! My 2013 Peugeot diesel with 95k miles on it still runs like new and is holding its value nicely because it costs nothing to tax. 😁 It's electric cars that are proving to be problematic. My mate bought an EV smart car a few months ago and it isn't charging properly, so it's been dragged off back to the dealers. Also, half the public chargers never seem to be working and the ones that do skim £45 out of your bank account before they let you charge, then don't put the money back until days later.
@@ruukinen my 2002 Honda jazz is still running quite happily at 225,000km... Yes it's less efficient than a lower km one but it still gets 7L per hundred kilometres every tank. You're argument has some truths to it but the figures are way way off.
ICE wont shrink, we have an subaru vivio 1999 since 2007 and it runs still the same 60mpg uk after 257000km bought at 74000km. We did only normal maintenance no huge costs. The only extra we did is to use fuel cleaner every year thats not a hugh expense against a battery pack
What documentation did you find where the 24kwh leaf did 124 miles of range? All the documents I've found on my 2014 with the same 24kwh battery says 84 miles from new. Mine has 10/12 bars and says it should get 70-75 miles depending on the temps. I usually drive it 30 miles / day and charge it over night on house voltage (120v here in USA).
It will be whatever the WLTP equivalent was in 2013. Which generally skewed higher than EPA.
Id buy that 60 miles is way more than enough for my 5 miles daily commute
5 милей? Так можно на велосипеде доехать:)
@@rusbiology3460 He could walk, but perhaps he prefers to drive.
And isnt that the problem. EVs are just encouraging car use.
@@bikeman123atleast they have no emissions
@@hamish2739 they still produce tire dust
1:34 to anyone who ever had to deal with electric anything it's obvious that the range estimation is based on the battary voltage and when you are using the device your voltage goes to the motor, so when you ride your car it shows less then it will show then you stop.
As a 2-time used EV owner, a 2013 Nissan Leaf is literally the worst case scenario. There are some small-battery cars that do actually surprise you. The Kia Soul EV is an example of that, simply because they actually decided to regulate the battery's temperature with water to extend it's lifespan. Leafs just let the batteries boil in the summer and freeze in the winter. I owned a 2018 Kia Soul EV with an EPA estimated 111 miles of range for almost two years, and the furthest I travelled on a single charge was 118 miles, and the range dropped onto to around 90 miles in the winter. It was genuinely a great car, and even charged at 70 kW from time to time! That charging speed let me recharge in 20-25 minutes, which some other expensive cars are still struggling to reach. Now I drive a 2017 Chevy Bolt so I can finally reasonably go on road trips, absolutely love it! Although, I miss some features of the Kia Soul. I rarely hit 50 kW when fast charging, usually more around 37 kW. Can take FOREVER to charge. However, the refreshed 2024 Bolt should address this by moving it to the Ultium platform. One thing is for sure, I will never buy an ICE car!
Great review Matt, confirmed everything I was thinking, looking for a cheap car for the Mrs to do a 6 mile daily commute and the Leaf looks like the answer, especially when she's a new driver that doesn't like changing gear!
😬 friend had a new EV jag, new. Within 3 months, multiple breakdowns. Problem is when electric cars go wrong, you can't move them. His issue was country lane (narrow) car gave up (all lights stopped working so no hazard lights) and can't be towed, has to be lifted. His kids were in that car. The health hazard that caused alone meant he quickly got rid of it. Get your Mrs a combustion engine.
The Leaf is a good car for around town. Very reliable (especially compared to that guy’s Jag haha).
@@Rampagedd Yes 1 is a really good sample size... Just because you know someone whose EV broke down doesnt mean all of them do. In fact, its much more likely to break down in a used ICE car compared to a used EV because there is much more that can go wrong. And what kind of health hazard are you talking about?
@@fremue9312 to expand, the fleet vehicles with const, engine, housing comp I work with have seemingly all gone back as faulty, new cars? Colleagues 'zoe EV' issue with headlight had head the car off the road for months as can't be fixed 🤣 please, it's your money. Atleast it's not so bad when our companies paying for the mistake..back to combu engine 😄 give it another 10 years.
There are still plenty of things that are mechanical on an EV... It's not a bloody unicorn! Steering motor Wiper Motors Heater box issues Suspension Battery Faults (as mentioned in the video) Ball joints, Bearings and anti-roll bars (more stress on a heavier EV with potholes these days) Gearbox issues (the leaf has a gearbox) General electrical issues (ECUs, Relays, shorts in lighting system etc) Heavy tyre wear Plus the risk of fire, hence the hike in insurance costs If the battery degrades to the point of death, then your £1500 suddenly becomes £3500 or it's a write-off
"you can't park here mate."
We’ve had a 2013 Renault Zoe with the 22 kWh battery for the last 4 years as our second car for driving round town and like the Leaf it’s perfect for that. And if you can charge on your destination you could also use it for the slightly longer journeys.
As a 2015 Leaf owner, I'd have liked to see the percentage of charge remaining vs the "never accurate" mileage range shown. I've even thought about putting a sticker over that spot fo the dash to keep other drivers from being tricked into thinking it's even remotely accurate.
It's a shame the original leaf had no battery thermal management and a battery chemistry that was barely up for the job. How times have changed.
Same with milk floats, battery much improved now
Indeed but i know for a fact that you can upgrade it to a more modern battery, one that lasts longer (finally has termal management), and goes way far, and still for less than buying a new equivalent EV. But still, imo for that to be worth it the rest of the car would have to be spotless...
@@markgt894 I used to drive milk floats, loved them.
@@Argoon1981it is a great car, and with a good battery it is a good city car. The batteries have improved massively and from 2017 ISH they are extremely capable of doing 250,000 miles while still retaining 80% of range. The incoming battery technology is a game changer, and the future looks awesome.
There's a reason the orignal Leafs are still on the road in everyday use. Even new chargepoints still carry Chademo because there are so many Leafs on the road that were supposed to have conked out years ago. Don't believe everything Jeremy Clarkson says. 10+ year-old Leafs still have between 75% and 95% battery capacity unless they have been severely mishandled. The battery chemistry actually worked better than even Nissan predicted.
You should drive in bad weather conditions, frosty or windy day...
You'll be lucky to find a 2014 Leaf here in Sweden with 50% capacity, the cold is REALLY hard on the battery.
Does fin in -25°C and heavy snow
My Toyota has done quarter of a million miles, barely broken in and still gets 1,000km to the full tanks AND has a great resale value!
A 2013 Leaf is a steal for that money. It's a great car and with an electric motor the maintenance is close to nothing, along with the fuel costs. How many times a week do you drive more than 50 miles/90km in a day? Our Leaf is our second car and still gets the job done admirably, even with this low range. The reason the mileage was changing so much is that it was calibrating the real world usage. It doesn't usually shift around that much, but it can change quite a lot when you swap from surface roads to freeway driving and so on.
Great video, i loved my old 24kWh leaf. I bought it used and sold 1 year later for a profit. Cheapest vehicle i ever owned and ran.
2 years ago I paid £100,000 for a Rolls Royce Ghost. I sold it a year later for exactly the same that I paid for it.
@@BibTheBoulderTheOriginalOne bet your running costs were way higher.
@@jocramkrispy305 ..as was the ownership experience...
@@BibTheBoulderTheOriginalOne I remember throwing up in the back of My dad's Lotus. 5 decades later he's not forgiven me for that depreciation...
Cheapest Leaf here is 9500€ , it makes zero sense to buy it.
You’d have to be mental to buy a used electric
The cheapest Leaf where I live is the same. That is ~8 months of wage fully saved, just to have 100kms of range + charging costs. At least I can park for free (for the time being) while I decide what to do with the 10-years-old car once no more batteries will be available or charging stations drop compatibility. No thanks. Sticking to the 20yo ICE Ford C-Max. Plenty of parts, relatively rugged and hard to break. Only thing getting more expensive is petrol. The gap between a used electric and petrol prices? Can spend it on fuel...
@@556poor7 Yeah I don't get this video at all. Most people are only interested in an electric car if can get away with charging it once a week and preferably for free at work due to costs. These used Leafs are just not practical at all.
@@forresten Then buy a diesel. Less energy to produce than petrol and better fuel consumption and longevity.
Bought one for 9500, love it. They sell like hotcakes here in Norway.
If the battery has lost that many kw, is it essentially cheaper to charge because the capacity is lower? If that makes sense
My friend has a 2011 Leaf that predicts 78-82 miles fully charged. He drives slow and carefully and regularly gets 4.7 miles/kWh. Yesterday we drove to a destination 20 miles away, no freeways, pretty flat. Outbound, the predictor went from 82 t0 39 miles and from 12 to 6 bars. On return it went from 39 to 17 miles and from 6 to 3 bars. So we used up twice as many "miles" and twice as many bars outbound as we did coming home. So maybe that is characteristic of a degraded battery? And overall the predictor was about 20% overoptimistic.
Actually, you probably want the variant with the leased battery. That way when it dies Nissan have to change it out and lease you a brand new battery with brand new range expectations
Really?
@@Kraven83 Yes. If you're leasing something then you don't own it. If that thing stops working then it has to be replaced because they cannot lease you something that doesn't work.
But you pay £1200 @ year . I'm sure there are companies out there that will repair your battery back to 100% for close to that.
@cwwiss1 there are people that pay 1200 per month for an outrageous mid car. Granted, since someone like me can afford a 1500 car and get a 1200 lease battery for a year, that's not really bad.
@@cwwiss1 Bwahahaha... Put down the bong!! Think about it, they're not making the 24Kw/h batteries anymore so they're going to be forced to replace it with the newer bigger battery which we know from the video is thousands of pounds second hand. 100/month to ensure you always have a viable battery is actually a really good deal.
Awesome video. Now can you do another similar one with the Zoe? The difference is that the Leaf is among the very few cars with no battery cooling whatsoever (Zoe has air cooling) which in theory has been an engineering tragedy because it needlessly aggravates battery degradation. So with a similarily old Zoe we should in theory see much better battery condition. Would be very interested in seeing something like that. Cheers.
I was once sent to pick up one of these. Never had I a more stressful journey. Trying to coast or cut corners at every opportunity only to run out of juice on a busy dual- carriageway one mile from the charging point. Then waited six hours for assistance.
Don't even think about switching that heater on, or the radio.
If buying the car with the leased battery though doesn’t that give you some warranty on the battery? Like it will get depleted at some point but won’t Nissan just replace it? Or is that not how it works?
~10 years old, 45k miles and only useful for a school run or a short commute. Remember that wasn't on predominantly faster roads, in rain or overly cold either so it will be worse as those factors are added. On top of that its got mould in it so welcome to a load of respiratory issues if you use it much and it still needs insurance, somewhere to park it and all the rest like any other car. There are plug-in hybrids with better range so its hard to see a use case for this thing unless you really want a car but never drive much more than about 30 miles and don't mind paying all the running costs for something with a similar usability to a golf cart. By contrast a cheap ice may well be in similar condition and have similar mileage but it will work as a car which can go where you like when you like. Even the old line about it being cheap to run is nonsense because it can't do enough mileage to make enough difference in fuel costs compared to an ice to even pay for its own insurance.
Plug-In hybrids are the worst of the two worlds. Heavy battery and extra electric motor will make the car very heavy, hampering with the combustion engine MPG, and then Electric also has to drag the ICE components, making that 10kWh battery good for 20 miles or so. You still need to charge the bloody thing and on top of that add more petrol to the equation, because it will consume more due to weight as I mentioned. A full hybrid that will reduce the fuel consumption when you drive of a traffic light, while having a lightweight battery and electric engine will bring the actual MPG down, that's why Toyota Prius has those crazy MPG figures and no brand managed to make a full hybrid as good as Toyota did, heck, some Renault models consume more fuel than their pure ICE counterparts, with Renault blaming it on the way you drive. The underline here is, keep yout ICE cars runing for a long as possible, specialy if you own a Diesel machine, you still can't beat that when it comes to price and range.
Good point. The range isn't enough to actually save anything on fuel.
@@grabedigger What a load of rubbish. "The electric motor has to drag the engine around". So thats about 100kg of engine. Instead of the 400kg+ of battery it weould need to drag around in a big battery ev. You assume it will drink more petrol but that has been proven false by numerous independant tests - some are available on here - because the larger battery allows full regen for longer periods than a normal hybrid and the battery is run at a lower C rate which means less internal resistance and heat build up. Then there is the way they are meant to be used. Short trips should be all ev then when you want to go far you use the ice. On a motorway the weight of the battery doesn't make much difference and on short runs its an ev carrying less weight around. Then there is the impact to make and recycle. Not only does a plug-in last longer than either ice or ev in general (since its doing far less mileage on each propulsion system) but it also uses a battery which is usually around 20% the size of a large battery ev so for the same waste of rare metals you can have five cars running around on electric for the bits where it makes sense rather than one. As for recycling there is a lot of hot air about batteries being used for storage and all the rest but in reality only a tiny percentage actually get used or recycled. We keep hearing "in the future" but the cars are being built and scrapped right now with the vast majority of li-ion batteries going straight to landfill. If the battery is a fifth the size its only a fifth of the problem and again hybrids and plug-ins look after their batteries much more than most ev's which is why you regularly see very old/high mileage hybrids while old/high mile ev's are so few and far between they usually make the news feed on a certain kind of site. Look up the word pragmatism.
Pay all the running costs of an electric car? What running costs are you talking about? Electricity? Tires? Those will be less than the plug-in hybrid you're recommending because and hybrid will have an extra ICE engine that will increase the maintenance costs. A cheap ICE in a similar condition will be better? Now you conveniently forget the maintenance costs of a cheap ICE car on fuel and lubrication, that the leaf won't need. Remember that the running costs of electricity should be higher than the fuel/lubricants costa of an ICE engine for the ICE car to be cheaper to run. You're so biased, you pick the worst characteristics of this poor old Nissan leaf and compared that with the ideal plug-in hybrids and ICE cars: the range. And then you hide the fact that the running costs of the ICE/hybrids will be more expensive than an electric car to make your point.
That's sad considering 45k miles for an ICE car would still be considered brand new with people only starting to look for potential issues at 60k miles or more. And Japanese cars often are still good at more than 120k miles because they overbuild the engines.
My neighbour uses her ancient Nissan Leaf to get to her teaching job every day. She doesn't need much range as it's about a 25 mile round trip. She can nip and do some shopping on the way home and it still does it comfortably. I don't see the problem to be honest.
The problem is it's unsalable after she uses it, and goes to scrap, meaning more waste. No sane person would buy a 10yr old EV due to the range, battery death and resellability. My car is 15yr old and still has the same range, and parts are cheap.
@@Jin-Ro1. your name is misspelled 2. a 15 year old car is a polluting mess and probably cost far more to repair and keep operational than a comparable ev 3. seeing how little modern ev batteries degrade, your complaints are meaningless
@@MaticTheProto 1: I know, but Roh is taken and I don't like numbers :) 2: It may pollute a little more, but it's still perfectly usable where as an EV would be in a junk yard, and more resources mined to make another one. Disposable cars are not green, they're worse than what we have now.
@@Jin-Ro ev batteries last for ~600k km So… about as long as most cars
@@MaticTheProto I'm talking lifespan. ICE engine can last millions of miles or decades. EV, not so.
Its done about 477 charge cycles At 43000 miles. Thats about 105000 miles worth in a car withh 220 mile range. It should be good for 800 charge cycles really just like our phones snd tablets but perhaps the previous owner left it fully charged constantly or below 20 percent for a long period of time.. A 2013 car with 105k on the clock could quite easily need a new engine, gearbox, brakes. They all cost a few quid. New engine from the manufacturer is generally 5k up. This car with a new bigger battery pack will be running for another 15 years easily. Lfp batteries in new teslas and mg4 do 3000 charge cycles go 80 percent. 5000 to 60 percent.
As the owner of a 2016 Renault Zoe that does 80 miles winter and 100 in summer I do have to say these small range cars are perfect for urban living. I can drive anywhere in Greater Manchester confidently and it's great for commuting and local chores! Do I wish I could drive it further in one go? Yes, because it's fun to drive! And I wish I wasn't paying monthly battery lease to Renault...... my secret shame... The suspension also collapsed at one point going over a speedbump, the mechanic thought the weight of the car probably contributed to that. But I do enjoy it. Looking at getting the Mégane E-tech as a proper upgrade to a more modern EV next.
People are making such a big fuss about the estimated range changing in EVs... My diesel E Class will show a range of 700 miles one minute and 500 another based on how I'm driving. It changes based on how you're driving, the terrain, how cold it is (yes cold weather ruins ICE car efficiency too) etc etc.
ICE aren't affected nearly as much. They have a thermostat in the coolant system for a reason. I bet most drivers wouldn't even notice a change in the tanks range between summer and winter unless they calculated it out. In an EV the range drop is very very obvious.
@@noggintubethey do about 80% of summer range in UK winter it’s not that bad. UK isn’t cold enough to really hammer them
@@michaelh7595 yeah not denying it, just pointing out that ICE isn't particularly affected to that extent - the OP stated cold weather 'ruins' ICE efficiency, which isn't true. It's slightly affected, not ruined, and certainly not to the point the driver notices.
My old fiesta only did 290 miles for the journeys I used to do and my EVs does just under that (literally a few miles). People just don’t like change and fear the unknown.
@@noggintubeyears ago I had a Renault 25. In the winter, the MPG would decrease by about 20% due to cold running enrichment for the first 5 miles or so.
About time we had another of these bad boys
Bought a used 2016 Leaf SV in August 2019 with 23500 miles on the odometer, 9 bars left. Traded it in February 2024 for a 2024 Hyundai Kona Electric SEl for ~$31,00. The Leaf was sportier, got about 5.0 to 5.2 miles per kW. Great car. PS was only $12, 586 in August 2019. MSRP was over $34,000 new. Always charged at home.
Here in oz we prefer hybrid not plug in hybrid but just hybrid suits range for country or city.
I bet the prices of electricity will just skyrocket by the time almost all cars on the road are electric.
Probably will. You know our government. Even more reasons to get solar panels.
Its already begun in Sweden. They add tax after tax.. last tax was on grid fee, for every kwh. I pay $0.26 / kwh here and its increasing.
@@chrishart8548 We already have to pay to get our left over electricity generated by them transferred away her in Belgium lol. It's wild here
I've got solar panels so actually get paid to fill my EV up 😉
@@davefitzpatrick4841 ah you got the solar panels for free? thats great.
Perfect London runabout, as long as you can charge at home. Probably get more miles out of it in city only driving, too.
In 2018 I bought a 2015 leaf. I still have it and drive it alot. I'm still at 11 bars. I just charge it all the time when I'm at home.
I had one of these cars. One of the very first EV's. It's original range was NOT 124mi. It was 100 miles, but in reality it was known to be about 73 miles. So That's consistent with the range displayed or experienced. I still see my 2011 on the road locally. But this all has little to do with buying used EV's in future as ranges soon went to 150, then 200, and now 300 miles when new PLUS battery degradation is not the problem it was with those 2011-2014 LEAFs