![]() ![]() Even if it starts at same price without discounts the resale value of an ICE car with 100,000 miles will be at least $10k more than a half battery EV.ģ. The sticker price is close but only with $7,500 rebates or govt help.Ģ. This just shows that EVs have even longer to go before they are of equal value purchase to an ICE. The result is that they are the very cheapest “functional” electric car you can buy. Check out Nissan Leaf owners forums, and you’ll see: Nissan Leafs, especially the first few model-years, are almost all down to about 30 to 40 miles of remaining range. ![]() Those 48 modules of pouch cells, which together give the vehicle 24 kWh of capacity when new, just aren’t managed properly to allow them to live beyond about 10 years, 100,000 miles without significant degradation. Still, when it launched for the 2011 model year with an air-cooled battery pack, the Leaf was pretty much doomed to a short life. It also saw a number of battery-related improvements over the years. To Nissan’s credit, the Leaf was early to the EV game, and you can argue that it was America’s first truly high-volume lithium-ion battery-equipped electric car. If you really want to get into the weeds of this pack, Weber State University’s EV-guru, John D. You can see some photos of the Leaf’s battery pack above, along with its drive-unit (it’s all under the hood the Leaf is front-wheel drive). I think 45 percent is optimistic, and that’s just sad. I do need to inflate the tires a bit, so that should help with range, but it probably won’t make a giant difference. That should give me about 35 miles of range (range when new was an EPA-estimated 73 miles), and yet, no matter how gingerly I drove my Leaf from Celso’s house to mine, it seemed like I was going to maybe - MAYBE - get 25 miles. As this table from shows, my Leaf’s battery capacity is probably somewhere around 45 percent. These are the battery health indicator bars, and you can find various tables around the internet describing how many bars correlate to how much remaining battery capacity. You’ll note that on the right side of the gauge cluster are five bars, two of them red. It became clear right away that the over-30 miles of estimated range stated on the Guess-O-Meter were just not going to happen. That’s because a decently maintained gasoline car, even with 200,000 miles on the clock, is a much, much more usable machine than an early Leaf with even just half as many miles.Īfter dishing out 20 Benjamins and taking ownership of the title (and also planning an off-road trip, since Celso, the Leaf’s seller, has a TJ and goes to the same off-road park that I frequent), I left the kind man’s house almost immediately regretting my purchase (I say “almost,” because I knew I was buying a basket case. In fact, around LA, the very cheapest Nissan in 2011, the Versa, costs at least double what a used Leaf costs (the $2,700 one below needs a new transmission). That is, by far, the least expensive functioning 2011 Nissan I’ve find near me. Note that this list excludes vehicles with malfunctioning batteries so what if you buy the already-cheapest EV, but with a battery whose health is severely compromised? Well, you get a very, very cheap machine. Autotrader compiled a list last year of the cheapest used EVs on its site, and the top three were: I’ve done this numerous times.īut if you want a working EV for $2000, and you don’t qualify for any incentives (EV incentives are bringing decent used EVs like my BMW i3 closer and closer to within reach for those shopping at the very bottom of the market), your options are slim. Snag an older, high-mileage gasoline-powered vehicle with a stickshift and with a bit of cosmetic damage, and you’ll have reasonably reliable transport for under the $2G mark. If you’ve got two grand in your pocket and need some wheels, you’ve got options. in 2023: The very bottom of the market doesn’t just suck, it is filled with some of the most useless vehicles in all of automotive history, as I discovered first-hand with the dirt-cheap Nissan Leaf I bought this past weekend. ![]() This is the state of used electric cars in the U.S. Fast forward a few hours and you’re driving home in your shiny (ish), new (ish), only-moderately-dented electric car only to realize: You might not actually make it back. “Hey, this 2011 Nissan Leaf is only $2000 what a deal!” you think as you slam your laptop shut and rush to the bank before someone can steal this smokin’ bargain from under you. “That’s fine, I’ll just snag a cheap used EV,” you think to yourself as you crack open Facebook Marketplace. It’s 2023 and gas prices are getting out of hand, especially in California. ![]()
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