Advice needed on possible battery issues with daughter's used Nissan Leaf

[TryingToFigureThisOut]

Hi all, hoping for some advice.

We bought our daughter a 2021 Nissan Leaf on Sunday and have already had a few issues, so I’m trying to work out whether this is normal or not.

On the first day, the car ran out of charge on a main road and we ended up waiting around 6 hours for RAC recovery.

Since then, the battery doesn’t seem to be lasting as expected. For example:
On Monday, fully charged, drove around 45 miles and it dropped to about 40%
Today, fully charged again, drove around 24 miles and it dropped to around 50%

Also, each time she charges it, £60 is taken from her card, with about £27 refunded the next day. She’s a student, so this is quite stressful, and it’s taken the joy out of what should have been a positive experience. It’s also made her quite anxious about driving it.

I’ll be contacting the garage tomorrow, but just wanted to sense check first:

Does this sound normal for this model, or does it point to a battery issue?
Is there anything specific I should ask the garage to check?
What are our rights if the car isn’t as described or has a fault so soon after purchase?

Any advice very welcome, especially from anyone with EV experience.

How is she charging it?

Is she charging to 100%?

why did it run out? Did it suddenly drop or was it a case of not realising she’d need as much charge as she did?

How fast is she driving? When I had a Leaf those miles wouldn’t have surprised me too much if I was driving at 70 with air con on. Although 50% for 24 miles is steep.

I don’t have any specific knowledge of the Leaf, but EV batteries degrade over time. Can you check the battery health status? That should tell you how well the battery will charge compared to when new. What is the advertised range of the car? From a quick google the 40kw battery had a real world range of 145-150 miles on a full charge based on perfect battery health, which isn’t massive.

@TryingToFigureThisOut it sounds like a defective battery which the RAC should have picked up on. Is it under warranty? Might be cheaper to replace the battery rather than call RAC multiple times. Definitely go back to wherever you bought it from. Batteries can catch fire in EVs so better safe than sorry.

It’s unlikely to be cheaper. A replacement will be ££££, probs around £5k

The range on my Leaf was listed as 169 but real world was more like 100 max, especially if using air con/driving at 70 or in a hilly area. The range was the only thing I didn’t like about it!

@ExperiencedTeacher You're correct. I realise that I mixed advice for traditional and EV battery. I'd take it back to wherever you bought it from after getting garage opinion on issue and safety.

I hate my leaf.. there’s a fb group for leaf users you can get good advice from, I did 40 miles today and it deducted more than 50!

We used to have a leaf snd had nothing but trouble with the battery. I’d urge you to take it back to the garage and get her something else

If she was driving it hard on the motorway with air con on then I can see that may happen, but ordinary town driving then it didn’t sound right and I would go back to the garage to query.

My friend has a Leaf and it's turned into an absolute nightmare. The battery has basically collapsed and she can only do very local trips in it. The garage says it needs a new battery but it's something insane like £12k!! Try to get rid of it if you can!

Did you buy privately or from a garage? if it was a garage you have 14 days to return, i would do that rather than risk an expensive battery replacement bill.

Just a few days ago I was reading up on consumer rights regarding purchase of 2nd hand cars. If a car developes a fault in the first 30 days which wasn’t mentioned at time of purchase or is not fit for purpose it can be returned to the dealer for a full refund. It’s covered by the Consumer Rights Act. Here is a link for further details.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/content/advice/how-does-the-consumer-rights-act-protect-you-when-you-buy-a-car?refresh=true

I would advise taking it back to garage where you purchased it asap and get a full refund. I bought a 2021 BMWi3S and I get 180 full charge. I have driven 120 miles and was stuck in stop start traffic for over 2 hours due to an accident and still had mileage left. I love my car. Try one and you’ll love it too. Guaranteed.

I have a second hand leaf. When new I think the range was around 130 miles - now it’s 105 max when fully charged. This is purely based on the battery degrading over time.

Also, the range is something that can change for all sorts of reasons.
If you’re driving 3 miles up a steep hill it will ‘cost’ more than 3 miles - but if it’s like mine it was also regenerate so you’ll get those miles back when you’re going downhill.
Also, if you switch on heating or air con, the power to run them comes from the battery too so it’ll take extra miles, as does putting your foot down and going fast.

If she’s charging at a fast charge they’ll deduct for an hours worth of electric then refund based on when the car reached 100% (similar to paying at pump where they deduct £99 or whatever then refund you whatever you didn’t use out of that).
The only real way EVs are economical is if you charge at home - fast charges are expensive as you’re paying for the convenience.

In your shoes I’d want the battery checked but depending on where and how she was driving I wouldn’t be particularly worried.

Battery fires in EVs are inredibly rare and usually caused by physical damage to the battery itself. Even then you would need a hefty impact to get a full-on fire rather than thermal runaway.

Lithium ion batteries on small devices like e bikes are a significant fire risk but that's because they can't be protected by external structures in the way they can be in a car (same reason why car petrol tanks are not a major fire risk but Jerry cans in the shed absolutely are even though there is less petrol in them.)

I have a 2019 leaf (smaller battery size I think it's 40kW) and it doesn't have the range it would have had new but it's a bit better than you report.

However, if it's being fast charged, are you sure the battery is starting out at 100 percent each time? Adding the last 10-20 percent is disproportionately slower and so I wonder if your DD is equating nearly fully charged and fully charged? Dropping to 50 percent from 80 percent battery sounds about right for those journeys if she has the smaller battery and is driving fast with heating or air con on full blast - especially if the outside air temp is cold.

You can change the dashboard display to show battery information so you can get a detailed picture of what the charge is doing.

Does your DD have access to overnight charging? It's much easier to get to grips with a small range EV if you get into a regular charging habit - there's a little bit of a learning curve but it is manageable.

Side question: how did you find insuring the Leaf for a young driver? I'm curious as may want to insure the DCs on ours at some point and my half-hearted attempts at research suggests it might be expensive.

Return it asap if you bought it at a dealership and get a hybrid/plug-in. All the benefits of low cost but no stress.

A friend bought a Leaf, very similar issue, range about 40 or 50 miles, a replacement battery was more than the car was worth, hers was a private sale, scraped it and bought a Honda Jazz.

Lessoned learned, stick to a petrol car unless you can afford something new.

@deplorabelle OP is saying "Fully Charged" so i don't think it sounds like user error.

Pretty sure you get a 7 year battery warranty on a Leaf. Mine (also 2021) had to have the battery replaced this winter because it had a fault (different from this - it was refusing to charge) and the Nissan main dealer took it away and the new one was fitted for free. This was despite the fact that I hadn't bought it via the main dealer.

Good luck getting it sorted! I love my Leaf (on my second one now) and with the price of petrol right now an EV feels like a good choice. As PP have said, your DD might have to get used to driving a bit differently - not too much braking, not too much over 60mph etc - but once she's used to it, and if there's no problem with the battery, you should easily get over 100 miles from a full charge. I find it's more useful to look at the car's estimate of miles remaining (which is usually pretty accurate) than the battery percentage.

I have an older style leaf, 2015. I’ve had it since 2019. It’s a bit of a learning curve but it is my favourite car I’ve ever had - but only because I know its limitations and it works with my lifestyle.

Firstly, what’s the battery health like? If she bought it from a garage hopefully there’s something in the paperwork? Often a battery health report. My leaf displays the battery health in ‘bars’ on the dash- 12 bars is full health, I have 10/12 bars now. It’s a bit like a mobile phone- after a few years a full charge doesn’t actually have the same amount of stored energy as when it was brand new, so it doesn’t power it for as long, or in the case of an EV, doesn’t have as much range. But you can plug in an OBD dongle and connect it to the LeafSpy ap and it will tell you the exact stats- the % of battery health you have. Eg brand new it would be at 100%, after a few years it might be mid 90s/high80s.

So firstly I’d want to check the battery health, either via the garage she bought it from or via LeafSpy. Where abouts are you based? The leaf Facebook group is very helpful. If you post on there and someone is local you might be able to ask if they’d plug it in and confirm the battery health for you.

If the battery health is ok, ie there’s no fault with it, then you need to think about lifestyle/how you use the car and if it’s suitable for you.

Don’t ever base your range on the guess-ometer on the dash board. That is based on the last few miles of driving. So if you’ve just gone downhill/pootled about at 30mph it’ll overestimate the range by a country mile because it’s basing the answer on continuing to drive like that, if you then start driving at 70mph you’re using more power and therefore have less range. You need to look at the % of battery charge left and work it out via that.

So as an example, I live on the edge of a very hilly area. When I leave my house I’m always going downhill for the first few miles- so my car will use up far less % on my outward journey, compared to my return home which is uphill the whole way. If my outward run used up 50% of my battery I wouldn’t make it home because I’ll use more than that on the way back.

Can she charge overnight at home? What sort of mileage is she doing on a regular basis?

My car would be a complete disaster if I was using it for a longer daily commute and couldn’t charge at home. But 50/60 miles per day and plugging into a granny charger on my driveway overnight means it’s ready and able to do what I need it to (school runs/kids club runs/visiting family/local journeys sub 50 miles per round trip). Obviously your car is newer with a bigger range, but if your daily driving/lack of charging facilities don’t match up with its capabilities it’s going to be a miserable experience all round.

The type of driving also really impacts range- so as I said above the car can do a longer distance at 30mph or a steady 65mph on the motorway, vs blasting along at 70mph with a heavy foot breaking and accelerating and the AC on where you’ll get a much shorter range.