Would you buy a used leaf?

[user1471530109]

The car that is!

I had a thread earlier in the week asking for advice buying a car. I've spent all week thinking about bloody cars and I keep coming back to the possibility of an electric vehicle.

I can see from old threads that some of you have them.

Would you still recommend them?
How reliable have they been and do you have to take them to a Nissan garage for all repairs etc? What about service price and MOT?

I've got a test drive booked tomorrow for a new version (which I adore the look of. Saw a top spec one at dealership today). But I'm not sure I can really afford to spend that kind of money a month. So now thinking of a used one.

Do you get worked up about the charging issue? Have you found the charging network a pain? I will only have one car for me and the kids. We don't do a lot of miles generally, but obviously we do day trips etc.

Finally, does anyone know if I can still access the government grant for installing a home charger for free, if I buy a used leaf?

Thanks for reading my ramblings

Shameful bump

I did - in March last year. A 14-reg 24kWh Tekna. Bought from an independent garage at 13,000 miles and I am the third owner. Have now put another 13,000 on it. Paintwork was a bit rough and I haven't done anything about that I think Japanese makes like soft paint. Totally reliable; the only issues I have had have been the passenger side windscreen washer, which is a known fault area, and some creaks and groans from the suspension. Haven't bothered servicing as such there isn't really anything to service -- but got local 'man and dog' garage to check it over and take it through MOT.

Haven't run out of charge yet, though have not done any long journeys in it as we have another (diesel) car -- best I have had from it was 88 miles. Mine has the higher power 6.6kW charger which means it can charge more quickly than most. I mainly use mine for my 40 mile each way commute to work where I can charge up for the journey home.

Last time I looked the government grant was available. The only requirement was that you keep the car for at least 6 months.

The best place to look for information is in the Leaf sections of www.speakev.com.

\the leaf in large parts is essentially a Renault (Renault own the controlling stake in Nissan and most Nissan products in Europe are essentially Renault's or contain a large amount of Renault components).

in terms of paint quality, various manufacturers suffer from poor paint quality, some more than others since the EU outlawed oil based paint for water based.
For example the paint work on a Peugeot 3008 built in France is good, the paint work on a Ford Transit custom built in Turkey is very poor.
Some manufacturer factories are simply worse than others, and some manufacturers are worse than others.
Nissan are not known to be bad in general.

As for the Leaf, it should be a fairly simple car to maintain.
Some people lease the batteries, I assume the only perk of leasing the batteries instead of owning them is the ability to return the batteries once they can no longer hold a charge which will happen at some point.

Replacement batteries will not be cheap.

That's interesting cardad, I had no idea Renault owned nissan! Hopefully they're learning how to make French cars more reliable

I bought a used one from a Nissan dealer, which came with 2 years free servicing. As it was bought from a dealer I was eligible for the Government grant to get a charger at home through podpoint. I've had an MOT done at a non Nissan garage. I've found it great. I don't often do longer trips but have found the ones I have done fine if you plan ahead using zap map to find a rapid charger en route. Also most IKEAs have rapid chargers which has come in handy a few times!

latest new shape Leaf has a much better electric range

Thanks, everyone. I've decided an electric car will be my next car, not this one.
I did a regular journey at the weekend and it was too close to the range limit for my liking! And I've heard in winter the range is lower.

I am very much interested and will almost definitely consider again in a couple of years when hopefully there are a few more chargers about.

Picking up my new non-electric car today.