Are used EVs a rip-off?!

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

[MrMainty]

The most unrealistic thing on this video is the fact RAC actually showed up within 12 hours!

[LaVidayElTristeFinal]

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!

[andrewmole]

So the car’s estimate at the beginning was pretty much spot on - it said 59 and you got 60.

[ryang]

For a two car family, £1500 for a car that will cost about 3p per mile when home charging is perfect for all the school runs and short trips that make up 95% of journeys for the average family. If you scrap it after 5 years you’ve still had some pretty cheap driving

[Jonathan_Corwin]

The most shocking thing about this video is the calling the RAC and it still being daylight when they turned up!

[zbyszanna]

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.

[johncoles]

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

[dailyrider]

CRAP!!! I've been ripped off! I got a an 2019 EV bike for $1900 and it only went 20 miles (32km) with throttle only (recently stolen out of my porch). This Nissan is a steal of a deal!

[Gmh]

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

[Mrcento]

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.

[FishFish]

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.

[davehad-enough]

A family member bought one of those three years ago. It was used for shopping and dropping the kids off at school. They thought as stated here, they would be more reliable than the petrol corolla they traded in. Then after three months the range dropped off slowly until it simply didn't go. The replacement battery is worth more than the car. No one wants to buy it including the car wreckers and so it sits in his yard - useless.

[johnwilson]

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.

[Leo.]

I swear that at first I was reading the licence plates as "Big Nope" 😂😅🤣

[MasterHD]

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.

[LGM]

In the U.S. 44k miles for a car to already be essentially junked is an absolute joke. That's like 2 years worth of driving when compared to our best ICE vehicles that run 300-600k miles for 15-20 years.

[bugone]

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.

[martinutr]

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!

[ianworley]

I live in rural Portugal, 13km from our nearest village and 25km from 4 local towns. I do around 700km of driving per month. Of that, around 90% of my daily driving is less than 60km. I own an immaculate 10 year old Nissan Leaf, which we use for all our local mileage. Our diesel Toyota Avensis estate is used for those rare occasions when we need something with a longer range. Last year we did under 1500km in the Toyota. We have never used a commercial charger. For us, that's the way to use an EV. The plan now is a few solar panels and the set up is perfect.

[TheAegisClaw]

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.