2nd Hand LEAF

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eevblog
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2nd Hand LEAF

Post by eevblog »

So is a 2nd hand 2012 LEAF with 17,500km for under $20k (business, tax write off) a sensible buy? Or is it just buying trouble with a 5+ year old pack?

Opinions please...
Thanks.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by Johny »

The Leaf comes with a handy battery condition indicator right there on the dash. The large inner scale is the projected range for "today", while the outer scale is the overall battery pack condition.
You can quickly assess when the condition is before even driving the car.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by jonescg »

Personally I don't believe any used Leaf in Australia should be sold for more than $20k. They are already >5 years old and the batteries will have deteriorated at least enough to be annoying, and at worst, not enough for your daily needs. It will still function perfectly well as a city car, but they won't be much fun on longer trips.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by mikedufty »

They weren't really any good for long trips in the first place, so you are not missing much if the range is a little reduced, unless your particular needs happen to be close to the range limit.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by eevblog »

mikedufty wrote: Mon, 04 Dec 2017, 12:46 They weren't really any good for long trips in the first place, so you are not missing much if the range is a little reduced, unless your particular needs happen to be close to the range limit.
That's what I figured.
Even if 20% of the range was lost, it would still meet all my daily needs.
100% vs 80% would likely not make a difference for long trips, as it more likely neither would be enough.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by eevblog »

Johny wrote: Mon, 04 Dec 2017, 09:11 The Leaf comes with a handy battery condition indicator right there on the dash. The large inner scale is the projected range for "today", while the outer scale is the overall battery pack condition.
You can quickly assess when the condition is before even driving the car.
Great to know, thanks. What should the outer scale indicate roughly for a car of this age?
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by Johny »

My expectation would be one bar lost. Two if it has been treated badly. If you google, somewhere there is a description of how much capacity each of these bars represents - it's not linear.
Ahh what the heck - I googled it.
The first lot of hot links tells the story. One bar lost is 15% lost, 2 bars lost is 21.25% lost etc.
http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Batt ... acity_Loss
Last edited by Johny on Mon, 11 Dec 2017, 08:30, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by Rusdy »

There's certainly a risk of getting bad batch. If you can somehow find out the history, from being driven from full to empty and still has 120 km or more, then you definitely have a good buy. Since the likelihood of Australian government opening up second hand EV like NZ is very unlikely, you don't have any other option in the market out there.

Similar story here: http://ozleaf.proboards.com/thread/1013/bars-15000km
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by eevblog »

Johny wrote: Thu, 07 Dec 2017, 11:24 My expectation would be one bar lost. Two if it has been treated badly. If you google, somewhere there is a description of how much capacity each of these bars represents - it's not linear.
Ahh what the heck - I googled it.
The first lot of hot links tells the story. One bar lost is 15% lost, 2 bars lost is 21.25% lost etc.
www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Real_World_ ... acity_Loss
Great info, thanks.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by lesmando »

Also you can use LEAF Spy and a ODBII dongle to check the stats of the battery. Look for modules which are sagging (each module contains 4 cells), as they will prevent the charging system filling each module. This is not a guarantee, but can give you an overview.
http://www.electricvehiclewiki.com/Leaf_Spy_Pro

Battery warranty is 5 years or 100,000km from date of first sale. Nissan may warranty after this, depends on the individual case.
Generally driving will degrade the battery the quickest. Heat or filling to 100% and not using it also degrade the battery.
Leaving the battery at a low state of charge for too long can also cause module faults, which will disable regenerative braking and fool the charging system into under charging the battery.

Also check for rusted front strut bolts (usually on the driver side), saggy rear hatch struts (usually $90 to get refilled) and the heater is working.

http://lesmando24.blogspot.com.au/p/new ... tions.html
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by Rusdy »

lesmando wrote: Sun, 10 Dec 2017, 12:22
Battery warranty is 5 years or 100,000km from date of first sale.
That's good to know. I'm trying to find the written details on this one but to no avail. This means I have time until 2019! The first owner, which is not me, bought it in 2014.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by weber »

My wife's Nissan Leaf has just recently lost its fourth bar from its capacity meter. It was made in April 2012 and bought new in July 2013. It is booked in for Nissan to look at this week. We expect they will replace the battery under warranty, as we know of another Brisbanite who has had this done. I believe this rapid battery ageing is due purely to the temperatures experienced here in Brisbane (Arrhenius law), as the Leaf has only done 44 Mm, has never been fast-charged, has rarely been charged past 80% and is usually driven in "Eco" mode (except when I drive it :twisted: ).

It is perfectly fine in every other way, as far as we can tell.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by jonescg »

That's really unfortunate @weber :(
How many km to a charge do you get nowadays? Seems like there's not a Leaf in circulation in Australia with more than 100 km range on a good day...
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by weber »

jonescg wrote: Mon, 11 Dec 2017, 15:47 That's really unfortunate @weber :(
It's not really a problem if Nissan replace the battery for free. Newer Leafs use a different battery chemistry with a longer life. [Edit: See my post on this below]
How many km to a charge do you get nowadays?
About 100 km on a 100% charge.
Seems like there's not a Leaf in circulation in Australia with more than 100 km range on a good day...
My wife tells me one of her squash partners with a Leaf (he drove hers and decided he wanted one) still gets 150 km on a 100% charge. He bought it second-hand. It spent the first 3.5 years of its life in Melbourne. Lower temperatures.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by 4Springs »

jonescg wrote: Mon, 11 Dec 2017, 15:47 Seems like there's not a Leaf in circulation in Australia with more than 100 km range on a good day...
There's range and there's range though.
I find that production cars are very optimistic with their estimations when their batteries are full (i.e. the 'guessometer'), but pessimistic with their empty warnings. I've not spoken to anyone who has said they have driven their Leaf or iMiEV until it would go no further. So folks who say their Leaf has 80km range often don't actually know how far it would go - it just complains at them hard enough that they don't want to drive it that flat again. Might go an extra 20km!
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by g4qber »

Imiev - When batt was new. I drove 106.5km totally flat.
Had to be towed into Northam

115km the previous time to Northam
Nana driving ie 80kmh
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by mikedufty »

I find the i-miev guessometer pretty good, except the one time I really pushed it, and it stopped saying it still had 7km range left (<1 km from home).
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by weber »

Correction: Our Leaf is booked in next week (Wed 20-Dec-2017) for Nissan to look at the capacity-loss issue.

Nissan switched from LMO (lithium manganese oxide) to the much better NMC (lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide) from the 2015 model onward. It's not so much that NMC is "less affected by temperature" than LMO. All battery chemistries pretty much follow Arrhenius law where a 10 °C rise in temperature causes an approximate doubling of their rate of ageing (per square root of time?). It's that NMC has a much slower rate of ageing to begin with.

This paper by Keil et al has some graphs (below) for NMC which you can compare with those on the EV Wiki page linked by Johny above. The second row of graphs below reminds us that capacity loss isn't the only problem. Internal resistance increase also matters, as this will increase the temperature rise of the battery during use, which then causes more rapid ageing. How about that LFP eh? LFP = lithium ferrous phosphate = LiFePO₄ barely gives a damn about being kept at high states of charge, compared to NCA (nickel cobalt aluminium oxide, as used in Tesla cars) and NMC, which spike in either IR-increase or capacity loss (respectively) between about 90% and 100%.

I understand that LTO (lithium titanium oxide), as used in the Mitsubishi iMievs, has an even lower rate of ageing than NMC, similar to LFP. Unlike all the other chemistries, LTO is named after its anode material (it typically has the same ca+hode material as NMC). The others all have graphite or carbon an̅odes.

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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

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4Springs wrote: Tue, 12 Dec 2017, 17:48 ...it just complains at them hard enough that they don't want to drive it that flat again. Might go an extra 20km!
So true. I would be very interested if anyone has ever done full to empty test. Anyone has link to such test from any Leaf on the globe?

I've tried to do it myself twice now but got scared. First time I've done it down to 5% SOC (according to LeafSpy) with the car sitting on the garage with heater on to deplete the battery. The LeafSpy voltage histogram has gone dancing like crazy due to cell imbalance going everywhere. At this stage, the cell imbalance already grew to 0.15V (from usual 10-ish mV) and VLBW (Very Low Battery Warning) came up. No turtle mode yet.

Second time by actually driving it down to 6.9%. By this time the GOM already not showing anything. No VLBW yet though. When at rest, the cell imbalance is at 90mV.

It looks to me the on-board computer is pretty accurate at low SOC level. In my opinion, once the GOM shows no more numbers, it's a practical 'zero' limit.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by alexeiw123 »

weber wrote: Wed, 13 Dec 2017, 08:05 Correction: Our Leaf is booked in next week (Wed 20-Dec-2017) for Nissan to look at the capacity-loss issue.
How did you go with the booking?

My parents have a leaf bought "new". It has 14,000km, charged to 80% excepting long trips and has now 10 bars remaining. The letter Nissan supplied at purchase says the battery will be warranted for loss below 9 bars until 2021 or 100,000km so seems pretty likely they will be doing this eventually.

Pretty disappointed with Nissans cooperation with the car so far - it was bought in Sydney and transported north with the promise that it can be serviced at any Nissan dealership (they didn't get that in writing). Our local nissan have refused to do any service on it and the dealerhsip that sold it to them denies they ever promised otherwise. They also will not order or install the 3G sim module at our local nissan, so a lot of the cars advertised features don't work.

Any other rural owners had success with servicing/sim upgrade?
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by 4Springs »

Doesn't have to be serviced by Nissan.
There is a mechanic in Smithton that will service them, so it might pay to call around smaller mechanics to see if there is someone who is willing to take it on.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by antiscab »

Aside from updates, what possible servicing could the leaf need?
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

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alexeiw123 wrote: Mon, 22 Jan 2018, 07:15
weber wrote: Wed, 13 Dec 2017, 08:05 Correction: Our Leaf is booked in next week (Wed 20-Dec-2017) for Nissan to look at the capacity-loss issue.
How did you go with the booking?Any other rural owners had success with servicing/sim upgrade?
That initial one day investigation led to a booking for another 5 day investigation, which was completed last Friday. I've been away, but the wife tells me they have agreed to replace the battery. Hoorah! The new battery may take 2 or 3 weeks to arrive from Japan. Then we'll book it in for a third time, to have the battery replaced.

I have heard from another Brisbane Leaf owner who had his battery replaced, that he went through the same procedure.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by alexeiw123 »

Thanks, I'll get them to check with a local mechanic. I think it's all about getting the stamp for warranty purposes. Nice work weber, good little range refresh there.
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Re: 2nd Hand LEAF

Post by weber »

The new battery finally arrived from Japan and was replaced about a week ago. Hoorah! So we're back to new-car range of 130 km or more. The guessometer claimed 160 km when it left the workshop.

They couldn't tell us whether the replacement has the same old LMO chemistry or the newer NMC chemistry. When asked about warranty they said 12 months.
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