We bought the leaf in 2016 because a $36,000 car turned into a $16,000 car after all the rebates…and they financed it with 0% interest for 5 years.
The car had a 100+ mile range when we bought it and we were pissed when we found out that the 2017 year model came out the next month with a 150-mile range. But the car worked well and things were great for a while.
We really didn’t really think-through what a normal 6-10% range loss every year would mean in real terms and we’ve now had the car for 10 years. We lost about 6-10 miles of range every year and it has dropped down to a fully-charged, 64-mile range in the summer, which would probably drop to a 45-mile range in the winter. It looked like we could only use it for errands in the neighborhood because driving it across town created range anxiety for us.
We don’t want or need a brand-new car, so we started looking at options. Nissan told us that a battery replacement would be something $14,000 a couple years ago, so it was probably closer to $20,000 for a 150-mile range car today through them. We looked at used cars, but you never know if you are getting a lemon or not, so we weren’t keen on that idea. Lina talked to one salesman and that was the end of the userd car search 🙂
I ran across this video channel during our research (https://www.youtube.com/@VIVNE-CoraLiu) and it looked like a battery replacement wouldn’t be as expensive as Nissan told us it would be, as long as we purchased it in China. I contacted the manufacturer and asked them a LOT of questions that always got a great answer. In the end, we decided to take a chance and order a battery pack from them that was more than twice the capacity of our existing battery.
Then the tariff war started. We hemmed and hawed as winter was close approaching, but decided to bite the bullet and buy the battery. They built it as quick as they could to get it out before the big tariffs were about to be applied, and then put it on a slow boat from China.
The next month was a little stressful as we watched the tariff news and wondered if we had been scammed, but the battery finally arrived a couple of weeks late. Lina didn’t want me to install it myself, so we hired Mile Hybrid Auto to do the job. It took them a couple of days to install the battery pack…and it worked perfectly! We now have a 246 mile according to the computer:
Our first trip on the new battery was a 90-mile round trip to the airport. Then we charged it up and did it again. Then we went even further on the same charge, so it seems to be working perfectly. So we now have a medium-range car for another 10+ years (hopefully) and still haven’t paid the full price for it.
Our friends then ordered a kit to turn the old batteries into an 18kw home battery system for their cabin, so we’re even recycling the old batteries properly.
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