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* Limiting the number of QCs (Quick Charges / DC Fast Charge), as this heats up the uncooled Leaf battery, degrading it slightly each time, especially on hotter

* Limiting the number of QCs (Quick Charges / DC Fast Charge), as this heats up the uncooled Leaf battery, degrading it slightly each time, especially on hotter days * Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable * Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards * Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
If you think this is what puts you off EVs, then you haven't read the horror stories from EV Clinic. TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars. Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets. Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs. Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.
- mort96 1y ago
  The DRM thing unfortunately has nothing to do with EVs and everything to do with the computerization of cars. All cars have gotten more and more computerized and harder to repair with more DRM. EVs arguably fundamentally require heavy computerization more than ICE cars, but you're not gonna avoid it in a brand new diesel car either.
  - jimnotgym 1y ago
    That is why I keep fixing up my old Diesels. No DPF, basic EGR, basic computer, no worries.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    That's why I said repair regulations are needed for all cars not just EVs.
    - arpinum 1y ago
      The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM. They want to prevent owners from turning off nanny devices or overriding pollution controls.
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Can you share what car repairability regulations did the EU put into place? Because following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like the opposite.
        mort96 1y ago
        I don't think there's disagreement here: > The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM is the same statement as: > following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- jacquesm 1y ago
  > Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets. Maybe they should do both.
- theshrike79 1y ago
  Hybrids are a different breed, they're very very bad. Don't ever buy one out of warranty and be REALLY sure what the warranty covers. FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous. Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.
guepe 1y ago
This is completely avoided and not my experience. This is only because the leaf is not actively cooled. Most ev do not suffer from such difficult management of battery and have a computer dedicated to cool / heat and keep battery in healthy temps. They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.
- formerly_proven 1y ago
  Even then the Leaf stands out with seemingly unusually high battery degradation compared to the uncooled battery competitors from 2014.
  - gambiting 1y ago
    A VW e-Up(and its siblings, Skoda Citigo EV and Seat Mii Electric) all have passively cooled batteries but owners don't report much if any battery degradation even on the first gen models which are over 10 years old now. I can only assume it's the battery chemistry or cell composition compared to the Leaf. Our own is 4 years old and I haven't noticed any range loss compared to when it was new.
    - arpinum 1y ago
      Could be due to American climate and Leafs getting sold heavily in America. Jeff lives in a place hotter and sunnier than Málaga. Cars can roast in their huge unshaded parking lots with black tarmac.
  - dzhiurgis 1y ago
    Not a battery expert, but I did recently look at using old leaf battery cells to build home battery. Their modules are 2s2p which make them impossible to balance.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  > Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet. Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.
mschuster91 1y ago
Limiting QC events is easy enough. A daily commuter vehicle can easily trickle charge over night, and even the measly 40 kWh old used Leaf can get you 200km a charge - assuming an average commute of 20 km for Germany, that's a whole work week worth of battery life. The only time you as an average person actually "need" QC is for the yearly vacation road trip, but as the author writes, renting an ICE or chungus electric vehicle for that occasion is way more cost effective. Admitted: if you don't have access to trickle charge at either the workplace or your home, the situation looks different. As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.
- stanski 1y ago
  I thought about this too - own a small electric vehicle for 90% of the family needs and rent a bigger SUV when the need arises. Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting. Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE. As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
    - 1y ago
carstenhag 1y ago
This is, as the title mentions, the cheapest EV. It's really old. It did not have tech that pretty much all EVs have nowadays. Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.
- nicce 1y ago
  > It's really old. Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+? EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
  - tpm 1y ago
    It's a 2 years old car, but the model and technology (2nd generation Nissan Leaf) is from 2017, so it's 8 years old in a rapidly evolving field.
  - padjo 1y ago
    First generation Leaf was launched in 2010 second gen in 2017. That’s quite an old design for any tech that’s still advancing.
  - numpad0 1y ago
    ZE1 Leaf(2017) was electronically a big minor update over ZE0(2010). IIRC so much so that ZE1 battery packs almost work on ZE0 body with only minor hack efforts. So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
  - Tade0 1y ago
    To add to what others said: back in 2017 40kWh was the standard, now people scoff at 55kWh. Cars also charge faster, which greatly increases their highway driving potential. > What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies? That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
  - 1y ago
kbos87 1y ago
I don't think about any of this and never have. My 2022 Model Y has 60,000 miles on it and the battery has only lost a negligible amount of health/range since I bought it.
- jimnotgym 1y ago
  What was the purchase cost difference between a Model Y and a Leaf in 2022?
numpad0 1y ago
Those were comporomises Nissan made in 2010s to build an EV that will be under $30k new in 2025. Not all of it are fundamental limitations of Li-ion BEV technology. Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.
fifilura 1y ago
My understanding is that 2 & 3 are problems with the original (20kWh) Leaf model. Which possibly led to a rumour about the 40kWh models, that the OP has. My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.
- geerlingguy 1y ago
  Is that the health reported by the car dashboard, or by LeafSpy? The dash has some wiggle room in its 1-10 display an IIRC it will display 100% until the SoH is below like 90%...
  - floxy 1y ago
    Obviously they are reporting the dashboard number. The first bar drops at 85%. For a 2019, it is probably getting close to dropping its first dashboard bar.
    - fifilura 1y ago
      After 25 years in the industry I should know that there is always someone that have read more forums and researched more :) Either way, the car is 6 years old. At this rate the battery will still be pretty fine when it is 15 years old and ready for retirement. Never charging it above 80% is not worth the hassle. It is like never using your left hand for the fear of hurting your left hand. You are crippling your car by overthinking.
sevenseacat 1y ago
I just checked my phone (an iPhone 11) and it says 72%. There is absolutely no way the capacity is anywhere near 72% anymore lol
- ruperthair 1y ago
  The performance/battery life of a phone can be seriously affected by the software (each new iOS being built for newer CPUs), whereas this is less of a factor for cars.
rsynnott 1y ago
A lot of this is either over-caution, or related to the Leaf's specific quirks (though it's not uncooled, it's passively cooled by airflow).
KaiserPro 1y ago
All of those problems are solved in non-leaf cars. The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago

If you think this is what puts you off EVs, then you haven't read the horror stories from EV Clinic. TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars. Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets. Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs. Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.

mort96 1y ago
The DRM thing unfortunately has nothing to do with EVs and everything to do with the computerization of cars. All cars have gotten more and more computerized and harder to repair with more DRM. EVs arguably fundamentally require heavy computerization more than ICE cars, but you're not gonna avoid it in a brand new diesel car either.
- jimnotgym 1y ago
  That is why I keep fixing up my old Diesels. No DPF, basic EGR, basic computer, no worries.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  That's why I said repair regulations are needed for all cars not just EVs.
  - arpinum 1y ago
    The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM. They want to prevent owners from turning off nanny devices or overriding pollution controls.
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Can you share what car repairability regulations did the EU put into place? Because following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like the opposite.
      - mort96 1y ago
        I don't think there's disagreement here: > The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM is the same statement as: > following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jacquesm 1y ago
> Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets. Maybe they should do both.
theshrike79 1y ago
Hybrids are a different breed, they're very very bad. Don't ever buy one out of warranty and be REALLY sure what the warranty covers. FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous. Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.

guepe 1y ago

This is completely avoided and not my experience. This is only because the leaf is not actively cooled. Most ev do not suffer from such difficult management of battery and have a computer dedicated to cool / heat and keep battery in healthy temps. They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.

formerly_proven 1y ago
Even then the Leaf stands out with seemingly unusually high battery degradation compared to the uncooled battery competitors from 2014.
- gambiting 1y ago
  A VW e-Up(and its siblings, Skoda Citigo EV and Seat Mii Electric) all have passively cooled batteries but owners don't report much if any battery degradation even on the first gen models which are over 10 years old now. I can only assume it's the battery chemistry or cell composition compared to the Leaf. Our own is 4 years old and I haven't noticed any range loss compared to when it was new.
  - arpinum 1y ago
    Could be due to American climate and Leafs getting sold heavily in America. Jeff lives in a place hotter and sunnier than Málaga. Cars can roast in their huge unshaded parking lots with black tarmac.
- dzhiurgis 1y ago
  Not a battery expert, but I did recently look at using old leaf battery cells to build home battery. Their modules are 2s2p which make them impossible to balance.
dzhiurgis 1y ago
> Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet. Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.

mschuster91 1y ago

Limiting QC events is easy enough. A daily commuter vehicle can easily trickle charge over night, and even the measly 40 kWh old used Leaf can get you 200km a charge - assuming an average commute of 20 km for Germany, that's a whole work week worth of battery life. The only time you as an average person actually "need" QC is for the yearly vacation road trip, but as the author writes, renting an ICE or chungus electric vehicle for that occasion is way more cost effective. Admitted: if you don't have access to trickle charge at either the workplace or your home, the situation looks different. As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.

stanski 1y ago
I thought about this too - own a small electric vehicle for 90% of the family needs and rent a bigger SUV when the need arises. Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting. Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE. As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.
  - 1y ago

carstenhag 1y ago

This is, as the title mentions, the cheapest EV. It's really old. It did not have tech that pretty much all EVs have nowadays. Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.

nicce 1y ago
> It's really old. Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+? EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?
- tpm 1y ago
  It's a 2 years old car, but the model and technology (2nd generation Nissan Leaf) is from 2017, so it's 8 years old in a rapidly evolving field.
- padjo 1y ago
  First generation Leaf was launched in 2010 second gen in 2017. That’s quite an old design for any tech that’s still advancing.
- numpad0 1y ago
  ZE1 Leaf(2017) was electronically a big minor update over ZE0(2010). IIRC so much so that ZE1 battery packs almost work on ZE0 body with only minor hack efforts. So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.
- Tade0 1y ago
  To add to what others said: back in 2017 40kWh was the standard, now people scoff at 55kWh. Cars also charge faster, which greatly increases their highway driving potential. > What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies? That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.
- 1y ago

kbos87 1y ago

I don't think about any of this and never have. My 2022 Model Y has 60,000 miles on it and the battery has only lost a negligible amount of health/range since I bought it.

jimnotgym 1y ago
What was the purchase cost difference between a Model Y and a Leaf in 2022?

numpad0 1y ago

Those were comporomises Nissan made in 2010s to build an EV that will be under $30k new in 2025. Not all of it are fundamental limitations of Li-ion BEV technology. Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.

fifilura 1y ago

My understanding is that 2 & 3 are problems with the original (20kWh) Leaf model. Which possibly led to a rumour about the 40kWh models, that the OP has. My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.

geerlingguy 1y ago
Is that the health reported by the car dashboard, or by LeafSpy? The dash has some wiggle room in its 1-10 display an IIRC it will display 100% until the SoH is below like 90%...
- floxy 1y ago
  Obviously they are reporting the dashboard number. The first bar drops at 85%. For a 2019, it is probably getting close to dropping its first dashboard bar.
  - fifilura 1y ago
    After 25 years in the industry I should know that there is always someone that have read more forums and researched more :) Either way, the car is 6 years old. At this rate the battery will still be pretty fine when it is 15 years old and ready for retirement. Never charging it above 80% is not worth the hassle. It is like never using your left hand for the fear of hurting your left hand. You are crippling your car by overthinking.

sevenseacat 1y ago

I just checked my phone (an iPhone 11) and it says 72%. There is absolutely no way the capacity is anywhere near 72% anymore lol

ruperthair 1y ago
The performance/battery life of a phone can be seriously affected by the software (each new iOS being built for newer CPUs), whereas this is less of a factor for cars.

rsynnott 1y ago

A lot of this is either over-caution, or related to the Leaf's specific quirks (though it's not uncooled, it's passively cooled by airflow).

KaiserPro 1y ago

All of those problems are solved in non-leaf cars. The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.