Potential new Leaf owner..a few questions

[Roop550]

The degradation warranty on the battery is this: if the car loses more than about 33% capacity over 8 years/100k miles, they will replace the battery. Don't expect that to happen with your Leaf. If a defective cell shows up within 8 years or 100k miles, they will replace either the cell or the battery. I wouldn't expect to get a new free battery from Nissan any time, and to buy a new one would cost you about $15k installed, for a 40kwh battery, roughly. So if you need most or all of that 150 mile range, then either lease the car for 2 years or consider a 62kwh Leaf Plus, instead of the 40kwh version. That has a range when new of a bit over 200 miles.

As noted above, the cars sold without the All Weather Package in colder areas tend to be cheap. I just saw a 62kwh Leaf Plus for $105 a month with $2500 down, but it lacked the AW Package so I had to pass. If you don't care about heated seats and steering wheel, then focus on those cars without them for a good or great deal.

Thanks for this information. This greatly helps. After I run down my numbers with PG&E and see what are my best options. Maybe a lease might be a good option for me. I have to research the secrets of that, too, haha.


So I dived deeper into my electricity provider's rates and whatnot...I will not save much or anything at all even if I change my electricity plan. The newer plan does have an Off-Peak charge of just 16 cents, but Peak and Partial Peak hours still sit around 35 cents and 48 cents. I will have plenty of time to charge the EV during Off-Peak hours, but my bill will go up in general use of electricity throughout the day. It will be almost double of what I pay on a yearly basis. I still need to do some math and figuring out of these numbers on a spreadsheet and calculate everything.

In the meantime, I'm putting the search for the vehicle off for a moment until I figure out the ins and outs of it. I do really want to own an EV, but the charging rate is super high for me.

I think most of my questions were answered with good satisfaction. The only deal-breaker is the charging price of kwh. I hope I can get it figured out and finally get a LEAF. I greatly appreciate everyone's help and information. I will keep coming back to get more updates on what people are doing and experiencing to gather more info.