Should I buy a 2012 Leaf SV for $16,188 (25,524)

[lonestar49]

I have the opportunity to buy a 2012 Ocean Blue Leaf SV (wht interior) for $16,188 (25,524 miles) in SoCal (los angeles)? It has the solar panel on the roof. I'm buying it from a Volvo dealer. So it's not Certified. How do I check battery degradation? What should I know that I don't know about the purchase and ownership of this model, yr and trim.

I checked my rental house and my sockets in the kitchen are grounded. The ones in my garage are not. I'm told it is a few hundred dollars for an electrician to get that done.

Will the kitchen sockets work ok? The kitchen and driveway are connected to it would be easy to run a cord to the car through the side kitchen window for a charge. We live on the westside of LA, so weather is permitting for this. There are a number of re-charge stations nearby. But will that put a strain on the wiring in the kitchen or be factor in my electric bill?

Do I need extended warranty? which kind? (for what?) what is the best kind from dealer or elsewhere? do I need it before I drive off the lot?

Also, if there is battery degradation, how much is too much to indicate that price needs to come down or I should walk away from the deal?

 

[utgrad]

Since you are talking about "buying"...the 2012 has the 3.3kw onboard charger (this is different from what is considered the "quick charge port" FYI), whereas newer Leafs (I believe starting in 2013) have 6.6kw. So if this is a car you'll have for a long time (I'm assuming because you're talking about buying) just know that you'll charge at about half the rate vs newer on a Level 2 (220v) evse. This could impact depreciation and general flexibility of the car going forward. I personally would not "buy" a pure electric car at this point that wasn't capable of charging at least 6.6kw.

 

[cwerdna]

Since you are talking about "buying"...the 2012 has the 3.3kw onboard charger (this is different from what is considered the "quick charge port" FYI), whereas newer Leafs (I believe starting in 2013) have 6.6kw.

6.6 kW OBC is optional on '13+ Leafs (standard on SV and SL; optional on S trim).

 

[swaltner]

That seems like a little high for the prices that I've heard people mentioning here. According to Kelly Blue Book, that's at the top end of the dealer pricing. You should be looking for prices in the low $15k range down to the high $14k range.

Regarding batter degradation, you can get a general idea of the condition by looking at the battery capacity bars on the dash. These are shown by the skinny bars at the far right of the dash display, right next to the much wider bars that show the current charge. The car starts out with 12 capacity bars. It will lose the first capacity bar at about 15% degradation and each remaining bar is about 7% (I'm sure those numbers are wrong, but you get the idea). If you see a car with 12 bars, you don't know if it's got 99% of the original capacity (unlikely with a 2 year old Leaf) or 85.001% and is just ready to lose it's first capacity bar on the display. The "Gid meters" mentioned on the forums can read the data from the OBDII port and give you a more accurate reading. The cheap route is running Leaf Spy on an Android phone using a Bluetooth OBDII reader.

You want to have an electrician correct the wiring in your garage. An ungrounded outlet in your garage is not good. Your proposed solution of an extension cord, while it will likely work assuming you use a quality extension cord, is not going to be convenient. Since you already are having an electrician out, I would suggest either upgrading the included EVSE via evseupgrade.com to accept 240 V input or having the electrician hardwire something like a ClipperCreek LCS-20 in your garage. You could go with a higher amp unit than the LCS-20 for future proofing, but the 2012 Leaf with its 3.3 kW onboard charger will max out on that setup.

 

[swaltner]

Also, in the future, don't start so many threads on the SAME topic. That's inconsiderate to do on web forums. I spent some time typing up a reply because it looked like some of your key questions were getting ignored. After spending time typing a reply, I see that others had given you the same guidance on other threads that you had started.

Please, just ask a question once, not three or more times in different area of the forum. Thank you.

 

[TimLee]

Also, in the future, don't start so many threads on the SAME topic. That's inconsiderate to do on web forums.

+10
Starting a new thread with same question but with a few more details only 73 minutes after the first one is real bad practice.

Extension cord use is a bad idea.
The 120V EVSE plug on 2013 forward has temperature sensor that will shut it off when plug / outlet gets too hot.
You do not have this protection with extension cord plugged in a kitchen outlet.

Extension cord presents tripping hazard and in one case a bundle of extension cord overheated and caught fire.

Previous info from another thread:

...
Trickle charging should be safe, though, right? I wouldn't necessarily need to have the circuit certified for it or anything, should I? If I were to go to a friend's house, would I be safe plugging into their outlet?

How safe 120V charging is depends on how lucky you are.
Very few garages have the correct properly installed high quality single outlet supplied by a single breaker.
Code only allows using 80% of the circuit rating for a long term continuous load.
So on a 15 amp circuit nothing else should be on the same circuit while the car is charging.
And a lot of 120V gets put in poorly using push in connections.
One person had a bad fire most likely from staples that had damaged the cable in the wall.
http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=15784&hilit=+fire#p352567" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Have a qualified person verify that what you are using is correct.
But in general a proper new carefully done 240V installation is much safer.

In this case the OP acknowledges the garage outlets aren't grounded.
Very likely there isn't a single outlet any where in the house that is suitable for safe electric vehicle charging.
Have something put in correctly by someone that is knowledgeable and have it inspected and approved before doing electric vehicle charging.

 

[cwerdna]

Also, in the future, don't start so many threads on the SAME topic. That's inconsiderate to do on web forums.

+10
Starting a new thread with same question but with a few more details only 73 minutes after the first one is real bad practice.

Extension cord use is a bad idea.
The 120V EVSE plug on 2013 forward has temperature sensor that will shut it off when plug / outlet gets too hot.
You do not have this protection with extension cord plugged in a kitchen outlet.

Yes on all of the above.

Mods: Please merge all of the OP's threads into one.

 

[kubel]

I was under the impression that only the SL has a solar panel on the roof.

As far as grounding outlets- when I bought my house, none of the outlets were grounded. However, when I switched off the breaker and took off the outlet cover, I noticed they did use 3-wire cable throughout the house. Grounding the outlets was as simple as removing the old outlet, taking the ground wire from the back of the metal outlet box and looping it around the ground screw of a new grounded outlet, and then wiring the hot and neutrals, and then screwing everything tight. Total cost for replacing an outlet myself was less than $1 and maybe 5 or 6 minutes of my time per outlet. It was strangely rewarding and was perhaps the cheapest and easiest thing to do to my house that resulted in a valuable improvement.