New Leaf Owner, thanks to this forum!

Thanks to all the incredible information in this forum I was able to make an eyes-wide-open purchase of a used Leaf.

2013 (early build) SV with QC and Premium.

So far so good (except for no SD card, so no sweet BOSE tunes yet or any way to set the charge timer).

When I Leaf-Spied it the day I bought it, it had sat completely discharged, then trickle charged up to 80%. I was willing to get any car near 90% since the getting an SV with both packages seemed to be a bit of a challenge.

Day Purchase - Friday last week:
AHr= 58.39 and 89%SOH battery health. I thought this would be about average for a 25k mile Leaf used in Northern Virginia. I made the purchase knowing that I would lose a battery bar of health in the coming months or years depending on how much we drove it (and how we drove it).

Today:
Well just after a 100 miles or so of driving the numbers have dropped quickly
AHr=57.17 and 87% SOH

Should I expect to see these numbers fluctuate up and down, or is this a true reading and I'm about to lose a bar?

Either way the car is just about perfect for my commute and daycare and school drop-off which is 29 miles round trip twice a day, plugged in whenever I want (work from home most days) and a few DC Quick chargers near home and work, and a smattering of L2 chargers in the area.

Thanks again to all the excellent research and effort by the forum gurus, and for the newbies like me asking the dumb questions for which I could read the replies.

Congrats! With a 29 mile round trip and ability to charge in between, you should have a good car for a long time. I imagine you got quite a bargain especially since you got on this forum and did some research first.

This forum has some very knowledgeable and helpful people. And they don't all wear rose-colored glasses regarding the Leaf, so this is the place to go to get the full spectrum and go in eyes open.

Enjoy!

Should I expect to see these numbers fluctuate up and down, or is this a true reading and I'm about to lose a bar?

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They do fluctuate, so unless they keep going down only for six months, I wouldn't assume that you are seeing degradation.

Congrats, good luck, and enjoy! Too bad it didn't come with the SD card. Did you get both key fobs?

Don't sweat the fluctuations. Over the past one year my 2013 has reported as high as 58.7 amp hours and as low as 56.44 amp hours. Because the temperatures are raising into the 70s this week, my last readings have been going up, with the last data point a few days ago at 57.45 amp hours. A few weeks ago during a warm spell it read 58.19 amp hours; so averaged over one year, I really appear to have "lost" only 0.5 amp hours of capacity.

Regarding the missing SD card, how difficult is that to replace? Can't someone just take theirs and clone it? Or did Nissan do something funky to it so PCs can't read it and make a copy?

DarthPuppy said:

Regarding the missing SD card, how difficult is that to replace? Can't someone just take theirs and clone it? Or did Nissan do something funky to it so PCs can't read it and make a copy?

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Correct. You need to jump through hoops, including providing a unique vehicle identifier code.

Evoforce said:

Congrats, good luck, and enjoy! Too bad it didn't come with the SD card. Did you get both key fobs?

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The dealer found the original SD card and after a quick reboot the NAV is up and running. Bose system sounds great! Nav is much less clunky than expected and charging stations just downloaded.

$125 new oem key fob is in the mail from http://stores.ebay.com/genuineoemnissanparts/. I think it was cheaper since it does not include the blank uncut physical key insert. Which is fine, this will be the extra fob in my wife's purse for easy car swapping. I'm still assuming that the dealer will require 2 hours of labor for programming.

Great to see the Leased/Used Leafs being picked up by new folks interested in driving Electric! Congrats!

I have heard that some dealers take the SD Card out when the car is sitting on the lot (concern about them being stollen unfortunately). Glad the Dealer found it for you! They could have lost track of it too.

Now you are eliminating many ICE cold starts and pollution, not sending as many dollars overseas for oil, keeping the dollars local for local jobs!

So just an update after almost 1500 miles in the first month (we love the car!):

The SOH % has hovered between 86 and 88. Mostly L2 charging to 80% with a 100% charge once a week. I think, and this is very anecdotal, that an L1 trickle to 100% seems to help the SOH number go up a bit.

A few QC blasts also seem to get the SOH to climb a bit.

Averaging 4.3 KWh since at least 80% of driving has been in the city. Only a few short bursts on the freeway. This car cruises at 80!

Love the Bose stereo and around view camera.

Tires will need replacing soon. I am notoriously quick to wear tires so this isn't unexpected. I will likely go with Bridgestone DriveGuards.

juice13 said:

Tires will need replacing soon. I am notoriously quick to wear tires so this isn't unexpected. I will likely go with Bridgestone DriveGuards.

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If you need most if not all of the car's remaining range for your daily needs, I'd stick to the Ecopias. The retail versions are MUCH better than the crappy ones that Nissan spec'd. Anything else might cause your range to go down significantly.

With 29-mile roundtrip commute, slight range reduction with the run flat tires should not be an issue. Reviews I read sound favorable for the Bridgestone Driveguards. I plan to try them when the original Michelins on my 2015 need replacement.

Gerry