Total Leaf with New Battery

I have a dilemma. My 2011 Leaf SL was in an auto accident and was deemed "totaled" by the insurance company since there was front and side body damage, and the side airbag and driver's seat airbag deployed.

They have offered to sell me the "salvaged" car and I'm wondering if I should take it, just to harvest the parts and buy a used leaf.

My leaf has a new battery installed under warranty at the end of 2015, so I think there's some value there. It only has about 6k miles on it. The dealership told me they could remove the battery and put into another leaf for about $1k, so if I found a cheap leaf with a high mileage battery, I may consider. Or I could "sell" the battery from my wrecked car.

Do you think that anyone would want to purchase this battery? If so how much do you think someone would pay?

There might be a market for the whole battery, but the modules inside are in pretty hot demand for non-Leaf use as well. EV converters in particular are using a lot of modules out of wrecked Leafs. There is some potential market there for other components (motor, inverter, LBC, charger, maybe more) but folks are still figuring out how to make use of them. Depending what the buy back is, I would imagine you could pretty easily sell just the battery modules for ~$80-100 each (times 48) or the whole car for $4-5k or so. I paid about $7k for a wrecked 2012 after fees and delivery from a salvage auction, but that was about a year ago and I wanted one still driveable as I'm using most of the parts. I'd much rather see the owner make some money back out of a bad situation than let the insurance company take it, but you'd have to decide if its worth the hassle.

Here's one place you could probably sell batteries, parts and/or the whole car:
http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/

Best of luck,
Rob

The insurance company should pay you more for your car with a new battery than just "blue book value", but you may have to argue with them to get a reasonable settlement. I had a new battery and had to fight with the other driver's insurance company for a month to get a reasonable settlement. I considered buying my 2011 back, but the insurance company's storage yard trashed the interior, the front, and the underside of it. If you decide to buy your car back, try to take possession as soon as possible to minimize additional damage while it is in storage.

Gerry