Early Leaf vs. Early Focus

[atikovi]

I know a few things to check on the first gen Leaf regarding battery health after driving one for a few months years ago. Now I see a 2013 Focus coming up for sale at auction with 124,000 miles. Looked at it and it's reasonably clean, and they want $2500 for it. I know nothing about the battery situation in these models. Is it a ticking time bomb? Is $2500 to much to risk on it?

 

[Stanton]

My biggest concern with the Ford Focus is: there aren't very many around (no parts) and there aren't a lot of qualified (Ford) dealers available to work on them. Plus, IIRC the battery pack wasn't much larger than the original Leaf. Having said all that, the price seems reasonable if you could verify the "health" of the battery pack...but of course there's no way to do that because (again) there weren't enough of them made for someone to come up with the equivalent of LeafSpy.
Are you a DIY kind of guy? Tough decision.

 

[Snakebitten]

Fords have the luxury of a software program called Forscan.
I don't know how well the 2013 Focus is supported, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover a fair amount of PIDs available to probe the car if given the necessary time.

Also, at least on the current model Fords, OBDlink offers some amazingly rich Ford/Lincoln/Mercury PID monitoring capabilities.

This is a screenshot of my Hybrid F150 using their app and OBDlink Bluetooth adapter:
(top half is ICE, bottom half is electric. HV/Orange LV/Red)