About to buy one, is a good deal?

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nahuelcd

New member
Joined
Nov 13, 2020
Messages
4
Hello everyone, this is my first post and hopefully I'm in the right place:

I am planning on buying my first electric car ever, I am looking at a 2011 leaf (first gen) with 60000 kmts and 9 health bars (70% Soh), the guy is asking NZD 7500 for it.

my daily commute is 30 kmts round and going to town is 45 kmts round. for longer trips I have an old ICE car but planning to use the leaf as main car as I am doing 15000 kmts per year

main reason to go electric is savings:
15000 kmts per year = 1500 litres = +/- 3000 nzd
a friend's leaf here makes 6,5 kmts per kwh here so: 15000 / 6,5 * .3285 (nzd per kilowat here) = 758 nzd
saving more than 2000 nzd per year (paying itself on savings after less than 4 years)

is my math ok or am I missing anything important?
is this car a good deal? how many more kmts should I expect from it before battery is't even good for my daily commute?

thanks in advance
 
While your math seems ok (the conversions make it a bit harder at this end), there is probably going to be an issue with the battery. If your local climate is on the warmer side, then the first generation battery (unless it was replaced at some point) in that Leaf will lose capacity fairly fast. (I've dubbed those batteries the "Canary Pack" because they are relatively easy to harm, especially with heat.) Unless the battery is from at least 2013, I would keep looking, especially if you want to keep the car more than a year or two, unless your local climate is on the cool side.
 
The car history suggests a loss of ~ 4% capacity a year
It started at ~ 110 km
Winter driving knocks off up to 30% of range

So ...
Winter range when new was ~ 110*0.7
Current winter range is 110*0.7*0.7
In 4 years winter range will be 110*0.7*0.7*0.86 = 46 km

If you buy this car you have to hope for no repairs and no headwinds.
 
LeftieBiker said:
One of the Big Questions is: What are the Winters like in that part of New Zealand...? The other is: "What are the Summers like?"

I would say "normal" weather: winter can get to 0° Celsius but only a few days and summer up to 30°C max
 
LeftieBiker said:
One of the Big Questions is: What are the Winters like in that part of New Zealand...? The other is: "What are the Summers like?"

Typical summer temperatures range from 22° to 30°+ Celsius - that's 71° to 86° Farenheit. Winter daytime temperatures range from 12° to 17° Celcius. It never gets really cold, it doesn't snow in here
 
Believe it or not, 30C is hot enough to degrade a Canary battery. If the nights cool off a lot, though, the pack itself likely won't reach those temps unless the car is driven hard or fast charged while hot.
 
Did Nissan sell the 2011 LEAF as a new car (in 2011) in NZ? I seem to recall that all LEAFs in NZ are imported...

If so, then one risk is a lack of dealership support.

However, these companies service EVs there:

https://bluecars.nz/

https://evsenhanced.com/

http://www.hybrids.co.nz/

They all apparently do battery pack swaps too.

So, at least there's some hope that, if things go bad with the car, you can get competent service
 
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