Carvana Leafs, seemingly very inexpensive

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francoliu

New member
Joined
Jan 6, 2023
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Hi all - thank you in advance for your advice. I've read the used leaf buying guide and all the resources here are much appreciated.

Basically I am in the market for an inexpensive car to be used by our future au pair and am thinking about a Leaf.

I've come across a number of listings, specifically from Carvana on 2016 62kwh Leafs that seem extremely... inexpensive. See this link (I used myev instead of Carvana itself because it lets you filter by range better than Carvana's filter does).


https://www.myev.com/cars-for-sale?make=nissan&model=leaf&sort=price-asc&page=1&mileage-max=39985&mileage-min=5&range-max=226&range-min=112

Basically there are a bunch of similar 2016 Leafs with 226 miles of range for about $12k and roughly 30K miles. These are about 30-40% less than similar cars at Carmax as far as I can tell. Can you guys tell me if I'm missing something? I understand the possibility of battery degradation but it seems unlikely that ALL of these are secretly degraded batteries.

thanks-
 
Welcome. There are NO 62kwh 2016 Leafs, so people are naturally suspicious of a car that is discounted, but doesn't exist. You'd want to contact Carvana, and ask for much, much more info on these cars. Most likely, they have the 30kwh pack, and having read the buying guide, you know what that would mean...
 
62 kWh Leaf, which is aka Leaf Plus didn't start shipping in the US until around Spring 2019, partway thru the '19 model year.

I was in this boat in Jan 2019 when I bought a heavily discounted new '19 Bolt, which was also eligible for Federal tax credit. I knew Leaf Plus was coming and Spring 2019 but didn't know exactly what month.

'16 SV, '16 SL and '16 "S 30" (https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1106593_nissan-leaf-s-quietly-gets-30-kwh-battery-upgrade-higher-price) were 30 kWh. '16 original S was 24 kWh (see specs tab of https://usa.nissannews.com/en-US/releases/us-2016-nissan-leaf-press-kit). All '17 were 30 kWh. All '18 were 40 kWh. '19 to '22 could be had in 40 or 62 kWh, once above Plus began shipping. '23 is 40 or 60 (!) kWh, depending on non-Plus vs. Plus.
 
Carvana’s listings aren’t always accurate. I purchased a 2015 Leaf SL for a surprisingly low price (I should have been suspicious.). When it arrived, it was an S, not an SL. Fortunately, Carvana’s policy is to accept returns for any reason, with no questions asked and no fees. They even drove an hour to my house to pick it up and then drove another hour another day to bring me the right car. They also refunded me $25/day until the correct car was in my driveway ($700 total).

I don’t advise you to buy a suspicious car, but if you do, Carvana’s return policy has you covered.

As a funny side note, when I said “no questions asked” that isn’t exactly true. The guy on the phone asked why I was returning it, so I told him “You sold me the wrong car”. He didn’t have a checkbox for that on his computer screen, so he kept asking the same question, and I kept patiently giving him the same answer. Finally he said, in an exasperated voice, “Would you say it’s not what you expected?” to which I replied, “I guess.” and then he checked a box and we moved on.
 
I am starting to see a set of youtube videos suggesting a modest oversupply in the used car market, maybe putting some of the carmax/carvana acquisitions potentially under water.
 
30kwhr leaf’s than are 7 years old have no business being more than about $5000-$6000

Sad that the market is so messed up.

Batteries of that age could be really degraded even if they aged well.
 
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