Nissan Leaf

It's about picking the right tool for the job at the right price. All of the above suggestions have less range and come with their own sets of issues, as any car does. I say that as someone interested in all of your listed suggestions. The Ioniq 28 is the only other EV from your list I would put as a comparable EV, but it does have a smaller range and is not as nice of a car to live with. The real advantage is the CCS for rapid charging, but many people will almost never use a rapid, or public charger. That's why we ask about user profile. The eGolf is an over priced car with small range, nice as it is. The i3 is ideally a second car and is quite small, seating only 4 people with half the range of a similarly priced Leaf.

From an economical and utility point of view, a 40kWh Leaf is a superb choice. This assumes the battery hasn't been cooked by charging it regularly on fast chargers on roasting hot days, which thankfully we see few of here. If the battery has been abused by continuous rapid charging, or leaving it charged at 100% for prolonged periods (an issue with any EV except those with LFP cells), then the battery should be in pretty good shape.

A very simple check with LeafSpy will show the battery health and how many quick and slow charges have been done. I would be looking for a car with less than 100k klms and with 90%+ health remaining. If it's had a lot of quick charges, I would pass. Age depending, I think a car with low quick charges should be around 25 per year. That's not unreasonable. In fact, the 2015 Leaf I bought a couple months had about a dozen quick charges, including the 3 or 4 I did on the journey home from NI. I would accept a car as low as 85% if the price was right, but not less.

Using LeafSpy takes out the guess work, so there is no need to worry about the battery degradation. I've shown this on here time and again.

Buying a 24kWh Leaf? Aim for 10/12 bars and under 120k klms. Use LeafSpy for proper check.

Buying a 40kWh Leaf? Aim for under 100k klms. Use LeafSpy to check.

Let's look at the clapped out Leaf you listed. It has 155k klms. Not huge mileage, but in less than 8 years, it has had had 4 owners, not including the person selling it. If it was a single owner, or maybe 2 owners, then it might be safe to assume annual average mileage of 20k. With 4 recorded owners, it's more likely at least one owner racked up a higher annual mileage and that points to a high likelihood of a lot of rapid charging. I reckon that car has an earth leak causing a fast charge error and reducing the allowable range. I bet the LeafSpy readout would be entertaining. I wouldn't rely on Nissan for anything. I'd choose a cheap Leaf with everything in order after I have inspected it.

I wouldn't recommend anyone buy an EV with a battery issue, same as I wouldn't recommend they buy a crashed car thinking they can lash a new wing on and drive away with thousands saved. A €20 dongle and a free APP is all that is needed to rule out a bad battery. Shopping for lower mileage and lower number of owners is a very effective way of not wasting your time when shopping for a Leaf in particular.

I've been around these cars for nearly 9 years now; all variants except the 62kWh battery and the XE/Visia spec. I stand over my opinions given here. Euro for Euro, in the lower end of the market (sub €13k) there is no better value to be had than a Leaf if it fits the prospective buyers needs.

Nissan were selling brand new Leafs last year for a little over €20k. That hit used Leafs hard in trade value, but the older 24kWh models were less impacted.

Also Tesla don't really take trade-ins. They just offer them up to the trade and come back with the best current offer, less 10-15% cut they take. They might hold onto a low mileage, newer model for CPO stock, but not a different brand car. They offered me about €22k last year for my 222 Model 3 RWD. It had under 70k klms and was less than 3 years old, so had full warranty. It wasn't a bad offer and I sold it for a little bit more privately to a Boardsie. The Model 3 is the best value car out there for a new car. I currently own a 25 MYJ AWD and a MS75D we just imported. Great cars.

Can you clarify if you need:

a) Granny charger (3 pin domestic)

b) Type 2 - Charging cable

c) Charge adapter

Thanks ghost,Im looking for a charging cable .

I believe what we have is a type 1 on the car end and type 2 on the wall end of the charging cable and looking to get the same again.

Well, we don't have to agree on everything. But I still contend that the Leaf is the better value option in most cases up to at least the €10 mark and imo, up to around €13k. I've said why I think so, using your earlier list as good example comparisons.

Occasional fast charging is perfectly OK. It only becomes an issue when it's done frequently, or if the car has been left plugged into a fast charger until after 100% was reached. This was a big issue back when charging was free and before penalties were brought in. The battery would be charged, hot and left idle until the owner returned. Most of the problem cars are ex-taxis; something never acknowledged.

I do agree that Nissan sticking with CHAdeMO after 2017 was stupid, but there are still CHAdeMO chargers being installed, with less and less demand for them. So, not a big issue. Maybe just more planning if taking the 40kWh Leaf for a long journey. Certainly a non issue for someone who only wants a local runabout.

Thanks for taking the time to look for them Ghost, I didn't think to look on amazon.

I just ordered the Amazon Cable, thanks again.

As @zg3409 said, the ideal check will include a full test drive til battery is empty. This is because if there are weak cells, they will show nearer to the empty state, usually below 40% SOC. Under harsh acceleration, a loss of of power would be experienced if a weak cell is exposed. However, if it's not practical to do a full test drive like this and your intention is to view and buy on the same day, then you can help protect yourself by looking at the LeafSpy figures and only buy if they all look good.

Let's be honest, most sellers aren't going to want you take the car out for an hour and drain the battery right down. Even I would probably tell that person to look elsewhere if I was selling and they wanted to spend all that time doing their checks. They're not fully insured, so I expect a short 5-10 minute test drive to check the car is driving OK. They can spend as long as they want checking everything else out on my driveway. If you really want to check for weak cells on the day. Ask the seller to have the battery at 25% and then do your test drive. If you are buying the car after that, you will have to wait for it to charge up 😁.

Below is a screenshot of the LeafSpy view of our 2015 Leaf. I have highlighted the bits you want to check. Orient the screen to landscape for best view.

SOH

The State Of Health is at the top. In general, anything over 80% is pretty good for a car over 10 years old.

CHARGE NUMBER

The number of Quick Charges if low is a really good sign and you are unlikely to have battery issues. 10 QCs per year or lower would be excellent. 20 per year is OK. Higher would be less ideal. You won't even be viewing cars that were Quick Charged daily, or weekly, because they will absolutely not have 10 bars of health.

L1/L2 charges is when you charge at home, or at slow public chargers. There is a software bug in the Leaf which double records the number of slow charges in the 24kWh Leaf. So, half the number you see.

CHARGE SPEED

See the Hx figure beside SOH. That figure represents internal battery resistance and should be nearly the same as the SOH figure. A higher number is better. A lower figure tells you that the battery was left too often at 100% or has been fast charged a lot. 79% is pretty good overall. A high resistance (low percentage) slows down the charging speed roughly equal to the missing percentage. So, the battery below will charge at around 80% of its original speed on a fast charger. Slow charges are not really impacted unless the Hx percentage is really low.

CELL IMBALANCE

The large number (12mV) is the cell imbalance. A low number is what you want. Below 30mV is excellent. Below 50mV is good. Anything higher means the cells are not balanced, or you have bad cells, usually the former. But you won't know for sure until the car has completed a full charge cycle on a slow charge. I always ask the seller to charge the car to 100% and leave it plugged in for a couple of hours after it is charged (until the charge lights go out).

The blue bars on the graph represent all the cells. All blue is superb. A happy battery. It's very normal to see a couple of red ones too, but you want to pay attention to the mV difference. If you see one cell that is way below the rest, it's likely a bad cell and will reduce the effective range and power of the entire pack. The weakest cell is the one that matters.

STATE OF CHARGE

Seen at the bottom. It's the real SOC. It doesn't always exactly match what is on the car dash. Just giving it a mention. The 12V battery also shows there on the bottom left. I use LeafSpy Pro, so the basic version (which isn't available on Android phones) may not have all the details, but I believe it has the ones you see here.

This car has 124k klms at time of reading the pack. It was over the usual limit I would normally look at, but I was more fortunate that this battery was better than expected. The original plan was to keep it for 2-3 months and sell when my OH got her Tesla. We have kept the Leaf for our Daughter who just passed her test.

If you stick to 100k klms or lower, you have far less chance of running into any issues. That's not to say you should rule out a car with higher mileage, but I would draw a hard line at 150k. It would want to be exceptional value to encourage me to look, or my budget and requirements would have to be low.

The red one looks really nice. (We have 2 red Leafs….my Son has 40kWh one and my Daughter has 24kWh). The cabin does look a bit worn though in the seats….as expected with the mileage. It has 10/12 capacity bars and I would expect to pay no more than €4k for it.

The Silver one (exterior damage aside) would seem to be the better option. It has 11/12 bars and the interior is in better condition. It is unlikely that there is any battery issue aside from some degradation. As for the exterior, it could be fixed for around €600 if she did care. The NCT is good for a year. Book it in for the end of the year and it gets another 2 years to Feb 2029. I'd not be paying more than €5k for that car. I'd get it for €4.5k if I was shopping. Depends on how well you negotiate.

Worth mentioning that the first battery bar represents about 12% of the battery with the remaining 11 bars representing around 8% each. So the silver car probably has about 85% SOH remaining. Don't get too bogged down in it. 10+ bars is all you need to look for.