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Comment by Xenoamorphous | Hacker News Reader

* Limiting the number of QCs (Quick Charges / DC Fast Charge), as this heats up the uncooled Leaf battery, degrading it slightly each time, especially on hotter days

* Keeping the charge between 50-80% when manageable

* Charging up to 100% at least once a month, and letting it 'top off' to rebalance the pack for at least a few hours afterwards

* Not driving like a maniac, despite having more torque in this car than I've ever had in any of my previous cars

This kind of thing (minus the driving like a maniac bit) is what puts me off EVs. I guess it's unavoidable? My experience with laptop and phone batteries (holding much less charge pretty quickly) doesn't help. My phone (iPhone 12) says battery health is at 81% but it doesn't feel like it so I'm not sure I'd trust that Leaf saying it's got 93%.

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This is completely avoided and not my experience. This is only because the leaf is not actively cooled. Most ev do not suffer from such difficult management of battery and have a computer dedicated to cool / heat and keep battery in healthy temps.

They do degrade over time but very, very slowly. Absolutely not like phones. Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.

Even then the Leaf stands out with seemingly unusually high battery degradation compared to the uncooled battery competitors from 2014.

A VW e-Up(and its siblings, Skoda Citigo EV and Seat Mii Electric) all have passively cooled batteries but owners don't report much if any battery degradation even on the first gen models which are over 10 years old now. I can only assume it's the battery chemistry or cell composition compared to the Leaf. Our own is 4 years old and I haven't noticed any range loss compared to when it was new.

Could be due to American climate and Leafs getting sold heavily in America. Jeff lives in a place hotter and sunnier than Málaga. Cars can roast in their huge unshaded parking lots with black tarmac.

Not a battery expert, but I did recently look at using old leaf battery cells to build home battery. Their modules are 2s2p which make them impossible to balance.

> Mine has 25k miles and zero degradation yet.

Let me guess - Hyundai? They are notoriously lying about degradation.

Rivian I think it’s eating the extra buffer but that also means that the worse degradation that happens in first year is « free ». Then stats are a few percents per 100k miles…. There are articles about stats on long term degradation - it’s a non issue. Buy used if you can in USA - people perceive them as degraded so price is cheap but they don’t degrade fast

This is, as the title mentions, the cheapest EV. It's really old. It did not have tech that pretty much all EVs have nowadays.

Nowadays you don't have to do this. You can. Just like with your phone or laptop.

> It's really old.

Funny, how 2 years old car is really old. For combustion engines, old is like 15+?

EVs will have the same problems as mobile phones. Maybe manufactures want that. But software will define the age of your car and I don’t like it. What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?

For practical purposes it is a 15 year old design; it had a minor update 8 years ago, but was not brought up to date with the norms of the time (in particular, the passively cooled battery).

This was the very first mass-market electric car, with only minor tweaks. It's not surprising that it's a bit rough around the edges. That's part of why they're cheap second-hand (along with the fact that the 3rd gen, which actually is a proper redesign, is coming out this year).

I don't think that we can use the general "old" here. The statement should have been more explicit and include the design of the battery.

If the model gets even minor updates, manufacturing is happening right now, the car is either good enough or new enough in general, and we cannot use old as negative quality.

Electric motors existed before the combustion engine, and people keep talking about "rapidly evolving area", while the only thing that is rapidly evolving and specific to EVs is the power source. A battery, to be precise. It is all about battery, and nothing else.

The problems with this car are all around the battery pack (though honestly these problems are a little exaggerated). The battery pack is, for practical purposes, a 15 year old design. This car is no longer made. When it was being made, it was the only electric car you could buy with such an old battery pack design.

Buying a 2nd-gen Leaf in 2025 would be a bit silly, unless you were getting a major discount.

I have a 2025 2nd gen on lease because the deals in Colorado were insane and the previous cost of my gas basically pays for the lease + insurance + electricity. That said, unless they give me a killer deal with a major discount at the end of the lease it's going back to the dealer. I love the car and it's been perfect for around town and the region but with 70% of the lease left they want $18000 for buy out. For that price you're well within a nice used EV with active thermal management, modern charge connectors not requiring an expensive adapter, etc...

There's probably going to be a surplus of off-lease Leafs coming up over the next one to three years which might make a great deal for people who can charge at home.

I got 42% off of the MSRP when buying a new 2025 SV+.

Yeah, I think this is the only way the could sell them, at this point, with the 3rd gen about to come out. Though, where did you even buy it? I vaguely thought they had stopped making them entirely last year in preparation for the third gen (and if I go to Nissan's website it just offers me a third-gen).

Bought it at my local Nissan dealer back in June.

ZE1 Leaf(2017) was electronically a big minor update over ZE0(2010). IIRC so much so that ZE1 battery packs almost work on ZE0 body with only minor hack efforts.

So they're basically 15 years old, technologically older than the Model S. Windows 7 was 1 year old when its basic systems shipped.

To add to what others said: back in 2017 40kWh was the standard, now people scoff at 55kWh. Cars also charge faster, which greatly increases their highway driving potential.

> What if the car requires internet connection and the company dies?

That's not a problem specific to EVs and with Chinese combustion car brands coming and going all the time, it's obvious.

First generation Leaf was launched in 2010 second gen in 2017. That’s quite an old design for any tech that’s still advancing.

It's a 2 years old car, but the model and technology (2nd generation Nissan Leaf) is from 2017, so it's 8 years old in a rapidly evolving field.

Limiting QC events is easy enough. A daily commuter vehicle can easily trickle charge over night, and even the measly 40 kWh old used Leaf can get you 200km a charge - assuming an average commute of 20 km for Germany, that's a whole work week worth of battery life. The only time you as an average person actually "need" QC is for the yearly vacation road trip, but as the author writes, renting an ICE or chungus electric vehicle for that occasion is way more cost effective. Admitted: if you don't have access to trickle charge at either the workplace or your home, the situation looks different.

As for the battery health rating, it's easy enough to measure. Go on the highway, keep it at 80 km/h straight and note how much range you get out of it. In practical commute settings, range will be longer than that anyway due to regenerative braking in all that start-stop-start-stop dance.

This is the thing that ICE people need to internalise.

You THINK you're driving long distances every day and you THINK charging is a massive hassle where you have to drive to a Charging Site and wait for the car to charge for HOURS.

When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning.

And when the infrastructure is properly built (yay Finland), you can get a week's charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW chargers along with a fleet of Level 2 (22kW) chargers.

The only times I need to actively think about charging are over 200-250km day trips (my old Ioniq EV has a WLTP of 300km on a warm summer day). And even then the kids an dogs need a bathroom break anyway and I need to walk around a bit to freshen up. 20-30 minutes gets us 100-150km of charge (old car, slow charging) and we're off again.

>> When in reality you plug in at home and have a full battery every morning

Right, but I should buy a house with a garage first.

>> charge when you're getting groceries as the shop has multiple 100kW

Unless you do groceries in unusual time, those chargers are occupied. Will you wait in line then?

You just need an outlet that is close to the car, but it’s mostly an American issue.

We get 230V/16A from a bog standard outlet, three phase is triple that.

I had a leaf on demonstration for 24 hours. I was impressed with it. I drove the 50 miles to work and back, and put it on slow charge knowing I had 16 hours until I needed it. No problem. When I came to drive it in the morning it hadn't charged. It was actually a problem with the plug in the garage, it must have gone off a few minutes after I plugged it in. Now what? Wait 16 more hours?

A couple of weeks later I went on holiday. I wouldn't be able to charge where I was stopping, and there were no chargers within 15 miles. I kept my diesel.

> It was actually a problem with the plug in the garage, it must have gone off a few minutes after I plugged it in. Now what? Wait 16 more hours?

So what, that's something you find out once that your electric installation is shoddy enough to most likely be a fire risk (because the charger plug has a thermal protection built in!), fix it and then you won't have that problem again. And as the Leaf should have 150 miles worth of range, you still should have way more than enough range on the battery to do two days worth of commute even if you suddenly find out the trickle charge didn't work.

50 miles each way...150 miles range turned into 10 miles left. So no.

Renting a car for vacations / road trips is expensive. sure you can but expect to pay $100 per day. Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.

> Renting a car for vacations / road trips is expensive. sure you can but expect to pay $100 per day.

Indeed... but now, think of the price difference between a small-ish commute EV and a chungus EV or ICE. Easily tens of thousands of dollars, that's a lot of days worth of rent.

> Also expect to arrive and be told they can't fill your reservation as they are out of cars.

That's extremely fucking rare to happen. In the eventuality your reservation can't be filled, you'll usually get upgraded for free. Personally, got upgraded from a small VW Golf class to a VW Phaeton once, plus a day for free. And automatic, no stick shift like the Golf.

Over the life of a car tens of thousands of dollars isn't that hard to build up though if the car cannot do anything. And there is value in having the vehicle that does what you need when the inspiration strikes.

Not having any rental cars is very common in my experience. I'm often renting in smaller cities though (like the rental car place just a couple miles from my house), I've never heard of problems in big tourist destinations or large cities.

There's also the convenience of having the car more appropriate for day-to-day use.

E.g. a family with two cars, where the smaller car is preferred because it's easier to park in the limited space available in a European city.

Seems expensive but in the grand scheme of a road trip that is only like a 33% increase in price when you factor in a motel room for $100 a night, maybe $100 spend on gas a day filling up twice, $100 on three meals coffee and snacks for one. Give or take of course.

That is probably why the american road trip is a dying animal. Past a days drive you are coming way behind just flying straight there.

I thought about this too - own a small electric vehicle for 90% of the family needs and rent a bigger SUV when the need arises.

Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year. Plus the usual inconveniences around renting.

Suddenly the math does not look so appealing.

> Until you do the math and realize that the 3-4 annual trips of multiple days would end up costing thousands of dollars in rental fees per year.

First, 3-4 annual multi-day trips that go for longer than 300 km? If one has that amount of disposable income to afford that, go for whatever the biggest Tesla is and use Superchargers along the route, even drives so long they're a safety issue on its own due to fatigue don't get that much longer due to charging because kids will need to go to the toilet every so often even with an ICE.

As for the rental fees: here in Germany, I just checked - a Mercedes Benz Vito, so up to 8 people (or 6 people plus a ton of luggage), that's 50€ a day here. Crossing four digits takes 20 days of rental, that's a lot of vacation time even by European standards.

I'm surprised you consider a 300km trip long, or 3-4 trips in a year excessive. That's only Berlin to Bielefeld. What do you do with your holiday?

The EU minimum is 20 days annual leave per year.

For that kind of distance I take a train, Munich-Dortmund doesn't take that long. As for holidays, Croatia by bus or by night train to get around horrid traffic, extortion level road tolls and dumbass border controls.

No idea what numbers you are crunching. I am doing this for 10 years now and able to afford luxurious cars for holidays because of it.

Those were comporomises Nissan made in 2010s to build an EV that will be under $30k new in 2025. Not all of it are fundamental limitations of Li-ion BEV technology.

Tangential trivia: BYD Dolphin Baseline is 20k new before subsidies in some places.

I don't think about any of this and never have. My 2022 Model Y has 60,000 miles on it and the battery has only lost a negligible amount of health/range since I bought it.

What was the purchase cost difference between a Model Y and a Leaf in 2022?

A lot of this is either over-caution, or related to the Leaf's specific quirks (though it's not uncooled, it's passively cooled by airflow).

My understanding is that 2 & 3 are problems with the original (20kWh) Leaf model. Which possibly led to a rumour about the 40kWh models, that the OP has.

My Leaf from 2019 has 100% battery health and I always charge it to 100%. I almost never use fast charging though since it is a commute kind of car.

Is that the health reported by the car dashboard, or by LeafSpy? The dash has some wiggle room in its 1-10 display an IIRC it will display 100% until the SoH is below like 90%...

Obviously they are reporting the dashboard number. The first bar drops at 85%. For a 2019, it is probably getting close to dropping its first dashboard bar.

After 25 years in the industry I should know that there is always someone that have read more forums and researched more :)

Either way, the car is 6 years old. At this rate the battery will still be pretty fine when it is 15 years old and ready for retirement.

Never charging it above 80% is not worth the hassle. It is like never using your left hand for the fear of hurting your left hand. You are crippling your car by overthinking.

All of those problems are solved in non-leaf cars.

The leaf is a terrible steward if its battery. virtually every other car is better in virtually every single way.

I just checked my phone (an iPhone 11) and it says 72%. There is absolutely no way the capacity is anywhere near 72% anymore lol

The performance/battery life of a phone can be seriously affected by the software (each new iOS being built for newer CPUs), whereas this is less of a factor for cars.

If you think this is what puts you off EVs, then you haven't read the horror stories from EV Clinic.

TL;DR is many EVs and hybrids (especially European ones) have tonnes of design faults with e-motors and power-electronics that not only make them ticking time bombs(not in the explosive sense) out of warranty, but also have malicious DRM making third party parts impossible to source, and repairs difficult and eye watering expensive even if theoretically EVs should be more reliable on paper than ICE cars.

Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.

Luckily EV Clinic is working hard on breaking the DRM and reverse engineering parts to make and sell aftermarket ones, but this shouldn't be needed in the first place if the OEMs weren't so bad at design, greedy and hostile to consumers and aftermarket repairs.

Seriously, we need regulations here ASAP. The free market doesn't work here for the consumer when OEMs all do the same anti consumer things.

The DRM thing unfortunately has nothing to do with EVs and everything to do with the computerization of cars. All cars have gotten more and more computerized and harder to repair with more DRM. EVs arguably fundamentally require heavy computerization more than ICE cars, but you're not gonna avoid it in a brand new diesel car either.

That is why I keep fixing up my old Diesels. No DPF, basic EGR, basic computer, no worries.

That's why I said repair regulations are needed for all cars not just EVs.

The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM. They want to prevent owners from turning off nanny devices or overriding pollution controls.

Can you share what car repairability regulations did the EU put into place? Because following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like the opposite.

I don't think there's disagreement here:

> The EU did put in regulations, but they did the opposite and essentially mandated DRM

is the same statement as:

> following the posts of EV Clinic it seems like [the EU did] the opposite

Where both posts use "the opposite" to mean "the opposite of creating in regulations to enforce repairability" .

Hybrids are a different breed, they're very very bad. Don't ever buy one out of warranty and be REALLY sure what the warranty covers.

FYI: Mercedes Benz hybrids have a full(*) battery warranty. What's the asterisk you ask? The warranty only covers repairs up to the car's current value. Which has plummeted over the few years you've owned it and the cost of the battery is absolutely ridiculous. Like "buy 3 used Leafs" ridiculous.

Most hybrid batteries are also blobs of molten plastic and silicone that can't be repaired at all. EV batteries are constructed of semi-standard cells and can be opened and repaired piecemeal by specialist shops. Official repairs usually just swap the whole thing - again for a massive cost.

> Maybe the EU should focus more on EV/auto repairability regulations instead of smartphones and USB-C widgets.

Maybe they should do both.

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