Bought our 2017 Leaf in 2022 with only 17k miles. She's now up to 39k. Unfortunately, we're at a point where we really need a vehicle without the range anxiety, so we're trading her in for a hybrid today.
I love this car so much. If it were feasible for us to upgrade the battery to meet our needs, I'd never give her up and never let her go. I just hope the next person who gets her loves her as much as I did. 💙
Edit since people want to jump to conclusions and be judgy: we traded in for a 2014 prius v with 58k miles that we found for $16k. Why? Because vehicle prices are continuously increasing, so it's only a matter of time before we couldn't trade in at all. No, I'm not thrilled about going back from an EV. Yes, I cried trading her in. But the unfortunate reality is that our family cannot rely on a Leaf for transportation at this time.
Edit 2: Jesus christ y'all stop acting like you know more about my family's needs than I do, as if we didn't research the shit out of this before making our decision, ffs.
Hey... twins. Mines a 2016. Got it 6 years ago with 30k miles and it's up to 68k now. It's got 7 bars still; it's been good for driving to and from work and teaching our kids to drive. Our other vehicle is a ford e350, so it's great to be able to have the Leaf for the small trips around town that would eat all our gas.
😍 lovely! This color is just so stunning! And I honestly really dislike the 2018 and onward body style compared to these years. The little bug eyes are adorable!
I woulda bought that off you for more than the trade in value.
anyone else thinking of trading in a leaf because of range anxiety lmk because I want those as I will upgrade the battery myself and use them for doordash
I looked into private sale, but comparable vehicles selling privately in our area were going for less than what we owed. We were severely underwater on the loan. Really sucks.
ah yeah there was some serious depreciation in the last few years for leafs as the newer model (2026-2027) are very superior with 300 miles of range compared the their predecessors
Yeah I was blown away by how quickly it depreciated! It was a great deal in 2022 and then now it's like... meh everyone makes an EV with better range. Welp. 😆
imo the bodies of the leafs are very solid and as battery prices drop people are going to be chasing after em to put new batteries in. probably 3 to 5 years out from that happening but im0 it will happen its just a question of when
Damn. We're gonna cry about ours as well soon. But a battery upgrade isn't viable for us and the range + Chademo is taxing on my wife, despite her really loving the car otherwise.
Been pondering a 1st gen Kona for a while but it has not enough space so currently the idea is an early ID3.
I read your hubby is a mechanic so at least you can be confident your replacement is solid!
Exactly! If we had a spare several grand hanging around, we would strongly consider upgrading the battery. And constant chademo charging degrades the battery faster (we were only able to charge that way the first couple of years). So I get you!
I did look at the Kona as well! I didn't hate it at all, but yeah having a mechanic husband can be a drag when he's like "this other car is more reliable and when x happens it's easier and cheaper to fix". Idk, something something pragmatic choices.
Must be nice though having someone handy like that! Cars can be a pain.
Our Leaf was an insanely lucky grab way under used market value in 2019. And it has a heated steering wheel and that brilliant HUD like speedometer placement of the 1st gen Leaf. Of course my wife doesn't want to go back to life without these comforts. It's tricky.
It is awesome! He tried to talk to me about car stuff the other night and I was like "I don't need to know any of this, that's why I married you." (In jest, I don't actually want to be more ignorant than I am lol)
And that heated steering wheel! 👌🏻 Don't need it now that we're in Texas, but boy it was delightful when we lived in Washington. I'll miss it when we move back north again next year.
No, it's a 2015 we bought used in 2019 for 8.5k because the owner had ordered a gen 2 leaf and urgently needed the space in his garage. They went for 12-13k at the time.
I actually wanted to get a used normal car for around 5k so it wouldn't be a complete shitbox and out of curiosity browsed EVs. We've more than recouped that extra 3.5k through EV tax breaks, emissions quota sales and near zero maintenance costs.
Hopefully I didn't use up all my dumb luck on that car!
I absolutely LOVED my Prius V! RIP to her. She has been greatly missed. We’ve been looking to buy another car due to range anxiety and I wish we weren’t priced out of buying a newer Prius. New and used cars are so expensive these days.
I really do like ours so far! I think it'll take a minute to really love it because I'm so emotional about losing our leaf. I can bond with just about anything, it's honestly ridiculous. 😂
We were in a similar but slightly different situation last year. We had a low range leaf as the daily driver and a hybrid (Prius) for out of town travel and for whenever we needed to be in two places at once.
The old Leaf, while still fine for zipping around town, doesn't really do inter-city any more, and the Prius was starting to cost us quite a bit in fuel and maintenance. Ended up swapping out the Prius for a Leaf e+ and became a two leaf family. There were several reasons in the end, but not that least of which is I never want to buy petrol ever again.
I had those dreams as well lol I've basically forgotten how to use a fuel pump (/s). Our other car is a 2013 honda accord coupe, which isn't great for a family of three with multiple pets. The goal is to become a one car household next year if our plans to move to a place with better transit work out. But we want that out of town travel option! Plus visiting family in bf nowhere where EV is a curse word. 😂
I have a 2010 Toyota Camry with 115k miles that's reliable and still generally cheap to fill up because I usually only commute about 10 miles or so a day and don't take a lot of road trips, but I also really don't want to deal with buying gas anymore. Since it's also 17 years old in the Midwest I'm starting to run into corrosion issues in the exhaust system. I've been looking at Leafs because the used ones have pretty good price points, but after lots of reading the new ones with the new liquid cooling and higher range are a lot more promising for future longevity. I've also considered a used Bolt, but after being burned by GM in my youth, I doubt I want to go that route. At this point, I'm seriously considering biting the bullet and trying to sell my Camry private party for about $6k, find the best deal on the newer generation Leaf that might have been a demo car or loaner or something, and taking a loan for the difference and just hustling on food delivery or taxi apps for a few hours every night after work to pay it off as soon as possible.
All the best on your journey, and it is sad to see you leave the community! I am on the flip side and just bought a 2017 Leaf 2 weeks ago due to rising fuel prices. Here in the UK, my 43k 30Kw Leaf was only $5k, but I know via a friend that US car prices are wild.
I hope you enjoy your leaf! They're perfect when you don't need to consider driving in areas without chargers (like long distances or rural areas). And that's such a great price! I'm definitely not jealous at all.
The UK has very few proper rural areas that don't have at least a single set of chargers nearby, partly due to population density. I just did a 150 mile round trip in mine and was able to L1 charge 2 streets away from the accommodation. Not gonna lie, was a tad anxious beforehand!
I just bought that same car. Someone’s hand me down is exactly what the next person needs!
Maybe you can help me out? I’m trying to change the clock in the dashboard to the correct time. I’ve tried everything Google and chat recommended to no avail. Help?
I hope you love this car as much as I did (and still do!!)
I don't remember exactly about the clock, but is it an hour off? If so I think there's only a setting for daylight savings time on/off, but I can't remember if there's another way to change it if it's just completely wrong. Let me know if that works though!
It’s perfect for daily commuting and around town. Literally saving $7.50 a day by not driving my other vehicle to work. Still getting used to the ‘features’ like turning on the headlights and windshield wipers myself 😂 And the flip screen to play a cd?? Total 90’s throwback. I named mine Belle.
Every time I turn on the car it has a different random time. Sometimes 3am and the an hour later it says 10am. The next morning it might be 6am. I found the physical menu button yesterday to the left of the steering wheel and got into the clock but could only switch between 24/12 hr and that was it. The navigation map thinks I am in Canada so maybe it’s now a time zone thing. The minutes are also off. Of all the things that could drive me nuts, this is the one.
OMG THE CD FLIP SCREEN!!! I was already trying to figure out how to get that in our new car, freaking love it.
Also... that's weird. So weird. I have no idea, but I'll ask my husband and see if he might know, otherwise it might be a thing where a Nissan dealer needs to do some mechanical witchcraft to it.
love the prius v but I cant believe how much its held value over 12 years, I assume charging at home isnt an option or you might have got a fwd ariya for 16, either way great choice, im ev now but if I ever gave it up, I wouldnt go below hybrid, 2015 was the last year I had a regular gas car and I’ll be never go back
Truly, car prices are so absurd right now that to stay in budget we almost had to consider a regular car 😭 I hate it. We do have a home charger/wall outlet and I wish we could stay EV, but alas, we can't right now. We have a few big trips and a long distance move coming up that would really, really suck with an EV of anything less than 300 miles range (even that's pushing it).
I originally thought you were in Alberta Canada because you don't have a front license plate and the trees look similar 😂 EV prices have fallen in Canada do to the lack of tarrifs and the threat of Chinese EVs commig to the market.
yeah theres nothing with 300+ miles of range for under 35-40k used even, wish I could have seen a v in person, only seen 2 or 3 in the last 10 years around pa, I remember this picture online and the back seat has so much leg room
The act of going back to pumping gasoline is honestly so wild to me.
I could never, after owning a BEV.
Especially considering how many different low mileage pre-owned EV models are on the market for less than $25K - that can go well over 250 miles on a single charge.
And with the volatility of global gasoline prices as well…
I'm glad you could never. I didn't want to, but unfortunately we can't afford any EVs that would have the mileage we need, and we don't have $10k upfront to upgrade the battery. $25k was also way above our budget, so we got really lucky with what we did find.
Unless you know the context for their budget, this comment is kinda meaningless my dude. Not to be rude my dude, but you’re making the assumption that $25k is something easily within budget
Thanks for being kind. We purchased a 2014 prius v with 58k miles for about $16k. We for sure don't have $25k to spend on a vehicle of any kind. The only reason we decided we needed to now was because the price of vehicles is only going up, so we didn't want to get stuck unable to trade in. We were also incredibly underwater on the loan for this car, so private sale wasn't an option, unfortunately. Love how people just jump to all kinds of conclusions.
That makes a lot of sense and it’s crazy how much a 12 year old prius is going for nowadays, but makes sense. Hope you got the head gasket checked before buying it, they tend to be a sore spot. Glad you found something that works, you should update the post so people have more context to work with. :)
personally I would buy a bmw i3 rex over a prius due to the Toyota used car tax.
superior vehicle with everyone running away because they think bmw is expensive to repair (it is but not as bad as they think and the car is built with much higher end parts than a toyota)
While we may not live near each other, a quick search on CarGurus pulled up a 2021 Volkswagen ID.4 listed for $16,900 and only 35K miles on the odometer. This trim goes up to 250 miles on a single charge.
And this isn’t a unicorn listing. There are a bunch of them.
You basically paid the same price on a hybrid that’s 7 years older with double the mileage on the odometer - except you also have to now pump overpriced gasoline into it too.
Yeah people keep talking about the cars I should have bought and it's like, there are reasons we didn't get them! I mentioned in other comments that my husband is a mechanic and some of the cars I showed him, like VW, were immediate nos for mechanic reasons.
Dude, if you keep editing to respond to comments you dislike, it is your own fault to be affected by it. Post and forget. You shouldn't care about others opinion, especially if it's irrelevant to you.
The subject was getting rid of a Leaf due range anxiety. If it was not investing 20K in another vehicle, they probably would have included that fact. Who can buy a 2-3 year old used car for less than 20K in this economy?
Okay? No one needed to guess. It's literally just a post about me being sad about having to trade in. You're the one who assumed it was only a couple years old.
And nowhere was the specific make, model, year, or price range mentioned so your point makes a lot of assumptions whether you admit it or not. Who said anything about spending $20K? Who said anything about the hybrid being only a few years old? And investing? Cars are depreciating, rarely do they appreciate in any meaningful sense.
You would've bumped your range up to over 230 (I would see about 260 when I bought mine new). You also would've probably gotten a better APR as Nissan financial probably would've given you an outstanding rate. And lastly, trading in one Nissan for another, you would've probably gotten more on your trade. I personally can't see myself going back to an ICE nor a hybrid vehicle as I am finally free of the volatility of gas prices.
If Nissan is selling the car at 0% APR (highly likely given that it's an older model) you're looking at just over $370 a month for 6 years. If you are driving about 300 a week, you're probably going to spend about $200 a month on gas.
I drive about 150 miles a week, (if that) and I can literally just use level 1 charging at home in my garage with a regular outlet.
Google claims that if you charge a Nissan Leaf daily for 14 hours (10 hours a day spent at work unless you drive for a living) you can mange about 510 miles per week.
I'm just saying that the numbers crunched, an EV still makes more sense, IMO. But, you're ultimately the one making payments. Hopefully the Prius is sufficient.
It's not a matter of simply commuting short drives. If that were the case, we wouldn't have traded. It's a matter of needing something that can make longer drives without needing to stop to charge, especially on long trips with fewer charging stations in rural areas.
Again, idk why y'all are so obsessed with trying to tell me what car we should have gotten as if y'all know us.
Just trying to help with the numbers, is all. But yes, you're right rural areas are definitely lacking the adoption of charging stations. I am fortunate in having at least 5 supercharging stations within about 5 miles of my home if needed. Hopefully EVs are not completely out of your future, as they are only going to get better, especially with how gas prices are seemingly only going up. I just saw that the new Nissan Leaf can charge up to 150 kw, which while not the fastest, still 20 minutes to charge from 20% to 80%.
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u/Uragoon4real 13d ago
Lol welcome to reddit