Anything, really. But of particular interest is how the range holds up from the original stated, powertrain degradation if any, and other general stuff like fit and finish, electronic gremlins, weather effects etc. Thanks in advance!
Used Hyundai IONIQ (2018) owner here. Buying is difficult, because most sellers know little about electric cars.
I recommend buying cars that come directly from a leasing contract.
Those cars often have low mileage, were serviced regularly and early problems fixed via warranty. Demand and prices for used cars are low because newer EVs have higher mileage in comparison.
Take a OBD dongle with you and read the battery SOH.
Also Check the Manufacturer warranty terms before buying.
All in all - buying a used EV was (longterm) the least expensive option for me and also less risky.
Electronic Systems tend to have more problems early on and way less, once they are “stable”.
I recommend.
(But Teslas are a whole chapter for themselves. I heard horror stories with their proprietary systems and app-based-services. Maybe someone else can elaborate)
Thanks. That’s was very informative! Lol @teslas
I got a used bolt, but because of the battery recall, it had just had it’s battery replaced by the manufacturer. It’s been doing really well for me, pretty indistinguishable from new. Except that I guess they forgot to fill up the coolant loop when they replaced the battery, so I needed to do that at a dealership. But it was free at least.
I bought a 2 year old, 2017 BMW i3 and have had basically no range reduction. I primarily charge at home on a level 2 charger. The i3 didn’t have a ton of range to begin with, so if you live in a colder climate, make sure you account for losing some of the stated range during colder months.
Was going to give a very similar story. Mine was a 2017 as well after 18 months. Been very happy with it.
I bought a 2015 leaf back in 2016. Has held up incredibly well. Range has dropped by 2-3 bars during ownership, which translates to going from around 90 estimated miles to around 60. I drive it around 20-30 miles a day and usually end up with around 50% battery left. The only real work has been standard maintenance replacements: cv boot, 12v battery, trunk lift hydraulics, tires.
Coincidentally, I’ve converted my wife to preferring electric cars over ice too, so we have a second 2022 leaf with the larger battery. So nice from the never caring about gas and lower maintenance perspectives.
I don’t want to tarnish your experience, but 30% degredation in 9 years is not good or normal across all EVs. Especially as you seem to be doing very little high power charging. 10-15% maybe, not 30%.
Nissan Leafs do seem to be the most extreme for degredation.
Can confirm. My dad’s went from 115 or whatever the rated mileage was to 60-70 miles within 2 years. It would struggle to go 40 miles if the heater was on.
I don’t know if they make those batteries out of packing peanuts or what, but it killed any possibility of him owning an EV for a long time.
Same here, it soured me on evs. I’ll never buy a leaf again. I had problem after problem with that pos. “But they require no maintenance”. Yeah right…
Second hand Renault Zoe user here. I have the model from 2020 with 52kWh battery. Things are pretty ok I think as far as the interior and exterior, but we had major issue with the engine that had to be swapped (good the car was under warranty still in the dealership we bought it from). For the rest it’s pretty smooth ride. The range of the car in spring/summer gets to about 350km so its pretty good. The SOH is 91.3%. Ranault’s warranty on battery is still active until 2028 or 80 000km or when battery’s SOH drops below 75% so for now I am not worried about this. I think once the battery gets low and outside of warranty there will most certainly be more developed infrastructure of third-party battery module maintenance so it should be possible to get the pack to it’s original state for not gigantic sums of money.
Thanks, that’s a very neat car. Some of the EVs are getting really large.
Yeah. I did quite some research and found Zoe to be the best price for range while not being a giant expensive suv. I think specially on european roads its pretty good choice.
How is it that this EU Electric car can go almost 250 miles on a charge, while our comparable Nissan leaf gets like 80 tops?
Battery size I think here is the difference. Leaf, specially the old ones come with 22kwh battery. My Zoe is 52kWh. Think newer Leafs also come with 52/64kwh packs but are much more expensive then Zoe. At least that was the case when I was researching it when buying a car last year.
I’m second owner of a 2016 Kia Soul EV. I have no complaints. The heating system was DOA but the dealership had it fixed. That’s the one thing with heat pump vehicles, make sure that system works or you’ll have a potentially expensive fix on your hands.
I asked for a batter state of health reading, they took it to Kia to have that done, no big deal.
It’s ridiculous that Kia doesn’t sell a modern Kia Soul EV in the US.
Do they really need a second CUV EV along with the Niro?
I tell everyone to buy more range than they think they’ll need, if they can afford it, for a variety of reasons. Realistically you shouldn’t expect >10% degradation over 10 years on a vehicle equipped with active cooling.
Active cooling is the thing. Basically don’t buy second hand leafs.
Though those are dirt cheap so as a second car to drive in low range (if you work close by or when need to do shopping etc) it’s perfect.
Fair point.
Go in with eyes open.
Yep. Even to this day, after their disastrous history, they still sell brand new vehicles with no active cooling. And AFAIK the only ones doing it. It’s really a shame because they are otherwise really good and affordable options.
And forget taking them on a road trip. The batteries can’t cool down fast enough to charge them. And they STILL use Chademo connectors that are limited to 50kW. Also still the ONLY brand doing that. Which is also a shame because they were at one point innovators in the industry. But these days they don’t innovate anything but expensive disposable garbage.
I think much of the Leaf’s lack of innovation was due to price, the goal was for it to be an everyday car in looks, operation and price, and that last one means it’d never be very profitable, at least not for a long time, so updates just weren’t feasible. A good question is how does the Arriya compare to other brands EVs, since that’s their newest most modern vehicle.
What difference does it make if the car is cheap if it can’t even last 10 years? How much extra would it cost to install a cooling loop, water pump, and radiator?
You’re much better off buying a REALLY NICE gasoline car at that point.
Cost isn’t the only factor to adding a cooling loop, there’s a good chance that they’d have to make room in the pack for the cooling system, which means either a bigger pack or a less powerful pack. As to cost, have to engineer the radiating, plumbing, plumbing mounting, computer controls for the cooling system, and of course the radiator needs good airflow which might require a redesign of the front end, and the charger port is there, so that might need moving which requires more engineering. It snowballs easily.
I actually agree, we leased our Leaf because we wanted an inexpensive electric car, and this was at the height of the Bolt battery mess, so that really only left the Leaf, but we weren’t dumb enough to buy it, use it during it’s best years, then give it back and let it be someone else’s problem.
As to cost, have to engineer the radiating, plumbing, plumbing mounting, computer controls for the cooling system, and of course the radiator needs good airflow which might require a redesign of the front end
Yeah but they already redesigned the entire vehicle and still didn’t add active cooling…
There are a lot of very ordinary EVs from Hyundai, Opel, VW, Peugeot etc that aren’t screwed up this way. It’s very much doable. Nissan just fails at making cars.
Do remember that those were designed from the start to have active cooling, the Leaf wasn’t, in fact it’s a great example of a lack of foresight between the lack of active cooling and the Chademo plug.
Thanks, good to know. I live in the tropics, so rain/ water damage is a concern.
Rain / water is not a concern at all unless you’re flooding the car. Even then it’s not the battery that has problems. It’s the low voltage electronics that are the same on any modern car.
If a diesel can survive it, so can an EV.
What exactly are you worried about being damaged by rain?
Electronics, battery pack maybe?
They’re all sealed, just like the electronics on any other vehicle.
Most likely much better for the HV and drive parts. And there’s no air intake or exhaust for the engine either, so it’s a lot less sensitive to water.
12v side is pretty much the same junk that’s in all cars. Apart from model specific mistakes (e.g. Cybertruck), which sometimes happen, all remotely modern cars are waterproof in any sane use.
Apart from model specific mistakes (e.g. Cybertruck)
What is that supposed to mean?
That there are occasionally car models which have design flaws leading to water ingress or condensation issues. Sometimes there’s a fix, sometimes not.
Cybertruck dying in a car wash was one recent example.
Flooding?
Not sure if a flood would affect an EV’s electrical system…
As much as it would the electrical system of any other vehicle made in the last 40 years…
Possible, unlikely though below the level that would make any ICE vehicle an insurance write off too, so no real reason to worry about that unless you plan on regularly driving through flooded roads
I’ve had a second hand Leaf and currently drive a second hand Zoe. They are the two best cars I’ve ever had.
The Leaf was quite old, but the battery was still over 90%. It definitely might have something to do with living in Northern England, though - our climate isn’t exactly stressful for batteries!
The Zoe was only a few years old, and the battery is essentially as new. I only replaced the Leaf because my sister-in-law lives over an hour away, and we couldn’t do the return trip on a single charge.
I would avoid older Nissan Leafs and compliance cars like the original Fiat 500e and VW e-Golf. These had low range to begin with. The Leaf is air cooled, which is hard on the battery. The compliance cars from six years ago or more are old and you’ll be lucky to get 60 miles out of the original battery pack.
If you buy an older Bolt, make sure the battery pack has already been replaced by GM. You can probably ask a Chevy dealer to look up the service history based on VIN.
Not a second hand owner here but I can speak to buying and ownership from the other perspective. 2018 Tesla model 3 lr rwd. Buying process was straightforward, place order online, fill out forms online, bring required papers and checks to pickup, leave with vehicle. I did have some paint chips/scratches from shipping which I raised as an issue to the delivery manager. They put me in a loaner while car was out for repair at body shop. Content with repairs no cost to me.
Looking forward, the past 5.5 years of ownerships have been pretty smooth. No major issues. Some buggy software back in 2018/2019, when they were making tons of new features and updates. It’s now pretty stable/mature. All of which were OTA updates. The only physical recall I had was the cable for the backup camera can rub and wear through. So they replaced the harness there during one of my other visits at no charge.
Bring in twice a year for winter/summer tire swap and brake lube. Have had lower control arms go under warranty and a crack in a control rod out of warranty.
Service centers were hit or miss in terms of smoothness. They seem to have gotten better with my more recent experiences.
One of the three 16amp onboard charges has failed. Technically in warranty, but I didn’t address it for over a year due to other factors, which is on me. So I’ve just been riding it out with 32amp charging instead of 48. Still plenty fast for home charging and I don’t really see the value in replacing it right now. This doesn’t affect supercharging (fastdc charging).
As for software, I did get the FSD package when it was $5k. And got the retrofit 3.0 hardware upgrade (no cost). It’s great on highway and I use it pretty regularly. City streets, which is in beta, has been pretty janky but has shown continued improvement. It’s not quite smooth enough for passengers imo, but it does some impressive maneuvers at times. I expect some further refinement in here, but I don’t expect it to ever achieve what the name it was marketed under. I wouldn’t pay much more than $5k for its current capabilities.
My biggest gripe with the car honestly is the auto wipers can be pretty sub par due to their vision based system. Have to use manual mode somewhat often.
No significant battery degradation at 55k mi. Get about 305 on charge. Was 310new and they technically bumped it to 325 sometime afterwards. It’s charge as high as 317, but I road trip fairly infrequently to have many data points here.
TLDR, I’d buy another Tesla, but I’d also shop around in 15 yr when I expect to be in the market again.
2019 LR AWD here. I’ve had a similar experience. Had a side camera go out under warranty. Had front control arm go out not under warranty. I also had a 12 volt battery go out not under warranty which was pretty trivial to have fixed and didn’t seriously affect operations. My main battery degradation has been noticeably more though. Currently my top range is 272 miles, down from EPA rating of 310 (so I’m at 88%).
The wipers are a nuisance. My biggest gripe is that the software seems buggy even after all of these years. Every time there is a software update my backup and/or side cameras will stop working for a few days then come back. I also will frequently lose access to FSD/autopilot/cruise control (!) for a whole day. It just will give some generic error out of nowhere. It self corrects after I leave it on the charger overnight but until I do it just is gone. Happened once on a cross country roadtrip and I wanted to scream.
