[Holj]

Hi all, already found a lot of helpful stuff on this thread so seemed like the best place to ask some advice

I recently got a 2016 24kwh leaf and I am panicking it was a big mistake (but I hope not bcs I love it!!)

My research suggested I could get up to 100-120 miles out of a charge, which was perfect for my relatively short commute to work and relying on public chargers

I received the car and a full charge seems to only be about 80 miles? It’s not the end of the world but I’ll just be seeking out public chargers more often than I had anticipated

I understand from the thread this could be pretty unreliable for a range of reasons such as cold weather, previous driving etc but it only has 14.5k miles on it (roughly)

I didn’t get it directly from a Nissan dealer, but I do have a 30 day warranty to return if it’s knackered so if I need to do anything I need to act

also this might be a stupid question, but do I need a different cable for rapid charging or do rapid charge have cables attached

thank you!

 

[Holj]

ah thank you guys!! As long as that’s normal then I’m absolutely okay with it, just wanted to check I hadn’t been sold a dud! Looking forward to my EV journey!!

 

[Holj]

Welcome to the newbie world of EV's.

I'm not sure what level of research you reached because it is fairly common knowledge these days that a 4 or 5 year old Leaf 24 will be showing 80 miles range in winter and more often as low as 60. In warmer weather that 80 miles range will be more achievable, and perhaps up to 100 can be possible in really favourable circumstances. But your hope for 120 miles is out of the question.

For a commute of up to 25 miles each way it will give you no issues as long as you are able to charge at home overnight. A lot of 24's only have the smaller charger on board as well so would need an overnight 7 or 8 hours plugged in to load enough for next day. If fitted with the larger charger unit this would be halved.

A decision to reject the car would be hard to justify by arguing that you expected to drive120 miles and only see 80 because that could be said to be an unrealistic expectation in such a car. But if that range is actually sufficient for your immediate needs then just enjoy the EV drive and pocket the large cash savings in fuel costs.

Longer trips could be an issue of course because in practice you would need to be plugging into a Rapid ( cable provided by the unit ) every 50 miles or so to allow for plan B if it is faulty. This is because it's good practice to stop at 20% state of charge and move on at 80%. After 80% the charging rate slows down to a trickle and just wastes time. So you tend to only drive on a road trip using 60% of battery capacity between stops. In winter that is 60% of 80 miles = 50 miles. So the average time to cover large distances is pretty poor.

When I had a Leaf 24 with the slow charger it was used entirely for commute and local domestic tasks and was absolutely excellent at that role. The cash savings easily covered occasional car hire events for distance journeys and avoided all of the downsides of owning a short range EV as a sole car.

Let us know what you decide please.

thank you! Definitely going to keep, just wanted to make sure it wasn’t faulty or anything but makes sense that it being an older battery it’s less than I anticipated and it’s not the end of the world! Luckily my partners car is still in use and his is petrol so no concerns for longer journeys.