This week my 2016 Nissan Leaf had it's MOT, and is still going strong after 10 years.
That is actually my second Leaf. I had a 2013 first generation Leaf before that, but it was on a 3 year lease with no option to keep the car, otherwise I would probably still have that one. It looks to have been MOTed up to 2021, having covered 20,000 miles. It may have been exported, many were. If not, it's quite likely the drive train and/or batteries live on in other uses.
I wrote several posts about that car when new, one year on, three years on etc. It was quite unusual to be daily driving an EV 13 years ago. I have not written about it's replacement so far as it is just normal common sense these days.
I did try a few times to arrange to buy out the lease, but it wasn't an option.
Instead, I replaced that with a brand new 2016 Leaf with a 30 kWh battery instead of the 24 kWh of the 2013 version.
The new one is essentially the same car, with nicer wheels, a better stereo, a better heater, a 6.6 kW charger (all good) and a mechanical left foot parking break instead of the electronic parking break (less good).
It seemed to me a step backwards from a neat little electronically controlled lever to a clunky mechanical foot operated version, and a very lazy change. They removed the lever and just left the hole for no particular reason, just an oddly shaped small storage recess.
At the time I was still doing a 32 mile round trip commute every day, and plugging it in to charge at work and occasionally at home as required.
These days I work from home, so it is just doing lots of short local runs and it is doing great.
The MOT this week failed first time around due to the "Nearside Rear Service brake excessively fluctuating fluctuating through pedal".
The inboard breaks were actually fine, it was the brake discs all around that were corroded and causing that issue. They had been advisories for the last couple of years, but they were the original 10 years old parts, so about time they were done, and after that it passed the retest.
Living close to the sea (about 100 yards) is not the best for corroding brake discs, and the Leaf does not use them enough to keep them clean as most of the time the regenerative braking slows the cars by recharging the battery.
Slamming the brakes on uses the actual breaks (or switching into neutral whilst moving and applying the breaks), which is usually enough the clear off the worst of the rust.
That is the most I have spent on the car over the last ten years. New brakes this year, new tyres a couple of years ago and a new 12V battery a few years before that. A couple of wiper blades and some screen wash. That's about the total parts cost over 10 years ~ £1,000.
Economy
The dash shows the current average economy of 4.1 miles per kWh, that's quite efficient even as far as modern EVs go.
With the 30 kWh battery, that is a theoretical range of 123 miles. In practice it was more like 100-120 when new.
The battery state of health is displayed on the dash by the 12 thin bars around the right hand side of the range gauge on the right.
This year that finally dropped from 12 bars to 11 bars. I think that indicates the battery is down to 80-85% of it's original range. Not bad for 10 years and 10,000 miles.
That means the range these days is 80-100 miles, and that is never an issue with the short trips, just top it up when convenient at home a few times a month or at the supermarket or car parks when convenient.
I have only used the rapid charger a handful of times, I don't live life at a speed where that is necessary.
Rounding lots of things, 10,000 miles and 4 miles per kWh is 2,500 kWh total over 10 years.
Using today's prices of 26.75 pence per kWh, those 10,000 miles would have cost £668.75.
That is worse case, using the cheap rate over night, it drops to 7p per kWh, so £175.
In fact it is probably less than that, as I did not pay to charge at work in those days, so it may be as little as £100 for £10,000 miles.
Diesel Comparison
My good old VW Golf (which I traded in for the first leaf after 11 years) would do about 50 miles per gallon on a good day. The Golf looks to have been MOTed up to 2018, with 170,000 miles on the clock. (I doubt the fuel tank or 1.8TDI engine live on)
Using today's prices, 10,000 miles would be 200 gallons of diesel. 900 litres. Google tells me the supermarket average price this days is about £1.38 per litre (I wouldn't know, it's been 13 years since I had to buy diesel).
900 litres of diesel at £1.38 per litre is £1,242, so about double the worse case of the EV and seven times more than the best case (twelve times more if I take into account the free charging!).
I am sure I would have needed more than 1 set of tires and 1 set of brakes over 10 years with the golf. I think I went through at least 3 clutches.
Conclusion
I don't like the styling of the current range of Leafs, and Nissan seems to have dropped the ball to their competition in terms of the underlying technology as well.
I am very happy with my 2016 model. I also don't fancy all the bings and bongs of the mandatory speed warnings and lane keep assist etc. in modern cars.
Lots of real buttons to easily access all the functions, none of this digging through touch screen menus to turn the demist on.
The car is still going strong 10 years on, and I have no plans to change.
It always looks nice and shiny after the rain, and luckily we have no shortage of rain these days.
It still looks smart and drives like a breeze. Cheap to run in terms of parts and energy costs.
What's not to like?
I know I happen to be a good use case, and not everyone is, so please don't feel the need to tell me why you have to drive 300 miles each day without stopping more than 5 minutes.
Something else celebrating a 10 year anniversary is the VIC20 Penultimate Cartridge, in honour of which there is a limited edition reissue of the original 2016 version. (I wonder if Nissan would consider that?)
My Tindie store also contains all sort of kits, test gear and upgrades for the ZX80, ZX81, Jupiter ACE, and Commodore PET.
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