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Are there any passionate Nissan Leaf owners here?
Specifically the 1st generation Leaf. I'm curious if this is a viable used car option. I know Nissan discontinued the platform and I heard rumblings that there wasnt much support / repair parts available from Nissan. Is this true? If it is true, is it a car that can be repaired easily yourself? Is there a community for 3rd party parts and new batteries?
Not a passionate Leaf owner but had a coworker that was into these a few years ago so I can recall some of the info. I think it's a viable option if you have a fairly short commute round trip and don't drive long distances on the weekends. Range is roughly 40-80 miles I think depending on model year and battery health. Most parts are fairly easy to source since they used fairly standard Nissan parts. They produced so many of them that body parts are also easy to source from junkyards and stuff. The complexity in these cars is basically the EV driving components: inverter, charger, and main battery of course. You can source inverters and chargers from Nissan but its better economically to just buy them from junkyards since so many Leafs are out there with just bad batteries but good electronics. It's basically impossible to get batteries from Nissan. There's a decent market out there for used batteries from other Leafs but other people quickly snatch them up to sell for a markup. There's third party replacements too but I have no info on them.
My friend had one for a few years and ultimately sold it because the charge port wasn’t compatible with most of the charging stations in our city.
ChaDeMo is definitely a dying port standard, but the plugs are still common enough in my area. The issue is that I really only see them in at larger charging stations, and there’s only ever one charger out of say 4-10 that actually has a ChaDeMo connector. So if that one space is occupied, you’re out of luck. I imagine it gets even messier if there’s a line, since typically you don’t wait for a specific spot in line at a charging station.
I think the strategy for a car like this is to either charge at work or at home and avoid public (specifically level 3) chargers altogether. OP could get a J1772 => ChaDeMo adapter and charge at level 2 stations just fine. A leaf can be fully charged in about 5 hours, so that leaves plenty of wiggle room to charge during the workday or at night.
There is no adapter. ChaDeMo uses different signaling and power, which is a big reason why people were so angry at Nissan for using it for years when it was pretty clear that the entire industry was settling on CCS except them and Tesla - and Tesla accepted CCS with an adapter.
You’re probably thinking NACS -> J1772. That does exist, for 120 or 240V AC power.
Really public charging might end up being kind of a problem for gen 1 leaf models in the future. J1772 chargers are still aplenty but it seems that charging networks are focusing on fast charging and are likely to be all NACS, which may not charge a Leaf even with an adapter. Anecdotally, metered level 2 J1772 chargers are still around in lots of places I go to but level 1 chargers are pretty rare. The Leaf will work with both.
I’m almost positive I’ve seen a couple people charge their Leaf at my workplace. We have a decent number of chargers but the plugs are all J1772, and the big clunky ChaDeMo port is pretty recognizable. It’s very possible I mixed something up in my memory, but I myself drive a (non-Tesla) EV with a NACS port so it’s not that.
After doing some research, it appears that there may be an CCS1 to ChaDeMo adapter…but it’s extremely expensive, which I assume is because of the issues you described. Without reading into it more, I’m also not convinced it would work with just J1772.
I’m a bit confused on what the charging situation looks like for a gen 1 Leaf though. Are none of their port(s) compatible with J1772 without some kind of electrical engineering wizardry?
The Leaf came with both a ChaDeMo and J1772 port. ChaDeMo was DC Fast Charge only, and the J1772 did not have the extra pins for CCS DC Fast charging.
Like I said, Nissan was dumb. It was a really nice car for pretty much everything else except for that. They really could have given Tesla and the rest of the industry more of a run for their money.
I had the higher trim model. I’m not sure if the lower trim was available without ChaDeMo.
The Gen1 Leaf has a J1772 port along with the ChaDeMo port. In fact, the latter was an option, some Leafs came without it.
Really, thats too bad. I wonder if an adapter exists for that
I think my friend did find one and some of the other comments mention a specific one existing but its expensive, for some reason or another my friend opted to just get a hybrid instead.
I know you specified gen 1, but I have a gen 2 and some of my experiences might translate to your search, so I'm pasting in my response to the other EV thread that popped up today:
I have (and love) a 2021 Nissan Leaf. It doesn't have the major battery woes of the first generation, it's a hatchback with good safety/quality of life features (radar cruise control, collision detection, lane assist, cameras), and it's fun to drive.
There are definitely drawbacks. The infotainment system leaves something to be desired in my use case, since it's wired Android Auto instead of wireless and bugs me on occasion to enable a bunch of data tracking that I've refused to agree to. But it works.
It's also not the greatest for longer distances. Like any EV, range is highly dependent on speed and conditions outside, but I've personally driven it 180 miles to visit my parents and another 180 back home a couple of days later with level 1, 120v AC charging off of regular wall outlets only, no fast charging of any kind. I had about 30 miles of stated range remaining each way. Now, I had my Google Maps set to avoid highways, which added about 45 minutes to my typical trip when I drive my ICE car. However, in a previous trip in the Leaf where I took my normal, faster route, I had to stop and fast charge (which is super annoying given the Chademo port on the Leaf) which added about the same amount of time, and was a more stressful trip overall.
But! I bought this car knowing full well that I would not intend to take longer trips in it, based on its weird fast charging connector and the fact that, without the kind of active battery cooling present in other EVs, I can only expect to successfully fast charge about once a day before temperature-based charging slowdowns begin. So this doesn't bother me.
For my actual use case, I drive about 14 miles a day during the work week, and make a couple of excursions a week to a larger city for shopping or meeting up with friends. I only have to charge 2-4 nights a week (120v AC slow charging from a normal wall outlet in my garage, mind you, no special equipment) most of the time, and I could do that less often if I weren't trying to baby the battery by only charging to 80% or less most of the time and not letting it dip below 50% most of the time.
It's got quirks, it's not perfect, but man do I love not having to deal with the gas station. And it's cheaper to fuel, and it's needed no service yet (2 years in), and despite being one of the slowest electric vehicles in recent years, with Eco Mode on it will still put you back into the seat if you want it to.
You can't go wrong with other, nicer EVs, but the Leaf really ain't bad.
We have a ~2021 Leaf as well and this absolutely matches our experience. It was originally a commuter car for my spouse, but we're now fortunate to both WFH. The Leaf entirely level 1 charges in the garage and does 99% of all our running around town driving (and did these even when commuting). Our ICE vehicle is relegated to long trips and times when we need two cars. Not buying gas weekly or even monthly is fantastic.
I also have a Gen 2 Leaf, one of the bigger battery models. I consider it boringly utilitarian to drive, but it replaced a Cupra Leon 300 I could not justify keeping with the incredibly low milage WFH has resulted in.
I charge at home, I think I've only used fast chargers ~10 times in the last few years. Here in the UK Chademo fast charging is still common, and there are adapters if that eventually becomes a problem.
I've done a few trips of ~350 miles in a day, which is well beyond the battery, and needed a couple of fast charges along the way which caused no problems. Good excuse for a coffee break.
All in all I've no regrets buying it. It is cheap to run, cheap to maintain, the drive is relaxing and the range is more than long enough for me to do almost all charging at home. Perfect day to day run around.
Am I going to take it on the roadtrip planned for next month? Nope, that's what my petrol softtop is for.