It's clear Tony had a nightmare buying this LEAF at auction and I'm sure to get comments like "I'd never buy an EV at auction", but we've bought both our EVs (24kWh LEAF and e-Niro) at auction and would happily do it again. You just need to make sure you know what to look for! Going through a company like eco-cars.net ( www.youtube.com/@JonathanPorterfield ) can help avoid the issues Tony had as they can give advice and know what red flags to look for.
Absolutely top marks to Tony for being prepared to go through the whole story on video. Its great how this shows all these things: research, read fault codes, EVs fail but quite often can be fixed without spending a huge amount.
My son bought a 2014 LEAF off Gumtree. I took my OBD2 dongle and plugged it in whilst going through a checklist downloaded off the internet. 85% SOH and all checks passed and he has a great little run about as his first car. Why can't auction houses take 5 minutes to plug in a dongle?
Auction houses exist to clear stock. The better ones will have a full disclosure policy. Hire external Mechanics to inspect every vehicle pre auction. Then the problem of knowing every vehicles quirks exists. Having a dongle & phone app to suit etc. In Australia, we recently had a national auction house with multiple outlets around the country exposed for misleading customers. So yeah, it’s a real problem.
Great video , Good Old BCA , i really loathe them massively, yes the assured report is worth and means NOTHING , especially when an issue arises! Nissan main dealers, again numpties most of them. This is the motor trade summed up ! HEVRA is brilliant and exists for the benefit of everyone 👏 Tony needs an E NIRO ! PHEV batteries are worse than nissan leaf gen 1 packs ! No thermal management, and small capacity so they are well cycled etc , stay away from plug in hybrids ! 😊
Thank you to Tony for sharing his experience. Fully endorse the expertise that can be found on Facebook EV specific model user groups. Great source of knowledge.
Had my 64kWh Kona for over 5 years now. 60k miles. New 12v battery and washer jets are all that went wrong.... 90% SoH so range still 250 miles in Summer. Will drive it until it dies!!!!
@@geoffersvoiceofreason2534 Probably because most of us have to do real journeys and dont have off road charging. Biggest killer for me though is the insane repair and depreciation costs on them.
I am glad you sorted the car out eventually and it hasn’t put you off EV’s for good. I followed Andrew’s advice last year and bought a Hyundai Ioniq5 Namsan and have really enjoyed the ownership. I bought it outright and will probably keep it for years as I am now retired. With a 250 plus mileage range I have no anxieties with either range or charge time so I would deffo recommend them if you can go that far. Either the I5 or the Kia EV are both excellent options. Good luck !
An excellent video. It was obviously a lot of pain but Tony fell on his feet by finding you Andrew and then figuring out how to get everything fixed. Certainly for older cars it shows the benefit of independent specialists and the general online community.
Agree Nissan can locally be somewhat helpful if you find the right technitian but as a central organisation they’re useless. You are esentially relying on the Nissan community and 3:rd part specialist workshops.
He was lucky to pop the hatch and find a CHAdeMo port - they werent standard on all Nissan or Renault EVs at that age - and BCA wont tell you if the car has one or not - other auction houses do tell you. I believe Renault had a 60KWh Zoe with no rapid charger until about 2020.
The AA have confirmed to me that they do a pre purchase inspection for electric vehicles. They emailed me the details of the additional EV checks and they are pretty useless and don’t check the state of health of the HV battery.
Watching u-toob, hybrids seem to suffer the highest fire risk of all electric cars. Not sure whether it is plug-ins, or not - but recent full BEVs, particularly (presumably) with Lithium Phosphate chemistry will prove the best so far. They are, one hopes, only improving as time goes on.
@@oliver90owner Hybrids won't develop much more. In most markets they have a limited lifespan for sales and that full BEVs are significantly out selling them. On fires, they have the same problem any ICE, they catch fire easily, petrol is highly combustable it's that simple.
@@gazza595 Sorree, I was referring to BEV batteries at that point of my post. I agree, hybrids won’t really develop any further. The only change, practically, can be the size of the battery? But that has likely been optimised already. The single advantage, as I see it, of a hybrid is the regeneration ability. Using fossils, to charge the battery, has its own inefficiencies? My BEV charges from predominantly green electricity and that will increase as more renewables replace fossil electricity generation.
Thank you so much for this. I was about to buy an ev on bca and no chance now. Been watching JP and yourself for a while so keep up the good work. Only reason i have not bought already is awaiting my BCA account. My friend let me log on his and I had marked a few as favourites to track. The battery check on the car and pics on the system screenshot should be standard. Tony would have avoided it. Really poor customer service. Just because you are the biggest does not make you the best.
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IMHO, I think buying a first EV with low range but needing greater range it will definitely disappoint and be harder to justify it to a skeptic wife/family about the technology. My first EV was/is a Ioniq 5 and it's been great, for longer trips the car charges really fast (as Andrew knows first hand) and it still can be an annoyance to the family, but it was easier to demonstrate the viability of the technology as it currently stands. If it was a car with much lower range, I can see that they would pressure me to sell it.
All EV cars sold should have a battery health certificate available should it be required as part of the MOT? as it would yield an enormous dividend in tetms of data about EVs and give buyers some confidence as a minimum all EVs sold by the trade should have a bsttery health tedt and certificstevto give buyers some confidence in the product as its like tge wild west currently.
Interesting Video as usual Andrew, but Tony why would you be sitting in a car for 30 minutes to wait for it to charge. 20,000klm in my first Ev in 10 months never sat in the car for 30 minutes even in my recent 6000 km trip from Spain to Edinbourgh and back. Only reason you would be doing that is if you are used to in a diesel driving for 6 odd hours without stopping which I would say is potentially dangerous. I as I did in my 900Km range 4x4 diesel stop every 3 ish hours anyway to get out walk, pee and get something to eat, so in a decent range EV like the EV Niro or our standard range model 3 means when you stop to pee etc. the car is charging while you do that. In fact the only complaint i have is the car is always charged before I have finished eating and i have to go and move it and come back to finish eatiing 🤣
@@davidlewis4399 Awesome if thats what you like to do, but if you are doing a 600 to 800 km trip in a day then surely you want to stop and and have a meal at least once in the trip, dont see how you can do that in a 10 minute stop. I find it difficult to have a pee in that time. 🤣
When we sit there charging ... we watch HBO or RUclips. My kids like playing Angry Birds ... but I get too nervous playing that. :) Never a dull moment really. I wouldn't buy a hybrid as a replacement for a second car ... but hey. Try an ID3 instead, they can be pretty cheap second hand. Cheers for the excellent series!
Really brave guy, I have had a 39kwh nissan leaf from new, I have had it for just over 2 years and have done 39,000 miles Range anxiety is a problem, so if i replace it, i will probably go for a second hand tesla
Great little Series Thanks I have been looking at buying EV's from BCA but this tells me not to, Battery problems are rare but if that's there policy no thanks. They work on commission so it would be in their interest. A simple test on battery isn't hard
Great story & nice to see that Tony has not been put off another EV. It's that bug that can never be got rid of, once you have had one. As a fellow e-niro owner. A wise choice, especially now the prices as dropping to a level of affordability.
Go all electric the Kia E nrio is a fantastic car I bought a 2020 4 spec loved it soo much replaced my second car with another Kia e niro 4+ highly recommend it.
There is definitely homework needed before buying any car. I bought a 2019 Hyundai Kona 64kWh earlier this year with just a couple of months left of its warranty. I knew it had an outstanding recall so immediately booked that in (with a 2 month waiting list). But unfortunately the car broke down 320 miles from home (utter nightmare!) before the recall could be done. When the local Hyundai garage first looked at it, they blamed a non-standard service and initially said the car wasn't covered by the manufacturer's warranty! Luckily they were persuaded by the garage who sold it to me (who were otherwise liable for a refund if I'd rejected the car) to honour the warranty, and in the end it turned out that the recall work due was an entirely new traction battery! In hindsight, although all is now good, we were without the car for 2 months and I should probably have walked away from the purchase. I think sellers should not legally be allowed to sell cars with outstanding recalls due on them, they are, after all, safety issues.
Totally agree with you, why buy a Leaf with about 80 miles range and then drive your kids to school in a polluting range rover, this guy is obviously a petrol head. If he was serious about Evs he would buy something with a decent range.
@@mikeolly67 I'd really love to have a sensible conversation with you about the benefits of ownership of an EV, but I noticed that you're subscribed to Farage! Is that just for laughs, or do you think that he's a serious person?
Yes, it most certainly demonstrates the possible occasional risks of buying second hand, but also showed that, even with the worst initial outlook, it can turn out to be a successful result in the end.
This series of videos is what I like, getting into the details of EVs. For context I was an original Nissan LEAF and e-NV200 Innovation Specialist. The early 24kWh LEAF had the charge to 80% feature but it was then removed on all the later models. Why? In America the EPA would only give their maximum range approval to that 80% as it had that function, so Nissan removed it with a software update, then the official EPA higher range was now approved to 100%.
I had no idea! That's fascinating but baffling. "Long Life Mode" wasn't switched on by default (or was it?), so it shouldn't have affected the EPA range. Plenty of other EVs have variable charge limits but presumably aren't affected either. Thank you so much for the information!
@@MrEV Don't forget years ago ~2015 the LEAF was probably the only EV that had that 80% feature and the original EPA were thinking they have to give it's minimum mileage range because it has that setting available to use. There was only the LEAF, eNV200, Zoe and the Triplets as mainstream. Today it's totally different.
Very entertaining and informative. I have the same car and love it, but similarly my SOH is only 68% (9 bars) after 64K miles and I get about 85 miles. What is surprising is my car has only done 25 quick charges and 2100 slow charges, so wouldn't have thought the SOH should be so low whereas Tony's car had done over 300 quick charges.
@@MrEV Could be. I don't commute, so tend to do longer journeys at the weekend, return home with very little charge left, fill up to 100% overnight and then only use it for going to the shops until the next weekend. Now, what I tend to do, is if I have more than 25% left I don't charge it until the night before I know I'm going to use it for a longer jaunt. But I only started doing that recently. I bought it used three years ago after it had done 43000 miles and was on 11 bars (didn't know the SOH % then) and have done 20000 since. A point of comparison is a 2015 Zoe, which I had used in the same way, and I still have it, which hasn't deteriorated nearly as much, in fact I'm not sure how little it has deteriorated.
you should have mentioned that the main reason the 30kwh failed more than 24kwh is they removed that limit charge to 80% feature in those "new" 30kwh models....
Battery state of health needs to be something thats easily reported on a dashboard like the odometer reading, its just as important. We will eventually get there but its a journey
I recently bought a 40 kwh 3 year old Leaf in the UK. The 12v is ok but I always like to replace it if I buy a used car. I rang my local Nissan dealer who wanted £300 + vat to fit a new 12v battery! Over £300!! What a total joke. I used to have a Toyota/Lexus before and they'd change about £30-£50 to fit it, plus the £80+vat cost of the battery and always gave amazing service too. This one experience of UK Nissan dealers has totally taken the shine off owning a Nissan Leaf. Absolute piss take of a charge. I have zero confidence in them. Nissan UK, you should be ashamed.
Not necessarily! A lot of auction cars are ex-leases (like my e-Niro) and are a safe bet. Cars of this age have probably gone through webuyanycar.com though… so yes, potentially dodgy!
Usually trade ins. Selling privately is horrible with people playing games. So trade in or use WBAC. WBAC always auctions everything, ordinary dealers may sell on their forecourt but often for them auctioning is better for cash flow. There need not be and often is no problem with the cars.
40:00 As long as your car supports Android Auto or Carplay you can get a device like a Carlinkit TBox to watch RUclips, Disney+, Netflix, etc. on your media screen. I occasionally catch up on youtube while I'm parked outside waiting for my wife to finish work on my EV6's infotainment screen.
forget about a Hybrid cause you are riding a horse on the extremes: you jumped into EV without thinking and now jumoing into the opposite again absolute blind about the technology, implications and risks. The story is simple: you will burn your fingers big times and if you think you had mastered something on the EV side then that might be true, but a hybrid car is a completely different world with a far higher complexity and far, far smaller group of qualified shops and no community cause the amount of hybrid cars sold is tiny compared to ICE and EV. Again: a EV shop will not repair your hybrid and can not fix all the ICE things, an ICE car shop avoids the electrical part of the hybrid and you are stuck Use your brain: The Hybrid battery is really tiny, if you floor the pedal then the small battery will have to push a lot of amps out and heat up and wear out a lot faster than any other car. And in that case the battery will be daily fully discharged on the commute trip which means 1 cycle gone - you can not cycle those endlessly and when those batteries dy then you can get only a replacenemt. You have a brain so check the battery swap price for a Passat GTE or GOLF GTE, a quite typical car - nothing fancy, just a pure hybrid and peoples car And you will end up with a repair bill higher than what you paid for the nissan leaf and its repairs: Expect 5000€ or roughly 4500 GBP as a usual price cause the hourly rate for a VW hybrid mechanic qualified for this jojb is what ? up to 200€ - so never speakt to him cause 5 minutes of his time will cost you 20€ at least. And there willl be a lot to talk about due to the complexity when and how which engine engages or turns off especially as used car. You will buy a cheap used Hybrid and tthink that this might be easier to fix but it is the opposite cause you need the EV guy and the ICE guy and both willing to work together cause the devils lays in the details, the control units and systems that manage the interaction . If you get a new hybrid you will adjust to that easily and learn how it behaves. If you get it used then you know nothing and for sure not what is normal and what not. WIthout that knowledge you will end in a garage and ask for help you have to pay for just to get the news: just normal - after the mechanic had done a testride. My advice get another ICE cause you know that. It will be affordable this time, the last time cause that next used ICE car beyond that maybe in 2030 will already become a lot more expensive due to higher CO2 emission costs and exploding spare part prices and mechanic prices cause the less ice business the more people with high skills will retire while demand is still there. And of cause the manufacturers will MILK you like a cow with your outdated ICE car by raising spare part prices to make more profits. This is a strategy everyone in the industry is familiar with and I have been working for the oldest car manufacturer in the world for decades and across the globe: at the end it is a about profits and those who wanna dy in their ICE will have to pay for that once the first wave of highly experienced ice mechanis will have already retired. So go back with the good experiences of an EV and the bad and ugly, but avoid the myth of a Hybrid cause its battery is its achilles heel which is quite expensive and not many wanna work with. I discharges daily and if you consider that an eGOLF battery gets a 8 year 150000 km warranty then think about how long a 25% battery would last. 30 kWh versus 6 kWh means 30.000 km commute and it is dying (below 80%) . That gets only better in the latest Passat GTE generation from model year 2021 or so onwards when the size has been increased up to 13 or 18 kWh. And finally: get an EV only if you have a home and solar power to charge from cause that makes it cheap. Maybe dynamic prices and charging during night might help but with a small 6 kWh battery no one will wait till 2 am so you will constantly charge during day light and peak tarifs . Octopus and all the others offer so nice and cheap tarifs but over the years those will change and if you have adopted your ilfe style to their tarifs over night everything can change. Same has happened here: charging at home during night using a heatpump tarif was cheap (maybe 60% of the usual price) and then Russia visited the Ukraine and here every of those tarifs was canceled and you got a new offer as a goodloyal customer but instead of saving 40% you would only get 9% and your whole world would fall apart. Therefore get solar power for you and those kids which will become big time consumers at least with a boy cause from 12 on he willl have a console or gaming PC which are power hungry like hell and you will pay for that - therefore solar power first, drive ice as the last straw and then when you learned a lot from solar power that using the own energy is the best you will come back fully cured from the EV desaster. But stay away from hybrids cause its bills will kill you - at least if you are such buyer you had been during the leaf purchase who had bought blindly without expertise a new tech car. If you buy a 8 year old Hybrid it can be the biggest hell for 2 reasons: those cars are a lot more expensive cause such Golf GTE sells here for a lot more and the repair bills are piling up soon and big ones cause that GOLF is not the average GOLF, it is the GTI ++ and therefore gets the XXXL bills . Of cause brake pads will cost a similiar amount, but eveything regarding the drive train will become a lot more tricky and expensive: you will drive from one garage to the next till you finally might find a Golf GTE or passat GTE specialist. Long story short: you have a lot more to loose than you are able to think about - at least from my 4 decades working for the top 4 german brands since I was 19 or so and Audi had send me to the university to study where another car manufacturer caught me and from where I visited Porsche and so on. You are the customer those companies love: blind , trustfull and too selfconfident which means they wanna have your money and make profits which means: not much effort but high bills for you And if you count the words and lines and minutes I spend writing in a foreign language you should see or at least smell the biggest warning signs what you might face. I suggest that you ask your wife kindly before you get a hybrid cause that might become multiple times more expensive than the cheap 900 GBP Nissan Leaf repair. There is just one excemption which is the Toyota Prius cause there in that eco system and forums you have the amount of owners and a huge economy of scale that you can make a good experience if you are very aware of the high risks of small battery which wears out daily. You can watch the hybrids batteries dying - and no one wants to repair nor buy them in such state. If you commute every second day with the electric drive train and charging at home after 30.000 km the battery might be dead. Consider a 3000 or 5000€ repair bill and you end up with 10 to 17 additional Cent or Pence per km on top of the kWh price. Here the Toyota hybrids can be cheaper but only those hybrids you can charge at home. Just the regen brakes do not save enough energy and those batteries are even smaller. If you get a commute Hybrid be aware to get at least a 50 km range fully electric cause then the battery might last longer, but those cars have been on sale for just 3 or 4 years and might be out of price range if you do a serious market research. You have kids, so make a good decision and not such a lighthearted impulsive one cause at the end a lot is at stake with such a young family cause everyone in your family has gone through a lot of pain or has felt how you and your wife went throught a nightmare. Kids feel that and might remember that 20 years later. My pa had a FORD M which did not really made it over the alps from italy back and I can still remember its colour: blue and I also remember the guy who had bought it later Good luck and trust people with experience and knowledge, not your gut feeling
eniro would be ideal. When people ask about range, I explain, tje car has a longer range than my bladder 😂 3-4 hours of driving is enough without stopping. I have done multiple journeys to balckpool and back from kent with no issues. Twice been to south of France, fully laden with family. Whenever we need to stop, we time it with a needed break to eat, and let kids stretch their legs in a play area, so no "additional cost" when stopping. Kids have books tablets etc to keep tjem entertained for long journeys anyway.
Not a leaf owner but a Note epower owner (you fellas in the UK didn't get this awesome car). I second Facebook user groups, amazing people on there and so helpful. I'm getting a leaf next year so I'll know what I get myself into. Glad Tony got sorted in the end, he will be a user group expert after his experience!!!
Interesting and good video. Lessons learned but glad Tony stuck it out. Rather than buy, you could lease through your business and have all maintenance covered .. even insurance and get a favourable BIK tax. A more modern EV will have a lot of the Range Rover comforts such as heated and cooled seats. PLUS the real biggie - pre-condition in the Winter. This is what I do ... had a Volvo XC40 EV which worked out £50 a month cheaper in overall motoring costs than my previous Diesel Jaguar. I now have the new Renault Scenic Iconic .. which is even cheaper at around £75 a month lower overall costs. This is even with only Public Charging using a discount card that drops Ionity from 74p to 43p. There is so much more to all this, but, the driving experience is so much better. BTW .. I easily see over 300 miles driving range with the Renault
I bought a 2014 mk2 24kwh leaf after doing loads a reading. Apart from the limited range, it was so well thought out. Nissan clearly put in so much effort to get everything right in the development stage, why won't every other manufacturer put the charge port front and center. It's so accessible unlike those situated on the wings.
Really interesting and honest mini series of videos. (I like the EU trips too) I'm happily motoring along with my 8 year old Model S, free supercharging and 266k miles so far. But if I was looking now, the price of the Tesla Model 3 LR or Performance is a no brainer! I can't charge at home and do a lot of long trips, Italy, Germany etc so that does dictate my choice, as the Tesla set up is still the best (IMO). I'm looking to head down to southern Italy again, later this year, but fancy stopping in France or Switzerland for an overnight stop this time. Can you recommend the best overnight stops from your experience? I've always driven in one go before, but having watched your trips, the stopover looks very appealing! Less the plastic bed covers 😁
Well done Tony for showing what happened, a lot of bad luck involved in the original purchase but you certainly learned all you need to know moving forward. Andrew, didnt JP have trouble with BCA auctions? Think they got upset and stroppy about him broadcasting their sales or something so he stopped using them.... I dont know maybe I dreamed that.🤔 Tony please dont go the hybrid route, there's twice as much to go wrong, you're carrying extra weight for both propulsion systems to cope with making neither as efficient as they should be. They are a big expensive con! Get Jonathan Porterfield at eco cars to find you something. You could even just tell him the amount of range thats ideal, all your family and doggy needs along with your prefered max price and he'll see what he can find. You can either say yes or no thanks, keep looking. Andrew probably knows how much he charges these days and how much to deliver it to you if its not local, if not check out eco-cars videos or even give them a ring and have a chat. Good luck with your next ev adventure, i hope it all goes a little smoother. Btw, thanks for finding the EV place at Herne Bay, as i said to Andrew in the last video, its a great find for us too as we're only fifteen minutes down the road. Dean will have a new customer for servicing next year. Plus I'm hoping i might get him to source a new undertray for our Ioniq 38kWh which has a bit of a hole in it. Its a car I highly recommend , its our first ev and we get around 220 miles in summer and in the last two mild winters we've not gone much under the 200. Only modest local driving and the occasional trip down to East Sussex mind. Its completely spoiled us for anything else as seeing anything less than 6m/kWh in summer or going under 4m/kWh in winter is depressing!😂👍
First of all the obvious comment, do not buy a hybrid.. I have heard you shouldn't get a BEV with a battery that is bigger than you need. The majority of my journeys are short which were easily achievable with my old 40kWh LEAF. But our son used to live on the west side of Southampton and from our home in East Sussex was about 80 miles, so we would always need a charge to do a roundtrip, hence I bought the 64kWh Soul and of course driving anywhere in the south east has always given us zero range anxiety, so always get a bigger battery if you can afford it or should i say a bigger range than what you need. Now I'm about to get a refresh Ioniq 5 through salary sacrifice I can't wait for the next level of EV ownership. Rob
Terrible first EV experience and my big problem with LEAFs in general. Because the battery is unmanaged they perpetuate the myth that EV batteries don't last, because they don't on early LEAFs. Only buy a LEAF if you know enough about EVs to dodge the pitfalls and you're prepared to live with a short range vehicle (which usually means having at least one other long range vehicle).
Main Dealers/Stealers if they have anyone often seem to have only one EV trained mechanic. He/she goes on holiday and you have a huge wait. Renault quoted a £130 examination fee (plug in a reader) in some four weeks time after my EV died. Totally useless, though it was only the 12v ancillary battery. The RAC after a 30hour wait eventually came out, diagnosed the issue and charged the 12v battery. I have heard good stories about MG dealers but the rest seem dire.
The video we have been waiting for. Tony did well to only lose £395 (plus a lot of time and stress). Proof that you need to be careful buying any vehicle - but particularly if you are bidding on cheap cars at auction unseen. If it had been an ICE car, and needed a replacement engine, then the costs would have been uneconomical. Andrew kept very calm when faced with the H word 😀
The 30kw leaf was a follow on model after the 24kw. It has more battery issues because it shoehorned more cells into the same battery pack space as the previous 24kw cells, thus more overheating and cell swelling. It’s like listening to Dumb and Dumber!!
The 30kw leaf was a follow on model after the 24kw. It has more battery issues because it shoehorned more cells into the same battery pack space as the previous 24kw cells, thus more overheating and cell swelling. It’s like listening to Dumb and Dumber!!
We recently drove our almost 8-year old 30 kWh Leaf from Devon to the Lake District and back without any issues, although it took more than 3 hours longer each way than other family members in their ICE vehicles. I know this is tempting fate, but we’ve never had any issues with the traction battery and we still have 11 bars and 83% SOH. That said, I have always made sure the battery SOC is kept close to 50% when the car isn’t in use.
He should have bought a e-Golf, a good transition to EV experience, it was my first venture and I loved it. Now have an MG 4 Trophy mainly for the extra range😊
Be weary of PHEVs, the batteries have no management, so it ends up just being a petrol car with an added heavy weight doing nothing eventually. Not that it is likely to happen, but if a car catches fire, PHIVs are top of the list, then ICE cars, while EVs are bottom of the list, so least likely to catch fire.
It was very good of Tony to appear in this video. Research is the key but at some point you have to just go for it. Perhaps next time use Jonathan Porterfield’s Eco Cars to help identify a good buy from an Auction. Anyway thank you both for a very informative video. 👍👍
Really interesting Andrew. Thank you. I think the most useful bit of this for a lot of people is to find out how much a cell replacement costs. Really quite a modest amount considering how expensive the repairs on ICE cars can be.
Part 4 Tony sells the Leaf, then buys a battery dead Niro. rinse and repeat, More views, has Mr. Till found the magic formula to bring life back to his channel?
I have a 2023 Nissan Ariya and you can only set charging via a schedule and not by state of charge at the end of charging. When I plug it in at home I do an offline calculation to determine how much time I require to achieve an end state % battery charge and then set the timer accordingly. I believe Nissan consciously changed their software a couple of years back for the Leaf to be this way and carried over to the Ariya. Itsa bit of a bother but easy enough to do
Great eye opening experience and shows it’s. It the end of the world. That was probably about the worst experience anyone could expect to have with a leaf and was fairly easily rectified (though not without drama). I can see a used (not from auction😂) Tesla Model X in that man’s future.
Great story, and educational. I’ve had my first EV for less than 3 weeks and still a lot to learn. However I took family to the airport this morning. 4 adults, little person and loads of luggage. No problems with space and little effect on performance.
A nice and very useful lot of information gathered from this story. We were told by Toyota to charge up too 80% as it saves the life of the batteries !!! We have a Toyota BZ4X, that I have always charged to 80%, which feels ideal, we dont see very many of them around, but we love it all the same. Thanks for explaining this story of the Leaf, my son in law had one, but it was hit by a Taxi and became unuseable, but it certainly was safe to drive, even after the crash.
Get great service from my local Hevra garage. They are always booked up for a 3/4 weeks in advance. Great video Andrew don't waste your money on a hybrid, stay with petrol if you're that unsure.
I had a pre reg mg5 with 2 miles on the clock when I bought it throw HV battery errors and go into limp mode constantly. Thankfully it turned out to be a software issue in my case (it’s been fine since they updated the software)
There is a really good MGEV community forum as well. Someone on there will probably know the answer to a question or problem someone has. Very reassuring when you are getting your first EV.
The 30 year tech has 30 years of working on ICE, the new systems need someone trained on these specifically, as it's the little things that trip you up
Shows how hard it is to convince people to go EV for their main car. I've seen this with friends, some of them will find any excuse to not make the move to EV only.
80% charge, our 2018 Renault ZOE couldn't be set to charge only to 80% or anything other than 100%, we had to work out how many % the charger gave it every hour and use the timer on the charger to get to whatever % we wanted
Which fault was that? I had an issue with the charge flap which is a known fault with the actuator and was fixed under warranty with no complaints. I don’t think I’ve had any other problems!
It's clear Tony had a nightmare buying this LEAF at auction and I'm sure to get comments like "I'd never buy an EV at auction", but we've bought both our EVs (24kWh LEAF and e-Niro) at auction and would happily do it again. You just need to make sure you know what to look for!
Going through a company like eco-cars.net ( www.youtube.com/@JonathanPorterfield ) can help avoid the issues Tony had as they can give advice and know what red flags to look for.
JP has become something of a byword for trustworthy.
Any car can be a lemon, ICE or BEV.
With modern cars, a full electrical diagnostic is needed, before parting with any money.
@@davidspencer7254 🤣
@@FFVoyager 🤣😂 etc.
Absolutely top marks to Tony for being prepared to go through the whole story on video. Its great how this shows all these things: research, read fault codes, EVs fail but quite often can be fixed without spending a huge amount.
My son bought a 2014 LEAF off Gumtree. I took my OBD2 dongle and plugged it in whilst going through a checklist downloaded off the internet. 85% SOH and all checks passed and he has a great little run about as his first car. Why can't auction houses take 5 minutes to plug in a dongle?
Auction houses exist to clear stock.
The better ones will have a full disclosure policy. Hire external
Mechanics to inspect every vehicle pre auction.
Then the problem of knowing every vehicles quirks exists. Having a dongle & phone app to suit etc.
In Australia, we recently had a national auction house with multiple outlets around the country exposed for misleading customers.
So yeah, it’s a real problem.
SOH report should be the bare minimum in any EV report
Battery health certificates are coming for used EVs. Just need to be mandated by law.
I love Andrew's face when Tony says the H word
Great video , Good Old BCA , i really loathe them massively, yes the assured report is worth and means NOTHING , especially when an issue arises!
Nissan main dealers, again numpties most of them.
This is the motor trade summed up !
HEVRA is brilliant and exists for the benefit of everyone 👏
Tony needs an E NIRO !
PHEV batteries are worse than nissan leaf gen 1 packs !
No thermal management, and small capacity so they are well cycled etc , stay away from plug in hybrids ! 😊
I fully agree with all that!
Well done Johnathan, I was wondering whether you would see this. Should have gone to your favourite auction in Shoreham.
Stop sitting on the fence JP and saying what you really think lol.
Tony seems a decent bloke.
BCA should do a battery health check it's not hard
Thank you to Tony for sharing his experience. Fully endorse the expertise that can be found on Facebook EV specific model user groups. Great source of knowledge.
Amazing story and all because his lemon Leaf was dumped outside Andrew’s (Mr. EV’s) house! What luck!!!
I had a plug-in hybrid and got rid of it after 6 months.
EV for 3 years now, a Kona 64kwh, and I'll not go back now.
The model I would have bought, but I’m not expecting to change the car I bought.
Snap, re Kona. Astounds me I don’t see far more Konas on the road. Range and efficiency of the 64KWh is perfect.
Had my 64kWh Kona for over 5 years now. 60k miles. New 12v battery and washer jets are all that went wrong.... 90% SoH so range still 250 miles in Summer. Will drive it until it dies!!!!
@@geoffersvoiceofreason2534 Probably because most of us have to do real journeys and dont have off road charging. Biggest killer for me though is the insane repair and depreciation costs on them.
Great to hear! The Kona really is incredibly good.
Hevra is EU wide too, as was discussed on Take it EV Podcast
True!
takeitev.transistor.fm/47
I am glad you sorted the car out eventually and it hasn’t put you off EV’s for good. I followed Andrew’s advice last year and bought a Hyundai Ioniq5 Namsan and have really enjoyed the ownership. I bought it outright and will probably keep it for years as I am now retired. With a 250 plus mileage range I have no anxieties with either range or charge time so I would deffo recommend them if you can go that far. Either the I5 or the Kia EV are both excellent options. Good luck !
The need for a battery health certificate is essential. Imagine buying an ICE with a blown engine or leaky fuel tank
An excellent video. It was obviously a lot of pain but Tony fell on his feet by finding you Andrew and then figuring out how to get everything fixed. Certainly for older cars it shows the benefit of independent specialists and the general online community.
Agree Nissan can locally be somewhat helpful if you find the right technitian but as a central organisation they’re useless. You are esentially relying on the Nissan community and 3:rd part specialist workshops.
I'm sorry but checking fault codes should be a standard part of a car survey the fact that it's not is astounding
BCA is a trade auction house. This is why the prices are so much less than on the forecourt.
That ain't going to happen at an auction.
Good idea but also what is to stop a dealer clearly all the codes before they send it to BCA? They may not reappear by the time it gets sold.
He was lucky to pop the hatch and find a CHAdeMo port - they werent standard on all Nissan or Renault EVs at that age - and BCA wont tell you if the car has one or not - other auction houses do tell you.
I believe Renault had a 60KWh Zoe with no rapid charger until about 2020.
@@ianemery2925 I thought all UK Leafs got chademo as a standard, though in the US it was an option early on.
Appalling how BCA treated you how can they have green tick when the battery is knackered and the wipers would fail a mot check?
The AA have confirmed to me that they do a pre purchase inspection for electric vehicles. They emailed me the details of the additional EV checks and they are pretty useless and don’t check the state of health of the HV battery.
DO NOT BUY A HYBRID 😂
Watching u-toob, hybrids seem to suffer the highest fire risk of all electric cars. Not sure whether it is plug-ins, or not - but recent full BEVs, particularly (presumably) with Lithium Phosphate chemistry will prove the best so far. They are, one hopes, only improving as time goes on.
There is no such thing as a self charging hebread
@@oliver90owner Hybrids won't develop much more. In most markets they have a limited lifespan for sales and that full BEVs are significantly out selling them. On fires, they have the same problem any ICE, they catch fire easily, petrol is highly combustable it's that simple.
@@gazza595 Sorree, I was referring to BEV batteries at that point of my post. I agree, hybrids won’t really develop any further. The only change, practically, can be the size of the battery? But that has likely been optimised already. The single advantage, as I see it, of a hybrid is the regeneration ability. Using fossils, to charge the battery, has its own inefficiencies?
My BEV charges from predominantly green electricity and that will increase as more renewables replace fossil electricity generation.
Thank you so much for this.
I was about to buy an ev on bca and no chance now.
Been watching JP and yourself for a while so keep up the good work.
Only reason i have not bought already is awaiting my BCA account. My friend let me log on his and I had marked a few as favourites to track.
The battery check on the car and pics on the system screenshot should be standard.
Tony would have avoided it.
Really poor customer service.
Just because you are the biggest does not make you the best.
IMHO, I think buying a first EV with low range but needing greater range it will definitely disappoint and be harder to justify it to a skeptic wife/family about the technology.
My first EV was/is a Ioniq 5 and it's been great, for longer trips the car charges really fast (as Andrew knows first hand) and it still can be an annoyance to the family, but it was easier to demonstrate the viability of the technology as it currently stands. If it was a car with much lower range, I can see that they would pressure me to sell it.
I would like to see Tony's progress on his EV journey. You both make for an interesting conversation
I'll certainly be back to do a follow-up if he does get another EV some time.
84mV difference is still way off but at least it drives properly now
Never had a RR. But I do have an Ionic5. Has all the bells and whistles. Goes anywhere. Charges superfast. Might be an option.
Had mine In hevra they're amazing guys
All EV cars sold should have a battery health certificate available should it be required as part of the MOT? as it would yield an enormous dividend in tetms of data about EVs and give buyers some confidence as a minimum all EVs sold by the trade should have a bsttery health tedt and certificstevto give buyers some confidence in the product as its like tge wild west currently.
Car dealers and banks..
The two things in life that’s sole purpose is to take your money without compassion or regret.
Thank you for your honesty and positivity in spite of a really painful experience. Buyer beware, or have leafspy 😊
BTW the video should be called.. "How not to buy a car!"
Interesting Video as usual Andrew, but Tony why would you be sitting in a car for 30 minutes to wait for it to charge. 20,000klm in my first Ev in 10 months never sat in the car for 30 minutes even in my recent 6000 km trip from Spain to Edinbourgh and back. Only reason you would be doing that is if you are used to in a diesel driving for 6 odd hours without stopping which I would say is potentially dangerous. I as I did in my 900Km range 4x4 diesel stop every 3 ish hours anyway to get out walk, pee and get something to eat, so in a decent range EV like the EV Niro or our standard range model 3 means when you stop to pee etc. the car is charging while you do that. In fact the only complaint i have is the car is always charged before I have finished eating and i have to go and move it and come back to finish eatiing 🤣
Lucky you I prefer a quick 10 min stop and then drive for another hour then 10 mins ...
@@davidlewis4399 Awesome if thats what you like to do, but if you are doing a 600 to 800 km trip in a day then surely you want to stop and and have a meal at least once in the trip, dont see how you can do that in a 10 minute stop. I find it difficult to have a pee in that time. 🤣
Just call it a parking brake like Americans.
KW = kWh. For those confused
Oh my gosh, my heart goes out to Tony - what a nightmare introduction to EVs 😢. Just glad he was able to solve all the problems.
Thanks Carol!
When we sit there charging ... we watch HBO or RUclips. My kids like playing Angry Birds ... but I get too nervous playing that. :) Never a dull moment really.
I wouldn't buy a hybrid as a replacement for a second car ... but hey. Try an ID3 instead, they can be pretty cheap second hand.
Cheers for the excellent series!
Really brave guy, I have had a 39kwh nissan leaf from new, I have had it for just over 2 years and have done 39,000 miles
Range anxiety is a problem, so if i replace it, i will probably go for a second hand tesla
Great little Series Thanks
I have been looking at buying EV's from BCA but this tells me not to, Battery problems are rare but if that's there policy no thanks. They work on commission so it would be in their interest. A simple test on battery isn't hard
Great story & nice to see that Tony has not been put off another EV. It's that bug that can never be got rid of, once you have had one. As a fellow e-niro owner. A wise choice, especially now the prices as dropping to a level of affordability.
Well done Tony, shame about the Leaf, shame he had a awful experience, but Leaf is old battery technology, should have purchased a i3 ☺️
Go all electric the Kia E nrio is a fantastic car I bought a 2020 4 spec loved it soo much replaced my second car with another Kia e niro 4+ highly recommend it.
Get yourself a Kia eNiro and you will have all the bells and whistles you get in your Range Rover.
Another great video and so much more enjoyable when it’s only you andrew !
There is definitely homework needed before buying any car. I bought a 2019 Hyundai Kona 64kWh earlier this year with just a couple of months left of its warranty. I knew it had an outstanding recall so immediately booked that in (with a 2 month waiting list). But unfortunately the car broke down 320 miles from home (utter nightmare!) before the recall could be done. When the local Hyundai garage first looked at it, they blamed a non-standard service and initially said the car wasn't covered by the manufacturer's warranty! Luckily they were persuaded by the garage who sold it to me (who were otherwise liable for a refund if I'd rejected the car) to honour the warranty, and in the end it turned out that the recall work due was an entirely new traction battery!
In hindsight, although all is now good, we were without the car for 2 months and I should probably have walked away from the purchase. I think sellers should not legally be allowed to sell cars with outstanding recalls due on them, they are, after all, safety issues.
Oh wow! A stressful experience but great to get a whole new battery. I remember hearing about those Kona issues.
@@MrEV Yep, I was very worried for a few weeks that I'd bought a total lemon. It's all good now though!
So you run a Range Rover and a Diesel Golf - I think maybe you've missed the point of driving EV's
I think that you may have missed the point of this video, or perhaps it was meant to be funny?
I have an MX5 which I am forcing myself to start using more. My EV is so cheap to run (£0.07) per KWh that it has got all the use up to now.
Totally agree with you, why buy a Leaf with about 80 miles range and then drive your kids to school in a polluting range rover, this guy is obviously a petrol head. If he was serious about Evs he would buy something with a decent range.
I’m interested what you think the point of driving an EV is? You do realise they’re not environmentally friendly.
@@mikeolly67 I'd really love to have a sensible conversation with you about the benefits of ownership of an EV, but I noticed that you're subscribed to Farage! Is that just for laughs, or do you think that he's a serious person?
MG4 SE is my recommendation, one year into mine and 16k miles and love it
Congratulations you own the least reliable car on the roads allegedly.
A one year old 16k miles is virtually brand new
Wonder what it’s like with 120 k at ten years old
@@davidlewis4399 wow, just made that shit up, didn't ya?
@@davidlewis4399don’t talk rubbish
Me too
unique & great content and story
Yes, it most certainly demonstrates the possible occasional risks of buying second hand, but also showed that, even with the worst initial outlook, it can turn out to be a successful result in the end.
Well done for seeing it through.
This series of videos is what I like, getting into the details of EVs. For context I was an original Nissan LEAF and e-NV200 Innovation Specialist.
The early 24kWh LEAF had the charge to 80% feature but it was then removed on all the later models. Why? In America the EPA would only give their maximum range approval to that 80% as it had that function, so Nissan removed it with a software update, then the official EPA higher range was now approved to 100%.
I had no idea! That's fascinating but baffling. "Long Life Mode" wasn't switched on by default (or was it?), so it shouldn't have affected the EPA range.
Plenty of other EVs have variable charge limits but presumably aren't affected either.
Thank you so much for the information!
@@MrEV Don't forget years ago ~2015 the LEAF was probably the only EV that had that 80% feature and the original EPA were thinking they have to give it's minimum mileage range because it has that setting available to use. There was only the LEAF, eNV200, Zoe and the Triplets as mainstream. Today it's totally different.
first!
Very entertaining and informative. I have the same car and love it, but similarly my SOH is only 68% (9 bars) after 64K miles and I get about 85 miles. What is surprising is my car has only done 25 quick charges and 2100 slow charges, so wouldn't have thought the SOH should be so low whereas Tony's car had done over 300 quick charges.
What really finishes it off is being parked at 100% for a long time. Could that have been what happened with yours?
@@MrEV Could be. I don't commute, so tend to do longer journeys at the weekend, return home with very little charge left, fill up to 100% overnight and then only use it for going to the shops until the next weekend. Now, what I tend to do, is if I have more than 25% left I don't charge it until the night before I know I'm going to use it for a longer jaunt. But I only started doing that recently. I bought it used three years ago after it had done 43000 miles and was on 11 bars (didn't know the SOH % then) and have done 20000 since. A point of comparison is a 2015 Zoe, which I had used in the same way, and I still have it, which hasn't deteriorated nearly as much, in fact I'm not sure how little it has deteriorated.
you should have mentioned that the main reason the 30kwh failed more than 24kwh is they removed that limit charge to 80% feature in those "new" 30kwh models....
Battery state of health needs to be something thats easily reported on a dashboard like the odometer reading, its just as important. We will eventually get there but its a journey
I recently bought a 40 kwh 3 year old Leaf in the UK. The 12v is ok but I always like to replace it if I buy a used car. I rang my local Nissan dealer who wanted £300 + vat to fit a new 12v battery! Over £300!! What a total joke. I used to have a Toyota/Lexus before and they'd change about £30-£50 to fit it, plus the £80+vat cost of the battery and always gave amazing service too.
This one experience of UK Nissan dealers has totally taken the shine off owning a Nissan Leaf. Absolute piss take of a charge. I have zero confidence in them.
Nissan UK, you should be ashamed.
My saying has always been if its at auction its there for a reason
Not necessarily! A lot of auction cars are ex-leases (like my e-Niro) and are a safe bet.
Cars of this age have probably gone through webuyanycar.com though… so yes, potentially dodgy!
Usually trade ins. Selling privately is horrible with people playing games. So trade in or use WBAC. WBAC always auctions everything, ordinary dealers may sell on their forecourt but often for them auctioning is better for cash flow. There need not be and often is no problem with the cars.
@@mbak7801 where I live good trade in are kept for lot or sold directly to a wholesaler. Less desirable stuff goes to auction
I'm considering a used EV too so Tony's experience is well worth sharing. Much learnt, thanks both.
40:00 As long as your car supports Android Auto or Carplay you can get a device like a Carlinkit TBox to watch RUclips, Disney+, Netflix, etc. on your media screen. I occasionally catch up on youtube while I'm parked outside waiting for my wife to finish work on my EV6's infotainment screen.
forget about a Hybrid cause you are riding a horse on the extremes: you jumped into EV without thinking and now jumoing into the opposite again absolute blind about the technology, implications and risks.
The story is simple: you will burn your fingers big times and if you think you had mastered something on the EV side then that might be true, but a hybrid car is a completely different world with a far higher complexity and far, far smaller group of qualified shops and no community cause the amount of hybrid cars sold is tiny compared to ICE and EV.
Again: a EV shop will not repair your hybrid and can not fix all the ICE things, an ICE car shop avoids the electrical part of the hybrid and you are stuck
Use your brain: The Hybrid battery is really tiny, if you floor the pedal then the small battery will have to push a lot of amps out and heat up and wear out a lot faster than any other car.
And in that case the battery will be daily fully discharged on the commute trip which means 1 cycle gone - you can not cycle those endlessly and when those batteries dy then you can get only a replacenemt. You have a brain so check the battery swap price for a Passat GTE or GOLF GTE, a quite typical car - nothing fancy, just a pure hybrid and peoples car
And you will end up with a repair bill higher than what you paid for the nissan leaf and its repairs: Expect 5000€ or roughly 4500 GBP as a usual price cause the hourly rate for a VW hybrid mechanic qualified for this jojb is what ? up to 200€ - so never speakt to him cause 5 minutes of his time will cost you 20€ at least. And there willl be a lot to talk about due to the complexity when and how which engine engages or turns off especially as used car. You will buy a cheap used Hybrid and tthink that this might be easier to fix but it is the opposite cause you need the EV guy and the ICE guy and both willing to work together cause the devils lays in the details, the control units and systems that manage the interaction . If you get a new hybrid you will adjust to that easily and learn how it behaves. If you get it used then you know nothing and for sure not what is normal and what not. WIthout that knowledge you will end in a garage and ask for help you have to pay for just to get the news: just normal - after the mechanic had done a testride.
My advice get another ICE cause you know that. It will be affordable this time, the last time cause that next used ICE car beyond that maybe in 2030 will already become a lot more expensive due to higher CO2 emission costs and exploding spare part prices and mechanic prices cause the less ice business the more people with high skills will retire while demand is still there.
And of cause the manufacturers will MILK you like a cow with your outdated ICE car by raising spare part prices to make more profits. This is a strategy everyone in the industry is familiar with and I have been working for the oldest car manufacturer in the world for decades and across the globe: at the end it is a about profits and those who wanna dy in their ICE will have to pay for that once the first wave of highly experienced ice mechanis will have already retired.
So go back with the good experiences of an EV and the bad and ugly, but avoid the myth of a Hybrid cause its battery is its achilles heel which is quite expensive and not many wanna work with. I discharges daily and if you consider that an eGOLF battery gets a 8 year 150000 km warranty then think about how long a 25% battery would last. 30 kWh versus 6 kWh means 30.000 km commute and it is dying (below 80%) . That gets only better in the latest Passat GTE generation from model year 2021 or so onwards when the size has been increased up to 13 or 18 kWh.
And finally: get an EV only if you have a home and solar power to charge from cause that makes it cheap. Maybe dynamic prices and charging during night might help but with a small 6 kWh battery no one will wait till 2 am so you will constantly charge during day light and peak tarifs . Octopus and all the others offer so nice and cheap tarifs but over the years those will change and if you have adopted your ilfe style to their tarifs over night everything can change. Same has happened here: charging at home during night using a heatpump tarif was cheap (maybe 60% of the usual price) and then Russia visited the Ukraine and here every of those tarifs was canceled and you got a new offer as a goodloyal customer but instead of saving 40% you would only get 9% and your whole world would fall apart. Therefore get solar power for you and those kids which will become big time consumers at least with a boy cause from 12 on he willl have a console or gaming PC which are power hungry like hell and you will pay for that - therefore solar power first, drive ice as the last straw and then when you learned a lot from solar power that using the own energy is the best you will come back fully cured from the EV desaster.
But stay away from hybrids cause its bills will kill you - at least if you are such buyer you had been during the leaf purchase who had bought blindly without expertise a new tech car. If you buy a 8 year old Hybrid it can be the biggest hell for 2 reasons: those cars are a lot more expensive cause such Golf GTE sells here for a lot more and the repair bills are piling up soon and big ones cause that GOLF is not the average GOLF, it is the GTI ++ and therefore gets the XXXL bills . Of cause brake pads will cost a similiar amount, but eveything regarding the drive train will become a lot more tricky and expensive: you will drive from one garage to the next till you finally might find a Golf GTE or passat GTE specialist.
Long story short: you have a lot more to loose than you are able to think about - at least from my 4 decades working for the top 4 german brands since I was 19 or so and Audi had send me to the university to study where another car manufacturer caught me and from where I visited Porsche and so on. You are the customer those companies love: blind , trustfull and too selfconfident which means they wanna have your money and make profits which means: not much effort but high bills for you
And if you count the words and lines and minutes I spend writing in a foreign language you should see or at least smell the biggest warning signs what you might face. I suggest that you ask your wife kindly before you get a hybrid cause that might become multiple times more expensive than the cheap 900 GBP Nissan Leaf repair. There is just one excemption which is the Toyota Prius cause there in that eco system and forums you have the amount of owners and a huge economy of scale that you can make a good experience if you are very aware of the high risks of small battery which wears out daily. You can watch the hybrids batteries dying - and no one wants to repair nor buy them in such state. If you commute every second day with the electric drive train and charging at home after 30.000 km the battery might be dead. Consider a 3000 or 5000€ repair bill and you end up with 10 to 17 additional Cent or Pence per km on top of the kWh price.
Here the Toyota hybrids can be cheaper but only those hybrids you can charge at home. Just the regen brakes do not save enough energy and those batteries are even smaller.
If you get a commute Hybrid be aware to get at least a 50 km range fully electric cause then the battery might last longer, but those cars have been on sale for just 3 or 4 years and might be out of price range if you do a serious market research. You have kids, so make a good decision and not such a lighthearted impulsive one cause at the end a lot is at stake with such a young family cause everyone in your family has gone through a lot of pain or has felt how you and your wife went throught a nightmare. Kids feel that and might remember that 20 years later. My pa had a FORD M which did not really made it over the alps from italy back and I can still remember its colour: blue and I also remember the guy who had bought it later
Good luck and trust people with experience and knowledge, not your gut feeling
eniro would be ideal. When people ask about range, I explain, tje car has a longer range than my bladder 😂
3-4 hours of driving is enough without stopping.
I have done multiple journeys to balckpool and back from kent with no issues.
Twice been to south of France, fully laden with family.
Whenever we need to stop, we time it with a needed break to eat, and let kids stretch their legs in a play area, so no "additional cost" when stopping. Kids have books tablets etc to keep tjem entertained for long journeys anyway.
Not a leaf owner but a Note epower owner (you fellas in the UK didn't get this awesome car). I second Facebook user groups, amazing people on there and so helpful. I'm getting a leaf next year so I'll know what I get myself into. Glad Tony got sorted in the end, he will be a user group expert after his experience!!!
What a journey! You’ve chronicled these modern Canterbury tales into a thrilling digital format.
Interesting and good video. Lessons learned but glad Tony stuck it out. Rather than buy, you could lease through your business and have all maintenance covered .. even insurance and get a favourable BIK tax. A more modern EV will have a lot of the Range Rover comforts such as heated and cooled seats. PLUS the real biggie - pre-condition in the Winter. This is what I do ... had a Volvo XC40 EV which worked out £50 a month cheaper in overall motoring costs than my previous Diesel Jaguar. I now have the new Renault Scenic Iconic .. which is even cheaper at around £75 a month lower overall costs. This is even with only Public Charging using a discount card that drops Ionity from 74p to 43p. There is so much more to all this, but, the driving experience is so much better. BTW .. I easily see over 300 miles driving range with the Renault
I bought a 2014 mk2 24kwh leaf after doing loads a reading. Apart from the limited range, it was so well thought out. Nissan clearly put in so much effort to get everything right in the development stage, why won't every other manufacturer put the charge port front and center. It's so accessible unlike those situated on the wings.
Really interesting and honest mini series of videos. (I like the EU trips too) I'm happily motoring along with my 8 year old Model S, free supercharging and 266k miles so far. But if I was looking now, the price of the Tesla Model 3 LR or Performance is a no brainer! I can't charge at home and do a lot of long trips, Italy, Germany etc so that does dictate my choice, as the Tesla set up is still the best (IMO). I'm looking to head down to southern Italy again, later this year, but fancy stopping in France or Switzerland for an overnight stop this time. Can you recommend the best overnight stops from your experience? I've always driven in one go before, but having watched your trips, the stopover looks very appealing! Less the plastic bed covers 😁
Well done Tony for showing what happened, a lot of bad luck involved in the original purchase but you certainly learned all you need to know moving forward.
Andrew, didnt JP have trouble with BCA auctions? Think they got upset and stroppy about him broadcasting their sales or something so he stopped using them.... I dont know maybe I dreamed that.🤔
Tony please dont go the hybrid route, there's twice as much to go wrong, you're carrying extra weight for both propulsion systems to cope with making neither as efficient as they should be. They are a big expensive con!
Get Jonathan Porterfield at eco cars to find you something. You could even just tell him the amount of range thats ideal, all your family and doggy needs along with your prefered max price and he'll see what he can find. You can either say yes or no thanks, keep looking. Andrew probably knows how much he charges these days and how much to deliver it to you if its not local, if not check out eco-cars videos or even give them a ring and have a chat.
Good luck with your next ev adventure, i hope it all goes a little smoother. Btw, thanks for finding the EV place at Herne Bay, as i said to Andrew in the last video, its a great find for us too as we're only fifteen minutes down the road. Dean will have a new customer for servicing next year. Plus I'm hoping i might get him to source a new undertray for our Ioniq 38kWh which has a bit of a hole in it.
Its a car I highly recommend , its our first ev and we get around 220 miles in summer and in the last two mild winters we've not gone much under the 200. Only modest local driving and the occasional trip down to East Sussex mind. Its completely spoiled us for anything else as seeing anything less than 6m/kWh in summer or going under 4m/kWh in winter is depressing!😂👍
First of all the obvious comment, do not buy a hybrid..
I have heard you shouldn't get a BEV with a battery that is bigger than you need. The majority of my journeys are short which were easily achievable with my old 40kWh LEAF. But our son used to live on the west side of Southampton and from our home in East Sussex was about 80 miles, so we would always need a charge to do a roundtrip, hence I bought the 64kWh Soul and of course driving anywhere in the south east has always given us zero range anxiety, so always get a bigger battery if you can afford it or should i say a bigger range than what you need.
Now I'm about to get a refresh Ioniq 5 through salary sacrifice I can't wait for the next level of EV ownership. Rob
Terrible first EV experience and my big problem with LEAFs in general. Because the battery is unmanaged they perpetuate the myth that EV batteries don't last, because they don't on early LEAFs. Only buy a LEAF if you know enough about EVs to dodge the pitfalls and you're prepared to live with a short range vehicle (which usually means having at least one other long range vehicle).
Main Dealers/Stealers if they have anyone often seem to have only one EV trained mechanic. He/she goes on holiday and you have a huge wait. Renault quoted a £130 examination fee (plug in a reader) in some four weeks time after my EV died. Totally useless, though it was only the 12v ancillary battery. The RAC after a 30hour wait eventually came out, diagnosed the issue and charged the 12v battery. I have heard good stories about MG dealers but the rest seem dire.
The video we have been waiting for. Tony did well to only lose £395 (plus a lot of time and stress). Proof that you need to be careful buying any vehicle - but particularly if you are bidding on cheap cars at auction unseen. If it had been an ICE car, and needed a replacement engine, then the costs would have been uneconomical. Andrew kept very calm when faced with the H word 😀
The 30kw leaf was a follow on model after the 24kw. It has more battery issues because it shoehorned more cells into the same battery pack space as the previous 24kw cells, thus more overheating and cell swelling.
It’s like listening to Dumb and Dumber!!
The 30kw leaf was a follow on model after the 24kw. It has more battery issues because it shoehorned more cells into the same battery pack space as the previous 24kw cells, thus more overheating and cell swelling.
It’s like listening to Dumb and Dumber!!
We recently drove our almost 8-year old 30 kWh Leaf from Devon to the Lake District and back without any issues, although it took more than 3 hours longer each way than other family members in their ICE vehicles. I know this is tempting fate, but we’ve never had any issues with the traction battery and we still have 11 bars and 83% SOH. That said, I have always made sure the battery SOC is kept close to 50% when the car isn’t in use.
He should have bought a e-Golf, a good transition to EV experience, it was my first venture and I loved it. Now have an MG 4 Trophy mainly for the extra range😊
Cool chat, glad Tony got it sorted and punted it on. Be interested to know what he got afterwards
Be weary of PHEVs, the batteries have no management, so it ends up just being a petrol car with an added heavy weight doing nothing eventually.
Not that it is likely to happen, but if a car catches fire, PHIVs are top of the list, then ICE cars, while EVs are bottom of the list, so least likely to catch fire.
It was very good of Tony to appear in this video. Research is the key but at some point you have to just go for it. Perhaps next time use Jonathan Porterfield’s Eco Cars to help identify a good buy from an Auction. Anyway thank you both for a very informative video. 👍👍
I always include an educational rebate, whether I’m buying or selling. Never learn tho.
Great story.
Really interesting Andrew. Thank you. I think the most useful bit of this for a lot of people is to find out how much a cell replacement costs. Really quite a modest amount considering how expensive the repairs on ICE cars can be.
Well done guys , very interesting . You should have bought my 68 plate Tekna 40 .
Part 4 Tony sells the Leaf, then buys a battery dead Niro. rinse and repeat, More views, has Mr. Till found the magic formula to bring life back to his channel?
I have a 2023 Nissan Ariya and you can only set charging via a schedule and not by state of charge at the end of charging. When I plug it in at home I do an offline calculation to determine how much time I require to achieve an end state % battery charge and then set the timer accordingly. I believe Nissan consciously changed their software a couple of years back for the Leaf to be this way and carried over to the Ariya. Itsa bit of a bother but easy enough to do
Great eye opening experience and shows it’s. It the end of the world. That was probably about the worst experience anyone could expect to have with a leaf and was fairly easily rectified (though not without drama).
I can see a used (not from auction😂) Tesla Model X in that man’s future.
Great story, and educational. I’ve had my first EV for less than 3 weeks and still a lot to learn. However I took family to the airport this morning. 4 adults, little person and loads of luggage. No problems with space and little effect on performance.
A nice and very useful lot of information gathered from this story. We were told by Toyota to charge up too 80% as it saves the life of the batteries !!! We have a Toyota BZ4X, that I have always charged to 80%, which feels ideal, we dont see very many of them around, but we love it all the same. Thanks for explaining this story of the Leaf, my son in law had one, but it was hit by a Taxi and became unuseable, but it certainly was safe to drive, even after the crash.
The facebook community for EVs is amazing, and the eniro one (which Andrew is a mod in) has been so useful
Dealer couldn't fix it because a quick fix is only 30 mins labour. Dealers could be like Dean, It's a choice not to be.
Get great service from my local Hevra garage. They are always booked up for a 3/4 weeks in advance. Great video Andrew don't waste your money on a hybrid, stay with petrol if you're that unsure.
I had a pre reg mg5 with 2 miles on the clock when I bought it throw HV battery errors and go into limp mode constantly.
Thankfully it turned out to be a software issue in my case (it’s been fine since they updated the software)
Great video Andrew, thank you to Tony for sharing his experience. Nice video editing with the mixed roadtrip sections.
There is a really good MGEV community forum as well. Someone on there will probably know the answer to a question or problem someone has. Very reassuring when you are getting your first EV.
Really interesting and insightful conversation, thanks both
Are these 84 mV the voltage difference between the highest and lowest cell voltage? That ain't good. Should be 20 or less.
The 30 year tech has 30 years of working on ICE, the new systems need someone trained on these specifically, as it's the little things that trip you up
Shows how hard it is to convince people to go EV for their main car.
I've seen this with friends, some of them will find any excuse to not make the move to EV only.
80% charge, our 2018 Renault ZOE couldn't be set to charge only to 80% or anything other than 100%, we had to work out how many % the charger gave it every hour and use the timer on the charger to get to whatever % we wanted
Did you get your fault with the eNiro repaired ok?
Which fault was that? I had an issue with the charge flap which is a known fault with the actuator and was fixed under warranty with no complaints.
I don’t think I’ve had any other problems!
@@MrEV thought you had the wheel of fortune sounds from the motor when leaving the auction.. might have been something else?
The dealer auctions here have strict NO warranty on anything Hybrid or NEV
How are Nissan Leafs to sleep in? It would have come in handy during this episode 😴 . Where is Flaviana when you need her 😊 ?
I quite happily listened to Tony for 46 minutes telling us about his experience. He's also quite easy on the eye😜
Hybrid 😂
😂. Andrew - we need an update on what Tony has bought
937... Tony's an EV convert, you watch.
BCA are no different to any other auction house they want your money no interest in customer service etc just buyer beware like a private sale
Might not be a lemon... When i sell my ICE car it was almost like that, i did not care... 😂
Great story, and I’m happy for Tony the car got fixed.