Post 1826: Used Leaf versus remaining alternatives

I’m still working on getting something to replace the car I got rid of a year ago. For use around town, when it’s inconvenient to borrow my wife’s car.

Bottom line: By the process of calculatus eliminatus, my best and most realistic option is a well-used Nissan Leaf. The 30% Federal tax rebate, on the purchase price of this qualifying used EV, is just gravy.

Beyond the items already discussed and dismissed (e-bike, e-motorcycle), the remaining options for local transport in my area seem to be:

Used Nissan Leaf
Uber or similar
Public transportation

In a nutshell, near as I can figure:

Used Leaf, convenient, $0.55/mile.
Uber, just about as convenient, $4/mile.
Public transport, inconvenient, not great in all weather, $1/mile.

Well-used Leaf: Once you buy a prize, it’s yours to keep.

In brief: The Leaf is the acme of convenience, for me. But it’s also an obsolete, depreciating asset, whose fast-charger CHAdeMO connector is being phased out. It never had a lot of range in the first place. If it makes it ten years, it’s destined to be strictly a town car. Average cost, ~$0.55/mile, under my assumption that it’s toast in ten years.

For around $10K, I could get an obsolete low-range EV.

A reasonably nice small car.
With about 100 miles of EV range.
That Nissan has decided to discontinue.
Using a fast-charging plug (CHAdeMO) that is being phased out.
And for which there is no adapter to allow it to work with the dominant CCS fast-charging plug.

This comes with my usual concern regarding what happens to the battery when the car is ready for the junkyard. In theory, sure, they are “recyclable”. And there are big plans to blah-blah-blah and so supplement the grid with a combination of massive banks of used car batteries and unicorn blood.

But I’ve been reading stories like that for two decades now. At present, nobody can make money recycling lithium-ion batteries. Stick that in your cheek give it a chaw, and then tell me how easy it will be to recycle the Leaf’s batteries, when It Is Time.

Further, despite big plans from Nissan, nobody seems to be collecting used Leaf batteries at scale. On the upside, that may be because they have exceeded expectations in terms of usable lifetime.

At the minimum, I expect a hefty disposal fee when it comes time to junk this baby. Assuming I do it legally. (Either that, or Uncle Sugar steps in to pay.)

The car is obsolete and low-range now. The model has been discontinued by Nissan, the ones I’m looking at only had ~100 miles of range when new. The CHAdeMO fast-charging plug it relies on is being phased out in many charger networks, and there is no commercially-available converter to allow you to charge it with the emerging-standard CCS fast-charging plug. A decade from now, if it survives, it’ll have yet lower range and be even obsolete-er.

Regarding cost:

As you can see from the per-mile column, the major expense in the lifetime-cost-of-ownership is the cost of buying it and insuring it. That’s based on the assumption that the car will last ten years, then have no value. And that’s true even after a roughly $3K federal tax rebate on the purchase of this qualifying used EV.

I think this is just telling me what I already know, which is that I really don’t drive enough to justify having a second car. Much of the expense is just the car wasting away over the course of a decade, plus the fixed annual cost of maintaining insurance. By contrast, the per-mile cost of running it is low, particularly the fuel cost.

On the other hand, if I drove a Leaf, I’d avoid putting miles on my wife’s car. So the Leaf is like the winter “beater” common in climates where they salt the roads all winter. Or your daily driver. You take your wear-and-tear on the a crappy car, and spare the good car.

All said and done, my main hesitation is that this car may be very hard to get rid of, a few years from now. By that time, if it survives, it will surely be viewed as an in-town vehicle only. And one with limited service life. And no tax credit — that’s a once-in-the-life-of-the-car deal, I think. So it definitely might be hard to sell. Might be expensive to scrap.

Addendum: A Gotcha in the used EV tax credit

The very idea of a tax credit for a used EV strikes me as almost absurd. So I can’t really be upset if some of the rules for claiming that credit are a bit absurd as well.

The Leaf makes everybody’s list of used EVs that are eligible for the used clean vehicle tax credit of 30% of sales price, up to $4000. Beyond that, my wife and I just have to have a low enough IRS income this year to qualify.

What could go wrong?

Based on the fine print, on the IRS website, if the car traded hands recently enough, it no longer qualifies for the tax credit. A “qualified vehicle” has to meet many criteria, including:

“Not have already been transferred after August 16, 2022, to a qualified buyer.”

Source: IRS, used clean vehicle credit.

(I’m pretty sure the “qualified buyer” mostly excludes sales to dealers, whose business is to re-sell the car. Such entities are not qualified buyers and cannot, themselves, claim those tax credits.)

I’d bet that the intent is to enforce a rule of that this is a once-per-vehicle used EV tax credit. That’s fair enough. But, oddly, they don’t require that I buy it (via a dealer) from the original owner. Which would make it a direct price support for the resale value of the new EV, thus priming the pump for more new EV sales. Instead, I can buy it from somebody who bought it used … as long as nobody bought it used after 8/16/2022.

The odd impact of this is that used Nissan Leafs (in my price range) listed as having just one prior owner are guaranteed to be eligible for the tax credit. Those listed with two or more may or may not be eligible, if that initial sale, as a used car, took place after 8/16/2022. Luckily, I can get enough information from free car history websites (e.g., vehiclehistory.com) that I can tell whether or not a sale took place after that date.

Finally, based on these VIN lookup services, it’s pretty clear that used Leafs are not selling well, and were a rapidly depreciating asset as a new car. Of the first two I looked at, one had been listed for sale for nearly six months, the other had already taken multiple large price discounts, and was being offered for 80% of the original asking price. Both suggest a slow resale market for these.

Buyers of new Leafs of this generation (circa 2016/2017) took an absolute beating, in terms of depreciation. For both cars I’ve looked at in detail, the original owners saw an average depreciation of $4K per year, on a car that only cost about $30K to start with. By contrast, the Prius of the same generation (and roughly the same price) seems to have suffered just $1K / year typical depreciation.

I don’t think that these cars are lemons. I think they work just about as well as they were designed to work. It’s that they are obsolete. Their low range and funky fast-charging port have been eclipsed by far greater range and a more-nearly-universal charge port of newer EVs.These days, if you want a “fully capable EV”, you wouldn’t even consider one of these. And the prices have fallen accordingly.

Uber or similar: $4 per mile.

Source: Uber.

Never used one. But it’s an option. And it sure appears to be about as convenient as driving your own car. More so if destination parking is tight.

I just priced what I would consider to be my bread-and-butter wintertime trip, a ride to my local Safeway grocery store. It’s just a couple of miles away, but it has become an almost-impossible bicycle trip, for the time being, due to a revised interchange between the local street and Interstate 66.

Mid-day, Wednesday, Uber would cost about $8, one-way. That works out to about $4 a mile, without tip. (Assuming you tip an Uber driver, right?). Similarly, my nearest hardware store is a $10 one-way trip, for about 2.5 miles.

Upshot: Around here, mid-day, weekday, I’d pay about $4 a mile to use Uber. A round-trip to the grocery store would cost $16, a round-trip to the hardware store would cost $20.

You might think, well, I won’t use Uber that much, so it’ll be cheaper. But assuming I did the math right, the cost of the used Leaf, per week, over ten years, would buy me two Uber round-trips a week, to my most common destinations. For a total cost of about $38 per week.

So Uber would work in a pinch.

But it definitely would mean no more running out to the hardware store on a moment’s notice. That would put a serious crimp in what passes for my lifestyle.

Zipcar: Still in business, but not viable in this case.

Source: Zipcar.

Decades ago, I bought a one-year membership in Zipcar. This business lets you rent a car by the hour, with cars stationed around the metro area.

It’s a great idea, in theory. This probably works well in denser urban areas, where cars are located close to potential users. But out here in the burbs, the cars are few and far between. And it appears that issue has gotten worse over time, with my nearest Zipcar now about six miles away.

Basically, I’d need a car to be able to get to my nearest Zipcar. Not a viable option.

Public transport: About $1 a mile for short trips, with high time cost. If I can find a route.

Hey, I’m retired. And frankly, it’s been hellish. I went from being a busy and valued consultant, to someone whose time has zero money value. As demeaning (?) as that is, free time, plus a knack for logic puzzles, makes me a great candidate for public transit.

For long-distance intra-urban travel — say 15 miles to the center of Washington, DC, from here in the ‘burbs — I can rely on the DC Metro rail system.

Walking distances would be minimal, for me. It’s about a tenth from my house to the nearest bus stop, where half-hourly buses will take me to my nearest Metro station. At the far end, more-or-less the entire urban core of Washington DC is within a half-mile walk of a Metro station.

Picking a downtown destination (the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum), that would cost a combined fare of about $8, or about $0.50 per mile. It’s currently about a 35 minute drive, and an hour and five minute trip by public transport. I’d say that’s on the low side of typical, and that long-distance trips via Metro Rail take two to three times as long as by car, in this area.

Outside of the Metro rail system, Fairfax County (Connector bus) and George Mason University (CUE bus) run a modest bus network throughout Fairfax County VA. The buses are clean and modern, and cost $2 a ride, payable through a Metro system smart card, or in cash. Transfers — including transfers from the Metro rail system — are discounted or free.

Unfortunately, pretty much anywhere I want to go requires a bus transfer. And while that’s free, it adds materially to the time burden. To the point where most of my local trips by bus proceed only modestly faster than walking.

You can see the travel times, mid-day, on the graphic at the top of this section. The upshot is that 15 minutes of grocery shopping would take, for all intents and purposes, half an hour if I drive, and an hour and a half if I take the bus.

It’s not a bad solution. A little more weather exposure than might be convenient, at times. But as a retiree, my time is worthless now anyway. But that’s still a lot of time just to run a simple errand.

Summary

Here’s the logic so far:

I ain’t gonna buy a straight-gas car.
Hybrid? A used Prius in this price range will almost certainly require traction battery replacement over the next decade. Been there, done that. And a standard Prius still burns gas for every trip. Crazy to do that if I can spend the same amount of money and NOT do that.
If I want electric, PHEV (like the Prius Prime) is too new. As in, I don’t think there are any used PHEVs, in that price range, with adequate EV range for me. I vaguely recall that older Prius PHEVs (Plug-in, early versions of the Prime) came with maybe 12 to 18 miles of all-EV range.
So the only option is electric.
Almost the only electric car old enough, and cheap enough to be in this price range, is the Leaf. Teslas appear to be holding good resale value. I might stray across a VW E-golf or similar low-selling compact EV. But the bread-and-butter car in this segment is a 7-year-old Leaf.

And, when I get right down to it, even if the car is junk in ten years, the cost per mile still remains lower than uber or than short-haul public transit.

In fact, taking a rough cut at it, only the e-bike option is materially cheaper than a used Leaf. And that’s in large part because that’s an unlicensed and un-insured option. Like so:

That said, options that are less than four-season, all-weather options are less desirable. I’ve bicycled, in the winter. In Chicago. It sucks. I’ve been caught out bicycling in rainstorms with dangerously high winds, and tree branches falling. It sucks, and it’s dangerous. I’m just too old for that stuff, is what I’m getting around to. There was a time when I would and could do that. That time passed decades ago.

In summary:

For me, at my stage of life, a car is a nicety. An expensive and environmentally unfriendly nicety.

One way or the other, I get the feeling that if I buy an older used Leaf, it’s mine to keep. In the sense that a few years from now, one way or the other, I’m guessing that there’s going to be no graceful way to get rid of it. Even if I like it, I’ll be “stuck” with it.

Do I really want the last car I’ll ever buy to be a used high-mileage Nissan Leaf? ‘Taint much of an epitaph.

That said, the logic of the choice seems pretty sound at this point.