Tag: Nissan Leaf

Post #1924: I bought a Chevy Bolt.

This morning I bought a three-year-old used car with just over 5,000 miles on the odometer.

Net cost, all in, just under $15K.  That’s ~$19K, out the door, at the dealer (including taxes, tags, and fees).  Less a $4K Federal tax credit.  For which I am depending on the dealer to file the critical paperwork with the IRS.

That’s a pretty good deal for any used car, these days.

The fact that it runs on electricity is a bonus.

The only thing missing is new car smell.  And for that, if I really want it, I can just buy some.

Note:  On that tax credit, you have to have sufficiently low income ($150K for married filing jointly).  Not every used EV qualifies.   Not every sale qualifies. Read the details before you even think of factoring that into your purchase decision. 

Continue reading Post #1924: I bought a Chevy Bolt.

Post #1919: Salted Leafs and Bolts, an unexpected twist in my search for a used EV.

 

I’m in the process of narrowing down the used EVs I want to look at.

I just got a rude, but entirely logical, surprise.  It turns out that a lot of the late-model used EVs for sale in this area are salt-belt refugees.  That is, they were sold new in northern states, where they salt the roads heavily all winter long.  But were shipped south for re-sale as used vehicles.

The story.

Based on the ratings of car dealers on-line, I’ve focused on a couple of independent used car dealers in my area.  (FWIW, Kingstowne and Eastern’s Sterling).  I think maybe the phrase in italics is key, because these aren’t new-car dealers accepting trade-ins.  These are used-car dealers.

As I was doing my on-line due diligence, seeing what I can see about these cars by VIN, I happened to notice that one car I’m interested in — a 2021 low-mileage Bolt — was originally sold in Michigan.

Hmm.  Funny that this car ended up in Virginia.  But people move, and so on.  And yet …

I tracked down the original state of sale for the other two I’m focused on — 2020 and later, relatively low mileage.  Those were originally sold in Upstate New York, and Vermont.

One salt-belt car might be by chance.  But every car I’m looking at?  Highly unlikely that’s a coincidence.

I can guess what’s driving this.

EVs lose a lot of range in cold weather.  That’s a fact.  None of these cars has an efficient (heat-pump) heating system.   Also a fact.

I have to guess that:

  1. You have a lot more dissatisfied owners in cold-climate states.
  2. You get a much better resale price on these vehicles, in warm-climate states.
  3. So there’s a steady trade in shipping used EVs south for resale.

The issue isn’t that these were driven in the cold.  The battery management systems on these cars will all prevent the owners from damaging the batteries permanently by (e.g.) charging when the batteries are below 32F.

The issue is that all of these cars are salt-belt refugees.  That is, they were driven in the states where roads are heavily salted, for a significant fraction of the year.

After a few months of watching YouTube auto mechanics in salt-belt states (Watch Wes Work, from Illinois, and South Main Auto Channel, from upstate New York), one thing that comes through loud and clear is that salt is incredibly destructive.  Among the things I learned from those videos is the term “rust jacking”, which is when the accumulation of rust literally bends and breaks metal parts of the car.  Never seen that around here, and I’ve owned a lot of crappy old cars.

And so, once again, I need to stop and cool my jets, as I give this a re-think.  And look at what’s available as a used vehicle, from local new-car dealers.

Post #1918: Falling Leafs, fallen Bolts: The trend in used EV prices in my area.

 

I don’t drive much.  I haven’t had a car for a couple of years now, and have gotten along  by borrowing my wife’s car, when convenient.

I’d like to get my hands on a nice, used EV.   That’s a good choice, given that I’m going to use this for a grocery-getter and little else.

Depending on the price, of course.  And I’m clearly in no hurry to buy one.

Back in July I looked at my local market for used EVs and narrowed my best option down to a 2018 or later Nissan Leaf.  That’s laid out in a series of posts around Post #1837, and the posts just prior to that.  The year cutoff was due to a change in the Leaf battery chemistry that year, to a much more stable (long-lived) battery.

I have been checking back occasionally ever since.

And I’ve been reading articles suggesting a steep decline in the price of used EVs.  I see talk about price declines on order of 30% per year.   This is almost always attributed to the fact that most used EVs are Teslas, and Tesla made some steep price cuts to their models this past year.

In other words, a falling tide sinks all boats.  Those Tesla price cuts are rippling through the entire used EV market.

But in addition, Chevy cut the price on the Bolt last year.  Both to spur sales, and maybe because the Bolt was plagued by a significant recall due to battery fire issues in a handful of vehicles.  Chevy claims that’s taken care of, but they ended up replacing the batteries in tens of thousands of cars.

In any case, when I went back to re-assess my local market for used EVs, it sure did seem like prices were down.  So I did my best apples-to-apples comparison between what I looked at back in August, and now.  As shown above.

By my estimate, asking prices for a used late-model Nissan Leaf fell 14% in the last five months of 2023.  Or … on-order-of a 30%/year rate of decline. 

More interestingly, I can now get a used Chevy Bolt for about the same price as a used Nissan Leaf.  This is a change from the prior analysis, where my back-of-the-envelope on a Bolt of this vintage, five months ago, put the average asking price at $21,000.

But now, consistent with the decline in the Leaf price, there’s been an even steeper decline in the Bolt price.

Objectively, the Bolt looks like a lot more utility for the money.

  • The Bolt has about 90 more miles of range than the leaf (about 250, versus about 160 for the base Leaf)
  • It uses a standard (J1772) plug, instead of the soon-to-be-obsolete CHADMO plug on the Leaf.
  • It has active battery temperature management, compared to the Leaf’s passively air-cooled battery.

The sole drawback from my perspective is that the Bolt looks like a tiny little car, where the Leaf does not.  To me.  They have roughly the same interior volume, and the Bolt actually has a higher curb weight than the base Leaf.  But the Bolt is shorter by about a foot-and-a-half.  Just enough that I notice how small it is, compared to (say) the 2021 Prius that my wife drives.

For either car, if you had little enough income in the year of purchase, Uncle Sugar will give you a $4K tax rebate for purchasing that used US-made EV.  (Yep, for purchasing a used US-made EV.  Part of the Biden Administration’s buy-American industrial policy intersecting with its global warming initiatives. So, thanks, Joe Biden. I guess.)

Rumor has it that the big drop in the Bolt price is due to Chevy rehabbing and re-selling a lot of those recalled vehicles.  I’m not sure how much that is true.  What I am sure is that the Bolt looks like a pretty good option, if you trust Chevy to have fixed that rare battery issue.  If you pick and choose, you can plausibly pick up a three- or four-year-old car, with about 10K miles on it, for a net $13K or so.

This, where the only expensive component — the battery — comes with a mandatory eight-year/100,000 mile manufacturer’s warranty. Which should, in theory, take a whole lot of the risk out of this used-car transaction.  Roughly speaking, you pretty much have to get at least five years of driving out of the car, or the manufacturer (not the seller!) has to replace your battery.

As used cars go, that seems like a pretty decent deal, regardless of the fuel source.  The fact that this is the low-carbon alternative is almost gravy, at this point.   To me, based on what I’ve been looking at, this now looks like it’s just a pretty good deal on a used car.  Period.

I have to confess that the first and last Chevrolet product that I ever bought was a Chevy Vega.  It was a traumatizing experience in many regards, as those of you familiar with the history of the Chevy Vega will understand.

I guess, going on 40 years later, maybe I can find it in my heart to forgive, and give Chevy another try.

Post #1837: Note to self: Get a 2018 or later Nissan Leaf

 

Edit 1/21/2024:  Between the time I wrote this, and January 2024, the price of used Chevy Bolts dropped so much that, in the end, I ended up buying a 2020 Chevy Bolt.  See Post #1924 for the reasoning behind that.

I continue to stumble across important facts about used EVs.

In this case, it’s that the 2018 (and later) Leaf is vastly better than earlier models.  That’s because Nissan finally scrapped its older, inferior battery chemistry that year.

Unsurprisingly, used Leaf prices seem to reflect that.

Continue reading Post #1837: Note to self: Get a 2018 or later Nissan Leaf

Post #1834: EV market, the missing middle: Used $10K to $20K

 

So far, I’ve looked at the bottom end of the used EV market (under $10K).  I’ve looked at the bottom end of the new EV market (under $51K).  The leading candidate for my EV purchase seems to be the Chevy Bolt.  New, those have a ridiculous markup.  Used, they seem to fall in line with competitors’ prices.

This post looks at the used EV market $10K to $20K.

Upshot:  Nothing to see here.  Or, at least, nothing new and actionable, for me.    In this post, I skim over this used EV segment and more-or-less dismiss what I find, relative to a new or lightly used Bolt.

In this segment of the market, I see …

  • Nissan Leaf, later model years, higher original range.
  • Chevy Bolt, earlier model years, not much discount compared to 2021.
  • The occasional Ford, Fiat, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, Mitsubishi
  • And the VW e-Golf.

The Leaf, of that generation (say 2016-2020 or so), not a bad car.  You can get them with original EPA range around 150, I think.  But the more I look at it, the more the basic design of the Leaf just has issues.  Between the lack of battery cooling and the obsolete fast-charge socket, it really seems that it never was intended to be anything but an around-town car.

Nothing wrong with it, but given what’s available, nothing that makes it stand out as a must-have.  Particularly as Virginia is hot in the summertime, and these vehicles have a hard time charging in the heat.

The Chevy Bolt is the leader so far.  You don’t seem to get a huge discount by rolling back to (say) a 2017 or 2018 model year.  So I don’t see these older Bolts as standing out, relative to a new-ish Bolt.

There are some stray other makes and models.  I just don’t feel like it’s worth the effort to research each one.  Do I really want to own one of the 100 Kia Soul EVs sold in this area, six years ago?

The there’s the VW e-Golf.  The e-Golf deserves a closer look, because those are available in large numbers as used cars in this price range.

Unfortunately,

  • The earlier model years had just 83miles EPA range
  • The 2017 and later, with 125 miles EPA range, cost $19 and up.

Absent some way to know that these are phenomenal cars, I don’t much see the point of looking at them further.  I don’t want the ones with short original range, and the ones with longer original EPA range cost about as much as a used Bolt.

To sum it up, there’s really nothing here that jumps up and says “buy me”, to me.  New Bolt for $26K net of tax credit, used low-mileage Bolt for $16 net of tax credit, for me, those seem to dominate.

What about used PHEVs?

PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) are hard to search for, for a variety of reasons.

One, they fall through the cracks.  They aren’t EVs, but the health of the traction battery matters greatly, like EVs.  Unlike EVs, most manufacturers offer absolutely no guarantee on the electrical range.  There’s absolutely zero indication about the state of health of the battery, in ads for PHEVs.

Two, these also have internal combustion engines, with all the complications that implies, for buying a used car.

Three, Edmunds apparently does not maintain PHEVs as a separate category of cars.  So I have to search for individual models.

Typical asking prices in this area:

  • Volt, 2018 or so, 40K miles, $25K
  • Prius Prime, 2018, 100K miles, $20K
  • Kia Niro, 2018, 40K miles, $26K

There are some larger SUVs that were not of interest to me.  Those mostly seemed to be at $30K and up.

I’m not sure how to proceed in this segment, as I have no way yet to assess the state of the battery in these cars, short of showing up and driving them.

Post #1833: Used EV rethink

I’m about a week into trying to buy a used EV.  I’m typically working from the listings provided by Edmunds.com, for a 25-mile radius around my ZIP code, here in Vienna VA.

It has been an education. 

Good news is, I haven’t spent any money yet.  Bad news is, I’m not sure I’m any closer to getting a used EV.

Maybe a change of focus is in order.

As of this last round, my best candidate is a two-year-old Chevy Bolt, with 20K miles on it, for a net $16K. 

 

First stop:  Used EVs, $10K and under.  What did I learn?

1:  The Leaf dominates this market segment.  By that I mean, most of the vehicles for sale are used Leafs, 2011-2016 models.  Never saw a 2017 listed.  And, on paper, the Leaf SV has better specs than the common alternatives in this market segment (Chevy Spark, Smart for Two, and Ford Focus).

2:  A used Leaf will tell you how much range it has lost, right on the “gas gauge”.   The same gauge will give you a snapshot of the range, subject to a lot of random variation.  But the bottom line is that if the seller posted a picture of the dash, showing that gauge, you can immediately weed out the ones with a lot of range loss.  I went through this in detail in recent posts on this topic.

3:  That’s handy, because the “Recharge.com” estimates of battery range provided in used car ads can be wildly inaccurate.  I got interested in a car because it had a Recharge.com range of about 110 miles.  Until I saw a picture of the dashboard, and found that the actual range was closer to 60 miles.

4: There’s a real “market for lemons” aspect to the used EV market.   By that I mean that used Leafs offered for sale around here had experienced an average of 8 percent per year range loss.  That’s about twice the typical range loss for this make/model/age.

Not that the used gas car market doesn’t suffer from the same thing.  But here, you can quantify the degree of adverse selection with a single, objective number.

Two things brought my search in this market area to a screeching halt.

5:  The best range I could find, on a used Leaf in that market segment, was 60-ish miles.  And upon reflection, that doesn’t really cut it if you want an all-season, all-Metro-area car, that will last you some years.  Highway travel reduces range.  Cold (and for the Leaf) warm temperatures reduce range.  The Leaf uses an obsolete CHAdeMO fast-charging plug that will become increasingly hard to find as time passes.  And that range is going to continue to degrade.

I could  see myself owning a car that I would hesitate to take half-way around the DC beltway, in the winter.  At which point, it’s no longer a fully-functional car, and has started the slow slide to becoming a glorified neighborhood electric vehicle.

6:  But the biggest problem is that some Leafs get temperamental as they age.  After reading enough accounts, it’s pretty clear that some well-used Leafs  can no longer deal with high-power/high-current-flow events, such as highway speeds, long uphills, or regenerative braking.  For those, you have to “baby” the vehicle, and otherwise live within its limitations.  Understand, this is for a car in excellent repair.  It’s not something that’s fixable, short of replacing the battery pack.

In hindsight, I see hints that other used EVs suffer from the same current-limiting issue as they age.  I suspect the extreme examples I found in older Leafs are due to the small battery pack.  Cars with larger initial range (e.g., Tesla) seem to manifest the same issue as a pronounced “loss of oomph”, rather than a car that will shut down if you push it too hard.

 

A new focus:  New EV under $30K?

Near as I can tell, in this market segment, by MSRP, you’ve got the Chevy Bolt, and the Nissan Leaf.  Both cars are about the same size, and both cars are about the size and weight of a Prius Prime.  So I suspect I’d be comfortable driving either one.

Source:  Fueleconomy.gov

Of these, on paper, the Chevy Bolt appears to be a much better choice.  First, the Bolt has a much higher range (~260 miles) than the Nissan Leaf in this price range (~150 miles).  (You can get a Leaf with more range, but it costs another $8K or so.)  Second, the Bolt has the modern CCS fast-charging socket, while the Leaf retains the obsolete CHAdeMO plug.  Third, the Bolt has (I think) a battery temperature management system, while the Leaf (I think) remains passively cooled (which a certain E. Musk described, circa 2010, as “crude”).

All together, this makes the 150-mile Leaf close to unusable for long-distance driving, certainly in summer.  Charging heats the battery.  The car responds by slowing the rate of charge.  Apparently, a mid-summer highway trip in a Leaf is just an excruciating experience.  This, per a YouTube presentation of a West Virginia Leaf owner who filmed his three-day trip from West Virginia to Florida.

Whereas the Bolt, in theory, would get me from Vienna VA to (e.g.) Ocean City Maryland (174 miles) without a recharge.  Not possible in the Leaf.  Per the diagram below, the Leaf’s one-way range limit is just slightly larger than the Bolt’s round-trip range limit.

There are other functional differences.  For example, the Bolt only has resistance electric heating, not the more-efficient heat pump that can be had on the Leaf.

But the Bolt has two big problems.

Fire.

The first problem with the Bolt is its checkered history.  GM ended up recalling every Bolt ever made, 2017-2022. 

There were … not battery fires, per se, but fires in the high-voltage battery compartment.   (A lithium-ion battery fire is all-but-impossible to put out.  Once that starts to burn, the car (and whatever the car is parked in) is toast.  These were events that charred some of the interior, so, for sure, it wasn’t the Li-ion battery that outright caught fire.  But the batter was the source of the heat that charred the battery compartment.)

Per the NHTSA, there were two fires out of a population of 78,000 cars, up to 2020.  Three more such fires occurred after 2020, out of a larger population of vehicles.  In the end, GM recalled all of those (2017 to 2022).

Reading further across several sources, the problem arose in cars with bad battery modules, where the owners charged the car to 100%.  GM’s interim guidance was, in effect, don’t do that.  Don’t charge to 100% (and don’t run the battery down to zero).  Initially, GM agreed to replace all of those batteries, then they backtracked, and offered a software fix to monitor for the presence of those defective modules.  Basically, they modified the software so that the car’s software would raise a red flag if that car had one of the “bad” batteries.

FWIW, the used-car market appears unconcerned, as those Bolts sell on a par with the lower-range Leafs.  Here’s my crude summary, below.  With either car, accounting for the different tax credits for new and used cars, buying a two-year-old Bolt or a two-year-old Leaf would only save about $4500 off the new car MSRP.  (But see below, there are no Bolts available new MSRP).

FWIW, there appears to have been has only been one known Leaf battery fire in the U.S. in the entire history of the car.

That said, I’m not too concerned about the fire risk.  First, I avoid charging Li-ion batteries to 100%, because it shortens their life.  Two, this will be housed on an ancient detached garage, so if it burns, it’s not going to take my house with it.

Bolt:  Unobtainium near MSRP

Just to be sure I’m not hallucinating, this is what Chevy says:

Near as I can tell, those prices are a complete fiction.  At least in this area.

I don’t know whether my local Chevy dealers have figured out a way to collude on prices or not, but every one, in my area, has chosen to mark the up the Bolt by roughly the same amount, about $6000 over MSRP.

What a coincidence.

There’s one dealer within 250 miles that claims to have one, at a more reasonable markup over MSRP.  But upon investigation, that’s vaporware.  They’ve ordered one from Chevy and are pre-advertising it.

There’s a second dealer that claims to offer some at just over MSRP.  But upon inspection, that’s the price after you’ve paid them roughly a $5000 down-payment.

In short, the lowest actual asking price for the base-model Bolt, that I have run across, within a roughly 500-mile radius of my home, is about $33K.  Which translates to $25,500 after Federal tax credit.  Plus the usual fees, taxes, and so on.

The rest of the low-end new market.

To put a cap on it, per Tesla, today, the cheapest model available in my area is a Model 3 for $51K, with a range of just over 300 miles.

To put a floor on it, based on the cheapest hybrid:  A new Toyota Corolla hybrid gets 50 MPG (per EPA) and can be had around here for $25K asking price.  Buying that car, instead of an EV, would add about 0.4 tons C02 to my annual carbon footprint, assuming 3000 miles a year, and assuming Virginia’s electrical generation averages 0.65 pounds C02/KWH.  Around here, a new Toyota Prius looks like it’s almost unobtainable for anything near MSRP.  I’d probably be looking at $36K to buy a new Prius in this area.  At the very bottom end of new-car prices, a new Nissan Versa can be hand for $18K, and gets about 35 MPG.

What is the middle door for?  Only she knows.

Lightly used EV?  Leaf is a poor value.  Used Bolt avoids the current new-car-dealer surcharge.

For the Leaf S, if I were willing to roll the dice on a two-year-old used car with 20K miles, I could save a whopping $4.5K.  That small savings is due in part to the different tax credits for new ($7500) and used (up to $4000) cars.

For the Bolt, the used market appears to avoid the current high dealer markups on new Bolts.  There, under the same conditions (two years old, maybe 20K miles), I would save more like $10K, relative to actual current new Bolt asking prices.  I don’t know whether that reflects the fact that these cars were recalled.  But as far as I know, the 2023 is no different from the 2021, it’s just that GM installed the new software from the get-go.

To summarize

I’m making progress.  I think.

Looks like a new or lightly used Chevy Bolt is the sweet spot, so far, for me.

There’s probably nothing in the $10K-and-under used EV market that I want.  All the cars in that segment started out with small battery packs.  I believe that, as the car ages, those small batteries make the car sensitive to even a few weak battery modules.  There’s too high a chance that now, or in a few years, I’ll end up with a temperamental vehicle that can’t be trusted to do normal all-around driving.

The only new EV available for under $30K asking price, around here, is the Nissan Leaf S.  That has some known drawbacks (no battery cooling, obsolete fast-charging port), and apparently is really not practical for any sort of summertime road trip, due to the extreme charge times with a hot battery.

A Chevy Bolt, with the current ridiculous dealer markup, but after the Federal tax credit, costs about the same as the cheapest new hybrid cars.   For example, it’s about the same as the base model Toyota Corolla, which gets 50 MPG EPA.  So, in the sense of avoiding carbon footprint, it costs me nothing to choose the Bolt over a new hybrid.

(Not shown, there’s also the Ford Maverick hybrid truck which would, in theory, cost about that much.  But those are also more-or-less unobtainable at reasonable markup in my area.  Those get 37 MPG, and have all the the functionality of a pickup truck.)

Cheaper than that, and the only available new cars are non-hybrids, with what appears to be a maximum gas mileage of around 35 MPG.  Of which the Nissan Versa is an example.  But now, still in the early stages of our global warming disaster, I’d say that the last thing I want to do is cause yet another straight-gas car to be created. 

The upshot is that if I refuse to buy anything less efficient that a hybrid, I might as well get a Bolt EV.  With the tax credit, the Bolt costs about the same as the cheapest hybrid.

And then, the question is whether I want to save maybe $10K by gambling on a two-year-old used Bolt.

Go up another $10K to $15K, and you have your choice of new EVs.  But just as a matter of taste, I find none of them to be any more appealing than the Bolt.  Some are modestly larger.  Some have (I guess) more prestigious names than Chevy.  None materially exceeds the range of the bolt, until you hit the $50K bottom-end Tesla.

Das Bolt von Barbie, only available in Germany.

The Bolt is a risk, due to a history of rare battery overheating during full charge.  In theory, GM addressed that.  In practice, you aren’t going to know for sure.  Certainly, the market has not shied away from the Bolt.  Even used Bolts are pretty fully-priced.  And I don’t think GM fixed the issue at any basic level, they just installed the newer software on the new Bolts at the factory.

Post #1832: Loss of performance with aging.

 

Finally, a topic every man can relate to.

I had been under the impression that as an EV ages, it ages gracefully.  It might slowly lose range, for sure, but otherwise, it was the same vehicle it always was.  I didn’t read a lot of chatter about them losing capability, or reliability, as they age.  So the story seems to be that EVs simply age into being reliable used cars, with more limited range than when new.

Maybe that’s true.  Maybe that’s sometimes true.  Maybe that’s true except for the bottom-of-the-market segment that I’m currently shopping.  Maybe that’s pro-EV propaganda.

To cut to the chase:  Size matters.  That’s my conclusion, at any rate.  All other things equal, performance and reliability issues should show up soonest in EVs with the smallest range.  That’s because, for any given maneuver on the road, those EVs draw more power per unit of battery capacity.  Unreliability shows up first during events that use (or produce) a lot of power.

Continue reading Post #1832: Loss of performance with aging.

Post #1828: Factors affecting the price of a used Nissan Leaf

 

The single biggest way to save money on a used Nissan Leaf?  Don’t buy from Carvana.

That’s what the data say.  Other results are in the RESULTS section below.

Hedonic price function

I didn’t make up the term.  A hedonic price function is the method economists use to parse out the factors that contribute to the market value of an object.

Basically, you take what everybody knows — newer cars cost more, high-mileage cars cost less — and you quantify it.  You calculate a data-based estimate of just how much those factors affect the price of the object in question.

Probably the single most important use of this approach is in the U.S. Consumer Price Index.  That index is no longer a simple average of observed prices for various goods.  That’s because the qualities of the underlying goods keep changing.  Take computers for example.  A new PC is typically far more capable than a ten-year-old PC.  If you simply lump those two together as “PCs”, you ignore the increase in the value of what the consumer is buying.  So, the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses hedonic price estimates to determine how much “better” newer models are, compared to older models, and adjusts the prices of newer models (down) accordingly.  The other way to look at that is that this is how Uncle Sam systematically understates the true rate of inflation.  And, accordingly, saves money on all of its payments linked to inflation, such as Social Security payments.

Practically speaking, I “ran a regression”.  Which is, at root, just an average.  Instead of taking a simple average price, it’s an adjusted average.  It adjusts the average asking price for the factors that you have identified (e.g., age, mileage). 

The nice thing about it is that it gives you the independent effect of each factor.  So, newer used cars also tend to be lower-mileage used cars.  To what extent is their higher price for late-model cars due to low age, versus low mileage?  In theory, a regression parses that out for you.

Regressions, much like the Magic 8 Ball from which they were derived, sometimes give you a non-committal answer.  By that I mean that there’s so little systematic impact of some factor that you can’t really say whether or not you’re just picking up random associations.  The ones above that are egregiously so, I’ve put in faint gray type.  You should ignore any estimates that don’t pass a standard hurdle for “statistical significance” this way.

(I hope it goes without saying that regressions may sometimes give a wrong answer, and may sometimes give a right answer.  Again, much like the Magic 8 Ball.)

Results

By far, the most important factor for saving money on a used Leaf is not to buy it from Carvana.  Averaged across all the cars in the dataset, buying from Carvana added $3K to the price of the car.  I don’t think that’s news, as I vaguely recall that they had a reputation for being a convenient-but-relatively-costly source for used cars.

But just as interesting are the things that don’t matter.

The trim level or options level had no (statistically significant) effect on the price.  This, I think, also matches conventional wisdom.  As stated by my mother-in-law: Buy a loaded car because you want to drive a loaded car.  Don’t buy it for the additional resale value, because there isn’t any.  (But keep in mind, the effect of difference in range is accounted for elsewhere, and so differences in battery capacity across trim lines should not, in theory, contribute to the pure effect of the trim level.)

Curiously, history of having been in an accident also did not much matter.  I have no explanation for that, except that maybe most of those aren’t major accidents?

Now we get to the big three:  Year, Mileage, and Range.  To interpret these, you need to know that the average asking price in this dataset was about $15,000.

All other things equal, each year that a used Leaf ages, as a used car, it loses about $900 in value, or about 6% of its value.  See the note below on comparing this to the depreciation of a brand-new Leaf.  It’s lower, but not vastly lower, than the depreciation of a new car.  I think this matches our received folklore about car values.  The fastest reduction in value that you will experience is in the moment you drive your new car off the dealer’s lot.

Mileage hardly matters. Every additional 10K miles on the odometer only drops the value of the car by about $200, or just over 1%.  I think that’s quite  different from what you see with gas cars, and speaks to the robustness of the motors and drive train.  It appears that the typical buyer isn’t concerned with expensive repairs for a fairly high-mileage used Leaf.

Alternatively, these cars may simply have such low average miles, that mileage had not yet begun to matter.  Median mileage was just 36K, median age was about five years.  The low average mileage is a function of both low car age and few miles per year, consistent with a car in which long-distance travel was likely awkward for most.)

Slice that either way you like.  The fact is, odometer miles didn’t much matter.

Oddly, battery range only matters a bit.  This analysis was restricted to models that had an estimate of the actual remaining range, via some remote monitoring service that tests battery life.  Every 10 miles of additional battery range was only worth about $430, or maybe 3%.   I’m guessing that people interested in a used Leaf are probably coming from the same place that I am, in that they plan to use it as a “city car”.  So extra range is nice, but not a deal-breaker, as long as it’ll get you around town for the next few years.

I’m not sure the same would hold true for the price of a new EV, where the typical buyer may want to be able to take long trips in the car.  There, I’d expect to see a higher value on longer range.

Final takeaways.

First, I’m not going to buy from Carvana.  As if I ever were.

Second, on paper, as new cars, Leafs appear to have suffered from shockingly steep depreciation.  So much so that it gave me pause.  How could a car that lost value that quickly be a good buy as a used car?

But I think that’s largely an artifact of the (then) $7500 tax credit.  A person buying a $32500 Leaf actually only paid $25,000 for it, net of the tax credit.  If I factor the tax credit in, depreciation on a new Leaf that appeared to be in excess of 12%/year falls to a far more reasonable 8% per year.  Or just modestly higher than the rate of depreciation shown among the sample of used Leafs.

Third, at the price range I’m considering (~$10K), it probably won’t cost me much to buy the model with the bigger battery/higher range (SV) instead of the base model (S, SL).  The additional 30 miles of range (100 vs 70) ought to cost me just over an additional $1200.  And that additional range should be cheap insurance against the future degradation of the lithium-ion battery.

Finally, as long as the battery is in good shape, I probably shouldn’t worry too much about the mileage.  Or, at least, that’s what the market is telling me.  Buyers seemed to be almost indifferent to the miles on the odometer.  To me, that crowd-sources the conclusion that, battery aside, these cars don’t tend to wear out within the range of mileages typically found for used Leafs.

Epilogue

A wise philospher once said, “You cannot step into the same used-car query twice.”  I thought about adding more information (e.g., Carmax as seller).  But I “keypunched” the cars in the order they showed when I ran my first query.  To get back to those Edmunds.com search results, I’d have to re-run that query.  That could easily give me a slightly different set of cars, depending.  Which means the existing dataset might not synch up with the new data, as punched.  Not without extraordinary measures.

In this case, the juice is not worth the squeeze.  I’ll let this be the end of it.

Post #1825: How about a nice used leaf?

 

I’m thinking through my options for replacing the car I got rid of a year ago.

I need something to use when it would be inconvenient to borrow my wife’s car.  As a result, I won’t be driving it much, and probably won’t be driving it far.

So how about a nice used Nissan Leaf?  That’s the subject of this post.

Source for artwork for this post:  The AI picture generator at Gencraft.com

Continue reading Post #1825: How about a nice used leaf?