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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

You can get a used Leaf for $5-10k very easily, and it'll still have several years left on the warranty.

If you happen to live in the right locations you can can get new Leafs for about $10K after taking advantage of federal, state and utility incentives.

https://www.sdge.com/clean-energy/electric-vehicles/10000-me...

https://cleantechnica.com/2016/12/15/get-new-nissan-leaf-low...

Really??? Wow, I thought about one when Nissan first hit the market with them but the price for a limited range car? No thanks but if they are that cheap I would grab one for a commuter! Are these certified nissan resales? Or just on the open market?

You can get used Nissan Leafs in the Bay Area with 30-40k miles on them for under $9k, from private party sellers.

Japanese cars don't depreciate as much as other cars, in general, but the Nissan Leaf has terrible resale value. So do some of the other all-electric cars, like the Fiat 500e. I suspect the prospective buyers are worried about the battery going bad or losing capacity over time. That would be very expensive to fix without a warranty.

The quote from a dealer here is 45k Norwegian kroner (~$5k) for a new battery. Not out of line with major repair on an older petrol vehicle.

A 5K repair on petrol vehicles is huge. Like engine replacement level bad. The average petrol vehicle never needs a repair that expense (or the car ends up junked when it does).

A shot gear in gearbox can easily be 5K in repairs. And whether you going to junk a vehicle depends a lot on its market value.

Third party sales have to compete with insane incentives for new cars. If a new Leaf can be had for $12K after incentives, why would I pay more for a used one?

I don't know if they're certified, but also not sure if that even matters for EVs (which have a few dozen parts that might need maintenance, as opposed to hundreds in a gas engine). These would also have years and miles left on the warranty.

The primary maintenance cost for the EV is the battery, and battery warranties are pretty generous to decrease people's anxiety about them.

Can you point to somewhere that you can buy a used Leaf for close to $7,500 with several years of warranty left?

I suspect OP was factoring in tax incentives - for example, in Colorado the EV tax credit can be taken the first time vehicles are registered in the state, so there's a cottage market in importing lightly used Leafs from other states which easily come in around the 10k mark to the buyer.

You can get decent Nissan Leafs with under 40k miles for less than $10k cash in California right now on sites like Carfax and AutoTrader -- no tax incentives are required to get them down to that price. The depreciation is that bad. If you bought one and took it to Colorado, you'd save even more money.

They depreciate really fast. I'm not sure about still having years on the warranty, but fairly young EVs can be had for far less than the new price.

https://www.carfax.com/Used-Nissan-Leaf_w536

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