nissan leaf purchase

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tweake

2391 posts

Uber Geek

#319104 22-Mar-2025 13:15

well i've been made redundant. work is closing, so good bye to having a company car. i'm currently looking if i can buy the company car/ute, but i have wondered is a cheap ev would do the job.

assuming next job is in the city, which is a 120km round trip, would the 2nd gen leaf have enough real world range with typical battery degradation? whats required charging wise? would 120km use be charged up with time to spare on ac? can it be charged outside in the rain?

Scott3

3963 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#3356338 22-Mar-2025 18:23

Yip, a Gen 2 (ZE1 chassis code, 40kWh or 62kWh battery) leaf should have no issue doing a 120 kM round trip.

EPA range (which I find fairly attainable in NZ conditions) for the 40kWh leaf is 243 km. Multiply by say 80% batter state of health and we get 194km.

I think you would want to charge to 100% each day. If you charged to only 80%, you would be arriving home with less than 20% battery remaining which isn't really enough safety margin of every day use.

As for charging, Yes AC charging is fine.

Charging at 8 Amps from a domestic wall outlet will add about 10km/h so will be a marginal / a bit slow for your use case.

Charging at 16 Amps from a wall charger will add about 20km per hour, so fast enough to recover your commute in 6 hours.

Every leaf supports ~16 A charging, and some support 32A charging which would recover your commute in about 3 hours. If you are trying so fit your charging into a free power window, you could seek out one of these, but otherwise no need.

Yes, outdoor charging is fine, and extremely common.

40kWh leaf's start at about $12k.

Things to be aware of:

40 KWh leaf is the "Rapidgate car". If you do more than two large DC fast charges in a day the battery pack (which is only passively cooled) gets hot and the cars charge speed slows to a crawl. Not the car you want for driving the length of the country, but fine for sub 450km trips (with two charge stops).
These car's are fitted with the CHAdeMO DC fast charge port. Places like Z are rolling out 3x CCS2 and 1x CHAdeMO charge port at their charge stations, given around 1/3rd of NZ's EV fleet is CHAdeMO (but falling), you are at a bit greater risk of coming up against a in use of broken charger.
AC charge port depends on the country of first registration. Japan cars have type 1, NZ cars have type 2.

Jase2985

13457 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#3356375 22-Mar-2025 21:44

Scott3:

Yip, a Gen 2 (ZE1 chassis code, 40kWh or 62kWh battery) leaf should have no issue doing a 120 kM round trip.

EPA range (which I find fairly attainable in NZ conditions) for the 40kWh leaf is 243 km. Multiply by say 80% batter state of health and we get 194km.

That 194km is rather generous, especially if travelling at motorway speed. we managed about 150Km from Auckland to Cambridge with 12% battery left. Was 2 Adults and 2 children with overnight bags, but still.

40% urban and 60% motorway (50% at 80kph) nets me around 200km.

Scott3

3963 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#3356382 22-Mar-2025 23:21

I only have a 24 kWh leaf, so was scaling my experience to a 40 kWh car. Jase obviously has real world experience.

Scale up the 150 km for the remaining 12% and we get 170.5 km range.

Considering the full load and how that is one of the few routes in NZ with large distances of 110km/h speed limits (which really sucked the range from my 24kWh leaf), I think that is close enough to my estimate.

everettpsycho

614 posts

Ultimate Geek

#3356437 23-Mar-2025 09:51

If it helps, we have a pair of 30kWh leafs and I've taken both on the 90km ish round trip to work. They are both in the 80-85% ballpark on their battery health.

Generally my 45km commute uses between 25% and 30% on the better car and up to 35% on the weaker battery. Optimistically we can get around 150km on a charge for a road trip in bith cars.

Personally if I was doing about 20-30km morr a day I'd be opting to go for a 40kWh battery. The 30kWh might do it but battery degradation is definitely a thing so how long would the car suit your needs and I'd definitely favour having the overhead just in case there's a detour, you have to make another trip after work or the car doesn't charge properly for some reason (usually not inserting the cable properly and not noticing as its on a timer). It's definitely saved us a couple of times having the spare capacity.