I’m working on my Jeep Wrangler right now, and I’ve lent my BMW i3 out to Jason’s wife, Sally. This means I have been stuck driving my $1000 Nissan Leaf, which infamously has a remaining range of only 25 miles due to battery degradation. Well, yesterday, while driving it 15 miles from Van Nuys to Santa Monica, I couldn’t help but think: My god this car is good. It’s such a monumental shame that its battery is trash, because everything else about this car is just fantastic. Here, allow me to explain what I mean.
I cannot even imagine what it must have been like stepping into a Nissan Leaf back in 2010. It must have felt like a spaceship. You step in, hit the start button, and a bunch of futuristic beeps and bongs play over the speakers as the screen and gauge cluster fire up. Ahead of you at eye-level is a digital speed readout, along with a clock and an instantaneous semi-circular eco-meter that tells you how efficiently you’re driving. Above the “nine and three” spokes of the steering wheel is the gauge cluster, which shows battery temperature, an indication of the power to and from battery (when accelerating and when regenerating), a battery health gauge and a battery state of charge gauge.
Off to the center of the dash is a big (by 2011 standards) center-stack infotainment display, with nice physical buttons for radio (including satellite radio), HVAC, and navigation. I like the blue trim around the HVAC controls:
Then you grab the weird round shifter, pull it to the left and up, and you’re in reverse. You watch the backup camera — which, by modern standards, seems to offer almost CRT-levels of clarity — and then push the shifter left and back for drive. Then you step on it.
“ZIPPPP” the car bolts from a standstill with alacrity, sometimes chirping its front tires (the entire electric powertrain is under the hood) mesmerizing you with its pairing of speed and silence — something you likely had never experienced before back in 2010. You lift off the accelerator and… nothing happens. The pull your right foot back a bit, wondering if maybe you were still touching the pedal — nope. The car just rolls, and with an eagerness you’ve never experienced. “What the hell? How aerodynamic is this thing?” you wonder. “How low-friction are these wheel bearings?”
The vehicle just moves forward, as if in its own world devoid of friction. It’s actually really nice, and it just feels efficient. Of course, when you have to slow down, you tap the brakes and things feel quite the opposite, with you wondering how much of that stop was regen and how much was friction braking.
The ride quality is phenomenal. It’s magic carpet-smooth, shrugging off expansion joints, potholes, and speed bumps, and yielding a cocoon of comfort for the driver. That cocoon is created by a whisper-quiet cabin that doesn’t transmit much wind or road noise, and by a beautifully light and cushy interior whose seats are made of this almost felt-like cloth. Those chairs coddle your body in a way that would make driving the Leaf for hundreds of miles at a time totally comfortable.
But “hundreds of miles at a time” will never happen because the Leaf was only ever EPA rated at 72 miles of EV range. And while that’s totally useable, the problem with the Leaf — one that will lead it to become extinct in the not-so-distant future — is that its battery pack degrades unbelievably quickly.
[EDIT: OK, I’m not kidding when I say: I closed my laptop in the middle of writing this article, then left for O’Reilly Auto Parts to grab some fuel system parts for the Jeep whose tank I have to install in the next two hours, then started driving to work. I was using the car’s rather antiquated Bluetooth, chatting with my brother, when I looked down: SIX MILES OF RANGE LEFT! At the start of my trip, the car said it had 34 miles of range, and now, just 13 miles in, only six?!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7XIXRAP4r_/?igsh=MzNzM3UwazJueWZt
This is what it’s like to drive an old leaf. If you ever, ever find yourself on the highway, get ready for the range to absolutely tank. You have to pay attention anytime you’re on the freeway, because the car just cannot deal with the current draw needed to overcome the aero drag.
Anyway, now I had to duck into the nearest charging station, which was at the Getty Museum just at the base of the Sepulveda pass, which I definitely would not have made it up without charging. So here I am, writing from the Getty center.
What a shame this car is. It’s so good otherwise! -DT].
[Editor’s Note: I sometimes wonder if David can hear himself. “It’s so good,” he says, before adding in a word that’s doing so much heavy lifting it has an 8-pack and its arms look like a garbage bag crammed full of snakes, “otherwise.” In this context, “otherwise” leads to exchanges like this:
I’ll cut the tension and let you know that thanks to the time at the Getty and moving to surface streets (after a bout of driving 45 on the 405, an offense which California may consider dusting off their electric chair for) David did make it to the office, but just barely. At one point the range guessometer read 6 miles and it was 6.7 to work. I’m not sure you get to still say a car is “so good” if you have to put up with shit like this. Would David be as enamored by a Nissan Versa with a 0.8 gallon gas tank? Because that’s pretty much what he has! Oh well. Cars aren’t rational, and we all know David sure as shit isn’t, either. – JT]
My 2011 Nissan Leaf, which has only 70,000 miles on the odometer, runs out of juice after under 20 miles of freeway driving, and part of the reason is that the pack has no active cooling whatsoever. Most modern EVs have liquid-cooled battery packs to make sure the cells stay at their optimum temperature when charging, discharging, or even just sitting. But early Leafs had nothing, and the result was severe degradation in hot climates like the American southwest, where my car spent all of its life.
Nissan redid the battery, rolling out the “Lizard” pack in 2015, and while this battery was air cooled, it lasted significantly longer before seeing the kinds of degradation I’m seeing in my Leaf. Anyway, I’m going to have to truncate this post, because I need to see if my Leaf is charged, and if so, I have to run before I get charged $25 to park (it’s free if I leave within an hour). I’ve run the numbers, and given that I’m 10 miles from work, and the car does about 3 miles per kWh, I really just need about 3 and some change kWh of charge to make it there. Actually, if I factor in the steep grade, maybe I need 5. Given that The Getty Museum’s chargers are Level 2s, and therefore probably crank out 6kW of power, I gotta make sure I stay plugged in for 50 minutes. But not more than 60.
So I gotta thread this needle here, so you’ll have to excuse me for shortening what was going to be a long blog about how much I love the 2011 Leaf, and how much of a shame it is that it didn’t get the battery it deserved.
[Editor’s Note: Just to re-iterate, the reason he’s cutting short his blog about how much he loves the 2011 Leaf is because his 2011 Leaf almost left him stuck on the side of the cruel and unforgiving 405. Oh, David, you idiot, this is why I love you, you poor delusional dummy. – JT]
I really liked the Leaf I used to have. It was nice, with leather (the blue stitching was sharp), solid stereo, and the inside had a cool futuristic look.
It was also a fun car to drive. I had to get rid of it because Louisiana doesn’t believe in EVs. It was also a very triggering car for the snowflakes driving their brodozers.
How did Louisiana make you get rid of a car?
At gunpoint probably.
Oh I guess wasn’t very clear. I got the car in California then moved to Louisiana about a year later. Changing infrastructure at the time (maybe it still is?) was terrible and pretty much non-existent. I kept it another 6 months after moving then got rid of it.
In typical Japanese fashion, Nissan preferred to sacrifice range for a battery cell that was safer from thermal runaway. Check this video https://youtu.be/Jz37WycW-7E?si=AgMDdXQEraRZ3JPi
You never hear of Leaf fires. There was a reason for those early conservative numbers. Even with all the degradation from heat, the leaf isn’t know for having thermal runaway/propagation issues.
At least your version of the leaf had odd, cool, funky, froggy styling. If Jason’s not drooling over its weirdo taillights, kindly re admit him to the hospital, they let him out tooooo soon! The new Leaf kept the crappy air cooled powertrain and lost all of its mojo. Who knew EVs could enter an old ICE war? Air cooled versus coolant. The more things change, the more they stay the same (according to my wise old long departed Grandpa) Gramps was correct. His quirky azzed old sayings have been proven to be true .As I get to be his age I’m finding out he was correct on many things. And I just thought he was an old smart ass. Turns out he was very, very, wise about the ways of the world!!!
How much is a refurbed pack by those guys in the Pacific Northwest?
$5,499.00 – $10,000.00
WITH RETURN OF YOUR OLD BATTERY
We had a 2013 Leaf in the family for a few years. It shared the garage with a 2011 335d, and honestly for around town I often preferred the Leaf. Don’t get me wrong, the 425lb-ft torque from that BMW diesel was guaranteed to put a grin on my face, but the Leaf was perfectly cromulent for our needs — especially for short errands where the diesel would barely get warmed up. The Leaf was *way* cheap to buy and operate – a lot of car for the $$. Ran snow tires on it in the winter and that thing was a beast in the snow. I see a number of people commented about it being a good car for teens and I had exactly that thought at the time. I’m still a few years away from needing a kiddo car, but I’ll definitely be considering a used EV when that time comes.
Our 2017 leaf is teetering on the brink of a warranty battery, but probably won’t get there. In the meantime, my college student drives it and it suits her. It is much more comfortable than our Bolt and David is right about all the good things he says. It’s a shame that this car will mechanically be wonderful still once the battery fails it and we won’t be able to replace it. So wasteful.
You could always retrofit an ICE into it :p
Rather than the Hayabusa approach to repowering tiny cars, I’d like to see a late-model Goldwing flat 6 or BMW K1600 stuffed in.
I’m thinking some sort of turbine. The APU in a Chinook or a flightline genset would be about the right size.
Can confirm, gen 1 leaf is surprisingly awesome! We bought one for my teen driver and it’s perfect.
By the numbers: year 2011, range 30mi, battery life 52%, charger 3.3kwh (level 1.5ish), odo 58k, purchase price $1800, insurance for a 16yo male new driver $750/yr, people who think it’s ugly 100%.
I drive this to work when my kid isn’t using it. I choose this over the Mercedes, BMW, and Porsche it shares a home with.
Also, I am the biggest bully at the Trader Joe’s parking lot. Don’t worry about dings. Life lesson: don’t mess with someone with nothing to lose. It’s not getting any worse looking.
Pro tip: get leafspy. The guess-o-meter is very wrong. Shows (—) at around 15% true capacity left. You have 4-6 miles more range! 7% is when the car is truly done.
Torch’s editor’s notes are basically my inner monologue
and
what happened/is happening to the Odyssey? or is the squad over on the left side of the country right now?
edit: was it a sienna? let’s just call it {minivan}
I have just become the (hopefully not for long) custodian of a Jensen FF. Again. It is a wonderful car, four-wheel drive, anti lock brakes and a comfortable cruising speed of over120mphin a 1969 car. It has an almost Nissan Leaf range, driven with brio it manages 6 mpg and has a fourteen gallon tank.
Compared to all of David’s previous cars, the Leaf must feel like the epitome of a modern, functional vehicle.
He thought a U-Haul van was nice, this makes me wonder how all of his car reviews would compare to my own impressions.
I was once like David and every car I owned passed through me before going to the junk yard…My concept of a nice car was severely skewed to that point that a road trip in a friend’s 1st Gen Sebring convertible was in my mind the absolute pinnacle of luxury. I shutter when I think back to those dark times…
“Nissan redid the battery, rolling out the “Lizard” pack in 2015, and while this battery, too, was air cooled, it lasted significantly longer”
Doesn’t this imply the longevity problem was due to battery chemistry as opposed to passive cooling? Since the 2015 and up Leafs have haven’t had major problems with degradation, I don’t see how an active cooling system would have significantly improved them. The Leaf’s real problems are the stupid CHAdeMO port and small battery. It is possible to retrofit an OG Leaf with a 62 kwh battery from the second-generation car, so the small battery issue is solvable. Given that, a better headline would be “the first generation Nissan Leaf was an NACS port away from greatness.” It is a shame it didn’t get the fast-charging port it deserved.
“…a long blog about how much I love the 2011 Leaf”
The original Leaf was a fantastic car despite its limitations. It is nice to know that someone else also appreciates these cars.
I won’t rule out a chemistry change but active air cooling is so much better than what the Gen 1 Leaf had.
Its like driving with all the windows up and no ac vs rolling the windows down.
Passive air cooling is inferior to active air or other cooling methods, but it doesn’t seem to have mattered all that much after the chemistry change. 2015+ Leaf batteries have held up well. They experienced more degradation than Tesla batteries, but not dramatically so (~10% more degradation after 8 years than a Tesla). That’s not ideal, but it means the average Leaf still has 75% or more of its range after 8 years.
The low battery capacity of the OG Leaf presumably accounts for some of the excess degradation. If your car has a range of 75 miles, you are probably charging to 100% instead of 80% out of necessity. It will be interesting to see how 62 kwh batteries hold up over time; I presume owners of those cars routinely charge to 80% because they can. Maybe that will improve longevity?
Also, losing 20% of your battery in a car with 75 miles range might impact your ability to use it for daily transportation. Losing 20% of your battery in a car with 300 miles of range won’t be noticeable aside from lengthy drives. 2015+ Leaf battery degradation isn’t all that worse than Tesla battery degradation, but it is far more noticeable. The battery health bars also don’t help. Battery health gauges are nice when evaluating a used car, but they also serve as a constant reminder that your battery is slowly dying. I presume that is why most EVs don’t have said gauges.
All that being said, I suspect Leaf battery longevity was improved by the lack of fast charging capability. CHAdeMO ports were always hard to find. If the Leaf had better access to fast charging (like an NACS port and access to the Tesla network), passive cooling might have been a problem since fast charging generates a lot of heat. I presume Nissan included the CHAdeMO port out of laziness, but the unintended consequence is improved battery longevity.
The OG Leaf gets a bad name given how poorly the original batteries held up, but they were good cars. They are mostly victims of rapid improvements in EV technology. They are objectively bad compared to what is available in 2024, but they were objectively good compared to what was available in 2011.
Time to get out the kite and a key.
In a range-related state of emergency, I believe the Getty bylaws say it’s okay to exit their garage and then re-enter it to resume charging.
“I’ve lent my BMW i3 out to Jason’s wife, Sally.”
I thought David already gifted them the Sienna? What’s going on in the Torchinsky domicile?
I had thought “Sally’s in LA for something?” and David was saving them the cost of a rental car.
Ah, that makes sense. I was worried there was another vehicle down for them, which would just be tragic at this point.
It’s got to be a months old post. Everything about this says “Out of Order”.
I can’t imagine David drove the i3 cross country and didn’t say anything about it. That would be quite a long trip.
Didn’t he just buy a 2nd i3?
I bet he’s trying to frankenstein them together into an i6 as we speak.
The Hooning Centipede
David Tracy Mad Libs are alive and well.
I have to fix my Jeep gas tank in the next two hours and my Leaf is out of juice.
Almost worth digging up my Gilligan’s Island Leaf Theme.
I love irony, so I think my favorite thing about the Leaf, and its inability to hold juice, was that it was endorsed by Lance Armstrong who, ironically, was juiced to the gills…
“…its arms look like a garbage bag crammed full of snakes,…”.
God bless this beautiful wordsmith.
Is there an unannounced prize for martyrdom in the name of automotive journalism? Barring that, I don’t see the value of this car. Fix it or trade it for a Suzuki Burgman, which has a greater range and can be ridden on the highway.
I’d appreciate if you differentiated between passive air cooling and (regular) fan based air cooling.
(don’t do the following)
But for thought experiment’s sake, say you got any ICE car with an air cooled engine, then removed the fan belt and or disconnected the electric fan, then drive it around and see how well it performs.
Then write an article on how shit all air cooled cars
They’re surprisingly shit when reliant on PASSIVE air cooling.
Hell, you can do the same experiment with any of your liquid cooled cars, remove the radiator fan(s) and see how long it takes for them to overheat.
Then write an article about how shit all liquid cooled cars are.
The point of my rant being that there’s nothing wrong with air cooling, especially for BEV applications, rather passive air cooling and traditional air cooling shouldn’t be conflated. The Leaf didn’t a whole new battery pack, it just needs cooling fans and the proper ducting, like the Renault ZOE
What’s even more frustrating is that Nissan made the e-NV200, which used the Leaf’s battery but forced cabin air through the pack. It would have been so easy to do this for the Leaf.
(Side note: cabin air recycling is clever, because lithium batteries prefer the same temperatures people do.)
When I visited Norway for about a month I nerded out over ever e-NV200 I saw.
Also saw my first Trabant and my first UAZ-452 (Loaf) there.
If I could buy e-NV200s new in the US I’d buy 3 of them at the minimum, even with the dying CHAdeMO charging standard.
All I care about is how the i3 ended up in Sally’s hands. Somebody drove cross country in it and I want to know who, what, when, where, and why. 🙂
David Tracy: A Fount of Pure Optimism and Enthusiasm. I see a possible DED type future for him. Some manufacturer is going to realize his infectious potential someday.
Jeep should have snagged him before he took a shine to BMW.
So you get what I’m talking about? Many have zero idea who DED is.
I wonder why auto manufacturers design cars that last significantly longer in some fethan others? others? An interior that you could bask in for 8 hours in a car that you can only drive less than 2 hours? I just don’t get the significant investment in unusable features. And yet that great interior never made it to their decent vehicles? I just don’t get it.
Don’t let David’s gushing fool you, the Leaf is very much a family commuter-grade interior. It’s not bad, and being electric means it’s very quiet, but a Camry interior is a substantially nicer place to be for example. I owned a 2015 and traded it in for 2018 when the second generation first came out, and the second generation is an improvement in every way, though it too is very dated by 2024 standards.
“Aggressively inoffensive” pretty well sums up Leaf interiors.
I always give DTs articles a ? since his experience in vehicles is of the very worst quality. However I was wondering if he has gotten more experience in decent vehicles?
Nice to ‘see’ you. 🙂
I wonder why auto manufacturers design cars that last significantly longer in some fethan others? others?”
What does “fethan others” mean?
“(it’s free if I leaf within an hour)”
I applaud this subtle yet entirely appropriate use of punnage. Bravo sir, bravo.
Make like a tree!
Make like a tree, and get out of here!
Make like a tree and… BURN…
https://www.torquenews.com/3618/nissan-leaf-cought-on-fire
One great thing about way Nissan designed the Leaf battery packs over the years is that the form factor is almost entirely identical from the 2010 pack clear up to the 2024 “Plus” pack, meaning there are people who have swapped the latest “long range” Leaf battery pack into the original Leafs and are seeing some very impressive distance/kWh numbers. There are open source tools for mapping the new battery capacity to the original Leaf computer so it takes full advantage of the much larger pack.
I freaking love the hot rod mentality, and regardless of it being putting a 70s axle in a 50s car, or putting 2020s battery in a 10s leaf, I totally consider that kind of parts bin hop up to be hot rodding.
We’re liable to see more of it. The Leaf gets a fair bit since it was one of the first to show up to the party, so it was bound to get more enthusiasts. I’m curious to see where Teslas end up in time, though having met Rich of Rich Rebuilds back in the day, I expect to see a lot more of it.
For example, the Honda e? There’s going to be some folks wanting to keep those around. Teslas will be around because there’s so many.
Yet what I want to see at a 2054 car show is that nutjob who has some sales dud. Where for them the Jabroni 4000 was genuinely the perfect vehicle for them, and ensure it’ll always be alongside them like a loyal dog.
I’ll be 99 and the car will be my Fit.
It seems David Tracy just loves cars that treat him like crap. I hope his taste in the fairer sex treats him better.
Well, considering she is feeding him healthy foods and banned pizza rolls and shower spaghetti, I think she has Plans for him. I always treated stud horses pretty well.
I feel like we can blame Nissan quite a bit for giving general consumers the idea that EV batteries have such a short lifespan. I can’t think of any other EV that was this successful that experiences almost guaranteed significant battery degradation within the decade of manufacture. Even early Volts and i3s tend to be better about that, right? Somehow in their brilliance of ‘batteries don’t need cooling’ Nissan accidentally (?) handed the anti-EV propaganda machine one of their biggest talking points.
Maybe, but remember the Leaf was on the market a full 7 years before the Bolt. When the Leaf first came out, the only other true EV on the market was the Tesla Roadster. There was the Mitsubishi i-MiEV too I guess, but that’s basically a golf cart.
Nissan was in uncharted territory with the Leaf for quite a few years. Not saying they did everything right, but it’s not like liquid-cooling was a widely established common thing at that point. It was odd they didn’t switch to liquid cooling for the second generation, but I will say our 2018 Leaf with 57k miles still has full battery capacity and still gets the rated 150 mile range, and we don’t do anything special for it.
My 2018 has 50k on it, and LeafSpy says the battery is down to 84% of the original capacity. At full charge, the car says 129mi at most (it used to go as high as 140), and I only have 25mi left after my daily roundtrip commute, whereas I used to have 35-40mi.
I have a ’15 and it has 95% of its battery life left and 40K miles. I just L2 charged it today at 6.5kwh and it took 3 hours to get to the max range which said 80 when I got in it to go to the store.
Right, but I guess I’m saying regardless of Nissan’s intentions or expertise they pretty much fucked the reputation of EV longevity by producing such a popular and widely available ‘early-adopter’ model with a chronic, critical flaw regarding battery degradation. To be fair though it’s basically how Nissan builds all their cars these days.