LEAF Plus 5 Year Review

 On November 16, 2019 I drove my 19 month old 2018 S 40 LEAF to Everett WA turning in my 3 year lease early in exchange for my 2019 LEAF S Plus. It was literally the car I had been waiting for since I began my EV journey in 2007. 

I had already known from the 40 kwh LEAF that this extended range version would be the first LEAF (after 4 tries!) that would be worth buying so I had decisions to make.  Should I just buy it or lease it then buy it out? I was turning in my 2018 early because I was offered the upgrade for the same monthly lease payment I already had. So I ended up taking the lease complete with hefty lease incentives, etc but for the first time, I opted for a 2 year lease because

Interest rates had been low...for a long time and I was afraid they were going to go back up before the 2 year time frame was up but I was prepared to end the lease early and buy it out if that was going to happen.  As luck would have it, 2 years wasn't too late to take advantage of great loan terms so I was able to finagle a 1.25% loan on the buyout.  Add to that, the reduced sale price, EV sales incentives for WA State, I was on track for a total out the door price all in under $30,000. 

Driving History

For the first 2½ years, my commute was 26 miles a day mostly 4 days a week.  I was also in the middle of a project that took me to Seattle 1-2 time a month that lasted just over a year. 

Then I dropped to 11 miles a day 5 days a week on a job change for 1½ years before a shift change made it 11 miles a day 4 days a week. After a recent move, I am now at 16 miles a day 4 days a week. 

Starting the 2nd week of December, I will be going back to a 5 day workweek making my commute about 82 miles a week. I also do food delivery (off and on over the past 5 years) currently 4 to 15 hours a week.  I plan to end the time clock from my reality in 13 months so the delivery thing is simply research for what to do when I suddenly have 50+ hours of extra time on my hands every week. 

Charging History

During my "free charge" days (Note; the 2019 only came with a $250 credit at EVgo but the 2018 still had the unlimited 2 year charging at a few different providers) that ended Feb 2020. The $250 credit had to be used in a year so I finished it December 2020. During that time, my SOC  ranged from 10ish to 75%.  I was generally hitting the DC station twice a week on my first and last shift of the week since I drove right by the EVgo station in DuPont. 

When the free DC ended, I then slid into the EVCS upgrade phase which meant free DC charging at the old Environment/Webasto (and probably a few others I have forgotten) station until it was upgraded which added another year or so.  Because the station was on the opposite side of town (I consider Olympia Lacey Tumwater as one entity) I probably only covered ¼ of my total charging there. 

I also used the many free level 2's around town but this was also quite seasonal. During Summer, I was covering over a third of my needs but that dropped to probably less than 10% during winter.  Movies at Capital Mall was a frequent thing when my Son was younger and they had free stations although only was able to find a vacant plug about half the time. 

When the weather was good, my goto was the stations at DOL in Lacey due to it being adjacent to the Chehalis Western Trail where I frequently biked. 

In fall of 2023, Puget Sound Energy started a TOU pilot program for EVers which I naturally signed up for which dropped my average costs to charge to around 6 cents/kwh.   Setting the car to charge 90 or 210 mins per day covered all my needs easily to the point that even at the lower charge, daily charging wasn't always necessary. 

But then the move happened. Building owner sold the building and new owners terminated everyone's leases to move in their extended family. 

After a few months of hanging out with relatives I found a place where all utilities were covered in the rent but now only charging at 120 volts.  So that is where I am at now.  The weather is just now starting to turn and my car has never lived outside before but parking in the garage would be difficult due to a narrow drive and the 90 degree angle of the garage door opening soooo... We shall see although I might "make" parking in the garage work depending on how it goes. 

Maintenance/Repairs

I see a lot of statements on how EVs require no maintenance so here is my "proof" that there is a cost  involved. Be it optional or not is an individual choice. 

Thru out the 5 years, the only regularly scheduled maintenance items were tire rotation which I did myself every 5,000 miles and cabin filter swaps which I did after one year and 6 months thereafter. I did reuse them a few times simply soaking them in soapy water then a good rinse and air dry. 

Cabin Filters

I bought a 4 pack online for $29 and also bought 3 from a Seattle LEAFer turned Teslatonian for $5 each and was given a handful (This actually started back on the 2016 I had and not sure how many I have received over the years?) In any event; total cost $44 so far. I still have one unused one but my current one has never been washed so it will last another cycle or two and I have 2 that have only been washed once so they will be rotated in a few times as well. Should be good for another 2 years at least. 

Traffic Cam

I already had one (billed to my 2013) which was ok but didn't transmit to my phone so I had to swap out SD cards to save anything. Wasn't a big deal since I had 3 cards in the car  and it took all of 3 seconds to switch them out but decided to go bigger.  Paid $170 for a front/rear  wi fi version with a remote turn on feature.  It had theft/accident detection but that required a subscription which I did not continue after the free trial period.  There was an extra $40 for the battery pack required for the remote turn on. 

Touch Up Kit  

$83.44  which was a 3 step refinish process and it worked very well for small scratches that went to metal but then I got a bumper scratch unattended and one I did myself. In both cases, the plastic was involved and I completely botched that up.  Later I found out that plastic needs surface prepping before any painting can be attempted.  So that project was on hold but...

Accident  

On August 6, 2023, I was headed home from work on Willamette Drive in the inside lane approaching the roundabout on Marvin and Britton Parkway with the intent to continue straight onto Britton Parkway when the car in the outside lane next to me attempted (illegally) to exit the roundabout in an effective left turn to get onto I-5. The collision was unexpected and didn't even know what the other guy was doing until he hit me.  

The driver could speak no English, was from Paraguay and had been in the country for 2 weeks. Had no license, no insurance and was driving home in a car he had just bought. I was forced to file under my uninsured motorist claim which included a $100 deductible. 

Then came the cascade of failures.  I was tasked with taking and sending pix to my insurance company who then decided the damage was $2900 and offered me a cash settlement. I declined. They also determined that damage to the passenger door was existing even after I disputed the decision claiming damage was done by the offending driver's side mirror. 

So I scheduled a visit with collision shop and they spent 30 mins taking dozens of pictures advising an estimate within 3 days.  A week later, I called them to find out what the estimate and was called back 3 days later and was told that they were forwarded the estimate from the insurance company and would be using that one instead. 

I then told them about damage to the door and how it happened and they later confirmed it was new damage and added it to the claim. I also told them about the passenger front wheel which was visibly bent out from vertical roughly 1½ inches.  The insurance company only allowed for an alignment which I knew to be completely wrong. 

Well the car drove fine. No vibration, no nothing and even did 4 trips to Seattle and back during all this.  So I take it to the shop with a 5 day repair time estimate and get my rental which my uninsured motorist would cover for 30 days "hoping" it would be long enough when they discovered the additional problems.  It wasn't. The more they looked, the more they found despite my telling them all this in advance.  Most of the estimate was remove, repair, repaint and install. I told them that several components could not be repaired but they stuck to the insurance company estimate. In the end, nearly ALL of the estimate was overridden. 

7 weeks later, I drove my car home "nearly" complete. They didn't have the wheel hub cover in yet and advised they would call when it came in.  I called them 30 days later and the person handling the job wasn't in. I never received a call back.   I ended up paying $423 out of pocket with the $100 deductible and for car rental services because all the credits (with other entities) and uninsured motorist only covered 30 days, etc ran out. 

I was able to recover $190 but have yet to recover the remaining balance from the other party. 

Door Handle

My door handle sleeve started working loose in late 2023 but was able to baby it for several months since the separation was only a few millimeters and  I was able to snap the handle sleeve back into place for a few months but eventually that stopped working as well. Fix was a tube of JB Weld Quickset.  Set time 5 mins, cure time one hour.  Cost $8. 

Since this was done only 2 months ago, I have yet to claim this as a success but for now, its working. 

Tires

On October 24, 2024 after 59,654.6 miles, I replaced my OEM Ecopias with the Ecopias from Costco for a cost of $701.60 which included installation, etc etc etc... Interestingly enough, despite being the same tire according to the sidewall, the OEMs are rated at 55,000 miles while the Costco versions are rated at 70,000 miles.  Even weirder was the fact that Costco also had the 55,000 mile version but they were more expensive (by less than a buck a tire) so... yeah, easy decision...

I do realize that tires could have been had for $200 less than what I paid but I wanted to maintain as much range as possible and I have seen no evidence that any other tire can match the efficiency of the Ecopias. There is a trade off and for people who practice a certain driving style where emergency braking is visited frequently, you might consider a tire with better wet road performance.  

Driving Methods

Despite the greater range, I always drive to maximize efficiency. I use a combination of D, B and N in ECO mode.  E Pedal is too hard to control and while it uses a small amount of friction braking, it simply is not an efficient way to drive.  For the non plussers, ECO B regen levels were increased slightly over the 40 kwh version making speed control via regen easier in radical traffic (which is nearly all the in my area) Now my driving style is based on my personal abilities and I do realize E Pedal can be worthy but it simply required too much concentration to achieve the levels of efficiency I wanted. Shifting thru various drive modes was much easier and yeah, in many situations, I am constantly shifting... 

Now one pedal driving is appropriate in certain traffic situations but after extensive trials using it and the scheme mentioned above, my lifetime average has moved from 4.35 miles/kwh to the current 4.68 miles/kwh.  Now part of that increase is due to smaller tires from wear.  So I will update this section Nov 2025 after a summer on the new tires but the difference in efficiency is double what the change in tire circumference would suggest so....  One other thing to mention.  For whatever reason, my ability or simply desire to tolerate cold isn't as robust as it used to be which means for the first time I can remember since living in Michigan, I blast the heat on my entire commute to and from work and I am not even in the coldest part of Winter yet... 

Battery Stats

Like every car I've driven since Thanksgiving Day Weekend 2003, I have tracked daily mileage and performance metrics. For the LEAF, this included logging LEAF Spy stats as well.  Now, I could tell you after 6 months, I was on pace to have less than 30% SOC by 100,000 miles, less than 60% after a year or... wouldn't drop below 85% by 1.5 million miles if only using degradation rates between year 2 and 4 but that would only add to the hysteria I see on SM daily...so ignore all that. 

Below is a chart logged roughly every 1,000 miles with mileage, ahr and SOC readings with degradation trends extrapolated to 100,000 miles. Pix is clickable if you want a bigger version. 

Below is a chart of annual readings taken every year on November 16. 

Interesting to note that my loss over the last 4 years  of 4.2% SOH doesn't match what I lost in the first year of 6.65%. Its also the year I drove the most miles since I was still involved in the Seattle project. 

The first year, I did over 1800 kwh of DC charging, less than 400 on year two but over 1000 on year 3. 

The first year was a few roadtrips, vaca and what not but mostly charging to 70ish %  but since I was on a 30 min time limit, on my Seattle trips I would do 20ish mins going depending on the time and 30 mins on the same station in DuPont coming home.  Heat buildup was so minimal, I even blogged about how well Nissan had mitigated the heat issue which I later found out to be a bit premature. 

The 3rd year, I DC'd a lot because of a lot of road trips where heat was always a thing but still kept SOH  below 80ish most of the time but there were days that I was doing 3,4 or even 5 DC sessions sooo.. yeah a bit warm here and there and all but one happened during the hottest part of the year. 

So did DC increase degradation? Heat?  Well based on the chart above, the answer is a less than obvious No.  It was the  2nd largest degradation period but...

The problem with annual snapshots is they don't show what happened during the year. The 3rd year odo reading ran roughly from 28K to 39ishK and the 100,000 mile extrapolation chart shows a decrease in degradation rates (rising line) during that time period.  What the chart missed is the fact that 2 of the 4 adjustments for that year were either positive or near zero. The largest drop happened at the beginning of the year which meant less road tripping since most of it was done during the hottest part of Summer. 

There there was year 4. By far the shortest distance. In case you don't remember, my job  took on a multi million dollar expansion with a goal of doubling the capacity of our most efficient system. This was a major construction undertaking and a massive disruption to the daily demands of supplying the healthcare industry.  In many cases, we had hard daily deadlines to meet and which equated to a lot of overtime to the point where I spent the better part of 5 months doing nothing but working and recovering from work.  But it was also the biggest overall jump in capacity for the pack. 

But a more interesting picture is shown on the chart of the actual adjustments. Adjustments happen every 90ish days and you can determine when yours will happen by your build date.  This should clue you into the fact that your driving habits are only part of the equation. 

Things to note here. The green highlights increases in capacity or no change. There is also the 7/2022 adjustment that was a small drop in there as well.  This illustrates that heat may not be the big bad Wolf everyone seems to think it is.  In the Pacific Northwest, we do get very hot weather but only for a short period of time. If this chart indicates the effect of hot weather, then we need to look at the adjustments that happen in October which in my case, covers early July to early October. As we can see; of the 5, only the first one and last one were down. The other 3 were positive twice and one no change. 

The other thing is year 4 which again was the easiest year for the LEAF due to work and we see minimal use of DC, just over 8,000 miles driven and 3 positive adjustments.  But year 5 does not continue that trend. 50% more miles driven due to 3 long trips and slightly more DC use but again 10/2024 is the lowest decrease despite modest DC usage. It was also 8 days in Bend OR where the temperature was much hotter than Olympia and the car did not benefit from a garage the whole time either. 

Conclusions

This entry may not be complete. There is other data I wanted to present but that would delay the post likely by several weeks due to lack of upcoming free time.  It has always been my contention (along with the scientific community) that "living in the middle" is the best practice for longest battery life. But that doesn't alway mesh with managing a convenient life.  As we know, life is anything but convenient so every little bit helps and I succumbed to this several times  either taking advantage of free charging or simply choosing life over SOC management. In either case, this maybe part of the reason that my practice has yet to show clear results of the benefits to the health of my pack. 

I thought after 5 years, it would be but apparently Nissan has built a more resilient cell than I had expected.  But I am confident the data will prove me right so expect a "I told you so" blog maybe as early as the next few years. Of course, it could be longer but with the uncertainty of Chademo, that is always a wild card  that can show up at any time. 

I am thankful my area has chosen to support Chademo on a greater level than most including 3 new locations in my area all within the past year. 

Here is the newest. Picture taken September 6, 2024 at Lacey Athletic Center

The other factors is my goal to end my time clock existence a year from now. The car will be paid off next July. My food delivery income will increase with more free time and I expect to cover the entire cost of the car; lease payments, purchase costs, interest, insurance, tab renewal fees and fuel by 2026 Q3.  I am not gonna lie. It would be  VERY hard for me to not blog about that! ;)

To Dot or Not To Dot...

 For the 2nd time in 3 years, I was in the middle of a forced move due to new owners evicting me so family members could move in. This happened at a time that could not have been worse. A recent $250 excursion to Costco, a long put off purchase of a few pieces of furniture which meant double the amount to store or get rid of, etc. 

I was simply not prepared. To complicate matters, I will be eliminating the time clock from my existence in less than 18 months which was when I was going to move anyway taking several months to evaluate and re evaluate what I was keeping, tossing and most importantly; where I would be going next. 

But all that went out the window so back to temporarily staying with relatives (the same one as before actually) while I search. This meant no home charging so again, on the lookout for reasonable charging alternatives. Like last time, I had run out my purchase incentives so getting a reasonable bang for my buck was a top priority along with convenience. 

So I put out my plight on Facebook and received a suggestion to sign up with Blue Dot which was a type of finance company that provided discounts for EV charging and also required an EV to sign up with them. But the key attraction was 30 cents/kwh for both EVgo and Chargepoint!

I figured I had nothing to lose so sure, why not? I would give them a try so signed up and deposited funds on the books and took off on a trip to Bend Oregon to see my niece get married. 

I had also signed up with EVCS on their $9.99 a month plan. The one charger that is somewhat local to me isn't very convenient since its in Tumwater which isn't too far away but far enough away that its nit common that I would be in the area. They have "stuff" but for the most part, we have the same "stuff" so why go there when it was quicker and shorter to go here. But EVCS has a monster presence in Oregon so thought it was a good idea to have them as a backup. 

So off we went on our 300 mile journey to the Eastern Side of the Cascades with... 75% charge.

A bit down the road, we were looking ok for our first stop down the road at The Ridgefield Cafe  to fuel us and the car. 

For whatever reason, Ryland only eats hard boiled eggs so I got 4 eggs over easy. This charge went only to 85% and used most of my allowance from EVCS (9.99 a month for first 30 kwh then 39 cents/kwh after.  A fair deal. 

Plusses here; Service was fast but it was a Thursday so was expecting it to be. We plugged in, ordered, ate and were back at the car in 30 mins 42 seconds gaining 22.5 KWH. A near perfect charge stop on both ends! 

So off we went and after that big breakfast, I needed a nap. Keep in mind, we were on the road by 9:30 AM but I had gone to bed at 4 AM but I had it covered! 

Next stop; Mill City Oregon a place I had used before on our 10 Fall Hike at Silver Falls State Park which I also blogged but that was mostly pix with only a dash of EV added. But this would be the first test of the Blue Dot app. We arrived and as always, we had our choice of 4 of 4 stations. Now you know why I like this place! 

I launched the app, plugged in and hit charge now and...nothing. App kept spinning. I then realized I had very poor cell service here. Since it was a Chargepoint, using NFC would have automatically activated my Chargepoint app and I would not have gotten the discount. Mind you the other reason I like this location is off peak rates are 30 cents/kwh but it was way too early in the day for that.  

So after an extensive back and forth with chat support complicated by cell service bouncing between 5G, 4G and...well ZERO G, it was getting rather time consuming and we were in full sun and it was pretty warm. I finally gave up, and decided to chance what little range I had left (just under 40 miles) and move to the next station EVCS that was just under a mile away.  Now that I think of it, there were other reasons why I liked this stop. Needless to say, my first impression of Blue Dot wasn't good. 

So 2 mins later, we plug into the lone EVCS station and it pretty much works exactly as advertised. I also notice I am back on 5G... but even that didn't matter as the store across the parking lot had wi fi so I was covered either way. 

Again we were in full sun but the store had a full variety of food so ice cream it was! This proved to be a disastrous decision as we were walking back, I was stepping over this 10 inch curb only to realize about halfway over that it was actually a 12 inch curb and I literally fell flat on my face throwing my phone onto the pavement in the process. The phone not only survived but came out of it without a scratch. My face wasn't nearly so lucky. 

 The charge gave us 21.36 kwh costing $5.41 putting a total cost on the trip of $15.40 after adding in the $9.99 subscription cost. 

This was more than enough to get us to Bend which also had a few Blue Dot "enabled" stations we could try. The location downtown near the river we checked out twice in our 5 days there but it was generally full of Teslas using adapters so not much going on there for us but the Hyundai dealership was a few miles closer to our Air BnB and it was always available. 

So I pull in and there are 2 stations, one blocked by a dealership gasser (weird...) but the other one was open and naturally its the handicap spot but... plug is a plug so I launch the app, plug in and hit start charge with a small sense of dread and the car started charging so fast I can't say it took more than 3 seconds!  Impression level is on the rise! 

Did I mention you get a sign up bonus making your first charge pretty much free with a $10 credit covering the first 33 kwh?  Made me wish  I had run the SOC down more but I wasn't sure how much driving I would be doing and didn't want to charge up too much either so only grabbed 25.11 kwh in 37 mins. 

But that was more than I wanted as Blue Dot doesn't have termination of charge in the app so it must be done at the station...something I have no experience doing. I always terminated thru the Chargepoint app.  So I attempted to stop the charge but sunlight combined with a less than responsive touch screen made it very difficult to stop,  Several times I got the stop charge button to appear but couldn't activate it. Eventually a salesman noticed me and came out and was able to get the charge stopped but even he had issues. 

As it turned out, the location was nearly perfect for the many events we attended being pretty much in the center of things sort of. This was my first trip to Bend since the mid 90's and I easily say I didn't recognize much simply because IT WASN'T HERE! The Bend I remember was surrounded by farms and 90% of the town was within a mile of the river.  The Bend we were in now was a sprawling network of housing developments, shopping enclaves and restaurants connected by the multitude of roundabouts that has transformed the town of Bend not only into of city of 100,000+ people but now they had a "metro" area exceeding a quarter million people! 

Over the next few days we charged 17.53 kwh for $5.25, and 10.01 kwh for $3.00

On the last charge, we were doing a wind up of the weekend celebration surrounding my niece's wedding and only wanted enough charge to be able to plug into the Air BnB at 10 amps 120 volts using the modified EVSE I got so many years ago. It was after 8 PM and the dealership was abandoned. So plugged in, launched Blue Dot and started charging away. Although the place "seemed" closed, the lobby lights were all on and I had to pee so I walked in, used the bathroom and walked out and there was obviously no one in the building. By now, it was getting pretty dark so wondering if someone forgot to lock up? 

Either way, when I reached the SOC I wanted, I noticed that the screen had been cleaned and now the touch response was perfect! It was also after sundown so guessed that helped. 

BUT... the other thing that caught my eye was off peak charging was only 21 cents/kwh and I thought I would be paying much less than 30 cents/kwh since the Blue Dot app mentioned 20% off charging rates so 20% off the 30 cents? That would be awesome! 

But, not to be. Blue Dot still charged me 30 cents/kwh so moral of that story is check Chargepoint pricing for a possible lower off peak rate. FYI; I don't think I have seen any station in WA do this but it seems to be common in OR. 

The next morning, we finally got out of town after eating a MONSTER breakfast at a great local restaurant in Bend. Decided to take the more direct route home up 97 and crossing the Cascades on highway 26 thru the Mt Hood National Forest. 

Was hoping to make it to Vancouver but personal needs dictated an earlier stop so it was the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Hall near Portland instead. Several Chargepoints that were immediately responsive to the Blue Dot app. These stations were new or "new looking"  and the touchscreens worked easily. 

This would not be the case for the station closest to my temporary home; Fast Fuel in Olympia. At just over a mile away, I thought it would be a great place to charge but there are two stations but only one appears on the Blue Dot app and it went thru 4 days of being off line for some reason necessitating a Charge Point charge at least once.  During the time it was not communicating with Blue Dot the stations were unused and functional thru Chargepoint so....

But these stations were older and the touchscreens beat up so I quickly realized my only option to terminate the charge was flipping the breaker which was conveniently located near by and unlocked. I did check thru the Charge point app and both stations were off line for only a few minutes at most.  Obviously, this would be a problem if someone else is charging on the other station. 

Plusses; 

Cheap especially in WA where the better prices are 10-15 cents  per kwh higher w/o a subscription plan.

Availability;  Having access to EVgo and Chargepoint gives make finding a location  easy

I should add that the Blue Dot app provides discounts and perks covering all kinds of other things but I have not really looked into those and I will unlikely be using any of them as I have those perks thru other financial vehicles so... 

Negatives; 

Interface. Blue Dot has no control of the station thru the app.  This is an obvious problem since the entire process has to rely on cellular service. Chargepoint uses NFC so they are perfectly operational in cellphone dead zones. Blue Dot wont work. 

Money; Some see this as negative but I don't.  Chargepoint currently just charges my credit card for every charge I get.  I have no balance on their books, etc.  This is not how I remember Chargepoint working in the past but that is how it works now.  EVCS is the same way. 

Recommendations;

At 30 cents/kwh if you rely on public DC charging frequently, this is a very good deal but doesn't eliminate the need for a backup charge plan as my trip proved. I started with $100 on my account and still have $81.57 left so it will be a while before my Blue Dot adventure ends but I think its a worthy app to investigate. Some have reported great success will no issues so its very dependent on the network you have to use.