How to Get a Used Nissan Leaf for Free!

Nissan Leaf
A Nissan Leaf At the Newseum. Creative Commons License, here is the original

How much would you pay to enter a raffle for a free used car? What would the odds have to be to get you to give it a shot? What if the entry fee was simply to give a loan to a friend that you were sure would be paid back and the odds that you’d win the raffle were 100%? Sounds like an insanely good deal that can’t be real, right? Well, if you drive another car 20-50 miles every day and have a way to charge an electric car cheaply such a deal is completely real. All you have to do is buy a cheap used Nissan Leaf and replace your daily around town driving with it. The savings of an EV over a gas car will more than pay for the cost of buying it after a few short years.

Used Leafs are Insanely Cheap

Right now the cheapest used Leaf on Autotrader is going for just $4900, and there are plenty available for under $8,000.

Used Leaf For Sale On AutoTrader
Used Leaf For Sale On AutoTrader

How is a car that originally sold for over $35,000 going for under $5,000 just 6 years later? Well there are a couple reasons for this. First, no one actually paid $35k for a Leaf. At the very least they got the $7,500 federal tax credit, and they could have gotten a state tax credit, cash back from Nissan, or a lowered price from the dealer. Still, the cheapest someone got this car new was probably around $23k. Why has that price fallen almost 80%? Two main reasons: rapidly improving EV technology and battery pack degradation.

EV Tech Has Gotten Soooo Much Better

Over the past few years electric cars have gotten both better and cheaper. This is largely due to the rapidly falling price of batteries. The 2012 Leaf had a base price over over $35k for just 75 miles of range. A 2017 Chevy Bolt had a base MSRP of $37.5k with a range of 238 miles. Hyundai has started selling their Kona EV with 258 miles of range for $36.5k and Tesla has finally started selling a Model 3 with 220 miles of range for $35k (you can spend $43k for a 3 that goes 325 miles per charge). Range anxiety has long been an issue with electric vehicles and with all of these amazing long range models available right now people might be forgetting the original Nissan Leaf with its relatively miniscule 73 miles of range. These new EVs are also much quicker with 0-60mph’s that blow the doors off an old Leaf. A Tesla 3 Performance gets to 60mph in 3.3 seconds while a 2012 Leaf did it in 9.7 seconds when brand new. Now, 7 years later, a 2012 Leaf will be even slower due to battery degradation.

Battery Degradation

A 2012 Leaf originally only had 73 miles of range and 207 lb-ft of torque at a stop. As the batteries degrade both the range and the max torque that can be put out will drop. Data from used Leaf’s suggest that 2012 packs lose a bit over 3% of their charge each year. This is a lot worse than packs from more advanced cars like Tesla’s, which only lose around 1% of range per year. This means that the battery in a 2012 Nissan Leaf will be fairly degraded, probably under 80% of its original capacity. The ad I found selling one for $4,900 noted that it has only “8 of 12 bars of capacity for a range of about 50 miles”, which sounds about right. You could spend a few bucks to buy Leaf Spy Pro to get a more detailed report on the battery, too.

The more miles that are put on a Leaf the faster its battery degrades. This guy put 150k miles on his leaf over 4 years and found that his range dropped by half. Half of a 2012 Leaf’s battery is still over 35 miles a day though. If your daily commute is less than that (or you can charge at work to double your range) then take the lower price and run with it all the way to the bank.

How Much Does a Leaf Save Vs A Gas Car?

So far we’ve shown that you can get a used Leaf for a fairly low price. But, you can find used gas cars for low prices, too. The Nissan Versa Note is very similar to a Leaf and there’s a used 2015 with 55k miles on it for just $4,795 on Autotrader right now. That car can travel hundreds of miles per tank and handle road trips, why not buy it instead? You certainly could, but that car lacks the two factors that make a Leaf so cheap to own: low fuel price and low maintenance costs.

Fuel Price Per Mile

Electric cars are just flat out more efficient than gas cars. A 2012 Nissan leaf was rated at 106 miles per gallon equivalent in the city! No mass production hybrid vehicle even comes close to that. When comparing the cost per unit of energy an electric car will save you money on fuel each mile relative to a gas car, despite electricity costing more than gas. Exactly how much depends on your local prices for gas and electricity and the mpg of the gas car you’re comparing.

The average price of a kWh of electricity for a residential customer in the US in December 2018 was 12.47 cents according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. New England, Alaska, Hawaii, and California drag this average up a lot, so if you don’t live in one of those areas you can expect to pay more like 11 cents per kWh. Even in a high price state like California you can get a big discount if you charge your car at night.

A new 2012 Leaf could drive over 4 miles per kWh, but an older Leaf battery pack may now only get 3.5 miles per kWh. At $0.11/kWh your fuel cost per mile for an old Leaf is 3.14 cents. A 2015 Versa Note gets 31 mpg in the city, so at $2.75/gallon you’re talking 8.9 cents per mile, almost 3 times more! And this is a fairly efficient gas car we’re talking about here. There are plenty of gas cars that get only 20 mpg in the city, costing a whopping 13.75 cents per mile. Even fuel for an efficient 51 mpg Prius costs 5.4 cents per mile, almost twice as much as a used Leaf.

Doing some quick subtraction we can see that every mile you drive a used Leaf saves you between 2.25 and 10.61 cents of fuel (obviously these numbers will change if your electricity or gas prices are different). Multiply this across 50,000 miles of driving and that’s already between $1,000 and $5,000 of savings on fuel alone. The Leaf I found above only cost $4,900 to begin with so, if you’re driving a 20 mpg truck for around town commuting you can just stop reading this article right now and just go buy that Leaf! If you’re tooling around in a more sensible 30 mpg car the Leaf will still save you nearly $2,900 over 50k miles. That means the $4,900 car only costs $2,000, but that’s still not free. Luckily, there is one more way a Leaf saves you a ton of money.

Maintenance Savings

Electric cars are far simpler than their gas counterparts. A gasoline engine is a marvel of engineering with literally thousands of parts. These parts require lubrication (aka oil) and many need to be replaced over time. Over the life of a gas car you’ll likely be faced with thousands of dollars of maintenance costs. An electric motor is far simpler. It has no spark plugs, no fuel pumps, no O2 or camshaft sensors, no exhaust, no transmission (generally), and there isn’t even any oil that needs changing. The brakes in electric cars also last far longer. This is because most of the time the electric motor is used to slow the car through regenerative braking where the electric motor becomes a generator that slows the wheels and recharges the battery. Because of this many Leaf owners have never had to replace a single brake pad.

The main maintenance costs of a Leaf consist of replacing the tires and air filters. Of course your car can still get hit by things so cracked windshields and dented bumpers can happen if you’re unlucky. The biggest possible maintenance expense for a used Leaf would be to completely replace the battery pack. Doing this would be akin to replacing the whole engine in a gas car. Nissan offers a replacement battery pack for $5,499 plus labor. That seems like a hell of a lot for a $4,900 car, but if you do go that route it will probably add another 100,000 miles to the life of your Leaf. Nissan is also selling refurbished batteries for just $2,850, but so far that is only in Japan. In the end I think you should only buy a used Leaf if it’ll pay for itself before the battery dies. Then, when the battery does die you may well find that it is cheaper to replace it than to buy another car (hell, with battery prices consistently falling it may become even cheaper to replace an old pack).

As for non battery maintenance prices, this owner tracked his maintenance costs for 5 years and found he paid all of $150/year. This review of gas car maintenance costs pins a Versa’s annual maintenance costs around $600/year (my own used Versa cost me almost $900/year in service, so I guess I got unlucky). The cheapest vehicle in the list is the Prius, at $430/year and at the top end a Chrysler Sebring costs over $1,700/year in maintenance alone! That means you’ll save between $280 and $1,550 on maintenance each year by picking a Leaf. Assuming 10,000 miles driven each year that’s between 2.8 and 15.5 cents per mile.

How much you have to drive it to make it free?

So now we know how much we save per mile in fuel and how much we save per year in maintenance. The following chart shows how many miles you would have to drive the $4,900 Leaf to pay for its purchase price in savings. This table assumes gas costs $2.75/gallon, electricity costs $0.11/kWh, and that the annual maintenance costs found on yourmechanic.com came from an average of 10,000 miles of yearly driving.

CarFuel
Savings/Mile
Maintenance
Savings/Mile
Total
Savings/Mile
Miles till free
Prius2.352.85.1595,145
Versa5.754.59.551,578
Sebring10.615.526.118,773

As you can see it doesn’t take too many miles before the savings have paid for the purchase price. If you work 20 miles away from home and are currently driving a Versa there and back every weekday, 50 weeks a year, then the Leaf would pay for itself in just over 5 years of driving. If you’re doing that same commute in a Sebring then it would take less than 2 years! You can still keep that Versa or Sebring for road trips. Just driving the Leaf a few thousand miles around town each year will pay for its $4,900 purchase price and every additional mile you drive it instead of your less efficient car is just profit in your pocket.

But What About Lost Investment Income!

I hear someone way way in the back shouting about lost investment income. True, if you invested the $4,900 in stocks or bonds instead of buying a Leaf the money would likely be providing a return each year. Since the Leaf has a fairly guaranteed amount of savings I think it’s only fair to compare it to similarly safe investments. A 5 year CD from my credit union currently returns 3% so that seems like a reasonable comparison. If you’d put the $4,900 for the car into that CD instead you’d be earning $147 per year. That means that to be fair the first $147 the car saves you each year must be discounted.

How many miles you have to drive to save $147 depends on what car you’re replacing. If it’s a cheap Prius then you’re losing the first 2,800 miles you drive each year. Since it was already going to take 95k miles to pay for the Leaf vs the Prius then you’re adding over 30k miles to handle the lost interest. This would put our example $4,900 Leaf with 47k miles up over 175k miles which is probably more than its battery will last. Basically, if you already have a Prius and are purely thinking of price don’t buy a used Leaf to go along with it. You could still save money by selling the Prius and buying a used Leaf to replace it, but if you don’t have another car that might not enable the occasional long distance drives you want to do.

On the other hand the picture is much rosier for replacing miles from less efficient vehicle. The Versa only takes 1,500 miles a year to pay for lost interest. If you drive it 10k miles per year the payback period simply slides from 5 years to 6. The Sebring and similar high cost vehicles fare even better, still only needing under 2 years of replacement to pay for the used Leaf, even accounting for lost interest.

There may be other yearly fees where you live. Things like car registration or inspections that you need to add in to your personal math as well. There could also be savings, like lower insurance costs. Figure out how much these fixed costs will add each year and re-run the math for yourself.

Even Better If You Get Rid Of Your Old Car

So far I’ve been talking about the Leaf being free as an additional car added to your fleet. We’ve seen how for a car like the Prius though this isn’t true (unless gas prices spike again). But, because a used Leaf has a lower per mile cost than pretty much anything else, if you can completely replace another car with a Leaf then the Leaf will always win (unless your electric price is crazy high). If you’re a multi-car household and can get away with having a car that might only be able to drive 40 miles a day then it’s pretty much a no brainer to replace one of your cars with a cheap used Leaf.

Bikes Still Win

There is still at least one vehicle that costs less per mile than a used Leaf. I’m speaking, of course, of the humble bicycle. Basically nothing (except maybe walking) can beat the price per mile of a bike. This is actually why I haven’t bought a used Leaf yet, because I walk or bike the vast majority of trips I take under 20 miles. I understand that many people are too physically disabled to ride bikes, though. Others are simply too afraid to bike on their roads (though in reality biking is the safest), or are priced out of living within biking distance of their work/school/grocery store (though this is often due to underestimating the true cost of commuting). If I was disabled or had some unconquerable fear of biking then a used Leaf would definitely be in my garage.

Just Do It

Do the math yourself and see if you’re missing out, then go buy one of those cheap old Leafs before someone else who read this post scoops it up first!

Profit Greenly
Environmental Blogger at Rampant Discourse
Earnest pragmatist. Non-theist ascetic. Data aficionado. Matt is a new father who's spent too much time debating whether the plastic box his spinach came in is the perfect first birthday present for his baby, or just a good one.

This article has 13 Comments

  1. “beat the price per mile”

    I had a conversation with Paul, Aaron, Jessica, Miguel, and Gurkie about beating the price per mile of the bike. Five on one. They told me that the only way the bike wins out is if my time is worth nothing. It sometimes takes longer to bike than to drive. This definitely took me by surprise. I don’t think my time is worth nothing! I think maybe they don’t feel that biking has entertainment value in and of itself. Or maybe they don’t care about the environmental benefit? Or the health benefit?

    But, mostly I think it’s that they live too far away from their work and their kids’ schools. It’s hard, when you live in a place with free parking, and a highway-commute, to even consider a bike as a potential. For me it’s different for sure: I live 10 minutes away from my work, residential roads the whole way. The choice is obvious. In the cities during rush-hour it feels even more stark. Where you can regularly pass by all of the cars stuck in traffic.

    Any idea how to get them to see the light? I doubt anybody is going to move, but maybe there is some logical loop-hole I’m not considering.

    1. Thinking that time spent on a bike is money lost is a misconception that many have. The simplest comeback to this is that getting a decent amount of exercise every day improves your whole life. I know Paul is trying to be more fit now, and I’ve tried to push this angle with him, not sure if it’s been successful. If people are committed to the idea that time spent exercising is time wasted then it may be hard to get them to bike, which is where the idea of buying a used Leaf comes in. If you won’t bike, then you might as well drive around in a free electric car right?

      If people do accept that getting regular exercise is a real benefit to their life (as soooo many studies have shown) then their next challenge is to figure out how to get such exercise. Many Americans solve this by paying for gym memberships, or rec leagues, or running circles around their neighborhoods. I suggest that biking to get places you actually need to go (like work, or the store) is better than these options because if you’re replacing other exercise with it then it saves you time. This is because commuting to and from a gym/game takes time, and then the time spent exercising there is essentially wasted. The running circles around your neighborhood (or on a treadmill in your house) avoids wasting time commuting, but the time spent exercising still doesn’t get you anything. On a bike your workout transports you to a place you need to be, rather than just taking you back to where you started so you actually get a non health benefit for the time you spend exercising. The other benefit of making bike commuting a habit, is that it is far harder to skip out on than the gym or other exercise choices. If you go super hardcore and completely ditch the car (or go down to just one car that your spouse uses) then you really have no other option than to exercise on a bike to get places. This makes it the least avoidable workout there is, which for some people is a real benefit.

      Mr. Money Mustache has a number of good articles that lay out the huge economic and personal advantages of biking.
      http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/04/18/get-rich-with-bikes/
      http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/05/07/what-do-you-mean-you-dont-have-a-bike/

      And this one about the huge economic costs of living far from your work.
      http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/

      If someone out there is in need of a bike, I recommend a used road bike from craigslist for $300 or less. If you’re not comfortable with buying used then you might look at the Vilano Diverse 4.0. It has a carbon fiber belt drive instead of a chain (so you won’t ever need to oil a chain or get grease on your pants), an 8 speed shimano hub gear (this allows you to shift at a dead stop, which is nice for city riding, plus it is fully enclosed so less maintenance than a traditional sprocket setup), and shimano hydraulic disc breaks for great stopping power even in the rain. The rest of the bike is fairly cheap parts, but these three parts are worth more than the purchase price alone ($479 msrp, often goes on sale for $400), so you could still upgrade literally everything else and be getting a good deal. My wife is riding this bike to work now, and all we added was a rear rack, panniers and some lights. http://www.vilanobikes.com/vilano-diverse-4-0-urban-performance-hybrid-road-bike-belt-drive-8-speed-shimano-alfine.html

  2. I bought a 2012 Nissan Leaf last year and it serves as the second car for my family. Based on my experience I agree with nearly every aspect of your article. The only correction I have to point out is that Nissan no longer offers batteries for $5500 because they increased their battery costs to $7500+labor last year. This was a kick in the teeth for anyone driving old Leafs and the change was done without any notification from Nissan. Also, Nissan has stated they will not be able to offer discounted refurbished Leaf batteries because of EPA regulations. The vehicle is still able to meet my needs for now but eventually I’ll have to decide what to do about the battery. The biggest issue I’m currently facing is that the vehicles range is severely limited in the winter because of two factors. First, the battery has less capacity in the winter (seems to be about a 1/3 less) and second the heater takes a ton of energy. Overall, my range is cut in half during the winter. People should also consider their charging station availability at home when making this purchase.

    Regardless of the drawbacks I’m still happy with this purchase because it’s a great little car that saves a ton of money.

    1. Thanks for sharing your experience Cayle. It’s sad that Nissan has jacked up the price on replacing the batteries. With the constant drop of battery prices and the large number of older Leaf’s out there I wonder if a third party will come in and offer a more affordable solution? This has happened with old Priuses, but the larger pack on a Leaf, and smaller number of old cars probably makes it a bit tougher.

      As for the winter, you’re definitely right on that, and I probably should have mentioned it. If people go with my main recommendation of just adding a Leaf to their existing car fleet then this won’t be much of an issue as they can just drive their old car on days when it is too cold. If I were doing it, I’d test the range I got at different temperatures carefully and keep a thick coat and gloves in the car so I could drive home with no heat if the trip in took the battery down more than I had planned (maybe even pay for AAA for the first year I did it so I could get a free tow back to my house in the worst case). People who completely replace one of their existing cars with a Leaf will have the most trouble dealing with this issue, but there are certainly ways around it if you want to be on this most money saving of paths (public transport, carpooling, working from home, etc.).

  3. This post answered a lot of questions I’ve been obsessing over lately regarding used Leafs. Thanks so much, will stick to the bike even though we get -40 in the winter in my city!

    1. Great to hear that it was helpful. Biking is definitely the way to go if you can handle it, and extra props for doing it in the extreme cold (I was gonna ask C or F, but it turns out at -40 they’re the same!).

  4. Matt, thanks for the post. I’m currently mulling over this exact decision.

    I inherited a 2011 Crosstour EXL w/Navi (86k mi) that seems to be worth 9k-12k. It’s a guzzling V6, I think 21cit/27hwy. I’m thinking of selling it and buying a Leaf or Prius and pocketing the cash leftover for savings/investment.

    There’s a 2014 Leaf S in my area with 50k mi for <$6k. It’s like it’s a deal ordained by God to pop up right at this time. The only catch here is I’m gonna move to the city from the suburbs probably by the end of this year and probably won’t need it. Now where I live is rent free but I do need a car. I don’t put many miles in it. And I do have a bike also but it’s only barely useful in town.

    Anyway, I’m wondering if it’s worth it to get the Leaf for what may end up being a short time. Any advice?

    1. You’ve got an interesting decision ahead Chris. I think whatever you do, dropping the Crosstour is the right move. At the very least you convert it to a Leaf. This lets you invest the $3-6K price difference in the stock market right now (or against any high interest debt you have for an even more guaranteed return, or saved in cash for first month’s rent and security deposit on your new place in the city). At the same time it’ll greatly drop the price per mile of your driving giving you additional savings until you move.

      When you finally do end up moving and go to sell the Leaf it will have depreciated a bit, but it’s already depreciated a ton, how much lower can it go? There’s a floor to the Leaf price because eventually someone will just buy it to put the battery into a DIY home battery system (look at the price of brand name one https://www.earthtechproducts.com/humless-off-grid-12000-wh.html) and sell the rest for parts. If your Crosstour is really worth 9-12k then it seems likely that it will depreciate more in the time before you move simply because it’s at a higher price now and thus has further to fall.

      Getting good money for a used car can be hard though. If you sell the Crosstour now and then later have to sell the Leaf that’s double the work, and also double the risk of having to accept a bad price. If your car use is truly quite low and you only need it a few days a month and are going to move soon you could consider selling the Crosstour and not buying another car at all. In the few instances you actually need a car you can either rent one (Enterprise often has crazy low weekend rental deals, the Turo app has a bunch or cars to rent all over, and Zipcar and other car sharing services still exist in a lot of places) or take a rideshare like Lyft or Uber. I’d have to know exactly how far you drive and how often to calculate whether this is a good financial choice for you, but going car free can save you a ton. Without any car you suddenly don’t have to pay car insurance, tax, or registration fees. When you add this to the money you can make investing the sale price of your car you’ll probably find that you can do a lot of car rentals each month and still come out ahead. You could even put a couple thousand into a cheap electric motorbike (https://electrek.co/2019/04/04/review-csc-city-slicker-electric-motorcycle/) if you need to replace a lot of short trips but need to go much faster than a bicycle to be safe.

      1. Those are all great ideas. At the least I’ll sell the Crosstour. My plan is to sell it and pocket it all or sell it and pocket the difference (after buying another vehicle) for savings/investment. But I’m gonna calculate my potential monthly Turo/Uber/Lyft expensives as an alternative to that. And getting a motorcycle is tempting option too. It works for summer/fall NY weather and I’ve been pining to learn to ride one recently.

        Anyway, good advice. That was really thorough and I appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on what my best options would be, Matt. I’m still leaning toward the second option I mentioned.

  5. Glad to be of service. If you’re thinking of going car free you might find my other post on the subject useful. https://rampantdiscourse.com/car-free-tempe-baby/

    Also, I noticed that you said NY just now. If the city you’re planning to move to soon is NYC you might do better with an electric bike/scooter that you can take up to your apartment with you. I have a friend who owns a motorcycle in NYC and pays like $10k/year just for a tiny parking spot for it. If you want to get really weird you could buy one of those self balancing 1 wheel scooters from amazon. The cool thing about those is that you can easily throw them in a bag to take on the subway. The other option in NYC is the bike share, scooter, and ebike networks. These certainly end up costing more than buying a single ride after a few years, but they eliminate the worry of your bike getting stolen and paying for parking while ensuring that you always have a ride wherever you are in the city.

  6. Hey, just to follow up, I got a Prius Plugin and sold the Honda Crosstour. I’m investing the money. So all my electric local driving around 10 miles is done with free charging. COVID-19 killed my NYC moving plans. But my Prius is setup to car camp.

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