Unsellable. That’s what my 2011 Nissan Leaf — a vehicle that I bought for $2000 and which only has about 30 miles of EV range (in the city) left due to a severely-degraded battery — seemed like. Who wants a car that can only reliably drive for 15 minutes on the highway before requiring a two-hour recharge? I was convinced I’d be stuck with this machine forever, and while I ultimately did manage to pawn the thing off, getting to that resolution was a nightmare.
When I moved to LA, I may have gone a bit overboard on the project cars, especially given that I really didn’t have an understanding of what my living/relationship/workload situation would be. I bought a Nash Metropolitan, a Nissan Leaf, a World War II Jeep, a Jeep Wrangler YJ, A Willys CJ-3B, a Pontiac Aztek, two BMW i3s, and… man I hope that’s all. My god that’s a huge list.
Needless to say, that’s too many cars, so I’m axing a few of them.
At Least I Got Some Content Out Of It
I already ditched the Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle I brought from Michigan; now it was time to ditch the Leaf, which is basically a paperweight that has left me in a lurch — and even stranded — far, far too many times. Seriously, look at this misery.
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The Nissan Leaf was initially meant to donate its EV components to the World War II Jeep I bought for $85, but that project isn’t happening, and that Nissan Leaf is just sitting in the Galpin employee lot, taking up space. So it’s gotta go. I’m a little bummed I don’t have time for the EV swap, but at the same time, I’m happy with all the wacky content I got out of this thing, even if hundreds of thousands of anti-EV extremists used it as fodder for their anti-ev rants:
Heck, this crappy Leaf even got me on Fox News!:
Selling This Car Online Was A Nightmare
I bought the Leaf about a year ago for $2000. My power company gave me a $1000 rebate under the condition that I keep the car for 20 months. I’ve sold it about 10 months in, meaning I’ll have to give back $500. So basically, I paid $1500 for the car. That’s what I wanted for the vehicle, but it didn’t quite happen. Honestly, the whole sale was a shitshow. Here’s my Facebook Marketplace listing (I’m sensitive to the fact that some of these folks likely just didn’t have the funds and needed a way to get to work; I wish them well):
Here’s my Offerup listing:
First off, there were the standard dumb-messages that have turned so much of thete internet into a deeply frustrating automotive marketplace. Lots of “Hi, is this available?” messages with no reply and lots of people offering to pay a sum significantly less than what I was asking:
One guy tried pulling the “It’s gonna cost me INFINITY dollars to fix that fender” classic bargaining card:
Lots of people made offers but never came through:
But mostly, what I noticed was a lack of understanding, not just about how EVs work, but also about how rebates work. This guy asked me if he could drive to Vegas. I made it very, very clear that he cannot.
This person just didn’t know how the used EV rebate worked:
d
Then there was my conversation with Teniesha, who seemed legitimately interested until I actually talked out of buying my car!:
I had to be honest, here. Teniesha lives in Long Beach, and her poor daughter is about to get a car for college — and that car is going to be a vehicle that can maybe do 30 miles of EV range with the AC off and driving super carefully (35 if she’s a master efficient-driver)? And once the car is dead, it takes two hours to charge just to get you back to 30 miles of range? Forget about it. I was feeling sorry for her already, and I just couldn’t saddle that poor child with this dastardly machine.
I Finally Sold It, But Even That Wasn’t Easy
In the end, I only felt comfortable selling the car to a man named Richard, and that’s because he’s already owned a Nissan Leaf with a degraded battery, so I figured he knew what he was in for. He wanted the car for his daughter, who had recently gotten into a crash in her own low-range Leaf; Richard was happy with its crash performance.
He even sent me a video of a Nissan Leaf owner showing how much range the guess-o-meter shows when fully charged. He asked me to take a similar video so he had an idea of how badly the battery was degraded.
I sent Richard a video of me showing what range the dashboard indicated at full charge, and he responded with:
I told him it could, but only if you drove carefully; to make sure he was 100% onboard, I recorded me driving over 25 miles:
Richard wanted to buy my car, and after his initially $1,200 offering, then $1,400 offering, he agreed to $1,500. He then asked me this:
I was so desperate to get rid of this paperweight, I agreed to meet him halfway between where the car was, Van Nuys, and where he lives, Hesperia — 100 miles away. I told him I could meet him in San Dimas, which was appropriate because Dimas sounds like “dumbass,” which I was for suggesting this.
Richard hadn’t even demanded it, but again, my desperation meant I would do almost anything just to get rid of the car without losing too much money (I am, after all, a cheap bastard).
We were to meet at 7:45 AM in San Dimas, which meant I had to leave Van Nuys — where the car was parked — at 5:45 on a Sunday morning. I could drive 30 miles (which would take an hour on surface streets) to Pasadena, then charge the car halfway for about a half an hour, then drive another 30 minute to San Dimas. All in, it would take me two hours.
Of course, that didn’t work out as I planned. Because of the uphill grade, the Leaf only just made it to Pasadena roughly 24 miles away, and then I couldn’t for the life of me find a fast charger since nobody uses CHAdeMO plugs anymore, meaning I had to use regular level-2 J1772 chargers. This normally wouldn’t be a huge issue except — and this blew my mind when I found out — the Leaf can only charge up to 3.3 kW with a J1772 charger. That’s glacial.
That’s literally 10 miles of range per hour. I needed 20 miles in 30 minutes.
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In the end, I messaged Richard and asked him to drive from San Dimas to Pasadena to pick up his car with his trailer. I lopped $100 off my $1,500 price, but finally — after over a month on the market for under two grand — the Leaf was gone. And with it, so were the headaches.
I would have towed it to San Dimas and saved the hassle. Galpin has to have a truck that you could borrow..
Time to turn over a new Leaf.
Wow, I really struck some nerves! Tons of comments! Mostly bad, but hey Libbie’s, what ya gonna do but hate, that is your peace to the earth fake assed mantra. First off, I love everybody, Secondly, I’m neither R or D, I’m independent. I want in the middle politics like the good old days. David, you sold a golf cart with a roof and doors, maybe if you had advertised it as such with its shitty 30 mile range I wouldn’t have gotten mad to begin with. As far as me and Cali goes, as was pointed out to me as being the proper nick name for it goes….. I have several family members in both CA and CO of 40+ years seen their life ruined buy this liberal bullshit voting. When I bitch about Cali people moving here to TX, all I ask is be smart and vote in a way that won’t ruin the state you just left. And to that other A-hole commenter, yes, CA recruits the top talent from all over, and then, A-hole, they have them move to TX where they just left CA and moved their company headquarters to. All of you haters are more than welcome to go fuck yourselves. Probably will be the first action you’ve had in years!!!!! And David, I left my subscription because y’all lied to me. I’m still waiting for the article of your adventures living in an Aztec. Y’all got too big for your britches, went corporate, and lost a loyal subscriber
It looks you’re the main “A-hole” here.
If you’ve seen the other articles going out, David and others have been busy! They just recently fixed up and took the Aztec out to Monterey. It takes some time to plan out logistics of living in a car and still make it interesting. If you’re jumping ship because an article didn’t come out according to your schedule then maybe you aren’t really a “loyal subscriber”
I can only imagine how they react at parties when someone plays music they don’t like.
Then again, they probably don’t get invited to parties.
I go to a lot of parties, asshat, and I’m usually in the DJ booth helping pick out the music. I endure the songs I don’t like, I know the next one will be one I like. No matter if I like the music or not, I dance along. May your next car be a Lada that requires a quart of 10-40 every 50 miles to stay running.
Not an Asshole, get people to subscribe on the premise of living in an Aztec for a week, your ass better deliver before the next sub fee is auto drafted from my banking account. Fraud. Just fraud if you don’t deliver on the promise. That fucking Aztec doesn’t need to be fixed up and the star of a car show before you live in it. Fraud, Fraud, Fraud. Ps, I make my living from dealing with insurance fraud and fighting it daily. If you’re on Medicare, don’t fall for the money card commercial scheme. Those folks are merely fishing to steal your info FYI. I deal with the aftermath daily. Maybe that’s why I’ve become such an unbearable old fuck???
Was it really necessary to cut and paste this comment multiple times?
Did it annoy you????? Yes…????? mission accomplished
oh, BTW, mommy wants you to contribute at least 10 dollars towards the next internet bill, and why haven’t you taken the trash out yet? Also, you will be doing your own laundry from now on.
Did it annoy me? No.
You know how junk yards work, right? They’ll give you $1500 for the wheels, seats and headlight assemblies, they also come pick the car up. Also ton of DIY enthusiasts would love that battery with only 30 miles range, along with the rest of the electric drivetrain. But have you ever tried to sell a car that isn’t usable? Most cars with a bad clutch could be limped 30 miles a day and still be used, but if you advertised and sold it like that people would have problems. Of course you are going to have issues if you try and sell it like a useable vehicle.
Q: How much was a new battery going to cost, and what would its range be?
$4K for a 24kWh (60-85 miles) or $8K for a 40kWh (100-120 miles)
Thanks.
It’s one thing if it someone’s ONLY car, and spending $8K for a battery that should last — what, another 8 years? — that is a decent enough expense for a car that takes someone to work and back.
For a tenth vehicle, like DT’s? Forget it.
Also, you’d think that a bigger battery would cost less per mile range? Economies of scale don’t work in a Leaf? The laws of Physics cease to work in your vehicle? Maybe they are magic batteries from Jack in the Beanstalk?
Paying twice for less than twice the range. That is stupid.
Thanks for the cheap Leaf content David, I enjoy the educmacation and the entertainment.
No surprise how bad the EVs are selling in the secondhand market, especially in Germany.
We had Sunday lunch at a posh restaurant last Saturday. The hotel-restaurant owner came round to chat with us. He told us that he vowed he would never buy another EV ever again. His first (and only) EV, a 2022 Mercedes-Benz EQC, was listed eight months ago, and nobody was even interested in his EQC despite several price reductions.
The sales of new EVs in Germany nosedived almost 70% this year as compared to last year. Volkswagen is hurting so much financially that it has reduced the investments on EVs and cut down the EV productions in Germany. To make the matter worse, Volkswagen has indicated its plan of shutting down all factories in Germany by 2029, laying off half of 200,000-strong workforce.
The fake green agenda is the worst thing ever happened to the modern civilisation…and Germany. No wonder Alternative for Germany (AfD) has made an enormous progress in the recent elections as Germans are exasperated about the legacy political parties ignoring the reality and doing everything to destroy Germany and its way of life.
“Yes, this consumer good wears out so we should definitely put actual NAZIS in power in response”
Holy shit dude…just….holy shit.
“The fake green agenda is the worst thing ever happened to the modern civilisation…and Germany.”
I think 6 million dead Jews might disagree, but thanks for telling us you don’t think so.
Sadly, one of my great Aunts was a holocaust survivor. Her stories were true, she was not a liar. She cried every time she talked about it. She lost her mom and dad, and 3 siblings. I will never buy anything German to this day because of her testimony about being in that camp. She was spared because she played awesome piano at 6 years old..
I pray to God you’re a bot, grow up.
I am not a bot. I will lose as much sleep tonight worrying about what you think about me as I did last night. That equals zero winks of sleep lost. I am grown, BTW, A boomer set in his ways and not swayed by young ignorant people. Just so you know, ignorant is not an insult.
God,the horrific facebook marketplace.
From now on my ads will start with “make me think you’re a human.Clicking that “is it available” button will only get you ignored” (Or something like that)
Isnt it weird that people will press that button then ignore any response? At first i wondered if facebook botts were sending them.Maybe as a way of annoying people who have dead ads up still.
The other possibility was some kind of scam attempt.Nearly all had weird foreign names with next to zero facebook backstory.But what was their intent?No one has ever tried to lure me to a second stage so i dont know.
I did once have a seller blow off an arranged meet ,then noticed someone following me later so there are crooks on there,i just cant work out their M.O
They are probably trying to lure you into a crypto scam or something stupid like that
So one thing I’m not sure I understand – was there an expectation that the experience of selling an unsellable paperweight should be identicall to selling the last off-the-assembly line 1991 Euro spec Norwegian market CRX EE8 with 7000 stock miles on the odo and a clean standard US title ?
Pasadena’s Paseo mall has an outdoor parking garage with a bank of Chademo-equipped chargers on the top floor. (While waiting, maybe buy something at their Starbucks to get parking validation.) There are a couple other Chademo places in Pasadena, too. The PlugShare app has filters to show things like Chademo locations.
But it would likely not make it to the top floor to get the charge.