Trading in a 2020 Prius Prime for a 2020 Leaf... Should I?

Agree completely and to be clear I am not trying to talk you out of it, just sharing our experience in owning an (older) Leaf, which may or may not be relevant. Anytime you can change for a “newer” vehicle (not model year but in-service use) for zero cost due to rebates/incentives (or even save some money) it is certainly worth considering, just make sure you are not letting go of an efficient and rock solid reliable vehicle for one that may be less-so.... but ultimately, I don’t think there is a bad choice here, there are different advantages on both sides.

Good luck with the decision!

 

We all do something we regret in life. Trading in a prius for a Nissan will be your one thing.

 

As someone who knows someone who owned a Leaf, if you can foot the bill and don’t get “range anxiety” - do it. Just remember you’ll likely need a second vehicle to drive for very long trips especially if you are in the northeast or southeast.

 

FWIW, are you familiar with Matt Ferrell’s YouTube channel “Undecided”? He’s talked about road tripping in his Tesla Model 3 from his home base in the Boston vicinity. In particular, talking about visiting his parents, road-tripping from Boston; I can’t recall to where right off, but he seems to find it no issue.

I’m not sure whether these videos in particular address that concern, but these are at least broadly along those lines anyway:

 

I traded in my 17 Prime for a Leaf 2 years ago. I just replaced it with the Longer Range one last month so I say go for it. You can probably get by on level 1 charging if only 40 miles a day. I wouldn't invest in the wiring now until you see how you do on level 1.

 

Thanks for the update. IMHO, it didn't make sense to trade a car that you didn't really need for one that you also didn't really need but would depreciate faster than the PP. I plan to sit back and wait for Toyota to make enough RAV4 Primes so I don't have to kiss their nice person to buy one.

 

Congrats on the wise decision! It is an excellent conclusion to come to, and not an easy one to give up the convenience. However you are absolutely right that most people really do not need two vehicles these days since many are working from home. I have thought about the same, but unfortunately public transit in our area is non-existent as an alternative, and though we drive little these days, I do need a normal range vehicle for my job (charging infrastructure is not quite there yet in Toronto either to rely on a BEV alone, IMO), and if we let the Leaf go we will take a beating on selling/trade (not to mention our only vehicle remaining with high mileage), particularly since EV rebates are non-existent in Ontario any more, it would be expensive to get back in with another BEV. Oh, and also my wife would surely never give up her car, LOL. So, status quo it is for us!

 

Salamander_King thank you for posting about your experience selling your vehicle to Carvana. That is a great option for selling your used vehicle! I didn't know about that option.

One thing about the current situation and the pandemic is the many options that the consumer has now to navigate the car buying/selling experience.

Believe Car Dealers are going to be less and less able to hold Car Buyers hostage.

It is a wonderful change where through the internet the Car Buyer is in complete charge and the Dealers had better march to his tune if they want to complete the sale.

 

Past owner of Leaf here. I love the car. One big drawback though is the poor engineering behind the battery cooling. It's inferior to Bolt and I presume also the Prius Prime--and way behind the Tesla. The major ramification of this is that the battery degrades more quickly on the Leaf than those other vehicles. I know this from personal experience, as well as by looking at EV data from commercial fleets--which is part of my regular day job. I can't explain why, but I still love that car nonetheless.

 

Out of curiosity, what year was your Leaf and how fast did your battery degrade? We have a 2016 with the 30kwh battery with 65k Km (~40k mi) over a period of a month shy of 5 years, and we have lost just one capacity bar so far, which I think is reasonable, though I expect the second to disappear any day... what was your experience?

(I don’t mean to derail the thread, but it seems kinda concluded anyway... )

 

For me, it comes down to range anxiety. Or perhaps I should say, lack of range flexibility. Sometimes we decide to make an additional trip--like: "hey let's go to the winery." With the ICE, no problem. Until charging stations are available in a robust way--I will always have an ICE.

 

It was a 2011. The battery capacity was down about 40% after five years--although I probably could have down a better job of managing the charge cycle.

I do remember that I could only drive from Walnut Creek to San Mateo if I fully charged the car and drove at 53 mph on highway--making many new friends along the way of course.

IIRC, Nissan offered a discounted replacement for that year's (and a few following years') battery using an improved battery, which is probably stock in your model year I assume.

Here's some good news: Leaf outperforms Focus EV. This is a slide from an analysis I did in 2019.

 

Yeah, new 40 and 62 kWh batteries are lasting much longer than the first generation. There are some 2018s and 2019s with over 100,000 miles and still have not lost a bar.

I'd like to know more about your Focus EV vs Leaf analysis. I had a 2015 Focus EV.

 

My company sells range-increasing technology to municipal and state fleet operators for fueled and electric vehicles. These government customers often send us before/after data to verify performance gains. Here's the Leaf vs Focus results that we saw on the most recent analysis.

 

Sorry, I missed this message last week... thanks for the reply. Your decision makes a lot of sense, I would have done the same in your situation.

Hopefully by the time things start getting back to “normal” and you are ready for another daily driver, the RAV4 Prime will be more readily available.

Cheers!