I've Made a Huge Mistake

You probably don’t recall – I certainly don’t – that at one point I proclaimed, on this very space, that buying an electric car was an actof stupidity. Leasing rather than buying an EV is vastly preferable in many ways:

• Less exposure to questionable resale values
•  Less exposure to questionable long-term reliability
• Subsidized lower monthly payments
•  Keeps you in the newest battery technology

I was holding out for Mitsubishi's new Wedge-Shaped-Object

Only a very stupid person would buy an electric car. I just so happen to be a very stupid person, and so it should surprise nobody that I recently found myself at a dealership, purchasing an electric car.

Specifically, I bought the Leaf I had already been driving for 30 months, which had about 6 months left on the lease. Why? Because math.

You can't argue with the truth.

NMAC (Nissan Monkey Accounting Cooperative) called me up as my lease was nearing completion. I was offered a large sum of money - $7500 – off the residual of the lease if I would please, pretty please, buy it instead of turning it in. My payoff amount, just $14,800 including the six remaining payments on the lease, meant I could walk out of the dealership with a 2 year old car, with under 25,000 miles, for just over $7,000. That's a deal even Bixby Snyder could get behind. 

The primates also threw in a free shirt.

For me, this was a great deal, but does it make sense for Nissan?  By offering so much off the lease buyout, Nissan might be trying to stem the flow of used Leafs (Leaves?) entering the market to shore up their already terrible resale value. On the flip side, Nissan might be shooting themselves in the foot by selling a very inexpensive used Leaf to those ending their leases, instead of trying to get them into a new Leaf.

2017 Nissan Leaf (artist's rendering)

Whatever the thinking, I found it hard to pass up the bargain, so I took it. The sum total of down payment, dealer fees, lease payments, monkey t-shirt swag, and residual ends up being just under $15,000. Not a bad price to pay for a brand new 2013 Nissan Leaf SV - less than half the original MSRP. Enough savings to splurge for a new vinyl wrap.

My daughter preferred Twilight Sparkle, but it's my car dammit, so I went with Fluttershy. 

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

Sweet Jesu, I’m back.

After a series of setbacks, a physician has finally cleared your dear blogger to resume scrivening. What has happened to me, you may ask justifiably. Read on for a tale of woe, and I will share what I know.

Nearly 2 years ago I undertook a project, attempting to mate the drivetrain of a Nissan Leaf with the remarkable shell of the Mitsubishi Bean-Shaped-Car (or was it Car-Shaped-Bean?). 

(Mitsubishi Mi-EV)

 

Understandably, these plans went nowhere, due a complete and total lack of understanding on my part of the finer points of engineering, product design, and reality in general. I ended up out of the energy to keep up even this meager blog, much like a Nissan Leaf being slowly overtaken by a yellow turtle within a deflector shield.

 

My Leaf-Related Experiences

If you trudged through the drivel above, I now present to you an accounting of mechanical problems I have actually encountered in 30 months of Nissan Leaf stewardship.  

1. For the second time, in sub-zero weather (that’s Fahrenheit, you socialist Canadians), the heater gave up the ghost. Once again it required a week of dealer care to fix, and I’d be wary of how much it would cost to replace when out of warranty. I would guess, based on pure speculation, that the replacement of the heater would run around $3000 USD.
2. Around the same time, a front control arm assembly became obnoxiously squeaky, and required replacement, and less than a year later, ominous clunks and squeaks are once again emanating from the recesses of whatever linkages of struts, springs, and devil’s machination with which the Leaf suspends itself. 
3. Annoyingly, the driver’s side door is off-kilter, and doesn’t seem to seat properly. 
4. And hanging over the whole experience is an eerie whirring and whistling sound from the electric drive, which the mechanic assures me they can’t duplicate, and is totally normal anyway, and WILL I PLEASE SHUT UP!

So with all these problems, and the previous post about the idiocy of buying an EV when lease rates are the far better deal, I must be looking for a new lease deal right? In an upcoming post, we’ll discuss the EV options that have become available, and some that hang on the horizon.