Hi Scotty,
I usually hear about the low maintenance cost of electric cars (which is quite true as you don't deal with oil and filter change), but I rarely had heard about the possible repair costs (other than the battery degradation). I had bought a 2012 leaf in 2017 for about $15k (in Sweden), which was working fine and I did not had any complaints until suddenly its on-board charger (that charges the DC high voltage battery from AC (120-220V) power) died. Nissan cited a price of $3000 just for the on-board charger and as its replacement needs removal of back seats and removing the cooling lines from under the car, I assume the total repair cost would approach $5000 (I did not get a citation for it however). I tried to buy it from breaking yards and even though there are many Leaf recyclers in Sweden and particularly Norway, there was no available parts (just recently there is one for $1000). Eventually I sourced one from Lithuania (probably from an imported US donor car) for $500 and replaced it myself, which was one of the most difficult DIY projects that I have done so far.
Considering that Nissan updated the design of the OBC from 2010-2012 several times and finally completely changed the OBC design from 2013 and also as this part is so rare/expensive on second hand market, I think we can say that it has some design short-coming rather than a failure due to bad maintenance; but Nissan has not bothered to take the responsibility, even though a similar charger problems on Mitsubishi i-MIEV is covered (to my knowledge) by Mitsubishi.
The only nice thing from Nissan was that the part was not locked into the car's computer so I could replace it with a unit from an older car. I am however afraid that car companies can and may do so in future cars.
Leaf was my most expensive car, with 25000 km on clock when I bought it and about 50000 km on ODO now, and I think similar cars are worth $9000 on the market now. It is frustrating to see that a repair could cost half of the car's price.
I think you have talked about the problems in Toyota Prius but maybe you can also mention these problems with electric cars that rarely other people talk about.
The battery in all electric cars are expensive (from Nissan to Tesla,...) and with the current technology, they go bad overt time, even if you don't use them. As a matter of fact, they go bad faster if you don't drive the car. Another issue about electric car is that they are not DIY friendly and most mechanics do not work on them (due to the high tech equipment that need to have), so if something goes wrong, it cost a fortune to fix. I see you don't drive much, have you thought about buying a small gasoline car instead of an electric?
Thanks for the report!
A coworker leased a Nissan Leaf. Had no repair problems, but said by the end of the 3 years she was only able to get 40-50 miles per charge in the cold Winter.
Yeah that's the issue with EVs, as they age and the batteries wear out, they get really expensive. We have a 2017 Ford Focus Electric with 44 000 km and it still runs great and we still get 185 km as advertised by Ford. We also have a long warranty on the battery and it doesn't end until 2025. We did have a 2008 Honda Civic before that, a great car but it needed some body work done and it wasn't worth putting any money into it, so we sold it to someone who just wanted a cheap car to drive around. My mom really wanted an EV since she wanted to contribute to climate change.
I knew a guy who bought a used Leaf from Carmax and got the extended warranty. Ended up having to replace the charging port, about $2000. Good move on the warranty.
