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Seat belts required industrial cleaner and a steam gun to remove the mould an curry stains.
Dirty EV bastards.
I am thinking that I will get a tethered charger but as the Leaf is Type 1 that is a bad investment. If I stay electric, which I guess we will all be forced to soon, then I will get a tethered charger to fit the new car. I will use the in car timer to get the cheap rates from the GO tariff for the moment.
Thank you very much WCA (I've PM'd you my code).
Re tethered chargers, My understanding is that you would only need to get the cable changed over from type1 to type2, so it wouldn't require a whole new charger unit (this might differ depending on the brand of unit ie Ohme?? not sure). The other interim option is to get a commando socket installed (presumably the electrics to the commando socket could then be used for the new charger unit?). Only other thing I can think of is if you have any intention of trying Agile tariff then it works best with a charger that can work with Agile (I think right now that's Ohme or Zappi, I would imagine more will be wanting to get onboard) as in having the tech to cherry pick the cheapest times as per the example above.
While all this battery swap stuff is possible, I think a lot of these early Leafs (and probably much of the generations after) will do that runabout job on their degraded batteries, changing hands for less and less money to people that need less and less range. Just the labour in doing a battery swap is quite pricey, let alone the pack, and you'll never get that back. 30-40 miles is absolutely fine for a lot of people as a second car for running kids about, shopping, etc.
We got an untethered charge point a couple of years ago and used to just leave the cable attached when we were charging the PHEV every day (run it through a padlock/hasp if you're worried about theft). These days I only need to do once a week so it lives in the boot. Cars generally come with the right cable - you need your own for public non-rapid charging - so any future one will work fine with your untethered point. They've already got more expensive to install recently and I can only see that getting more expensive if the grant get squeezed more.
I'm the same as simon-g, I've got an untethered Rolec (none smart) and recently bought an Ohme smart cable through Octopus Energy. Only about 12 months ago Rolec website was quoting £149 for a straightforward untethered charger install (with grant), then it went to £249 for a smart charger install, now it's £295.
Leafs quite decent on lease at the moment.
Don't overlook EDFs tarrif too.
Slightly more expensive than the others but available over much better time periods.
I agree about 30 miles bring fine for what I use the car for. I have two others for fun or longer journeys. This is also why I am not getting a charger yet.
The car I bought is a cheap experiment I want to run for a year or so to see what I really need
My thoughts about tethered is that if I don't get one then I will just leave the cable in anyway for convenience (and need s spare for the car)
Do the degraded batteries still require the same time to recharge? i.e. does the ppm charging cost increase as battery life decreases?
"According to the EV doubters at Top Gear, that’s the problem with the Leaf, when they’re getting on a bit the range falls to 35-40 real world miles and nobody wants them, hence very cheap to buy. I guess that would seem very limiting to a lot of people for an only car, but you’ve got a few."
Problem is its a V1 and they have the worst battery degredation.
Mine is a V2 and getting on for 6 years old. Battery is still at 89% and it was at 85% when I bought it! Basically it was 'stored' on a drive by an old lady for 2 years where it did less than 4k miles and was left plugged in the rest of the time. I bought it and have driven it like it was stolen for the last 3.5 years. I've put 40k on it and charged it hundreds and hundreds of times. I've carried bikes and kayaks on the roof and loaded it down with people and kit.
Its filthy and the alloys are scratched but the battery is in far ruder health than when I got it. I reckon if I drove like miss daisy I'd get 75- 80 miles out of it.