The 9 month report: 10K Miles.
First the bad news. Everything that's gone wrong or failed to operate as expected:
1. There's a slow leak in the left front tire (two weeks for 10 PSI) that we haven't been able to locate.
2. There is no '2.' That's it for problems. Seriously.
No hickups. Never stranded us. Never ran (completely) out of charge.
[See Caveat below]
As expected the car goes round-trip to Corvallis twice a week and if the weather is nice and we're not in too big a hurry to make it up there then it does that on a single (home) charge. If it's nasty rainy and cold or we buzz up the freeway at 75 then we have to stop at the charger on the way back.
Fortunately there are three fast chargers on the route. You can easily check on the LEAF EZ-Charge app (on either the Google or Apple app stores) to see if the chargers are available and review the last few user comments to see if there's been any problems. We always try to have enough charge remaining to make it to the next charger in case of failure or a long wait. We've used the AV Network CHaDeMo fast charger at the Tangent OR freeway exit the most, Roughly 60-70 times so far. It takes around 15 min. for the amount we need.
There were two occasions where we had a short wait.
There were two occasions where we went on to the next charger in Halsey due to the wait.
There was one occasion where the charger was mis-behaving (showed a warning on the app) and we went on to the next charger. Granted it probably would have been just a case of calling the AV support number and having then remotely reset it, but we didn't have time.
That works out to an error rate of somewhere below 2%.
Keep in mind that the access to the charger networks is free for the period of our lease (ie: included in the purchase) and would have cost $180 if paid monthly or ~$500 if paid 'per use.'
Anyway, it's been a darn good ride. Plenty of acceleration for scooting around town or freeway on-ramps. Nice quiet ride. Competent cornering and braking. Comfortable interior.
We wish the heater didn't suck down the battery charge quite as fast (lops off about 15%) and it would be nice if there were about 20% more range as many fewer charging stops would be required.
Caveat: The early results from late 2016 and 2017 Leaf's that have the 30KWh ('larger') battery pack like ours indicate that battery degradation is even more pronounced on these models than on the earlier units with the 24KWh pack. Granted it's early days yet, but this is NOT a good trend. We are VERY pleased to have leased the car. We get the sweet part of the battery life and someone else has to deal with the tail end. As a result I probably wouldn't consider buying one of these used unless the price is VERY attractive and the commute distance is relatively low. We (and everyone else) are waiting to see of the Leaf Gen2 (2018) 40 KWh packs have the same problem.
