A 7 year old LEAF?

Concerns over battery degradation are very prominent in the discussion these days. Even to a point where it gets blamed for all sorts of things, and people avoid buying used EVs because of these concerns. With that, why don’t we take a look at my 7 year old 2018 Nissan Leaf and see what battery degradation actually is? Hint: Its just fine, save your money, buy used.

In our quest to explore my 2018 Nissan LEEAFs battery, we can do two things: Check the onboard battery display, and use Leafspy. Start with the former, this was the Dash back in November 2021, showing a battery in full health

And now in June of 2025, showing very much the same

As to leaf-spy, this is what we saw back in November of 2021, wow thats almost four years ago, and we had 91.34 % state of health from leafspy, and an estimated 36 kWh capacity when full, 60 k km driven, and 59 quick charges and 1004 L1/L2 charges.

And now 4 years later? June 2025 is shown below, state of health of 84.04%, as before, 56.3% state of charge, with a 18.7 kWh remaining gets us 33 kWh of capacity. A few more kilometres on the odo 122k km, 247 quick charges and 1898 L1/L2 charges.

So, shall we cry over the 3 kWh of lost capacity in 4 years? Nah, the car works just fine, do keep in mind that at the EPA efficiency of 6 km/kWh (source) thats only 18 km. And by the way, if I really had to push my LEAF to go the distance, slowing down is a trick that works quite well, and it does not really matter if I have 33 kWh or 36 kWh.

In the end, its all about your use-case. Owning a 7 year old Nissan LEAF has its advantages. Its very cheap transportation, depreciation is a major item in the ownership cost equation, my 2018 will be worth about the same, road trip or no road trip, there is hardly any maintenance, and at 2c/km “fuel” cost, its an incredible bargain (assuming 15 c/kWh power rate, and 6 km/kWh efficiency).

There is also my life situation, with two teenagers that are embarking on their driving education journey, keeping the 5k EV is a great idea.