You Should Never Buy A Used EV … Or Should You? – CleanTechnica

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For early EV adopters on a budget, life could sometimes be very hard.

For example, I had a bad experience with a used 2011 Nissan LEAF I bought when the EV bug first bit me. It turned out that the early Nissan LEAF batteries weren’t very good at handling the heat, and the car had spent some time in Phoenix before arriving in El Paso for sale. With two cities worth of roasting, the car had a range of about 50 miles when driven carefully, and far less when driven at freeway speeds. However, the car’s “guess-o-meter” on the dash said it could go about 70 miles when fully charged!

I ended up trading it toward a used Chevy Volt, which had similar range, but the Volt had a range extender to keep the car going on gas when the battery ran out. My experience with that car was far better, and I’ve since gone back to full EV for my daily driver.

You’d think after that bad first experience buying a used EV that I’d tell people to stay FAR FAR away from used electric vehicles. But, to do that, I’d have to forget a lot of other things I’ve learned since making that one bad decision. In this article, I’m going to share what I’ve learned so that readers and any friends/family you guys share it with can find a dependable used EV at affordable prices instead of stepping in it like I did!

The Steaming Pile To Avoid: “Compliance Cars”

Since I bought that early LEAF, things have changed a LOT on the more affordable end of the EV industry. Starting in the late 2010s, far better cars went to market. Chevrolet introduced the first Bolt EVs. Tesla released the Model 3. After that, everyone started offering more affordable models with over 200 miles of range, liquid cooling systems to protect the battery’s health, and faster charging that could make road trips possible and even pleasant.

But, before that happened, there was a giant canyon of affordability in the market. Decent EVs, like the Tesla Model S and Model X, were awesome, but very expensive. Cars going for over $100,000 were the norm, and used prices were still out of the reach of many Americans. The rest of the industry either wasn’t doing EVs at all, or were only putting in a token effort to meet government requirements without going all-in on EV production.

It was this half-a**ing that led to “compliance cars,” or vehicles that manufacturers built only to meet quotas imposed by states like California. These early half-a**ed EVs were sometimes great for local driving, but often were just terrible. Many of them had only 50–80 miles of range (if that), bad cooling systems, and dealers that weren’t equipped or trained to adequately support them in the long run.

It’s these vehicles that you want to avoid. They’re often available for super cheap, but they’re cheap like that for a reason. Now that they’re out of warranty and dealers can’t get parts for them, they can quickly become either extremely costly to repair or simply unrepairable at any price.

What You Should Be Looking For

Now that we’ve talked about the biggest thing to avoid, let’s talk about what what you should be looking for in a used EV if you want to get years of reliable, pleasant driving out of it.

The first thing I’d recommend is looking for an EV that was rated for at least 250 miles of range when it was new. This weeds out nearly all of the junk that manufacturers built before they got serious about building EVs. This also gives you some room for degradation, because batteries lose range over time (~10% over a couple hundred thousand miles on the original battery). When driving heavy highway speeds (75 mph+), you may see a reduction in range, but the car would still be able to get you at least 200 miles. This is more than enough to be able to cross most EV charging gaps across the highways during road trips.

The second thing you want in a used EV is one with liquid cooling for the main drive battery. You can google this to see if any model has it, but the big one to avoid is the Nissan LEAF, even the newer second-generation ones with 150–225 miles of EPA range. Because the battery does not have a thermal management system, they overheat in normal driving in hotter regions, and overheat on the highway on longer road trips in anything but winter conditions. But, if you live in a cooler state and don’t plan on road trips, they are probably okay.

Finally, you’ll want to take the same precautions you take buying any used car. Like other cars, EVs have tires, wheels, suspensions, brakes, and interiors. They can be salvage titles, flood cars, and suffer from almost any other issue an ICE car experiences outside of the motor and transmission. So, doing things like getting the car inspected and buying from a reputable dealer are still extremely important.

If you avoid the biggest problem cars, shop from reputable sources, and do your homework a bit, you can get a quality used EV that will give you years of reliable service!

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This article is sponsored by Xcelerate.