Has anyone gotten their Leaf windows tinted? I’m in southeast USA and our summers get pretty hot. My Leaf will be garage-kept when I’m at home, but just sits in a parking lot at work.
I already ordered a windshield sunshade, but I’m thinking about getting my windows tinted with the nice ceramic heat-resistant stuff to help reduce heat in the summer.
Anyone have their windows tinted? Do you find it helps with battery temp/life?
Thanks everyone for the input on my last post! I was able to talk the dealer down a little more, and they offered me 2k over blue book for my trade-in. So I pulled the trigger and bought the CPO 2025 Leaf SV+. It left the dealership with barely 500 miles, all the accessories still shrink-wrapped, and that nice new car smell.
I appreciated the input on 2025 vs 2026 and understand why a lot of folks prefer to pay extra for the utility of the NACS charge port. But I just don’t drive out of a 50-mile radius except once or twice a year, when I might do a 140-mile round trip that’s mainly on a country highway with 45-55 speed limit— I think the SV+ should handle that even in winter (and our winters are generally mild). We fly for longer trips, or we take our ICE pickup for luggage space. Overall, the extra 13k for the 2026 didn’t seem necessary. I’m going to be Level 2 charging at home 99.999% of the time, but I checked out of curiosity and most of the chargers around me do offer chademo still (not that i should really ever have to use one— it’s just nice to know the option is there). I’ll pick up an adapter if I end up with range anxiety, I guess.
I love the smooth drive, the way it handles, and best of all, not having to work a gas station into my 40-mile (round trip) daily commute! New to EVs, but already obsessed with the driving experience. Any tips on Leaf ownership are welcome!
Appreciate this community, and I’m looking forward to driving my Leaf for years to come!
I had never been an EV person before, but my hubby bought a 2014 Leaf for ridiculously cheap earlier this year and uses it for his daily commute. I drive it sometimes on the weekends and love it.
It’s getting to be time to replace my car, and I’m seriously considering a 2025 Leaf SV Plus. My daily commute to work and school pickup is 40 miles round trip, but sometimes (once or twice a year) I drive up to 130 miles total in a day to the nearest big city and back for a sporting event or play or something.
We have an ICE pickup that gets decent highway mileage that we typically use for long drives anyway because it’s more comfortable than my compact sedan. Also my husband is a pilot, so we are likely to fly anywhere much further than 150 miles away.
There’s a 2025 Leaf SV Plus near me for right about 24k. It has 500 miles on it, basically brand-new. We already have a level 2 charger at home, the smaller charger is enough to charge my husband’s Leaf overnight so I could use the Level 2 overnight, and we can easily charge both Leafs simultaneously in our garage.
Does this sound like a decent deal? I’m thinking the range will be plenty for everything I currently use my car for, and I like the form factor of the Leaf. I will probably never fast-charge it, so I can’t imagine the chademo connector would be a pain point. I like the features it comes with and I test-drove it yesterday. Kinda love it honestly. I’m dreaming of leaving gas stations behind.
Is there anything I’m not thinking about here? I’m a drive-it-till-the-wheels-fall-off kind of person, and I like to start new or close to it so that I know the car’s history. 24k for a basically new EV seems super affordable to me (though I’m no expert), and I feel like even with 2-3% battery degradation per year, this car should do what I need it to do for a long time.
Would you buy it?
I have a 2015 Nissan Sentra with the infamous bad CVT. I took it in for CVT service and computer reprogramming under recall at about 60k, and they did a CVT fluid replacement as well. They recommended coming in for another at 100k. The CVT has worked fine since then, until now.
It’s approaching 100k miles, and I was planning to get CVT drain and fill scheduled here shortly. But the transmission has started to act up in the same ways it was originally before the recall service— not as bad yet, no hunting for RPMs at speed or anything, but every now and then it has issues accelerating from a full stop like a stop sign, then shifts roughly and abruptly. Maybe twice in the past week. And yesterday it started humming/whining slightly at 60mph, which it’s never done before.
So my question is, do I go ahead and get the scheduled maintenance and hope that solves my problem? Obviously the CVT needs some love. But I’ve also read that replacing the transmission fluid can actually accelerate the decline once it starts whining. Is it better to cut my losses and trade it in while it still runs?
Is maintenance likely to fix the issue and get it another 20-50k, or am I approaching paperweight territory?