u/Wraith347

Seriously, it’s the best. I can leave AC on blast without worrying about gas or emissions. One-pedal driving makes the stop-and-go line a breeze. It’s an unexpected benefit of going EV, a little quality-of-life upgrade I enjoy every weekday. I don’t hear this particular point talked about much but it honestly makes the whole school drop off/pickup process so much more tolerable.

Just another reason I don’t ever want to go back to ICE.

In early April, as gas prices rose, my husband bought a cheap 2014 Leaf to drive for his daily commute, to save on fuel and keep miles off his GMC Canyon truck.

I borrowed the Leaf a couple times for weekend grocery runs. I didn’t expect to enjoy driving it so much, but it’s just such a comfy and solid little car. So when my old Sentra finally bit the dust in May, I bought a lightly-used 2025 SV+.

Someday when it’s time to replace the truck, maybe we will become an all-EV family. For now, the truck still gets driven every now and then to haul the trailer for garbage runs and hay pickup, etc. But our day-to-day driving is all electric whenever possible.

We were paying about $290-$350 in gas each month between our two ICE daily drivers. We’re now burning less than $25 in gas on the truck and paying $70-ish total in monthly electricity costs to drive both LEAFs, for a total of $90-$100 in fuel costs. We have tracking apps to watch the exact kWh usage on both our chargers. We pay $0.129 per kWh and charge exclusively at home.

We are saving $200 in fuel each month and saving on oil changes. We’re also enjoying the convenience of home charging and the responsive, quiet electric driving experience.
Very happy with our LEAFs so far!

I got my first EV, a ‘25 Leaf SV Plus, about 6 weeks ago. I expected to enjoy the convenience of home charging, and I went in fully aware of the ‘25 Leaf’s chademo/rapidgate limitations. I knew I would save a good amount of money on fuel, since electricity is cheap in my state.

What I didn’t expect was just how much I would enjoy actually driving this car. I’ve always been a point-A-to-point-B person, never the kind of person to go on a drive for fun. Driving used to stress me out.

I didn’t realize how much of that stress was due to my old ICE sedan’s slippy and underpowered transmission. No more wondering if I’ll get properly up to speed before the highway on-ramp ends. No more sudden, uncomfortable lurching. The smoothness and instant power of the electric transmission is a totally different feel than anything my Sentra could do even back when it was brand-new. And adjusted for inflation, the Leaf was actually cheaper (granted, I bought it as a CPO with 500 miles on it).

Maybe I’ve just been driving crappy ICE cars my whole life because that’s what I could afford. Maybe it’s over a decade of technological advancements since I last car shopped. But I’m blown away by how smooth and comfortable and powerful the Leaf is. Not only am I saving money on gas, I’m actually having fun driving.

And I’ve never even been the kind of person who likes to drive. Is it just the novelty of EV life? Will it wear off eventually? I don’t know, but at this point I am just enjoying the ride.

Honestly just curious what made other Leaf owners choose the Leaf specifically, especially if you have a pre-2026 model (though definitely open to hearing what made you choose the 2026 too).

For me, the main considerations were:
- Cost: I found a basically brand-new CPO 2025 SV Plus with only 500 miles on it for about 40% off the original window sticker. I realize that’s probably because the much-updated ‘26 came out.
- Comfort: it’s nice and quiet and I like the seats. I sit in them for over an hour a day during the school year, so that matters to me. Didn’t find the Bolt as comfortable.
- Familiarity: it looks and drives like a car. I’ve had a Nissan for over a decade so I know where the buttons are (yay physical buttons, that’s a big deal for me too).
- I charge at home 100% of the time and don’t road trip in my car, so the chademo port/rapidgate wasn’t an issue for me. And I didn’t want to pay a bunch of extra money for range I won’t regularly use.

How about you?

I recently bought my 2025 SV+ and so far I am loving it— it’s an improvement in every way over my old ICE sedan. Charging at home is amazing, and my car’s range outweighs my daily commute by enough that I’m comfortable keeping the battery in the 20-80% range on a regular basis.

I’m getting well over the EP rating in miles per charge currently (averaging about 246 according to the GOM), as I drive mainly back roads and country highways for my daily commute.

I haven’t had much of an opportunity to drive on highways, and I’m curious— if you have an SV+, how many miles do you usually get out of a charge on back roads versus highway? and how have winter temps affected the range for you?

Longest trip I typically take in my car is a once-annual drive that’s 150 miles round-trip, but it does involve driving over Monteagle mountains on I-24 (at least it’s a lot of downhill on the way back?). Is that feasible in the winter? ABRP app seems to think I could do it with 13% left after starting from a full charge, which I’m assuming means I’d need to top off before leaving in cold weather conditions. Do you find ABRP to be optimistic or pessimistic for range? 13% is a little closer than I would like to cut it, in general. Would you fast charge on that trip or not? (I have Level 2 charging at home.)

Not a big deal at all if we would need to top off on DC charging once a year, but I’m brand-new to this EV thing and curious how you would handle that drive.

I recently bought my 2025 SV+ and so far I am loving it— it’s an improvement in every way over my old ICE sedan. Charging at home is amazing, and my car’s range outweighs my daily commute by enough that I’m comfortable keeping the battery in the 20-80% range on a regular basis.

I’m getting well over the EP rating in miles per charge currently (averaging about 246 according to the GOM), as I drive mainly back roads and country highways for my daily commute.

I haven’t had much of an opportunity to drive on highways, and I’m curious— if you have an SV+, how many miles do you usually get out of a charge on back roads versus highway? and how have winter temps affected the range for you?

Longest trip I typically take in my car is a once-annual drive that’s 150 miles round-trip, but it does involve driving over Monteagle mountains on I-24 (at least it’s a lot of downhill on the way back?). Is that feasible in the winter? ABRP app seems to think I could do it with 13% left, which I’m assuming means I’d need to top off before leaving in cold weather conditions. Do you find ABRP to be optimistic or pessimistic for range? 13% is a little closer than I would like to cut it, in general. Would you fast charge on that trip or not? (I have Level 2 charging at home.)

Not a big deal at all if we would need to top off on DC charging once a year, but I’m brand-new to this EV thing and curious how you would handle that drive.

I’m a recent EV convert, picking up a 2025 Leaf SV Plus as a super low-mileage CPO at a discount earlier this month (likely due to the release of the much-improved 2026 model). My car has always been more of a local runabout, while my husband’s is our road tripper.

Charging at home is AMAZING. Just plug it in, and wake up to a full tank? I use about 90kwh total per week, which is $11 of electricity in my area— compared to the $45 a week i had been paying lately for my relatively-economical ICE sedan.

I don’t know why we didn’t make this switch sooner. My almost-new car is objectively one of the cheapest EVs out there— it barely cost more than I paid for my Sentra in 2015, and was probably actually cheaper when you account for inflation. But it’s pretty fully-loaded with features (heated steering wheel, ProPilot, etc), has a super smooth ride, and is fun to drive with quick acceleration when you want it. It’ll never be a great road tripper, since it’s chademo and air-cooled, but the range is more than sufficient for 99.9% of my driving. And we’ve still got an ICE truck for the .1%.

Why don’t more 2-car families with the ability to charge from home opt for an EV, I wonder? I get the range anxiety if it’s your only car (particularly with the older Leaf). Personally, I was under the impression that charging infrastructure here in the USA wasn’t at a point in our rural area where EVs were viable. I didn’t think about the fact that getting 200+ miles per charge means that I could just get a Level 2 charger installed in my garage and never have to hit up a gas station again.

Anyway, I’m excited and slightly obsessed. I don’t think my family or friends really get it, but this shift is a big deal for me. It’s not just a new car, it’s a new way to car. I can’t see myself ever buying an ICE car again.

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?

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?