r/leaf • u/biersackarmy • 23h ago
One of these is more impressive in context
No I don't actually drive exclusively Leafs. Although having the fleet is funny, 2 of my 3 get used by family members. My work truck/cargo van/road tripper is a 2017 Model S, which indeed has 340,000 miles on the original powertrain, I just don't bring it up much here because it's usually not relevant to conversations.
People in real life though of course lose their minds over the big number, an EV lasting that long, and only 22% degradation with almost exactly twice what's on my already high mileage Leaf. But an important point to note is that it's done double the miles, with triple the amount of battery.
In reality, it's frankly much more impressive that the "infamously unreliable", "badly designed", and passively cooled Leaf's battery has only 2% more degradation despite going through 50% more battery cycles.
Yes this the bright pink modified KPop car, and people irl often ask me why I haven't done a battery swap/upgrade on it yet, especially after owning it for 7 years (a very long time by my car-retention standards). Because I haven't needed to?
It still runs great, and continues to be the happy survivor that stuck with me and went against all the old Leaf battery stereotypes. In return, it now gets a much more fun and fulfilling job, making more people smile and winning more car show awards than any other Leaf ever has.