Real life, real answers

Is a used Nissan Leaf battery still any good?

Early Leafs are air-cooled, so they degrade faster than liquid-cooled rivals — check the state of health before you buy.

The Nissan Leaf is the honest cautionary tale of used EVs. It has no active battery cooling, so its pack ages faster than liquid-cooled cars of the same age and mileage — especially if it's been rapid-charged a lot or lived somewhere warm.

That doesn't make a used Leaf a bad buy. It makes state of health the number that matters. Our model estimates a Leaf's remaining capacity from its age and mileage using a degradation profile calibrated for air-cooled packs, and shows the resulting real range.

Open the Leaf pages and set the age and odometer to the car you're looking at. Before buying any used EV, a battery health check is worth it — that's what the battery-check link on each car page is for.