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2018 Nissan Leaf Owner Reports Car “Falling Apart at 66,000 Miles”

After a few years of ownership and not that many miles with relatively few problems, an electric vehicle shouldn’t be falling apart. Jennifer Sensiba is one of many people who regret buying a brand-new Nissan Leaf over the likes of the Tesla Model 3, and her ownership story goes from mild to wild.
2018 Nissan Leaf owned by Jennifer Sensiba 18 photos
Photo: Jennifer Sensiba for Clean Technica
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The first issue that Jennifer reports is range loss attributable to no liquid cooling. “There are things I can’t do with the car that I used to. For one, it can’t reach a mountain town that’s 90 miles from my apartment anymore.”

As for the bigger issues, Jennifer was baffled to see both of the front-door handles breaking not long after the bumper-to-bumper warranty expired by miles. “They still work, but the outer trim has separated a bit from the rest of the handle,” she told Clean Technica. Not long after this unfortunate episode, one of the power door lock actuators failed on the 2-year-old Leaf.

The 12-volt battery died on a cold night, the car gives a “door ajar” warning when Jennifer makes a fast right turn, and a plastic piece of interior trim was apparently designed to never be removed. As for the biggest issue in roughly 2.5 years of ownership, our protagonist had to replace the CV joints.

“There had been an ongoing ‘clicking’ problem many other owners have experienced, and this one recurred enough times to wipe out the car’s axles,” said Jennifer. “6,500 miles later, the CV joint on the driver’s side is making noise again.” Adding insult to injury, the Nissan dealership that sold the Leaf “pulled a shady paperwork trick” to cheat Jennifer out of $5,000.

The question is, what can we learn from this account?

For starters, dropping the ball in terms of quality has alienated current and previous Leaf customers. We live in a day and age where legacy automakers are slowly but steadily encroaching on Tesla, and Nissan has slim chances of taking back a significant piece of the EV market with this kind of errors.

Secondly, but not in the least, there was a time when Nissan wasn’t challenged in the EV segment by anyone, not even Tesla. It all ended when the Model 3 entered the scene, and Jennifer agrees to that narrative.

“The only reason I even bought a Nissan Leaf was that the Tesla Model 3 wasn’t available yet at the time I needed a car,” she told the cited publication. “Now I’m wishing I rode a bike for a while and waited for the M3.”
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About the author: Mircea Panait
Mircea Panait profile photo

After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well.
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