Your Leaf is worth what the battery actually reads.
A buyer who cannot read the battery has to price your Leaf for the worst thing it might be, and that guess costs them nothing.
We take the reading at your place and price the capacity that is actually in the car.
- Battery electric
- Australia wide
- Finance settled directly
4.9/5 from 500+ sellers across The Car Buyers group
Degradation
The battery is the whole conversation, so we have it properly
On most cars the battery is a footnote. On a Leaf it is the first thing anybody raises and the last thing a generic buyer will actually measure.
By the time most people call us about a Leaf they have usually already had one of two answers. One is a number so low it reads as a refusal with a figure attached. The other is a plain refusal, sometimes explained as the market and sometimes not explained at all. Both come from the same place. Somebody who has not read the battery has to protect themselves, so they price it as though the worst were true and take that discount up front. It costs nothing to assume, and you are never told what the assumption cost you.
State of health is how much of the original battery capacity is left, and it is a reading rather than an opinion. The inspector takes it at your home or your work, in front of you, and the offer is built on what it says. It also means the odometer settles less here than you would expect. On an electric car the state of health moves the value more than kilometres do, so a Leaf that has barely been used is not automatically the better car, and one that has done the work is not carrying the black mark a petrol buyer would make of it.
The other thing about this car is that you are usually the best informed person in the conversation. Leaf owners tend to watch their own battery and can describe how it has changed over the time they have owned it. Most of that gets wasted everywhere else, because the person quoting has already decided what an old electric car is before they open the door. Bring it to the call. We would rather start from what you have watched happen than from an assumption made by somebody who never looked at the car.
In the driveway
What we ask about a Leaf
Six questions, and every one of them changes the number rather than deciding whether we are interested.
- What is the dash telling you about the battery?
- Whatever the car reports about its own health is where we start, and it is the quickest way to know what the inspector is likely to find. Read it out to us on the call. It does not replace the reading taken at your place, it just means nobody arrives guessing.
- Has the battery ever been repaired or replaced?
- If it has, that is worth being able to prove. Tell us what was done and who did it, and have the paperwork with the car on the day. Work that can be evidenced is treated as value. Work nobody can evidence has to be treated as a story.
- Which charging cable is in the boot?
- The one that plugs into an ordinary power point, the one for a public charger, or both. On a car that has changed hands more than once the cable is the thing that quietly goes missing, and it is priced as part of what you are selling rather than assumed to be thrown in.
- Is this the short trip car in the house, and where does it charge?
- It tells us how the car has actually lived, and it points the inspector at the right things before they arrive. Neither answer is the wrong one, and neither is a reason to be careful about what you say.
- Did the car come to you as an import?
- If it did, say so on the call. It changes which paperwork we ask you to have ready on the day, the registration history in particular. It does not change how the battery is read.
- Has anyone already turned the car down?
- Tell us who, and tell us what they said. If somebody has refused this car or put a number on it, we would rather hear what they were reacting to than find it ourselves later. It is not held against the car.
Whatever the reading says
Three things that do not depend on the number
- A poor reading is still a sale. If it comes back worse than you hoped, we say so and the number reflects it. The reading decides what the offer is, not whether there is one, and you are never left holding a car nobody will put a price on.
- You do not have to work it out first. Nobody expects you to arrive with a figure, or to have decoded what the dash is showing you. Tell us what you know and the inspector takes the reading.
- A shortfall gets written down before it gets signed. If what is owed on it comes to more than the car does, that difference is put in front of you in writing, and nothing is signed until you have read it.
Before you call
Three questions Leaf owners put to us
Will you buy a Leaf with a badly degraded battery?
Yes. The reading changes what we can pay, not whether we are buying. Having it measured can only help you, because the alternative is a buyer who never finds out and prices accordingly.
A dealer would not take mine as a trade in. Does that mean it is worthless?
No. A trade in is one buyer deciding whether they want your car sitting on their lot, which is a different question from what the car is worth. We buy it from you directly, and the offer comes off the reading.
What if the battery reads worse than I have been telling people?
Then it reads worse, and the offer accounts for it. Nobody minds that you had a different figure in your head, and it is far better found on the day than argued about afterwards.
Have the battery measured before you take a number built on a guess.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.