This thing is for sale near me and would satisfy the roll of an EV/plug in to match to the solar grid at my parents place, does anyone here have any good experience with these? It's been an exercise in frustration trying to find a reasonably priced EV for this, nothing is worth what people ask and there is no such thing as an affordable EV with this thing being the closest thing I have found to affordable so far. I would still like to pay $5k and get a good car but I know that will never be possible lol!

https://columbus.craigslist.org/ctd/...569136499.html

 

I'm not much help since I've never seen one before.

Something looks off to me in the pics tho, maybe it's just me.
My car flipper shadiness radar is going off when viewing the ad... lol

PS- may be a legit deal but I'm guessing there is a story behind this car.

 

The one I drove was horrible

 

As in horrible on interstate or just so bad dot bother at all? It's something like this or a leaf at this point, between those is it worse?

 

I've never driven an i3, but a friend of mine had one and I don't think he really liked it. Nissan Leaf would be a much better vehicle, especially if this is just a commute car. They drive pretty decent, and if you are looking for range, the SV Plus gets you around 226 miles. Cheap to drive, reliable. The only issue I have with the Leaf is it uses the CHAdeMO port standard instead of CCS for Fast charging, so you would need to visit a fast charger that has that port. If you are charging at home than it doesn't matter

 

Uts just a crappy car all around, if you’re going to buy an EV, I wouldn’t buy something so rudimentary. I wouldn’t buy either.

 

There is no reason to buy such an ancient, mediocre EV beyond the BMW badge. It's not an EV, but the i8 at least looks good.

 

Totally agree here. i3 is as rudimentary as it gets

 

Got it, leaf it is then. I've not been in an i3 but was hoping it's better than a leaf, guess I'll wait a bit more for a 2012/13 to fall in price some more then add it in. The batteries don't seem too much of a pain on them even if they will be near end of life

 

Easy to change, there was a guy in my neighborhood who bought off lease Leaf's and changed the batteries in his garage. Almost leased one for my wife, but the Ioniq was almost $100 a month cheaper

 

Whats the rationale for wanting to buy a Leaf?

 

That's good to hear, it looks simple based on the repair manuals but you never really know until you try and do it for real. I've never dealt with leafs, only ever seen Toyota hybrids and teslas.

 

Cheap and gives free range to stores near their house to avoid starting real cars. My mom has a horrible habit of short trips that she makes up for by idling the car to let it warm up/run for at least 30 min. It's senseless IMO when most stores are 1-3 miles round trip from their house, a small EV like this that is plugged into the main solar for power would avoid that and I won't have to mind short drive intervals anymore.

Thought is fix the batteries once, keep it around almost as a courtesy car of sorts for in town use. It would not have enough range to make it to say....my house and back reliably even with the latest leaf in winter. If they attempted to use it for a Columbus run and back even a M3 would be out most of its range.

Mostly it's just so I don't have to mess with anything and the cool factor of having a car to go with all the panels.