Second Maintenance Checkup for my Nissan Leaf December 2, 2013 Mark D Larsen

On a Roll (Click to enlarge)

Yesterday my Leaf’s odometer turned over to 15,000 miles, as you can see in the above photo. Anticipatiing that milestone, last week I made an appointment for its second maintenance checkup, and took it in this afternoon.

As I’ve observed many times, electric cars require comparatively little maintenance. This checkup was a tad more thorough than the first one, however. They performed another battery analysis, rotated the tires, and changed the microfilter in the cabin. I must say that those filters are rather expensive: $29.95. Add that amount to the labor costs, and I ended up paying $86.66 total. That’s significantly more than for the first checkup, but I suppose that I can’t complain: imagine if I'd also had to change the oil, other filters, spark plugs, transmission fluid, etc.!

One of the items in the checkup report didn’t surprise me, but another one did. The first result was that my Leaf’s tires now score 5 out of 10, i.e., their treads have worn halfway down —just what I’d expect at this point. The result that perplexes me, however, is that the brakes scored 7 out of 10. I frankly assumed that they might have scored higher, since I use regenerative braking to slow down most of the time, and try to only engage the actual brakes when really needed. Still, given that rate of deterioration, I surmise that I won’t need to replace them until I’ve put more than 40,000 on the odometer. Not bad.

Finally, the battery analysis confirmed that my conscientous driving, charging, and usage patterns are helping my pack to hold up very well, probably better than most. Here is a copy of the results, with five stars in all categories: