Full battery electric vehicles (BEVs) have been on sale in Australia for just over 10 years now – and a topic I am increasingly being asked about at my public talks is “how good a buy is a second-hand BEV?”
Whilst the early BEVs were not brought here in great numbers, there are more and more of them coming up for sale now as early owners are tempted to buy the latest crop of better featured, longer range and faster charging ones.
Even more will be coming up soon as the first Hyundai Ioniqs, Hyundai Konas and Renault Zoes are starting to hit the magic 4 year lease-end period.
First-up, I should point out that some things don’t change – two thirds of a BEV is still a car! BEVs still have the same body, brakes, suspension, steering etc components that are found in fossil fuelled ones. All the usual checks for these components still apply.
In fact, it could be argued that the biggest change is in what you DO NOT need to check. For a BEV, these include the exhaust system, fuel system, gearbox, clutch (if a manual), oil levels, oil condition, air filter, spark plugs (if a petrol car), particulate filter (if a diesel), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera ….
The checks of a second-hand BEV that replace these include:
- Remaining battery capacity;
- Operation of charging systems/s;
- Condition of charge socket/s;
- Portable EVSE existence, condition and operation;
- Operation in different driving modes.
Note: If you are in any doubt about any part of the vehicle or its EV drive and charging systems, or in your ability to check them – have the vehicle checked by a qualified specialist. (See final part of this article about where to find one).
Remaining battery capacity:
For the earlier Nissan Leafs, there is a very useful ‘Remaining Capacity’ gauge you can check. (This is the outer ring of bars to the right of the charge level gauge – see figure 1).
Notes to figure 1:
- Long blue/white bars: 12 = full charge.
- Short white segments: 9 of 12 showing. (Approximately 70% remaining capacity).
(12 bars = 100%, loss of the first bar represents a 15% decrease, the rest represent an approximately 7.5% loss each. 8 bars therefore represents a 37.5 decrease/62.5% remaining.
- 130km = estimate of driving range in km. (By the way: for a ZE0/AZE0 Leaf, this is almost never correct!).
For all other EVs – get the owner to charge the car to 100% before you arrive and check the driving range estimate against the originally quoted manufacturer’s range estimates.
(This will never be an exact science, but a large discrepancy can indicate either it has lost capacity … or perhaps the car has been driven hard recently: most range estimators are based on recent driving history).
In addition, for the Leaf and several other BEV models, apps can be downloaded and used in conjunction with an OBDII dongle that plugs into a car diagnostics port to check further battery and system data. These include:
- LeafSpy (Nissan Leaf)
- CANion (Mitsubishi iMiEV)
- CanZE (Renault Zoe)
- MyGreenVolt (Holden Volt)
- EvBatMon (Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV)
If you do want to use one of these – first get the owner’s permission to do so, plus ensure you are familiar with the app, how to use it and what the data it produces means.
Charging port options:
Whilst the Plug War was won back around 2017, many older EVs may come with different charging ports to the ones now fitted. (See table 1).
Fortunately, Type 1 AC ports can be used with adaptors – but the CCS1 DC ports fitted to the early BMWi3 are useless for DC charging in Australia as there are no longer any DC chargers fitted with CCS1 plugs. Therefore, if looking at an early i3 that is said to be ‘DC charging capable’, visually check that it has been swapped to CCS2. (Some i3 owners paid to have this done).
This socket is fitted to all new BEVs sold here except the Nissan Leaf and Lexus UX300e.
Upper three rows: Type 2 AC socket.
Note: Single phase current carrying pins are LHS and RHS of second row, centre pin is earth. If car is capable of 11kW or 22kW AC, the two holes in the third row will also contain current carrying pins).
Fourth row: the two current carrying DC pins.
Found here only in early BMWi3. Upper section is a Type 1 AC socket. Lower two pins are the DC pins, as per the CCS2 socket. This socket is incompatible with Australian DC chargers.
Don’t forget the portable charger
All EVs sold in Australia (except the Renault Zoe) came with a portable EVSE (charger), so check that it does come with the car. If you are considering buying a Zoe, factor in buying one if the previous owner is not selling theirs with the car. To check the portable charger, I suggest the following process:
- Visually check for damage. This includes both the power and charging end leads and plugs. Check the connection pins in both the three pin plug and charging plug for burn marks or rust. If there are signs damage to the control box or burning or rust or the pins, do not continue testing it. You will need to get a new one.
- Plug the EVSE into a power point. Does it light up?
- Plug the EVSE into the car. Does it start charging the car and its data display work?
What if you are not comfortable with checking a car?
As I mentioned earlier, roughly two thirds of the components of a BEV (more if it is a PHEV or HEV) are common with their fossil fuelled predecessors, so all those normal checks still apply. For these, any competent mechanic is fine to do the checking.
The trickier bit is finding someone to check that new third that makes up the ‘E’ of an EV – the electric drive train and battery. Currently, most EV mechanics and technicians are in-house staff trained by the manufacturer on their own model vehicle/s.
This means your first port of call for having an EV pre-purchase check done is through a member of the dealer network who sold that model car in the first instance.
It is worth noting here that dealers are very unlikely to do pre-purchase inspections of private (or ‘grey’) import EVs. (Private imports are vehicles that were not sold new through the Australian dealer network, instead they were imported to Australia as second-hand vehicles. In the case of EVs, these most commonly come from Japan).
Dealers generally will not work on private imports as these often have options and systems not fitted to the models officially supplied for the Australian market. Given dealer data and parts systems are geared to servicing and repairing Australian delivered cars only, it is not hard to understand why they don’t want the headache of working out what may, or may not, fit or apply to a private import.
Outside of the dealer networks, some manufacturer-trained mechanics may have moved on to set up an independent workshop.
Unfortunately, EVs (in particular BEVs) have not been around long enough for there to be a lot of these ‘escapees’, with the ones that do exist generally only being found by word-of-mouth, web research and/or asking around the EV community through the various online EV model forums.
For the general non-dealer mechanic or auto electrician, there are some elective EV training units in automotive apprenticeship qualifications (with more to come) – and some enterprising mechanical and auto electrical workshops have already had their apprentices do (as well as retrained their staff in) these units. Again, such EV technicians can be hard to find and will likely require research and/or asking around to discover one locally.
Questions to ask of a non-dealer EV mechanic include:
- Whether their staff are qualified mechanics;
- What EV training have their EV experts done;
- How much experience they have had with the EV model you are asking them to inspect.
So good luck in your second-hand EV purchase: and don’t forget, EVs are significantly simpler that their fossil-fuelled predecessors, so there should be fewer problems needing to be found or rectified.
For further information on models (including second-hand options) see EV Fact Sheets at: https://www.aeva.asn.au/battery-electric-vehicle-models-bevs/
Bryce Gaton is an expert on electric vehicles and contributor for The Driven and Renew Economy. He has been working in the EV sector since 2008 and is currently working as EV electrical safety trainer/supervisor for the University of Melbourne. He also provides support for the EV Transition to business, government and the public through his EV Transition consultancy EVchoice.