I returned to the dealer yesterday with my wife. I'm going to separate our experience into two parts below, the car and the dealer.
The car: We test drove a Leaf SV. While it felt familiar and very much like our 2013 Leaf, in a good way, it also felt like it was significantly updated. More power, much nicer controls and gauges, etc. We came away impressed but not blown away; the one feature I disliked was the e-pedal. We had talked about it before going to the dealer and then again standing in the parking lot just after the test drive, and we agreed that it didn't make sense for us to spend the delta on an SL. For those following this thread, yes, this means I actually won one of these discussions with my wife, which is a statistical outlier, not to mention reason for me to do an embarrassing victory dance in the parking lot. I'm sure when they show security cam highlights at this year's Xmas party, I'll be one of the stars. But I digress.
The dealer: As I've said before, we bought my Leaf and my wife's Rogue from this dealer, and they seemed to really be on the ball -- knowledgeable and with great attention to detail. Last night, that went right out the window. I had told my contact there early in the day that we would be coming in to test drive a Leaf S, and she said she would let our salesman know, have the car ready, etc. We got there and found: no car (it was stored on a remote lot), no salesman (no one had told him we were coming in), no business manager to talk deal (ditto). When the salesman arrived -- someone called him at home despite our objections to interrupting his evening -- it turned out he knew almost zero about EVs. Everything he did online, as in looking up local inventory, was painfully slow. I asked about the NY State $2,000 EV rebate and he had no idea how that was executed (turns out, it's point-of-purchase). It was a textbook case of how not to try to sell someone an electric car. (In the interest of brevity I'm omitting several more damning details.)
I diplomatically but firmly told my contact at the dealership via e-mail this morning how badly things had gone. Several hours later I got a phone message from their business manager saying that they had obviously done a bad job and he wanted to talk to me to get it straightened out. I don't know yet if that will result in fewer dollars flowing from my pocket to the dealership's, or if it will be an exercise in hot air.
Summary: My wife and I are both much less enthusiastic about buying a Leaf than we were before our encounter. Despite my dislike of the Bolt's interior, I plan to test drive one soon, possibly tomorrow, and try to convince myself that I could live with it. (Several local dealers have 2017 Bolts available on big discounts.) Because of the increased need for range (a relatively new addition to our requirements), we're feeling a bit trapped by the lack of real world options. I like the idea of a 40 kWh Soul EV, but it's not likely to arrive before very late this year, and the new FFE is a 2019 vehicle.
Part of the issue here is deciding how long we will keep my next car. My wife likes the idea of buying one and if it turns out to be an issue for any reason then we can trade it in on something else in a couple of years. This is very expensive thanks to depreciation in a car's early years on the road, especially an EV. But with the high lease rates we were quoted for a Leaf (see way upthread), there's no real incentive to lease rather than buy and quickly (by our standards) trade in. And this also intersects with the issue of Leaf battery durability. Our 2013 Leaf is still showing all bars, and I think this is entirely due to not living in a hot part of the US and always charging it via 120v outlet overnight. But will that usage pattern similarly preserve a 40 kWh battery in a 2018 Leaf? My gut says yes, but it's a sizable gamble.
More details to follow as this saga unfolds...
