Do most of you have level 2 chargers at home?

agree, not a luxury. with an older leaf your driveway is the only charger you can really count on. when i had mine i found about 1/3 of the nissan dealership chademos were dead on arrival with no app or car warning, and another 1/3 were blocked by inventory cars. so if you come home low, being stuck on 1.3 kW with no easy fallback is a pain. L1 is fine for 30-40 km a day, but since you already have the outlet i'd keep the L2 for the bad days.

Honestly you're lucky to have the outlet at all. I'm in an apartment so I can't charge at home, and I depend on the CHAdeMO fast chargers in my town. Those are only "fast" if nobody's on the other side. I get 50 kW alone and about 20 kW when someone else plugs in. I'd keep the L2 for the bad days, like others said.

Interesting, I never thought about L1 vs L2 affecting the bill. I'm renting so home charging isn't even an option for me, and where I live there are barely any CHAdeMO stations. The ones with more than 4 units usually have about 3 broken. Honestly if you've got a driveway outlet and a 30-40 km commute, I'd be pretty happy with that setup.

One thing for a Leaf: don't count on public CHAdeMO as your backup. The one in Waterloo, NY sat broken for over a year before EA fixed it. So on a bad day your home charger is really your only dependable option. L1 for the daily 30-40 km sounds fine, but I'd keep the L2 around.

I'd keep the L2 too. I've done the NY to OH run (about 460 miles on I-80) in cold, normal and very hot weather in a Leaf, and there are just enough chargers to make it work. I use PlugShare and ABRP to plan it. I still got stranded once by an out-of-order charger and needed Nissan roadside to flatbed me to a DC fast charger. Home is the one place you can count on, so having L2 for the bad days is worth it. L1 is fine for 30-40 km a day.

The no active cooling thing is why I'm wary of leaning on DC fast charging at all. I've lost 1.5% SOH in about 3 weeks on mine while babying it, so I don't need extra heat cycles on the pack. Home L2 is the gentle option, and it's the one I'd keep for the bad days.

L1 will cover your commute fine, but I've done two 600-mile trips in 30 kWh Leafs with some battery degradation, because I didn't want to pay to have the cars hauled. Each one took two very long days. The thing I learned is that on 120v it takes a full day or more to get back to full, so if a day goes sideways L1 won't bail you out. Since you already have the 50 amp outlet, I'd hang onto the L2 for those days.

We have a 2022 Leaf and mostly charge at home for free off our rooftop solar, so the bill side of this was never a big factor for us. If you can swing it, solar changes the math on L1 vs L2. A faster charge just means you can use the sunny hours. Your 30-40 km commute is easy either way, and I'd keep the L2 for the bad days like everyone says.

Same here on the solar side. I have an L2 for my Leaf, and on weekends when I'm home I charge midday so it runs on solar instead of grid power. That's where the L2 pays off for me, since it can fill up during the sunny hours. I'd keep it for that alone.

Agree with keeping the L2. I'd trade for your driveway outlet in a heartbeat. I don't have home charging for my Leaf yet (HOA fight, which I'm winning), so I DC fast charged yesterday because it's often the only way I can charge it. Not something I'd pick if I had the choice. L1 for 30-40 km a day sounds fine, and the L2 is there for the days it isn't.

For what it's worth, I charge my Leaf off a regular balcony outlet in an upper floor apartment. A heavy-duty weather-rated extension cord goes over the edge, and I connect the charger on the lawn inside a waterproof drybox. It takes me about 3 days to go from nearly empty to full, but for normal use overnight or one full day keeps me ahead. I've done it for about 3 years. At 30-40 km a day you'd be fine on L1 with a lot of room to spare. If you already have the 50 amp outlet and the unit, I'd say keep it for the days you come home low, but you didn't waste your money lol.

We did 7 years on just L1 with a 42 mile round trip commute, so yours will be easy. We only got around to the L2 this year, and it's nice for the random days where we do too many errands and drive the battery way down. Not a must-have, though. If we didn't have a contractor father-in-law and the materials already, I wouldn't have thought much about it. You already have the outlet, so I'd try L1 for a couple weeks and keep the L2 for those days.

Same experience here with a longer commute. My wife drives our Leaf to a different city every day for work. On L1 it never fully caught up, and by the last work day of the week she'd have to take the gas car because the Leaf hadn't charged enough. Since we put in L2 she can always take the Leaf. For OP's 30-40 km I think L1 is fine, but with a heavier daily drive it stops keeping up.

One thing if you do the L1 trial. Check what that 120V outlet is actually on. I figured L1 would be plenty for our ~20 miles a day too, but the outdoor outlet I had was split off other circuits and didn't have the right breaker for a continuous load. The electricians really stressed it needs to be dedicated, with nothing else branching off it. I ended up putting in a new outlet instead, and since I was doing that anyway I made it 240. You already have the 50 amp one, so that's probably not an issue for you, but I'd be careful about running the granny cord off a random outdoor outlet.

I've been on L1 with my Leaf for about a year now and it's been fine. One thing worth knowing: the charger that came with a US Leaf is also a level 2 unit if you plug it into a 50 amp outlet, so if you're in the US you may already have been set up for both. Not sure if that applies to you with the $700 unit, but I'd try L1 for a couple weeks like you planned.

Loading to 80% and forgetting about it sounds like a good routine for light driving. I do something similar with a first-gen Juice Box 40 Pro on a west-facing wall here in Huntsville. In summer I have time-of-day charging set to start at 11 PM and stop at 9 AM, so it never runs in the afternoon heat. The unit's temperature monitoring is good too, which is reassuring on a hot wall. For store runs and the occasional weekend trip, a schedule like that means you really don't have to think about it.

Late to this, but on the battery side: I have a 2013 Leaf S with almost 80,000 miles and it hasn't dropped a bar yet. LeafSpy has the SOH at 86.6%. I did most of my quick charging in the first two years and have since stayed mostly on L1/L2 at home, so I'd lean on home charging for everyday use, like others said. For your commute either one should be easy on the battery.

Ugh, this is basically my story. 2015 here too, and one day my usual drive downtown just ate way more battery than it should have. I used to see roughly 84 miles and now a full charge gets me about 50. Same routes to work every day, so the only things that changed were the weather and how I drive. The capacity bars still all show up, which is what bugs me. Hope yours turns out better.