[redpoint5]

I basically wouldn't buy earlier than '13 unless the battery was replaced, or the car was being sold extremely cheap. It seems many people have experienced capacity loss near to what is warrantied by Nissan, but not quite enough to get a replacement (44% loss before 5 years). The guy below describes a good sense for what to expect capacity wise from a used Leaf.

you can’t set the bars to an arbitrary value (the only choice is current or max, you can’t set it from 9 to 10). But you can reset them back to full 12. Every time you drive the car the system evaluates and updates the bar status. This will in time return to the true value if it was set to 12 for any reason. Unfortunately under normal use this will take months.

So to recap
1 car starts at 12 bars at factory
2 car degrades to less than 12 bars in use
3 car can be reset to 12 bars temporarily
4 car will always return to correct value eventually

the key is not to buy the car between #3 and #4 unless you are getting it for the same price you would get one of a known lower bar status.

Target used options are modified if the car is near or above the 60,000 mile mark or the 5 year mark.

12 bars (never trust, even if not reset it should be treated as 11 bars, but might be lower)
11 bars (treat as 11 or 10 but know it might be as low as 8, treat it as 8 if the miles are over 60,000 and you haven’t done a range test or used a obdii reader)
10 bars (treat as 10 or 9 but know it might be as low as 8, treat it as 8 if the miles are over 60,000 and you haven’t done a range test or used a obdii reader)
9 bars (treat as 9 but know it might be as low as 8, treat it as 8 if the miles are over 60,000 and you haven’t done a range test or used a obdii reader)
8 bars treat at face value if above 60,000 miles, jump for joy if below 60,000 miles and treat it carefully knowing you’ll be able to get a free battery but only if you do it before rolling the odometer too far or waiting too long.
7 bars or less and more than 60,000 miles take at face value.

So how much is a bar worth? Well if a battery is replaced at 8 bars to take it back to 12 and it cost $4,000 then a bar is worth $1000.

Compare your two or three used leafs carefully and get the best deal you can knowing it will take work to verify battery capacity. You can’t just sit in the car and trust the dash.

bar loss capacity
1 85.00%
2 78.75%
3 72.50%
4 66.25%