Looking for advice - looking to buy a preowned Clarity

1550 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by EV Nerd, Mar 22, 2022

col127

Discussion Starter · Mar 21, 2022 (Edited)

Hey all,

I just found out about the Clarity recently and am thinking about selling my Nissan Leaf and swap it. My wife and I do a lot of road trips and having a car that has a huge EV range + gas is appealing for us.

So, I know the Clarity was discontinued last year - which means preowned is the only way to go.

I found a 2018 Clarity with 114,000km / 71,000 miles .

It's higher mileage than I want, but it's priced well.

One possible problem I see - is that according to the CarFax, the first notated oil change reported was at 82699 km... unless the owner did it themselves.. shrug ... oddly, this person then did their next oil change at 92,214 km and then at 101.067 km - why all of a sudden oil changes every 10k intervals when the first 80k didn't have?

So it's possible they did their own oil change or they used a smaller shop... or they didn't do any oil changes at all...! That's super concerning if they didn't do an oil change until 83000km... (I mean would a car even last that long without it??)

Thoughts on this? What's the oil change frequency SUPPOSED to be?

What type of longevity could I expect from this car? I'm looking for a car that I can keep until I run into the car.
Is there anything else I should know?

I also found another Clarity, but it seemed to be in service a LOT... see attached... I'm assuming this is pretty bad. like why is it in the shop so often?

Thanks!

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4sallypat

· #2 · Mar 22, 2022

If you are getting a 2018, make sure you get a complete car history on it.

If it comes back clean without accidents, then know that this vehicle will last a long time due to the EV & HV design.

My 2018 has 40,000 miles (65,000 KM) so it's not unusual.

Frequent service might mean that the Maintenance minder is signalling the owner - lot of times, it's not necessary - it's to build profit for Honda.

Very little maintenance other than oil (5 times), brakes (no fluid replaced), tires (none yet)

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EV Nerd

· #3 · Mar 22, 2022

Understand that oil changes can be determined by both calendar age and engine hours. However, there's no easy way to determine how many hours are on the engine. The previous owner (like me) might have done the vast majority of miles around town, in EV mode.

I put an hour meter on my 2021's engine, so I'll have a pretty good indication of how much time is on it. Since I'll likely be using the engine with highway miles, I can multiply hours by 70 mi/hr to get miles. If my miles on the engine are over 5,000 in less than a year, I'll change the oil. Besides that condition, I'll likely change the oil every year, regardless.

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