When The Robot wanted your attention, it usually involved flailing appendages. The Leaf prefers warning lights with its audible warnings. By the time I pulled into work this morning (Friday), I had racked up three warning lights, an empty battery gauge and a blinking “—“ where my estimated range used to be. But how did I get here?
Back up to Thursday morning, when I left home with only a third of my battery gauge remaining (four of 12 bars) and an estimated 37 miles of range left. The drive to work was perfectly routine and done in 5.4 miles, slightly further than the 32 miles of range remaining would indicate. With 43.7 total miles down, my average consumption was hanging at 3.4 miles per kilowatt-hour and my average speed was down to 20.7 mph. The Leaf was asking for five-and-a-half hours to charge on 240v power and 17 hours to charge on 120v.
My trip home was a bit more interesting, and where my experiment took a turn. I had to swing by the grocery store again since my trip earlier this week returned only beer and a candy bar. That added a few blocks to the trip and by the time I was home, my estimated range was down to 24 miles, several more than expected, and it was dropping fast.
Thursday, as you know, was Cinco De Mayo and my wife and I made plans to go out for a bit of dinner and celebrating. The restaurant, as it happens, is just a mile or two up the road from the office, which meant another 12 mile roundtrip, but the Leaf had other ideas. By the time I found parking, my estimated range was down to 18 miles and it was blinking to let me know I was living dangerously.
At this point, I was getting a little nervous. I needed to use the headlights on the way home and the range was dropping quickly. I know I promised you I wouldn’t try any tricks to extend my range, but I have to confess that I caved. To be honest, if I were in a gasoline-powered car and the needle on the fuel gauge was in the red, I’d back off the throttle as well, so I think this was only fair. I’d already killed the climate control since it was warm in the car as it seems to have the biggest effect on the battery life.
When we left the restaurant, we got our first audible warning that the charge was getting low and advising us to find a plug. Warning messages also popped up on the screen in the gauge cluster and the nav/radio screen and offered to locate the nearest plug for us. We declined and headed home. By the time we got there, the estimated range was down to nine miles, far more than the actual distance traveled despite my newfound light-footedness. My average speed was also down again to 20.3 mph while my efficiency had climbed to 3.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. The Leaf was demanding seven-and-a-half hours to charge on 240v and 22 hours on 120v. Total trip was up to 62.2 miles.
The situation looked grim the next morning. The Leaf doubled up the audible warnings, advising that the battery level was both “low” and “very low” and again offering to find the nearest charging station. Short of running an extension cord out the window of my apartment, my options consisted of the airport or the office. Making the decision harder was the fact that my estimated range was now reading “—“ and the battery gauge was in the red zone with only two bars left. At the same time, I’d picked up three warning lights on the dash, a yellow triangle with an exclamation point near the speedometer, a yellow icon showing a gas pump with an extension cord hanging off it in the center of the main gauge cluster and a similar icon with an arrow next to the range indicator. I was not feeling confident.
With a gentle touch of the throttle and the climate control and stereo off, I rolled out. I had no choice, I had to stop at the Post Office again and get those Mother’s Day cards out (If you’re reading this, Mom, ignore that) and Motor Trend policy dictates we return the cars clean rather than stick the next guy with a dirty ride, and the Leaf was quite dirty after parking under the trees on my street all week. Between the Post Office and the car wash, I lost one of my remaining two bars of battery power and the “—“ readout began flashing. Less than a mile from the office, I lost the last bar.
But I made it. According to Nissan’s online Leaf owner’s tool, the car actually had four miles of range left when I parked it in the garage. I never did get the turtle warning light and accompanying loss of top speed, but previous tests have indicated those don’t come on until the battery is right about to give out, around a mile before it quits. With no other public charging station within four miles of the office, I had no choice but to plug in.
I’d gone 67.6 miles total, putting the actual range at 73.6 miles, or right about what the EPA predicts but 11.4 miles short of what the Leaf predicted when I first unplugged it. Average speed was down to 20.1 mph and efficiency was up to 3.6 miles per kilowatt-hour. The Leaf told us it would need seven-and-a-half hours to charge on our 240v charger, or a whopping 23 hours on a 120v outlet. In actuality, it needed only six-and-a-half hours to fully charge, sucking up 23.09 kilowatt-hours of electricity, just shy of the battery’s official 24 kilowatt-hour capacity. Not all of that charge actually went into the battery of course, as there are always losses due to heat and resistance during charging.
With that, I’ve failed to reach my objective. It’s possible I could’ve milked it home with some serious hypermiling, but doubtful. And let’s not forget, I didn’t drive the Leaf into work Monday morning, so in a real week of commuting we’d need to add another six miles onto my trip and in all likelihood I wouldn’t have made it to work this morning. Of course, I brought this on myself. I could’ve driven more gently. I could’ve used the Eco mode, boring as it might’ve been to drive with an electronic brick under the pedal. I could’ve stayed in Thursday night, or picked a restaurant near a public charging station. But I didn’t, and I paid the price.
Now, this raises an important question. If I owned this car, what would I do now? Assuming I didn’t have a charging station at work, I could try to talk my employer into letting me plug in to a 120v wall socket and add enough charge to get me home (assuming the 240v charging station in the MT garage didn’t exist). Then what? Well, I could drop an extension cord out the window of my apartment and across the parking lot, but I doubt that would’ve gone over well. I could talk to my landlord about installing a 120v plug at my parking space (the area is lighted, it would be relatively easy), or taking the plunge on a public 240v charger, but it would be a tough sell. There are public chargers at the airport, which is only three miles or so away, so I could put my bike in the back and leave it there to charge, though someone might’ve complained after seven hours. There are also public chargers near a major shopping area up in Santa Monica. Assuming I had the charge to get there, I could plug in then go to dinner and movie or some such.
That last option is really the only one that wouldn’t be completely equivalent to planning my life around my car, as it could be worked into a weekly routine so long as I had the disposable income for a night out at least once a week. I had planned to do this over the weekend, but obviously I ran out of charge before I could try it. Still, I’d have to find a way to kill six-and-a-half hours in order to get a full charge, which is a pretty big time commitment. This issue could be mitigated, though, when some of the promised 400v quick-charge stations actually come online and shorten the charge time to 30 minutes or so from empty, but that raises the issue of potential battery damage if I were to use the quick-charge station for every fill-up.
Then there’s the matter of the cost. Electricity is pretty cheap, so I could probably slip my employer a couple of bucks to cover it. Most ChargePoint public charging stations we’ve found around the Los Angeles area are free for now, a means of attracting EV-owning customers rather than a profit-generator. Stations that do charge seem to be asking between 30 and 50 cents per kilowatt-hour, well above market rates.
The actual market rate is tricky to determine, as the LA Department of Water and Power, like most utilities, uses different rates depending on the application and the amount of power consumed. Single family homes get different rates than airports, summer and winter command different prices due to demand, there are different rates for “standard” service and “Time-of-Use” service and the price per kilowatt hour increases with every 350 kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed. Counting only the electricity needed to fill the Leaf, my 23.09 kilowatt-hour fill-up should’ve cost between $1.62 and $3.69 were I charging at home depending on my service plan, household usage and the season. Businesses like malls and airports get a better rate, so charging there would’ve cost them about 69 cents.
Can the Leaf be used as an eight-to-five commuter for and apartment dweller like me? Yes, it can, if driven properly. I probably could’ve done it without resorting to the Eco mode if I’d tried hard enough, or if I’d simply consolidated my errands and not gone out to dinner. But then what? Options certainly exist for charging the car, but none is nearly as practical as the old gas station. I could make it work, but would I?
If I’m completely honest, no. I like electric cars, what they’re capable of and what they represent. The compromises necessary to make EV ownership compatible with my apartment dwelling, however, are simply more inconvenient than I’m willing to accept. If I lived in a house or had an available charger at work (ours is already servicing two cars and most consumers don’t even have that option right now), it would be a different story. In my case, a hybrid would be a better option, as even a plug-in hybrid would run into the same charging challenges. Perhaps other apartment dwellers, those even more enthusiastic about EVs than I or with better access to charging infrastructure, could make it work. I’m sure someone out there is. For the average apartment-dwelling consumer, though, the infrastructure just isn’t there yet and the compromise isn’t worth the cost. Someday.
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