April Leaf Update

Well, for starters, leaves are finally beginning to appear. And the cherry tree is in full bloom. We're currently struggling through the coldest Spring on record. As a result, the April numbers for the Leaf aren't much better than March: 840 miles and 272 KWh, for an average of 3.1 miles/KWh. At $0.12 per KHw, it's costing us about $0.038/mile to fuel up. At the current price of $4.10 per gallon (yikes!), we're getting the equivalent of 105 MPG.

Otherwise, no issues to report. We did get the service bulletin from Nissan about an issue with the fault detection system. Even though our car isn't affected, Nissan still wants us to have Sparkii reprogrammed just to be on the safe side.

Finally, starting this week, I'm going to answer some commonly-asked questions about EV ownership. This week's question:

How long does it take to recharge the Nissan Leaf?

Answer: 10 seconds. We typically charge the car at night. After parking Sparkii in the garage, I open the hatch cover and plug in. Then I proceed into the house. At 11 PM, the timer goes off and the charger starts up. How long does the charger run? Don't know, don't care. What I do know is I start the next day with a full "tank" of fuel. By way of contrast, how long does it take to put gasoline in your car? If you add up driving to a filling station, waiting in line, pumping the gas, and paying, is it 10 minutes? 15 minutes? With an EV, your "filling station" is at home, and the car refills itself.