Early Days

These are definitely early days with respect to electric vehicles. Level 2 (240v) and Level 3 (480v) public chargers are few and far between. For the most part, EV owners are charging at home and limiting their trips in order to make it back home before running out of stored energy.

Within a few years, the situation will be quite different. Two federally-funded programs (The EV Project and ChargePoint America) are busy installing public charging stations in major metropolitan areas. Electron stations will soon be nearly as ubiquitous as gas stations.

Remember, the automobile existed before gas stations. Back then, you bought your fuel from a druggist or grocer. If you didn't plan your trips carefully, you hired a horse to tow you to the next town, accompanied by the usual comments of "Only a fool would buy an automobile." "A horse never runs out of fuel, there's grass everywhere."

The difference this time is there already exists a nationwide distribution network for EV fuel. It's called the grid. Electricity is everywhere. So although filling up at a high power charging station is more convenient, it's not required. Simply pull out your 110v trickle charger and ask the nearest homeowner if you can borrow a cup of electrons.

LEAF update

Another uneventful month of driving with electrons. Our EV Project-supplied Blink EVSE arrived this month, so now we get all kinds of statistics (see above). The Blink was installed on the 7th, so this is roughly 75% of the monthly total. Mileage isn't shown, but was 650.5 for the same period. Extrapolating for the entire month would put us at 870 miles and 280 KWh, for an average of 3.1 miles/KWh or $0.038/mile. If we were buying gasoline instead (at the current local price of $3.90/gallon for regular), it would be the equivalent of 100 MPG.

But I didn't want to talk about cost. As I said before, if you were buying a car on purely economic grounds, you wouldn't -- you'd get a bicycle or a bus pass. We bought the LEAF because the idea of an electric car was just so cool. We missed out on EVs the first time around, so I wanted to make sure we were part of the renaissance.

Completely unexpected was how much fun this car would be to drive. Nissan really did their homework. Gen 1 electric cars (and golf cars, and forklifts, and drag racers) gave you 100% torque instantly. Kind of a hard shove in the small of the back. But once you've got your torque, that's it. You don't get any more. So you have this sensation of the car running out of steam as the speed increases.

The LEAF builds up torque quickly, but continues to add more even as the speed increases. If you step hard on the accelerator, you think "V6 sport coupe", not "overpriced golf cart". All good things must come to an end, and the torque eventually levels off, but from 0 to 40, it's the quickest car in the morning grand prix.

Karma

Payback time. No, not gas prices. The weather. Back in January, I posted about the "normal" winter we'd been having instead of the anticipated "Snowpocalypse 2011". That changed about a month later. If you look at the temperature plot above, you'll see a dip, leading up to March 1st. Unseasonably cold temperatures and convergence zones blessed us with 8" of snow that stuck around for about a week. From now on, I keep my mouth shut.

I haven't updated you on our Nissan LEAF for a while. There's a simple reason for that: nothing really interesting has happened. Which may be interesting in its own right. The LEAF has turned out to be an ordinary car with one exception -- it runs on electricity. We drive it during the day, we plug it in at night, and we don't stop at gas stations anymore. Karma's painful, so I'm not going to say, "I told you so!". But I started needling my wife a few years ago about her solo-driver commute. I asked her, "What are you going to do when gasoline hit $10 a gallon? You need to figure out some way to get to work that doesn't involve burning oil." Well, we did. Of course, I would rather she rode a bicycle, but this is probably more practical for most people.

The one change that has occurred in the past month is the installation of our Blink charging station. The Blink has a touch-screen menu system, wireless connectivity, and web access. It also tracks our actual electricity consumption. Since we don't have a separate meter for the car, I've been trying to estimate based on data coming from the car's telematics system. Turns out my estimate was a bit off. We're actually averaging a bit over 3 miles per KWh, when you measure it straight from the wall.

Based on a rate of $0.116 per KWh, our fuel costs are just under $0.04 per mile. That compares with just over $0.10 per mile for the car my wife was using (Toyota Echo), and $0.19 per mile for the minivan we traded in (Toyota Sienna). As a family, we're still buying gasoline. But the oil burners have been shuffled so that the highest-mileage child drives the car with the highest MPG. My son, when he starts driving in a couple of years, will be getting one of these.

One Month Off the Pump

We've had our Nissan LEAF for one month now. In that time, we've traveled 945 miles, consumed 225 KWh of electricity, and grown 83 virtual "trees". No issues with the car so far (knock on wood). We have learned to ignore the range estimator, putting our faith in the battery gauge. I also bought a ChargePoint prepaid card to take advantage of public charging stations, although we haven't used it yet.

We emitted 350 fewer lbs of carbon dioxide versus the previous vehicle. That's based on PSE's current load mix (32% coal, 36% hydro, 30% natural gas). Given current prices, it's likely that PSE will be using more natural gas and renewables, and less coal in the future, so things should only get better.

We don't get a separate electric bill for the LEAF, so it's a little hard to determine precisely what the actual costs have been. Using the 225 KWh reported by Carwings and a rate of $0.11 per KWh, figure around $25 for the month. By way of comparison, if we had been driving our Toyota Echo instead, we would have used 30 gallons of gasoline, at $3.30 per gallon, for a total of $100.

Which brings me to my final point. During the month we've had the LEAF, electric rates have gone from $0.11 per KWh to $0.11 per KWh. Electric rates are controlled by the utility commission. Local gasoline prices have gone from $3.20 per gallon to $3.45 per gallon. Gasoline prices fluctuate based on supply and demand, market speculation, unrest in the Middle East, and hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know about you, but I like knowing what my transportation costs are going to be more than a few days in advance.