August 2018 Drive Report; What A Long Hot Trip It's Been!

Another month down and no real surprises. My battery stats are continuing their rather predictable trend. The LEAF is still rock solid reliable and yeah, in a fit of impatience, I spun the tires twice in the past 30 days for the first time in my 2018.  I quickly found out, its quite an easy thing to do!

For the month, I traveled 1480.3 miles at a personal cost of $4.45 supported with 296.145 kwh from NCTC.  Without that benefit, my cost would have ballooned to $31.91 pushing the last few kwh into tier 2 rates or about 2.1 cents per mile.  This is an increase in efficiency probably brought on by a few trips where I challenged the range of the LEAF which meant driving conservatively AKA "24 kwh LEAF mode."

This month, my rates were a bit cheaper at 8.5 cents per kwh over the more normal 8.9 cents per kwh.  This will change soon as we get into the more expensive Winter rates but should go no higher than 9.3 or so.

As always, I minimized full charges only doing two for the month adding only 3 L2 sessions.  Charge count is currently 94 L2's and 121 L3 sessions.   Ahr is 110.97, SOH; 96.13 and Hx is 114.59 with total miles at 10,703. This a loss of 4.08 ahr,  3.53% SOH. Extrapolated to 100,000 miles I am on pace to be down about 33% (the difference between loss of ahr and SOH is less than .03%) which means I would just miss a warranty claim.

Now as the pack degrades, its rate of degradation should increase if all else remains equal. This makes sense as degraded pack means more cycling to travel the same distances. I am on a lease which means in 2½ years, I need to make the decision to buy it or give it back.  I did lease the car with the intent of buying it "if" everything worked out. Based on my experience with my 2016 S30, I was expecting a degradation rate that would be no more than 10% over 100,000 miles.  My 2016 had degradation of 1-3% over nearly 30,000 miles.  Granted its a guess since the 30 kwh LEAF battery stats bounced all over the place so nailing down specifics was impossible.  Only looking at long term trends was I able to get any kind of picture and normally, I would have gone with the low water mark recorded but a week to the day of my accident,  I did drive over 116 miles on a charge in January which pretty much told me that my LEAF hadn't lost much.

The other thing to consider is that I blog about the LEAF in order to show people how cheap a LEAF  "can" be.  So yeah that means using what resources I have and that means taking as much advantage of the free charging period as I can. I can say with HIGH certainty that when my free 2 year NCTC ends, my public charging rates will drop.  They will drop simply because charging at home will become the cheapest option.  How this affects my rate of degradation? I guess I will find out.

Greenlots Announces DCFC Rates for Central WA

Starting Sept 1st, the new Greenlots stations (partially paid for with $50 of our EV tab fees) in Central WA will begin billing at the rate of 35 cents per minute for DCFCs and $1.50 an hour for AC.  TBH, when I first read the email received, I thought it was 35 cents per kwh which is ok pricing considering the Central WA stations in question enjoy power at half the cost we Puget Sounders pay. But it was not to be.  This equates to $21 an hour but because its a per minute cost, the speed of charging is also a major concern.

Using a recent example (from last night) I received 21.4 kwh in a 30 min charging session. This is near the best I can do in my LEAF. The charger only ran at 118 amps which is a bit lower than some but close enough for this comparison.   This pencils out to 49 cents per kwh which matches what Blink charges.   But that is a best case scenario which would get me no more than 60% SOC.

A warm pack would yield even worse results.  Charging at the "common" rate of 30 KW would yield 70 cents per kwh. For anyone wanting or needing a charge over 60% SOC in a 2018 LEAF, the costs become astronomical.

Webasto the new owner of the AV stations is still maintaining the $20 per month unlimited charging plan and does cover a bit of Central WA (mostly along Highway 2 and a bit of I-90) but is lacking presence in the Southern part of the region.  Also as new owners, I am not sure I would want to count on the $20 plan remaining especially if the greatly needed expansion hopes come to fruition.

EVGO is expanding and offers a decent plan which is also per minute based but at a much lower cost.  Their best deal would even be good for a moderate user. Its 9.99 a month with a per minute rate of 18 cents per minute so half the cost of Central WA.  The best part is the $9.99 month subscription cost covers the first $9.99 of per minute billing. So basically charge twice for 30 minutes and you have covered your minimum monthly cost.   Even at 30 KW, EVGO runs to 36 cents per kwh, a VERY good deal!

Because of all this, I see the brand new stations in Central WA getting minimal use and that would be a shame. Greenlots; Maybe you should consider a subscription plan to at least give locals a reasonable option for use?


Electrify America

EA is expanding rapidly now mostly because they have to. The settlement requires them to complete phase 1 of 5 by July 2019 so they have 10 months left.  New ground broken in Albany, OR and Vancouver, WA plus new announcements for TWO in Everett, WA (a place that is pretty thin for QC options)  but strangely just down the street from each other??  Oh well, better than nothing.  The two Everett stations along with both Albany and Vancouver will continue the trend with a Walmart Supercenter host.  Pricing is currently 30 cents a minute so not cheap but still cheaper than Central WA  and they do promise higher charging speeds sometime in the distant future.

Camping In A LEAF

The current topic has been camping in the LEAF and since this is something that I have done, I thought I would share my experience.  This was a bit thrown together so don't have the picture coverage I normally have for these types of things so if there is a specific item or question you have after reading this, comment!

First off,  calling it camping is stretching the term a bit but recently I had a chance to test the theory of whether sleeping in the LEAF is a doable thing. I mean real sleep. I have dozed at charging stations several times in the front seat and it was almost always VERY refreshing but what about those times when a good 3-4 hours is what you are looking for and you want to wake up without a sore neck or back?

 IOW, the challenge of getting a mattress in the back was the first thing to deal with.  Now as we know, the 2018 LEAF back seats do not fold flat or even anything close actually but there were two issues.  

First folding the backseats, the area left was too short to sleep in. With a slight curl, I could do it but I wanted a bit more room but then discovered the front seats recline to the same level as the back seats folded forward. So I folded the seats down and found the length was a bit too short so had to remove the head rests and fold the front seats back. It was a perfect matchup. 

This also required sliding the front seats as far forward as they would go. The picture does not show it but its actually quite flat and more importantly, sturdy.   Notice the cubby holes created between the seats on the floor. I found that they were the perfect storage places for things that we might need in the middle of the night that would have been stored in the well "under" the mattress...

The 2nd and most obvious issue was the folded rear seats created a tiered floor so leveling it was the next step. I have a bunch of metal boxes that were used to store magnetic data tape from the 80's and 90's.  I used two of them which was handy as I used both to store stuff.  But the real discovery came when I realized the height needed was a near perfect match to my laptop stand I had. Now the stand worked great on the coach but when I got my chair years ago, the stand was too cumbersome so it has literally sat in the corner of my living room the past 5 years doing nothing.

Now my mattress comes with a 12 volt air pump which I don't use. The first time putting a double mattress measuring 54" by 75" in thru a "single mattress" hatch opening makes the issue of partial inflation quite intuitive. 

So I inflated the mattress to about 50% or so or just enough to take shape using the manual pump that came with my canoe which I prefer anyway.  Its also much faster.

After I got the mattress in the back, I finished the inflation only going to around 80-90%. This allowed the mattress to settle into the space which in reality is not nearly as big as the mattress so I inflated it until it was a snug fit in the car and there was no possibility of "bottoming out" by any one person.

For one person, it would be a dream but even with the 2 of us, (My Son is only 11 so maybe  1½?) we were still very comfortable.

Before completing final inflation

All in all, it was a very comfortable setup. There is minimal headroom so no option to sit up but a few extra pillows allowed me to prop myself up enough that I could have watched a video or something.  Now that Summer is nearly over, I am guessing the super smoky days are mostly behind us.  It was this reason why I decided to head out to the sound to find a place to sleep that I was hoping had slightly better air to breathe. 

After a night parked near the  boat launch at Arcadia Point, the realization that shades to cover the windows would be a great idea as the Sun is still a VERY early riser!

Pros

I actually went and re did all this at home to time how long it would take from parking to bed and was able to replicate the setup in under 10 minutes quite easily.  Key points are determining ahead of time anything you might need in the middle of the night. There is ample room in the front seats to put something that will be accessible without opening the doors.  

I also packed what I would normally take for a 3 day trip with my Son and for this, you want to balance small with convenience. I used 2 backpacks and 2 gym bags along with 2 coolers, a small 6 pack cooler and a 24 Qt Coleman cooler.   What wasn't packed was the 2 blankets (My Son is not a good sharer...) 3 pillows.   The metal cases held basics like TP, extra towels, utensils, most of the food, etc. 

I will say although a 10 minute setup time isn't bad, its definitely not what I would use for the frequent cat naps I like to take especially on the longer road trips. But the position was near perfect. It was a slight incline so the head is higher than the feet but only by a little. It was VERY comfortable. 

Cons

Because of the length of the bed, folding the front seats "back" was required to make it fit. I tried folding them forward but that only made the bed to uneven at the top and sleeping comfortably like that just wasn't going to happen.  So driving in this setup is out of the question. Granted it would be illegal to move without everyone being belted but sometimes, repositioning is needed. 

**Make sure you know where the Sun will rise.  I would have been ok had I parked in a different spot where the trees would have blocked the Sun. 

The other thing was storage. Next time I will be prepared with one of those collapsible bins that will hold everything I might need in the middle of the night. This will be easier than reaching blindly to grab a bag to open only to find out its the wrong one "or" I could try using different color bags...

The large Coleman Cooler was also a bit too much. Its great for keeping things cold but due to the fact it has 3" thick walls.  But the cooler would only fit on the front passenger seat. I will look at ones that will fit in the cubby hole between the seats as a better solution.  There is actually a decently large space there.  Below I put the 6 pack cooler there as a reference. When camping I was easily able to put both backpacks on one side. 

Another thing that I hesitate to label as a "con" is that all the headrests have to be removed. Now, the backseat headrests are off nearly all the time since my Son is generally the only backseat passenger I have at least until he gains a "few" more lbs and can legally ride in front.  But they do only take a second to remove.