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On May 31, 2012, I finally got my dream car! A 100% electric Nissan LEAF. Now, using the electricity produced by my solar system I have a "solar electric car"! I can travel around Chittenden county knowing that I'm not burning fossil fuels and am avoiding all the pollution, etc. that results from oil consumption.
One of the first questions people ask, why did you buy a 100% electric car instead of a "gasoline-powered, range-extended" electric car like the Chevy Volt? Or a hybrid? Basically, I wanted to demonstrate that zero emission transportation is possible, today, even in Vermont. The EPA conservatively rates the LEAF’s range at 73 miles. I realized that the vast majority of my driving is 60 miles or less, and I figured that the few times I need to go long distances I’d take a train or a bus if feasible, or rent a car if necessary.
Why operate a car that pollutes all the time for the few days a year that I need to travel a long distance? I'd argue that every household that has two cars, one of which has a daily commute of 50 miles or less, should have at least one 100% electric Nissan LEAF!
Another big question most people ask is: "How far can you go?" I have a 40 mile daily commute (from Underhill Center to South Burlington). Following Nissan's recommendation, I typically charge the batteries to 80% charge--that should extend their life compared to routinely charging them to 100%. Charging overnight on 110 V gives me plenty of juice to make it back and forth to work, run a few errands, etc. The charging is all automatic--I plug in the car when I get home from work, the car automatically starts charging when it needs to in order to be ready the next morning, and it shuts the charger off and emails me when the charging is complete.
From years of driving a Honda Civic Hybrid, I've learned how to maximize mileage. For example, I would anticipate a light about to turn red up ahead and slow down so that I reached the light just after it turned green. That way I maintained a constant speed rather than racing up to the light, stopping, wasting gas idling, and then wasting more gas getting the car back up to speed. Such “hypermiling” techniques made it possible for me to routinely get 60 mpg on my commute in a car that was EPA rated at about 50 mpg. (See Tips for Owning an Electric Vehicle for more hypermiling tips.)
Hypermiling techniques also work great with an electric car. According to Nissan, the LEAF can get about 100 miles on a fully charged battery. In the summer I find that I’m able to get about 100 miles on an 80% charged battery, and around 125 miles on a 100% charge.
The farthest I've gone so far is to Solar Fest, in Tinmouth south of Rutland, about 80 miles south of Montpelier. I drove to Montpelier to pick up a friend. We left the car charging (for free) at the 220 V charging station behind City Hall while we spent time in town. The 220 V charger charges about 3 times as fast as my 110 charger, so we were back up to 100% charge in a little over 2 hours. Being new to the car and not sure about its efficiency and range, I drove VERY conservatively. As we were driving up the big hill near Killington the car warned us that if we kept consuming energy at our current rate we probably wouldn't have enough electricity to make it to Tinmouth, but as soon as we crested the hill and headed down, the regenerative braking kicked in and we made it to Tinmouth with 13 miles to spare! We got a primo parking space on site next to a $120,000 Tesla all-electric car and were able to recharge using SolarFest's PV system. (See pictures above and below.)
Although in my mind it's much more about saving the planet than saving money, operating costs for the LEAF are quite low. So far, I’m getting about 4 miles per kWh. If a kWh costs 15 cents, that’s 3.75 cents per mile. If I had a gasoline-powered car that got 40 mpg, and if gas cost $3.60 / gallon, that would be about 9 cents per mile. So, for a month of commuting, if I were buying my electricity, I'd pay about $30, compared to about $72 if I had to buy gas.
And maintenance costs are minimal on the LEAF. No oil changes! For example, at 7,500 miles all I do is rotate the tires. (And since I switch from summer to winter tires twice a year, even that wasn't necessary.)
Another concern people raise is the fact that cold batteries don’t have as much energy as warm ones, so the range is likely to be less in the winter than in the summer. In addition, in the winter electricity will be consumed to keep the passengers warm. The LEAF has a great feature to deal with this fact—not only can you set the time by which you want the car to be charged, but you can also set a time when the car should warm up the cabin, using electricity from the charger rather than the battery, before you start driving. And the LEAF has heated seats, so passengers can stay warm using less energy than it would take to heat the entire cabin. Another tip (that works in any car) is to drape a light-weight blanket over your lap--it's amazing how much warmer you'll feel!
Now that I've been through my first winter I can tell you that the LEAF's heated seats really work well and do use a lot less electricity than the cabin heater does. But on several bitter cold days (lower than -15°F and blowing like crazy), I ran the cabin heater and defroster almost continuously. On such days I comfortably got 50 miles of range on a 100% charged battery.
FYI, the LEAF handles very well in the snow. I live on a dirt road at the top of a hill and never had a problem making it home, even when the snow plow had yet to clear the road.
Then there’s the issue of using electricity to power the car. If we increase the demand for oil-, coal-, natural gas-, or nuclear-generated electricity to power our LEAFs, are we gaining? Will electric cars help us achieve our goals of developing a sustainable energy system and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants? Of course, I don’t want create demand that necessitates building more non-renewable power plants, but even if we did use such sources of electricity, I think you could make the argument that we would still be ahead. It’s not a trivial calculation, but given that only about 14 – 26% of the fuel you put in a gasoline-powered car actually moves the car down the road (the remaining 74 - 86% is wasted), if you look at the full energy use from "fuel in" to "miles driven," electric cars use less energy, and therefore pollute less.
On the other hand, if we use renewable energy (solar, wind, hydro, biomass) to produce electricity, electric cars pollute much less than gasoline-powered cars. If we all support renewable energy development to replace nonrenewable sources, someday in the not too distant future we all could be driving clean, renewable energy cars!
Nissan LEAF Ultimate Guide--Links to lots of articles about the LEAF.
Drive Electric Vermont web site
Good reasons to consider an electric car...now!
Some first-hand data on energy use and costs of my Nissan LEAF
Tips for Owning an Electric Vehicle (including several hypermiling tips)
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