Plugging In Beats Filling Up Any Day Of The Week

November 12th was my 17th month anniversary with MINI-E #250. I have driven it almost 45,000 miles and I am approaching my 800th recharge. I keep detailed records of every time I drive the car as well as every time I charge up so I know exactly how many times I have plugged in, and that would be 791 times so far.

Sounds like a lot of work, right? I often hear people say how they wouldn't want an electric car and one of the reasons is because it's so easy to drive to a gas station and fill up. When you do so, you're generally good for 300 to 400 miles of driving as opposed to only a hundred miles or so for an EV.

The thing is, it's really no work at all to plug in, and only people that have lived with an EV can honestly attest to that. When I arrive home at night, it takes less than ten seconds to walk over to my EVSE, grab the cable and plug in. The car charges while I'm sleeping, it's that easy. When you need gas, you have to drive to a station and wait for them to fill your car up before you can continue on your way. My other car, a Toyota Tacoma can go about 325 miles between fill ups so I would have had to fill up at least 140 times, and most likely would have done so about 150 times.

So what would I prefer to do?  Make 150 trips to the gas station or just pull into my garage like I always do every night anyway and take a few seconds to plug in my electric car? Continue to suck on the oil nipple that we have all been conditioned to believe that we need, or tell OPEC to shove their black gold up their a** and charge my electric car with clean renewable electricity that I make myself with my solar PV array.
Hmmm, let me think about that one for a while.........

How Much Electricity Does the MINI-E Use?

One of the questions that people frequently ask me about the MINI-E is "How much electricity does it use?" Sometimes they'll just say "I love the car, but I wouldn't want to see your electric bill!"

When I tell them the car costs between $3.00 and $6.00 in electricity to go 100-120 miles they usually smile and say "Wow, that's great". The reason the range is between $3.00 and $6.00 is because there is such a difference in electricity rates throughout the country. The MINI-E has a 35 kWh battery pack but only 80% of the pack is usable which means it has 28kWh of available power. That 28kWh can move the car between 90 and 120 miles depending on how efficiently you drive. It is less in the winter months because the heater uses a lot of energy, but for most of the year these numbers are correct as an average.

The national average cost for electricity is $.12 per kWh which means it would cost the average person $3.36 to fully charge a depleted battery on the MINI-E. However rates do vary. I pay $.11 per kWh at my restaurant in Montclair, lower than the national average, but it costs me $.18 per kWh at my home in Chester, only 30 miles from Montclair. So if I "fill up" at work it costs me $3.08 but at home it costs me $5.04! Obviously I take advantage of the lower rates and charge at work as much as possible.

Since I have a solar PV array at my home, I sell the electricity back to the utility at the rate they sell it to me ($.18/kWh) so every kilowatt-hour that charge at work saves me $.07. The average person drives about 15,000 miles per year. If they had a MINI-E they would need to use about 4,200kWh to drive 15,000 miles. If you use the national average, you would pay $504 for fuel for the entire year. If you use my rate at my restaurant, it's $462, at my home it's $756. So figure anywhere between a $40/month and $65/month increase in your electric bill if you had a MINI-E and drove it the average of 15,000 miles per year.

One of the great things about electric cars is that you can easily reduce your electric bill by $40 to $60 per month just by being more efficient and therefore completely eliminate your transportation fuel cost! You can't use less gasoline unless you drive less, but you can reduce your electricity usage and still drive as much as you always have. Simple measures like a programmable thermostat and the use of compact florescent light bulbs can make a big difference. In fact, five 100 watt light bulbs left on continuously for a year use the same amount of energy as it takes to power the MINI-E 15,000 miles! Here's how: five 100 watt light bulbs use 500 watts per hour. In 24 hours they use 12,000 watts or 12kWh. In 365 days they use 4,380kWh. What does the MINI-E use to go 15,000 miles? Remember above I calculated it to be 4,200kWh? So five 100 watt light bulbs use 180 more kWh than it takes to power 3,200lb MINI-E for 15,000 miles!

If you take a good look at your home electricity use, I'm sure you can reduce your usage enough to drastically offset the cost of electricity to power an electric car, if not completely eliminate it. Then, every penny of the money you would have spent on gasoline can go right into your pocket!

Closing in on 40,000 Zero Emission Miles

I looked down at my odometer today and realized that I am closing in on 40,000 miles on my MINI-E. I suspect I'll get there in a couple weeks, right around the time I pass 15 months with the car. I drive a lot more than the average American does, partly because I live about 32 miles from my job and partly because owning a restaurant means frequent trips during the day to get supplies, visit off-site catering jobs and sometimes even deliver food myself.

The time has gone by very quickly and I have enjoyed the car much more than I ever thought I would. I've met so many interesting people along the way, most total strangers that stop and ask me about the car. Many of which tell me they are interested in the same things I am; energy independence, national security and the environmental benefits of electric cars. I have also met a whole legion of electric car enthusiasts online, many of which have found me through this blog, and others I have met from electric car websites like PlugInCars.com, a site that I occasionally write articles for. In fact, the editor of the site, Brad Berman, recently asked me to attend the Bay Area Green Drive Expo in October to sit on a panel of experienced electric car owners and answer questions from the audience, which I accepted.

It's hard to simply describe the great feeling of driving a zero emission vehicle, you have to experience it. The good news is that soon many others will get the opportunity with electric cars like the Chevy volt and the Nissan LEAF both going on sale in three months, followed by the all electric Ford Focus by mid 2011. I really think the public is going to love these cars, and I'm really thankful I have had the chance to experience it before most others have.

One thing that's cool to think about is there is about 2,200 gallons of gasoline that I didn't have to buy, currently sitting in an underground storage tank at the Lukoil gas station in Morristown that I used to go to. That gas would have been burned in my Toyota the past fourteen plus months if I wasn't in the MINI-E program.

Some other facts at 40,000 miles:

I didn't have to purchase 2,200 gallons of gasoline (My Toyota Tacoma gets 18mpg)
At $2.65/gal that's about $5,800. Compared to the roughly $1,800 in electric I've spent to charge up which is a $4,000 fuel savings. Even with a solar PV system, the electricity still "costs" me money because I could have sold it back to the utility at the current rate if I didn't use it to charge my car.

I didn't have to get ten oil changes, a savings of about $500 and I didn't generate 60 quarts of used motor oil that needs to be recycled.

I didn't have to stop for gas about 125 times. That would have added up to over 12 hours of wasted time sitting in my car at the pump. It takes me all of 5 seconds to plug my car in when I get home at night and I'm sleeping while it charges.
I would be close to needing a full tune up. Plugs, filters, belts, etc. All of which aren't necessary with an EV. That's one of the great things with electric cars, there are so few moving parts that can wear out, making the long term maintenance very low. Of course you still have the one big expense of a replacement battery pack that will probably come at around 120-140,000 miles. It's really not possible to predict what that will cost because the price of the Lithium Ion batteries are dropping all the time as more and more companies are making them plus the technology constantly improves. That being said, the money you will have saved in fuel and maintenance will more than cover the cost of the replacement battery pack.

Oh yeah, and since I didn't have to buy any "black gold" to power my car, none of my money left our local economy and went into the pockets of some radical foreign regime that's a member of OPEC. I think I like that fact the most.

Prius Gets Schooled on Efficiency

When I pulled into the Quick Chek parking lot this morning that I sometime stop at to get a cup of coffee I parked next to a brand new Toyota Prius. When I came out a few minutes later the owner of the Prius was looking at my MINI-E. As I walked over I said "It's probably not often you're parked next to a car that uses less gasoline than you do". He quickly said "I get 50mpg, I doubt this does" He then said he's never even heard of a MINI hybrid. I told him that MINI doesn't make a hybrid. Now he was really puzzled and asked "What is it then?" When I explained to him what the car was and that I'm in a pilot program to test the cars out and gain real world data to be used on future electric cars he seemed disappointed. Not disappointed about the car, but disappointed he didn't have one or even know about it. He asked me how much it costs in electricity to run the car and when I told him it cost me about $3.50 to go 100 miles(I pay .11 per kwh) but others pay between $3.00 and $6.00 (depending on their electricity rates). He did some quick math and realized he wasn't the most efficient car on the road as he thought he was. Sorry to ruin your day buddy...

35,000 hard miles: No reduction in range yet

It's been thirteen months now that I've been driving MINI-E #250 and I just passed 35,000 on the odometer driving home from work last night. Long gone are the days that I would worry if I could make a destination, if the car had it in it to make a certain range. Once I had the car for a while and I understood it's range and the relationship between speed and range, I very rarely have to wonder if I can make a particular destination. Recently I started thinking how I haven't noticed any reduction in the cars range yet, but I wanted to take a quick look at my trip logs to make sure. If there were any reduction that I didn't notice myself, it would be there in the recorded numbers for me to see.

I drive the car hard, I don't pamper it at all. Actually I drive it harder than if I owned it because after all, I don't own it and I get to hand the key's back to BMW next June and I'm really not responsible for the condition the car(or the batteries) are in. One of the first thing I looked at was how many times I charged the car since I picked it up June12th, 2009. That would be 623 times in 396 days. Since I charge at work, many days I plug in when I arrive at work even if I don't need the extra juice, just to top it off. This was especially true in the cold winter months when I plugged in just to help keep the batteries warm. I also noticed that I plugged in when the cars state of charge was at or below 5% 52 times. I mention that figure because it is commonly accepted that deep discharge is not a good thing for these lithium ion batteries and below 5% would qualify as deep discharge. Additionally, 52 times in 13 months would also definitely constitute "abuse" and I would not want to do this if it were my $25,000 battery pack. You should know, although I keep talking about how I'm abusing the car, I'm not driving it hard to be spiteful or malicious, I'm test driving this prototype vehicle to find the problem areas and help BMW recognize what works and what need to be improved so I'm doing exactly what they want me to do with it; beat it up and find the weak links.

So, after taking a thorough look at 35,000 miles of trip data I can conclude there has been no recognizable reduction of range, even though I have charged the car way more then would be expected in 13 months, driven about double the miles you would normally drive and had frequent deep discharges of the battery pack. The only pattern to range reduction I can see is temperature related. Both extreme heat and cold weather cause the range to drop. I believe it's primarily due to the extensive use of the heater and the air conditioning because they both use a lot of energy, however the extreme ambient temperature does have it's own direct effect on the batteries also.

So thirteen months in the car is still performing as well as it did when I picked it up. It will be interesting to see it this continues or if the excessive driving and charging that I do with the car starts to get the better of it. Stay tuned...

A Rolling Political Statement

When I first agreed to lease the all electric MINI-E, I really did it because I thought it would be interesting to drive a car so different than everything else on the road. I thought electric cars might be a viable alternative to internal combustion cars but I wasn't really sure if they were ready to take on the established oil burners just yet.

Driving the car for a year taught me a few things, not the least of which that we have the technology to build these cars now, not ten years from now, and that they can compete head to head with their ICE counterparts. Of course there are things they do not do as well as gasoline powered cars can, like drive long distances between refueling and this will make a lot of folks hesitant to buy one until the single charge range increases. However there are a lot of things these cars do well and even better than gas burners like the simple fact that they do not use oil for fuel.  I proudly display that fact in more than one way on #250 and it garners a lot of attention from passers by.

I always see people taking pictures of the car, the emblems and the license plate, sometimes even with their cell phone while they are driving. A wave and a thumbs up usually follows. Recently, I ordered some new magnets from TwistyBitz.com. Robert at TwistyBiz offers all kinds of t-shirts and magnetic badges for all MINI Coopers, and he has a whole line of MINI-E specific stuff like the badges you can see in the picture above (No Oil, No Gas, Plug in & Powered by Sunshine) which would be good for any electric car.

Somehow over the past year I turned from someone that thought driving an electric car would be a fun thing to do to someone that advocates energy independence for financial, environmental and security reasons. How'd that happen?

MINI-E #217 stops buy Nauna's for a charge!

 

Gordon Miller drives MINI-E #217 and before his year lease is over and he has to give the car back he wanted to see how far he could drive the car in 24 hours so he set out this morning from his Rockland County, NY home and drove about 100 miles before he needed to "fill up". He decided to make his first stop at Nauna's for some juice and some lunch. We talked for a while about the trial lease program, about how we both love driving an electric car, about times we needed service and about how we both agree electric cars are here to stay. Once the general public gets to experience what we have for the past year we're convinced people will want them, especially as range becomes bigger and public charging stations become available. We both consider ourselves lucky to be involved in this program and to hopefully play a role in the advancement of electric drive vehicles. He and his friend Scott had sat down to some eggplant parmigiana and then took a nice walk around Montclair before heading back to a fully charged car and another 100 miles of road. Gordon is one of the MINI-E drivers that I have been in frequent contact with during the year we have had our cars. I have met a lot of really nice people from the MINI-E program and become friends with many of them and Gordon is definitely one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. The plan is to drive the car 400 miles today; good luck guys!

Plugging In

Recently I was talking to a friend about the future of electric cars and he said he thinks one of the obstacles will be that people(he) wouldn't want to have to waste time plugging in the car all the time. He said it's so easy to just buy gas once a week and it takes so little time to do so. I quickly snapped back "you waste more time buying gas than I do plugging this thing in, I'll tell you that" He didn't believe me, but as they said in Cool Hand Luke "Some people you just can't reach".

So I thought I'd do a little test to see just how much time I spend plugging in. I know it's not long, but exactly how long I wasn't sure. So for the next few times I plugged the car in (and then unplugged) I timed myself.

Six seconds.

Yep, that's all it take to plug the car in and another 5 or 6 seconds to unplug. So basically I spent about 24 seconds a day plugging in and unplugging since I charge the car twice a day on most days, once at home and once at work. I'm not sitting there waiting for the car to charge, like you have to go when you're filling up with gasoline. I'm either sleeping or working while the lithium ion batteries are recharging. I then went to a gas station when I had some time and parked over on the side by the air pump and timed some of the cars that were filling up.

Seven minutes.

The average car took seven minutes from the time they pulled in to the station to the time they pulled out full of dino juice. While this wasn't a scientifically controlled experiment, I think I'm pretty close to how long the average car takes to full up and I'm not even taking into consideration the time it took them to drive to the gas station. I'll assume it was on their way so they only had to pull into the station.

I have about 32,000 miles on my car in three weeks less than a year so I'm going to end up with right around 33,000 miles on the car this year. If I had driven my Toyota Tacoma truck all year instead of the MINI, I would have to had to stop for gasoline exactly 100 times as I can get 325 to 340 miles per tank.

Doing simple math I have spent a cumulative 2 hours and 26 minutes plugging and unplugging my car this year. If I was driving my Toyota, I would have spent over 11 and a half hours sitting at a gas station waiting for the tank to fill.

So I ask: Who's really wasting their time?

Nice Day, Nice drive, Great Range..

 

When I woke up this morning it seemed like a great day leisurely drive around North Western New Jersey so my wife and I hopped into #250 and took it for a 54 mile cruise through the country. We drove on all rural, secondary roads so it was mostly low speed driving, the kind of driving the MINI-E loves most. The temperature was in the low 70's so the battery was very happy also. It was a very enjoyable drive, as there were no other cars on the road to spoil the relaxing peacefulness of the quiet electric drive of the MINI-E. When we arrived home about two hours later we had driven 54 miles and still had an estimated 70 miles of range left. 124 miles, pretty good if I do say so myself.

#458 Gets a Charge out of Nauna's

 Jim McLaughlin lives in Princeton, NJ and drives MINI-E #458. His daily commute takes him into Pennsylvania to his job every day and has a round trip of around 130 miles. Like me, Jim is able to charge while he is working, although it's at 120V, 12amps so it's a slow charge. Still, it adds about 20% to his state of charge while he works so he doesn't have to worry about the long 65 mile drive home. Because of his long commute, Jim has over 26,000 miles on his car and is second only to me in total miles out of all the 612 MINI-E's made. Over the weekend he and his wife stopped by Nauna's for some lunch and to top off #458 as they continued to their destination in New York City. The round trip was about 135 miles and slightly out of the MINI-E's range although Jim has made himself famous for getting exceptionally long single-charge driving range. He regularly gets 120+ miles per charge, but 135 mostly highway miles might be even too much for him to squeeze out of the MINI-E's 35kwh battery pack. Why take that chance when there is a friendly restaurant on the way in Montclair willing to let MINI-E drivers "fill up" for free? I've probably had a few dozen pioneers stop by and use the charger so far. I'm fine with that, I've let everyone know the charger is there and ready for anyone that needs it. Hopefully next year they'll be some BMW ActiveE's stopping by to get some juice because that would mean I'd have one parked out there too!

30,000 Zero Emission Miles in Eleven Months

Yesterday was eleven months to the day (June12th, 2009 to May 12th 2010) since I picked up MINI-E #250 from Morristown MINI. Yesterday was also the day that the cars odometer rolled past 29,999 to an even 30,000 just as I turned into my driveway as I returned home from work.

Electric cars have a long way to go before they are accepted by the majority of the public as a legitimate alternative to gasoline burning cars.  There are still many questions and obstacles like the high cost of batteries, the usable life span of the batteries, the effects the ambient temperature has on the range, the unavailability of public charging infrastructure, but most of all the single charge range of the current EV's. Until recently when Tesla introduced the Roadster there were no production cars that you could purchase that could consistently go100 miles on single charge regardless of the whether conditions. 100 miles per charge seems to be the accepted bare minimum for an EV to be really considered a serious player and have a chance to sell in numbers great enough to warrant production by a major auto maker.

Most of the general public has the perception that we currently don't have the technology to build and sell a car, for a competitive price, that could go far enough on a single charge to satisfy their daily driving requirements. If anything, I hope that people that read about me and my adventures with the MINI-E realize that the auto makers can make a car that can be used as a daily driven commuter car and be used for high mileage driving if the circumstances are right. 30,000 miles in less than a year is much more than the average person drives. In fact, the average driver logs about half the miles that I'll have on the car next month when my first year with the car is over.

I know that the car wouldn't work for everyone. There are plenty of people that drive less miles than I do in a year but have the need to longer individual trips, so yeah, a car with a 100 mile range just wouldn't work for them. However, I believe most households that have more than one car could use a 100 mile EV and could save a lot of money doing so. The cost of maintenance of these cars is dramatically lower than that of an internal combustion engine vehicle because there are so few moving parts to wear out and need replacement. Plus the fuel cost (electricity vs gasoline) is dramatically lower. Depending on what part of the country you live in the average cost to power your electric car would be around $2.50 to $4.50 per 100 miles you drive.

Lately I've been interviewed by quite a few journalists that have heard of the high mileage I'm putting on the car and many of them ask me if I know of anyone else that has driven an electric car more than 30,000 in a single year. I've asked around the EV community and nobody seems to know of anyone that has. I know some of the EV-1 drivers put as many as 50 or 60,000 on their cars over a 3 to 4 year period, and that some of the Toyota RAV4 drivers have 150,000 miles on them but they were sold from 1997 to 2003 so they are all 7 to 13 years old. The Tesla roadster is capable of doing it, but I don't know if anyone would buy one for $110,000 and then basically drive it into the ground like I'm doing to the MINI-E.

If anyone knows of anyone that has driven their EV more than this in a year, please leave a comment with the details. The more people see that these cars are capable of high mileage driving, the quicker the public will realize that driving electric is a legitimate alternative to gasoline powered cars.

2010 NY Auto Show Interview

A few weeks back I was contacted by Nathalie Bauters from MINI. She said she was contacted by a German Journalist, Thomas Geiger and that he wanted to know if she would be able to set up an interview with me at the NY Auto Show. He had read about me and how many miles I've driven the MINI-E so far and read this blog so he wanted to interview me about my experiences with the car. Nathalie arraigned for me to get a press pass to the show so I could go on press day which was two days before the show was open to the public.

It was great because I was able to walk around the show floor while it was empty, just photographers and journalists there. I could sit in cars and take pictures unobstructed by the hordes of people that are there once the show is open to the public. 

Finally I sat down with Thomas and another German journalist, Stefan Grundhoff and answered questions for about a half hour. They then took some pictures of me in the MINI-E on display at the show(see above) and I was free to continue to walk around and check out the show floor. Over at the BMW "lounge area" they were serving refreshments and had a small buffet line so I figured I'd partake in the festivities and joined in. I met Gert Hildebrand there, he is a member of the MINI design team. We talked for a while about the MINI-E program, the new MINI crossover, the Countryman as well as the future MINI coupe. Gert was also really interested in my opinions and asked if I think the new MINI coupe would sell if it were offered as an all electric model.


During the interview Thomas asked me if I would mind if he mentioned this blog in his article and I told it was fine. He then went on to say that he was a very popular journalist in Germany and that I could expect to have a lot of visits to the blog once his article is live. He was definitely right about that! The article was posted online three days ago and this blog has had over 3,000 new visitors in the past three days, most of which are from Germany and other European Countries. Just for a reference, I usually have about 60 to 80 visitors a day so his article was responsible for a remarkable boost in traffic. I have also received about a dozen emails from readers in Germany that have asked questions and offered support for the MINI-E and electric cars in general. You can see the article here, but you'll need to read German to understand it.

Nice trip to the Delaware Water Gap

Yesterday morning my wife and I got up early and headed up to the Delaware Water Gap. It's a beautiful area with lots of scenic views of the Delaware River plus places to picnic and hike. It was about 45 miles from our home so I knew we could make it with the MINI-E, I just didn't know how much driving around we could do once we got there since I wanted to head back home with 45-50% charge.

We made it there with about 55% charge left so we took advantage of the extra juice and drove around for a while. The roads were empty and the MINI-E was at it's best in my opinion. Driving along country roads with the windows down and all you could hear was birds and the occasional sound of the tires rolling over gravel in the road. We didn't even want to turn the radio on it was so peaceful.

After a while we stopped at an Appalachian trail and went for a short hike. We didn't have the time to go too far but it's definitely a place that we'll return to when we have more time for a longer exploration.

We headed back home and finished the trip of 100.7 miles with 7% charge left which would be good for at least 10 more miles before I would have needed to use the 15 or so miles of "reserve" that the car has. The MINI-E is good for most driving environments but in my opinion, there is nothing better than driving it on winding country roads with the windows down and listening to the tires on the road, the slight whine of the regenerative braking and the sounds of the environment outside the car that you normally don't hear over the engine of an internal combustion engine car. I can't explain it, you have to experience it to know how much more enjoyable it is.

I had to do it at least once

Ever since I picked up MINI-E #250 I have had the urge to stop at a gas station and say "Fill er up". Here in New Jersey it's against the law to pump your own gas (crazy I know) so there is always someone there to pump the gas for you. I always thought about doing it, but I really never pull into gas stations any more so the right opportunity never presented itself. The other day I pulled into an Exxon station to get a cup of coffee and instead of pulling in a parking spot I pulled up to a pump got out and walked to the convenience store to get coffee. As I walked away, I said to the attendant "fill please". I was out in a minute or so with my coffee and the guy was looking at me like I had two heads. I quickly told him that he's not crazy and I was just messing with him. He laughed and said he loved the car(especially the license plate!) and wished he had one. He had a bunch of questions about range, the electricity cost, etc; all the usual questions I get all the time. I asked him if I can take a picture of him and he happily obliged. OK, now I can cross that off my list.

Fellow MINI-E driver gets some juice

When I asked for a second wall charger to install at my restaurant in Montclair, I told MINI that I would allow anyone else with a MINI-E that needed to charge up access to it. I really didn't expect to see as many people come to use it as I have. I'm fine with it, the electricity cost is minimal, about $3.00 if they completely charged a depleted battery which rarely is needed. More often the person just needs a little juice to get where they want to go. In this case the car that is in use by Saint Peters College in Jersey City needed a boost. They had driven from Jersey City to Montclair State University for a meeting and were feeling a little uneasy about getting back after the meeting. So they plugged in at Nauna's and went to the meeting. When they came back two hours later they had plenty of juice to make it home. One of the problems of using the car like this for a university is that many different people drive it and rarely does any of them drive it enough to get comfortable with the range. They don't have the confidence that someone that drives it every day has because we learn the limits from driving it all the time. The people that drive them every day wouldn't take a trip that we knew is close to or over the range limit. When you don't know the car well, you don't really know it's limits and you can get that dreaded "range anxiety" feeling.

Filming the MINI-E

A few weeks ago I was contacted by Ulrika Ingold of TVT Media in Munich, Germany and was asked if I would participate video shoot for a documentary on the electric mobility and MINI-E. There was very little details about what they would need me to do and how long it would take, just that the film crew would be coming here from Germany the first week in March and needed to film me with the car at home, at work, in New York City and driving in between those points. They were given my contact info by BMW and as an early adopter they wanted my thoughts on the car, my lifestyle, energy and any savings I have enjoyed since getting the MINI-E. I agreed to participate without asking any questions mostly because I do believe in these cars and would like to offer my experiences and opinions for others to see.

On Wednesday morning I met up with Christine Burgmeier, Franz Stepan and Andreas Kickel at my restaurant, Nauna's Bella Casa in Montclair. They had spent the past two days shooting in New York without the car so they were anxious to start the interviews with me at home, work, and while driving the MINI-E.

It took about twenty hours in all between traveling and shooting on Thursday, Friday and Saturday which was much more than I expected. Christine, Franz and Andreas were such nice people I really wanted them to get all the different angles, environments and soundbites that they wanted, but honestly it turned out to be a lot more of an effort than I expected it to be.

Driving around a busy midtown Manhattan is difficult enough, but doing it while someone is driving next to you hanging out of a taxicab window trying to get in perfect position to film you driving is nerve-racking. We did it for about two hours when they either got enough footage or realized that I was beginning to get very anxious and wanted to finish the driving portion of the day.

I'm not supposed to get into much detail about what we discussed so I won't. I can say that they were very interested in my opinions on my energy usage, lifestyle changes and philosophy, maybe even more so than they were interested in specifics about the MINI-E car itself. The one problem I had was that they needed my answers to be brief and full of content. I found it hard to cut my answers down because I had a lot to say about each subject we discussed.

Christine, Franz and Andreas were all very gracious and professional so I hope I was able to give them all the video and sound bites that they were looking for.

Another Article about my high mileage

I received another Google news alert about the MINI-E today and when I checked it out I found it was another article about me and the mileage I'm putting on the car. This time it was in AllCarsElectric.com and you can read it here. They basically copied what I wrote in my guest blog post for Edmunds Inside Line and what was written in AutoGreenBlog.com. I guess people are starting to notice because I also received an email from MINI USA and they were contacted by a journalist from Germany and he wants to interview me about my experiences with the car. I agreed. This should be fun.

On The Road Again!

 

#250 is back in action! I got the call from Vinny at Morristown MINI this morning that the car was was fixed and had been towed back from the secret MINI-E repair facility at an undisclosed location. (BMW headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ but don't tell anyone) Evidently I did quite a bit of damage when I hit the pot hole, (my bad!) but hey, that's what we're here for right? Anyway, the service tag said they "changed engine, did all high voltage and ground tests and changed battery system" Sounds like a lot of changing went on in there, but as long as it's good to go I'm happy. While the car was there they did another regular service on the car. We were told in the beginning that we would have to bring the car in for service twice during the year so they could download data from the car. If we drove a lot then we would probably have to come in three times because the car can only hold data from about 5,000 miles. This is my fourth service download and I still have almost four months to go. I don't think the folks at BMW thought anyone would put so many miles on the car, but I and others are doing just that. Vinny said the Flying doctors (the tech's that repair the MINI-E's) were "ecstatic" that I'm putting as many miles on the car as I am. I guess it gives them more data to analyze. That's it for now, I gotta go make more data : )

Nissan LEAF Tour visits New Jersey

My wife and I stopped by the Liberty State Science Center in Jersey City this morning to see Nissan LEAF. Nissan has dubbed it the Nissan LEAF Tour and they are stopping at various cities around the country to show off the car. I thought the car looked better in person and definitely was designed with aerodynamics as a primary concern. We got there at 9:15 am and nobody was there yet so I could really talk to the representatives. I voiced my concerns about the lack of an active thermal management system which is what I believe is the MINI-E's biggest flaw. It's acceptable in the MINI-E though because we know it's a test mule and not a polished and refined vehicle that will be offered for sale. The reps stressed that the Lithium Ion batteries that will be in the Leaf are superior to the ones in our MINI-E's and have tested well and will work better in cold weather. She also told me that Nissan has discussed this at great length and is prepared to install a thermal system if they see that there are problems with the cars. Anyone that had already bought a LEAF would have the system installed at no cost to them if they decided that it was necessary.

I do like the car a lot, but I am also concerned with size of the battery pack. It's only 24kwh. If you compare it to the MINI-E's 35kwh pack it looks underwhelming. The Leaf is lighter (by about 600lbs) and more aerodynamic though so that should help to bridge the gap in energy storage. Plus, it's been designed from the ground up as an EV, so perhaps it will come close to the MINI-E's true 100 mile per charge range. Nissan is claiming a 100 mile range, but remember the MINI-E was rated as having a 156 mile range and that's about as real as Santa Clause.

As much as I like the LEAF and want to support Nissan for having the guts to be the first major auto manufacturer to actually sell an EV, I think I'll stick with BMW and see where they are going with Project I. We have been told that the MINI-E trial lease participants will be offered another year extension, but we haven't been told what we have to pay if we want to keep the cars for another year. We have also read that BMW will transition some of the MINI-E participants into ActiveE leases in June 2011 which is when our second year lease will be over. Again, no promises and no word on what it will cost us. Even then, it's just a one year lease and we can't keep the cars. Hopefully, this possible three year lease odyssey will end with an offer to buy an ActiveE or Megacity or whatever BMW is going to call the EV they eventually sell. Leasing is OK for now, but in the end I want to own an EV. I give Nissan a lot of credit for bringing the LEAF to the market for sale. After checking out the car in person, I think they are going to make a lot of people that want to own an EV very happy.

20,000 Zero Emission Miles in 7 Months

Electric cars get lots of criticism about why they just won't work for the masses. If you look around the internet where there are discussions about EV's you'll hear things like "Electric cars are a joke", "They are only for the rich that want to act like they care about the environment" "Battery technology isn't ready for prime time" and "EV's are only good for low mileage, local city driving". Well, I'm doing what I can to disprove the last one. I've had my MINI-E for a little over seven months now and I've racked up over 20,000 miles on it. That's with losing a combined month for two service visits (battery module replacements) so I've really only driven it for six months. I'm on pace for about 35,000 miles in the one year I have the car. 35,000 miles is more than 95% of the population drives in a year and I'm doing it in a 100% electric vehicle.

I have a unique situation because I own the building I work in so I was able to install a charge station at my place of business. This allows me to plug in during the day and charge up if I need to drive further than the available range will allow. I understand many others do not have this luxury, so they would be limited to the range a single charge can provide until they get home at night to charge back up. In the case of the MINI-E, that would be anywhere from 70 to 115 miles depending on the ambient temperature and the driving conditions (freeway vs city). Still, many others in the MINI-E trial lease program with only their home charging station are on course for well over 20,000 miles in the year. This is also more than what the average driver does in a year.

During my 20,000 mile joy ride the past seven months I have had a lot of fun with the car. I have met too many interesting EV advocates to list as well as many, many local folks that stop to ask me about the car.(Mostly wanting to know where they can buy one)I have also decided that EV driving is what I plan on doing from now on, even after this trial lease is up. I'm even installing a solar array on the roof of my home so I'll be driving on pure sunshine in about a month, plus generating enough electric to cover 3/4 of the overall electric bill for my home.

I haven't had to deal with the "problems that all EV drivers have to live with", whatever they are. I really haven't had to alter my life at all to accommodate the fact that the car has a finite range. I do everything the same as I did before other than taking about 30 seconds to plug the car in at night and again in the afternoon when I arrive at work. If you read the comments on blogs on the internet you would think it's such a hassle to drive an EV. That you have to deal with all kinds of obstacles and inconveniences and nobody will buy one because they won't want to put up with it. Funny thing is, the people that write comments like this have never owned or driven an EV. They've read somewhere how bad and unreliable EV's are so they've adopted the bad information as fact. They then write these negative comments that others read and the misinformation is perpetuated. So few people have actually had the pleasure of owning or driving an EV that there aren't enough of us to let everyone know how great they can be. I'm not saying that EV's are for everyone, but I do believe that they would work for a good percentage of the population. It's going to be interesting because very soon consumers will have a choice. EV's are coming to a dealer near you, and sooner than you think.

Some 20,000 mile facts:

Right now, there is over 1,100 gallons of gas that I didn't have to buy sitting in an underground storage tank of a gas station in Morristown NJ.

I didn't need to stop at that gas station about 75 times, which would have wasted about twelve hours of my life just sitting there while my tank was filled.

I didn't have to pay for five oil changes, and there isn't 30 quarts of dirty motor oil that needs to be recycled.

I've had a lot of fun driving the car and meeting a lot of interesting people along the way.