Friday, October 16, 2009

Christmas came early!

I received my 2nd wall charger today that I am installing at my restaurant in Montclair, Nauna's Bella Casa. This is really good news for me as it will significantly increase my daily range. I can "fill up" anytime now during the day so I don't have to allow for my 31 mile trip home every night. My round trip from Chester to Montclair is 63 miles so that left me with about 40 miles of driving during the day. Now I can drive to Montclair, top off, drive 100 miles or so and then charge up for the 31 mile drive home. I have agreed to allow any of the other Mini E trial lease participants use of the charger during business hours at no cost, so if anyone is in need of a charge and is near Montclair come on over, I'll have it installed in a few days.

The only bad news I have to report is that with the cold weather starting to set in, I am seeing a noticeable reduction in driving range. The second wall charger may be more of a necessity than the luxury I originally thought it would be. Up until recently, I could expect to get 100 to 120 miles on a single charge, and I needed it because I drive about 95 miles a day. Lately, I'm really stretching it to get 90 -95 miles, and driving the last 5-8 miles with the cars' charge indicator at 0%! I have to bring it in next week for the second scheduled service and I plan to ask them to look into the range issue. I'm hoping there is a problem they can fix, and that it's not just the cold weather that's causing the reduction in range. I'll write a post about this issue once I get the car back from service next week and by then I'll have more range data to examine.

No comments:

Post a Comment