60,000 Zero Emission Miles Later...

 

Today the odometer turned 60k just as I pulled into the parking lot of my restaurant. It's been two years and seven days since I picked up MINI-E #250 now and the car is still running perfectly. Other than a couple of faulty battery modules very early on and the time I hit (well really was engulfed in) a huge pothole and needed front-end repairs, the car has been virtually maintenance free. 

That's not unusual for electric cars. They really are basically maintenance free. When you buy one, the dealer isn't reminding you to bring it in for your regularly scheduled maintenance like oil changes and tune ups. These regular maintenance items add up, but you really don't think about the cost when you buy a car, because you know it's just part of automobile ownership and there's no way around it. 

But there is...

Electric cars are extraordinarily simple compared to their gasoline burning counterparts and don't have hundreds of parts constantly moving and rubbing against each other causing friction and heat, and friction and heat are a cars worst enemy as they cause parts to wear out and need to be replaced. That's why you need to constantly keep fresh lubrication(oil) in your car to reduce the friction on all the moving parts and hopefully make them last longer.

EV's like the MINI-E have a simple brushless electric motor that will in most cases last longer than the car will, and that's really the only moving part of the drivetrain other than some small electric fans. Of course anything can break, especially electrical components, but by removing just about all of the moving parts in a car you are drastically reducing the mount of things that will wear out and need replacement.

So here I am at 60,000 miles and all the car really needed was a couple tire replacements and wiper blades. The range is surprisingly consistent, and just as good as when I first got it. There has been virtually no battery degradation after 60,000 miles and over 1,100 recharges.  Take a look at the picture above, I just drove 76.7 miles and still had 26% state of charge. I could easily drive another 30 to 35 miles(and probably 40) with 26% SOC since I could drive at least 10 miles even after the meter hits zero. Even the brake pads are the original ones. With the regenerative brakes, I bet I could get 100,000 miles on a set of brake pads so even the brakes will cost you less with an EV.

It's cost me about $2,500 in electricity (actually less because I have solar electric, but I like to figure what I would have paid) to drive 60,000 miles. Take a few moments and figure out what you have paid in gasoline to drive the past 60,000 miles. Then add up all the oil changes, tune ups, vacuum hoses, belts, exhaust pipes or whatever else you've done to keep your gas car running along and maybe you'll start to think about giving an EV a try the next time your shopping for a new car. After two years and 60,000 miles of zero emission driving I know I'm sold and I'm never going back.

Thermal Conditioning for the Battery AND the Passengers!

The Cog & Temp icon you see it telling me the battery is too cold and the car will not have regenerative braking. I see this when the battery temperature gets in the low 40's. If the battery temperature gets any lower and the car will not accept a charge.

There's a lot of talk about thermal conditioning in electric cars, and for good reason. Maintaining proper battery temperature will not only help the vehicle to offer a more stable, predictable driving range, but will most likely be a big factor in determining how long the battery will acceptably perform before a replacement is needed.

The MINI-E is a wonderful vehicle. Those that have followed this blog know how I feel about it. I think the electric propulsion system pairs so well with the small, fun to drive MINI Cooper, that it's an outright shame BMW isn't going to offer it for sale in the near future, yes it's THAT good. All that said, the MINI-E is a prototype test vehicle and it does have it's faults. The most glaring shortcoming, is a lack of a proper thermal management system. The passive, cabin-air based system is insufficient to warm the pack in the winter or cool it off in the summer months. If the ambient temperature is below 95 degrees or above 50 degrees, everything is just fine and you can almost always squeeze out 100 miles of range if you drive conservatively, even 120-130 if you stay off the highways. However once the temperature extremes occur, the car lets you know it's not a happy camper. I'm going to focus here on the cold weather effects, since I did a post last summer about my hot weather experiences and difficulties.

The most obvious problem is the reduced range. I'm not really 100% sure if the battery simply cannot store the same amount of energy, or if it cannot efficiently use it when it gets cold, but the reduced range that the MINI-E has in the cold Northeast is something that you have to accept and manage. I know that it's not only the batteries storage/usage of the energy, but also the fact that the cabin heater uses a good amount of juice so it's really a double hit that conspires to cut into how far the car will go. This winter has been very cold and there are days when the temperature doesn't even approach 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7C). On these days I'm lucky to push the car to 75 miles per charge. That's about a 30% reduction from optimal conditions, and in my opinion, it's just too much for the average retail consumer to accept.

That's -2 degrees!

Luckily, there is a better way to manage the battery temperature and thus the range, and that's by implementing an active thermal management system to heat and cool the battery as needed. These systems will obviously add to the cost to the vehicle, but in my opinion, it's money well spent. BMW seems to agree with me because their next EV offering, the 2011 BMW ActiveE will have active thermal management. I expect to be one of the few people driving an ActiveE this summer when the MINI-E program ends so I'll be able to report on how well the system does or doesn't work. This to me is the most important improvement that BMW can make from lessons learned in the MINI-E program.

MINI-E winter driving apparel !

There is one more thermal conditioning issue I need to bring to light. That's the MINI-E's inability to thermally condition it's passengers! There's no problem in the summer as the A/C works fine. However when it's cold outside, the MINI-E drivers here on the East Coast are cold also! The heater in the car is woefully insufficient to really warm the cabin or it's passengers. Those of us that have a MINI-E in NY & NJ have learned to deal with it, but it's not fun. Most all of us have learned to keep gloves, a hat and a blanket in the car at all times. Others have even used a hot water bottle(Now I know why BMW calls us pioneers!) I haven't done the hot water bottle thing, but I do keep a hooded sweatshirt, gloves and yes, a small blanket in the car especially when I drive home from work late at night when it's bitter cold outside and the car has been sitting outside for 12 hours.

My Garage Heater

Last year I did a post about installing a heater in my garage to keep the car warm overnight. It's works really well and even keeps my family room warmer because that room is adjacent to the garage. I set it at about 45-50 degrees so no matter how cold it gets outside the garage is around 45 degrees.  Recently I have also been pre-heating the cabin in the mornings. I have a small ceramic heater that I put in the cabin about 30 minutes before I leave for work. When I leave the cabin is very warm and I don't need to turn the heater on for a while and that helps to extend the range a bit. This is similar, but not as good as preconditioning, something all production EV's have the ability to do.

It's going to be really interesting to see how much better the BMW ActiveE manages the weather extremes. I trust the engineers over in Munich know what they are doing. I'm sure I'll be writing a lot on this issue once I've had the time to drive the ActiveE in the extreme weather and analyze my range data. It will be nice to use the MINI-E as a comparison vehicle as I write about the ActiveE. Hopefully I'll be using the word "improvement" a lot, but you never know...

I'm Burning Gasoline For a While

One of the unfortunate aspects of the MINI-E program is that I have to bring the car in for service every 5,000 miles. The BMW technicians trained to work on these cars (called the flying doctors) inspect every detail, check all the battery modules and download the data the car has captured since the last service visit.

I recently turned 42,000 and that meant I had gone 5k since my last service so I knew I had to make an appointment soon. Then yesterday I noticed the battery temperature was unusually high, as it was over 100 degrees and this time of year when it's typically 60 to 70 degrees outside I usually see battery temperatures in the 80's so something was off. I then looked (and listened) closely to the battery compartment and didn't hear the usual sound of the fans that pull air from the cabin of the car and blow it across the battery pack. I'm guessing they stopped functioning and the increase in battery temperature is the result. If it were in the middle of the summer, it would be a big problem and probably prevent me from being able to drive the car because the modules would get too hot and the car would shut down. However since it is now cooler outside, I could have probably driven it fora while with no real effects or problem.

I emailed Rob Healey at BMW and asked him if he wanted me to bring the car right in for service or wait until next week when I had originally planned to bring it in for the 5,000 mile service. As I expected, he said being it in as soon as possible, not wanting to take a chance. So this morning I brought it in to Morristown MINI and picked up my 2010 Dodge Charger loaner car.

I got a nice surprise while I was waiting for the loaner car at the dealership as Rob Healey and Hugo VanGeem from BMW just happened to be there. Rob is the Technical coordinator for the MINI-E and Hugo is the head of BMW's electric car sales. It was nice to see them in person and say hello as I usually only correspond with them via email.

It is worth noting that this is the first malfunction I have had since last December, nearly a full year now. I did have a problem in February, but that was caused by me hitting a big pothole and messing up some stuff in the front end, hardly the cars fault. So now I'll be joining everybody else for the next few days. I'll be burning gas, supporting terrorism, sending my US dollars to foreign regimes and polluting the air as I drive. Luckily, it won't be for long.

Private tour of the MINI-E repair facility BMW headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ

Rob Healey is on the far right with the "Flying Doctor" Crew    (Sorry guys, I don't remember everyone's name)

This morning I drove to BMW's North American headquarters to attend the kick off of the "MINI Takes The States 2010" tour across America. It is basically a MINI road rally that starts on both coasts and ends up in Denver, Colorado. I don't think too many people are actually driving the entire route(maybe I'm wrong) but lots of MINI owners are going to drive specific legs of the rally and today it started with about 100(or more) cars leaving the Woodcliff Lake, NJ headquarters and heading to the first stop in Philadelphia. Obviously, I wasn't going to try to participate in the road rally since Philadelphia is a little out of my single charge range, but I wanted to attend the event to offer my support as well as say hello to some of the people in the MINI-E program that I know.

I arrived at around 8:30am and there were already a lot of people there. They had a new MINI Countryman on display which was nice to see. All of the cars that were going to participate in the rally were lined up three cars wide and looked to be about 30 cars deep. Since I wasn't participating, they directed me to a parking lot close to the gathering of people and right in front of the main entrance. As I approached, I saw about 6 MINI-E's parked in a row so I parked right next to them. When I got out, I realized that these were corporate cars that were being used to give test drives to the people there today. I was surprised how good they all looked, like they were brand new, but I'll get to that later.

I signed in, got a bag full of MINI goodies and some food and the first person I saw was Nathalie Bauters, communication manager for MINI. Nathalie contacted me a few months back and arraigned for me to have press credentials for the NY Auto Show because there were journalists from Germany that wanted to interview me about my experiences with the MINI-E. I then ran into Richard Steinberg, the manager of BMW Electric Vehicle Operations & Strategy. Richard and I have communicated via email and by telephone, but never met in person. It was nice to say hello in person and talk for a while about the MINI-E and electric cars in general. 

I then took a walk around of the facility as they were letting people see some of the vehicle testing rooms. There was even a MINI-E in one of the rooms with a AC Propulsion motor and PEU out for display on the counter next to the car. There was nobody there to talk about the MINI-E though. When I walked outside, Richard had a reporter there that wanted to do a short video interview with me and talk about the MINI-E. He also introduced me to Rob Healey who is the technical coordinator for the MINI-E. After I did the interview, Rob asked me if I wanted to take a private tour of the MINI-E repair facility where the "flying doctors" work on all the MINI-E's from the East Coast. You know I wasn't going to turn down this opportunity.   

First, he took me to an area where there were no complete cars, just parts. Everything from MINI-E's were on shelves from seats to battery boxes. There was even a huge vice there where he explained they put battery modules in to squeeze them to test that they can withstand the pressure. We then went to a parking garage where there were about 6 MINI-E's that were in various states of dissemble.  One of them had the entire interior including the batteries removed. It looked strange to see the car in that state. Then there was another that was really torn apart. So much so that I wondered why they even kept it. Without me saying anything, Rob offered "That one is used for parts" so that made sense. Sorry there aren't any pictures of the "inner workings" of the facility, but I didn't even ask if I could take pictures there because it was obvious to me that wouldn't be allowed.

We then walked over to the area where all the MINI-E's come to be repaired. There are two lifts dedicated to the MINI-E's and one of them even had a car on the lift being worked on. As when I first saw the cars in the parking lot when I arrived, I noticed how new and clean the car looked, like it was brand new. When I asked Rob about it, he said that all the cars that were returned after the first year lease were completely reconditioned. They had new front and rear bumpers installed, repainted as needed, new side view mirror covers, completely cleaned and reconditioned and anything that looked worn at all was replaced. Also, all of them got the giant plug decals put on the doors which was optional for us when we first got the cars(I declined). So that explained why all the MINI-E's I saw outside looked brand new. Before they ship them to France, China, Japan & the UK to be re-leased they really reconditioned them well, so much so the cars looked brand new. Actually I'm a bit jealous, maybe they'll spruce #250 up a bit the next time she's in for service. ; )

So the event went better than I expected. I had really went to show support for the rally and say hi to some of the MINI-E people and I ended up getting a private tour of the inner workings of the MINI-E program. I'd like to thank Rob for taking the time to show me around.

Size Matters

How big is too big? Mini Coopers are small cars, well very small cars. Take out the back seat and put a bunch of lithium ion battery modules in there and it seems even smaller. While I've managed just fine with #250 for the past nine months, packing it to the roof  with supplies on many occasions, I've often thought "How much space in my vehicle do I really need?"

Obviously I would like a little more than the MINI-E has. I don't have any children yet so the two seats work well for my wife and I. In fact, we have three vehicles now (Porsche Boxster, Toyota Tacoma & MINI-E) and they are all two seaters. We might be the only family that has three cars and they all only have two seats!

So as I walked past this humongous Chevy Suburban 2500HD with vanity plates in the parking lot of my restaurant I had to stop and take this picture and wonder how much car do I really need?  Please post your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below. I'd really like to hear some opinions on this one.

It was bound to happen at some point

 

Well, when I agreed to "test drive" the MINI-E for a year I knew it was a prototype. I knew (and was warned) that there would probably be problems, breakdowns and other inconveniences to deal with, but I still wanted to be part of the largest deployment of electric vehicles by a major auto manufacturer since GM's EV-1 so I agreed to be one of the guinea pigs driving around in a prototype vehicle. Funny thing is, I really haven't had to deal with any of those problem. Yes, I had to have the car service twice to have battery modules replaced, but both times the car was parked when the warning icon came on so I wasn't stranded anywhere and I simply drove my other car that day while the car was taken in to replace the modules. It took eight months and 21,000 miles of driving for me to actually have a break down and to be fair it really wasn't entirely the cars fault.

We have had a real cold winter so far here in New Jersey and a lot of snow recently. The frequent plowing and salting of the roads results in pot holes developing and some can get really big before they are repaired. A few days ago I was driving to work in the morning and was going about 50 mph and found one of those big, nasty potholes with my front right wheel and broke something in the front end. I'm not quite sure if it's a part that is specific to the electric drive or something that is on a regular MINI but the car made a very loud bang when I hit it and continued to make loud banging/grinding noises so I had to pull over and call the 800 line for roadside assistance. The tow truck came in about a half hour and took me and the car to Morristown MINI. 

 

Vinny, the service rep that is the MINI-E specialist there took great care of me and got me a loaner car from Enterprise (all the MINI loaners were out or he said he would have given me one of them). I'm happy to report that the "flying doctors" that work on the MINI-E's have been feeding more information to the dealers than they previously were, so Vinny is current on what is going on with the cars that have been taken to Woodcliff Lake to be repaired. This wasn't the case in the beginning when we first got the cars. The dealers really had no information about the MINI-E's that were being serviced and the customers were frustrated because they couldn't find out the status of their cars. I talked with Vinny for a bit and he told me that he now gets the information that he needs to keep the customers in the loop and that's a great improvement. I used to feel bad for the guys at the dealers because some of the MINI-E participants would give them a hard time about the lack of information but it wasn't their fault, they weren't getting any info. Vinny assured me that he'll stay on top of it and give me a progress report as soon as he hears something and he did. I got a call from him a couple days after I brought the car in and he told me that they identified the problem and have begun the repairs. He said the pot hole caused considerable damage and it would take a couple more days to complete the repair and bring the car back to Morristown for me and that he'd give me a call when he knows exactly when it will be ready. He then went on to apologize for my inconvenience and told me that I would be refunded this months lease payment for my troubles. Now that's good service! (especially since the repair was kinda my fault)

MINI-E Doubles as a Cargo Van

One of the shortfalls of the MINI-E as compared to a regular MINI Cooper is that there is no back seat. Just about the entire back seat area is taken up by the 48 lithium ion battery modules that power the car. There is a small cargo area that you can access from the rear hatch but it is only about 12 inches deep and can fit about 3 grocery bags. Any large items that you need to transport must be put in the passenger seat area. I just about always drive alone so the passengers seat does not have a person there, but that doesn't mean it's not full most of the time. I own a restaurant in Montclair New Jersey, Nauna's Bella Casa and I always need to run and pick up supplies. I pack that little MINI-E with so much stuff you wouldn't believe it unless you saw it. I once filled it with 18 cases of soda. Another time I carried six 50lb bags of flour but most of the time I just fill it with an assortment of restaurant supplies like pasta, olive oil, paper goods & produce. The picture about doesn't nearly show how much stuff I've packed in it at once, but it was the only picture I had. I better explain why the seat belt is fastened before I get some smart comment. No, I'm not worried that the cooking oil might get hurt, I just have to fasten the seat belt when there is weight on the passenger seat or I'll have to listen to the annoying chime that MINI puts in their cars to remind you to wear your seat belt. I'll tell you this, it works. It's so annoying I have to fasten my seatbelt or I'll go out of my mind listening to it.

MINI-E #250 Back With 2 New Modules

Finally! After 24 days I finally got the call from Morristown MINI that #250 was fixed and I could pick it up. Evidently, there were two battery modules that needed to be replaced. I'm pretty sure part of the reason it took so long to fix was because I had it towed in the week of Christmas. MINI had specialized engineers that repair the MINI-E's, they don't use the mechanics at the dealerships. MINI calls these technicians the "flying docs" probably because they fly from coast to coast to repair MINI-E's in California, New York and New Jersey. I bet they flew home for the holidays so #250 just sat and waited for them to get back to work after the New Year. This is only the second time I had a problem with the car. The other time is was a bad battery module also and it was fixed in eight days. I had that problem three weeks after I got the car and at the time I was worried that it was going to break down every couple weeks or so. I remember thinking to myself "what did I get myself involved with?". That turned out not to be the case at all. I had six months of trouble free driving until this problem so I really can't complain. After all, this is a test vehicle, a prototype that will never be produced for sale. BMW made the MINI-E purely for research so I'm not at all surprised that there will be problems. But for now I'm back in the saddle of #250. Perhaps the best news is that nobody has to hear me complain about buying gas for a while.