MINI-E #250 One Year Wrap-Up

Wow. I really can't believe I've had my MINI-E for a year now, but it's true. When I picked up #250 from Morristown MINI on June 12th of last year I honestly had no idea what to expect. Questions crossed my mind like: Would the car break down all the time? Would I be left stranded on the roadside waiting for tow trucks to save me? Would the car lose power the longer I had it? Would the range be adequate for my needs? But most of all: Would I regret doing this?

I got involved with this trial lease program by accident really. I was dong some online research about the recently announced Chevrolet Volt concept car. An electric car with an on-board generator to allow continuous driving albeit not emission free. At the time Chevrolet just announced they were going to move forward with the car and bring it to market in the end of 2010. This being years away I did some searches to see what other auto manufacturers were developing electric cars. I was really an EV newbie and knew little about the industry and the politics that have repressed electric cars to date. That would change.

As I was searching, I  happened upon an online application to lease an all electric MINI Cooper. I really just filled it out for the fun of it, and never thought I would be one of the people selected to participate in the trial. After all, they were only going to deploy 100 of them in New Jersey and I was sure there would be lots of applicants. Low and behold about 4 months later I received a call from a MINI rep that said I was one of the selected few and if I would like to continue they would need to inspect the electric service at my home and make sure I qualified financially for the lease. All of that went fine and on June 12th, 2009 I was driving this amazing car home.

I'm not going to go into specifics about my experiences in this post, there are plenty of them if anyone wants to look back at my prior posts from thorough the year. I will say that every expectation that I had about the car had been exceeded and that I am extraordinarily happy that I was chosen to be in the program and drive this great car for the past year. I am now completely convinced the future of the automobile will be electric. The technology is there, the driving experience is fantastic and now that significant investment is being made, advancements are coming at a fast pace. One of the great unexpected bonuses I have had is that I have met so many great people, both industry experts that have been EV advocates for years now, as well as everyday people that see my car and ask me questions about it. I even have let many of them test drive it, so they can experience what it is to drive an electric car. I must have let over 50 people drive the car and given rides to many, many more. I'm sure I've made more than a few believers.

I have also received a lot of attention along the way, which has been quite interesting. I have been interviewed by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the Toronto Financial Times. Been written about on AutoGreenBlog, and All Cars Electric. There have been full length articles written about me in the Montclair Times and the Observer Tribune, both local papers where I live and work. I have been featured in a New Your Times Video and was filmed for three days by a production company from Germany that is making a documentary on the transition the auto makers are making to electrics. It will be a 90 minute documentary that will be complete in a few years but there was a short video made from some of the footage for BMW that you can see here. I was also interviewed by Thomas Geiger of Der Spiegel in Germany which is an enormously popular magazine in Europe. When the article was written, Thomas mentioned this blog and I received about 5,000 new visitors in the next week, mostly all from European Countries.

I wasn't sure about starting a blog at first, but I'm very happy I did. I have receives so many emails and comments from visitors that had questions and also wanted to offer support. Many even thanked me for being an early adopter and doing this to help electric cars advance quickly.

Well, as many of you know, I have accepted BMW's offer to keep the car for another year so the one year experiment has now turned into two. However I do not view it as an experiment any more. I view it as an opportunity to be part of the future, an hopefully be someone that is helping to shape it.

Thank you all for reading this blog and I hope to have lots of great stories to write about in the next twelve months. Stay tuned!

Tom

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.

Zero emission pizza delivery

Any business owner knows you do whatever you have to in order to keep your customers happy. You work very hard to build customer loyalty, and it can be lost in a moment if the product or service you are selling isn't up to par. Today at the restaurant I had a delivery person call in sick and I couldn't get anyone to cover for him. I knew I would probably have to take a few deliveries if it got busy, but I do that every now and then so it's nothing out of the ordinary. What I didn't realize was that we would be extraordinarily busy today, perhaps due to the heat as it was about 91 degrees and humid today. Instead of having to take a couple deliveries myself, I ended delivering for 4 hours straight and taking almost 30 deliveries. Mini-E #250 got a good workout, and passed with flying colors. The car really likes stop and go driving, unlike gasoline powered cars. The low speed, around the town driving is easy on the batteries as long as you don't drive like you're on racetrack. So after driving 45 miles I only used 39% of the battery charge, which is better than I would get on the highway. Gasoline cars get terrible mileage in this type of stop and go driving, just another example of the difference in electric vs. ICE(internal combustion engine) vehicles.

The other thing I realized today is that a lot of people read the local newspaper, The Montclair Times. About two months ago the Montclair Times did an article on me and the electric Mini-E. It had pictures of me with the car and details of how and why I got involved in the program. Since then, I've had a lot of people tell me they read the article when they come to the restaurant and that they were glad I was doing it and wish me good luck. However, bringing the car to their home to deliver food elicited much more enthusiastic responses. Sure, I got the usual "wow, the owner is delivering to me today, I feel special" but many of them that saw the car in their driveway added "Oh and you brought THE CAR! Can I take a look?" I didn't think that that many people knew about it, but I guess they all read the Montclair Times. As I reported before, I LOVE talking about the car, the environmental impact of ICE vehicles, the need to break the nations foreign oil dependency, etc, so I really enjoyed talking to everyone about it. I would have liked to take some of them for a ride and show off the car, but there were hungry people waiting for me so I couldn't take too much time at any one house. I felt like I was selling the car today, instead of just dinner. Today was a good day. The restaurant was busy all day, I got to talk with a lot of my customers, and I did about 110 miles of zero emission driving. Life is good.