Workplace Charging: The Electric Car's Best Friend

MINI-E #250 Sipping On Some Electrons While I'm Working

There has been a lot of talk about the necessity of public charging stations and the lack thereof. There are some that think we cannot expect people to buy electric cars unless there's a complex network of public charging points on every block, in order to compete with the multitude of gas stations that seem to be on the corner of every main intersection.

I've written on various websites that I just don't think that's necessary. I think a nice sprinkling of public charge points here and there will do just fine for now, until EV's really gain traction and we see sales of electric cars in the tens of thousands every month. I also think that the private sector(at least the smart ones) will jump on the opportunity to capture customers that drive EV's and install a charger or two in their parking lot. Let's face it, if an EV driver is looking for a quick bite to eat and they know that McDonald's has public chargers and Burger King doesn't, I bet they will stop at a McDonald's if there is one in the area. Even if they don't really "need" to charge, why not get a 1/2 hour boost or so while you grab a quick bite to eat. Also, if you do happen to need to charge, you know you can do so there, so they get a customer that they wouldn't have if they didn't have the chargers.

I know level 3 DC quick charge will be useful for long-trip highway driving, but we don't even have a standard and I think we are a ways away from seeing it available in any great numbers so I'm not going to really focus on it. For the most, I really think level 2 public charging is more important for the psyche of potential EV buyers, to give them peace of mind so they don't think they will be stranded with no place to charge than I think it will really be needed. It's mainly this reason that I am in favor of installing them, just not as many as I think some others feel is necessary and I hate to see public funds wasted by over-installing them in clusters where they will be underutilized.

Which brings me to the topic of the day, workplace charging. About six months into the MINI-E program, BMW offered the pioneers a second EVSE if we wanted one and had a use for it. I accepted the offer and installed it at my restaurant as did Cliff Saunders, a MINI-E pioneer that lives in New York who also owns a restaurant. I know what you are going to say "Not everyone owns their own restaurant and can install an EVSE there" and you would be right with that. However many of the other MINI-E pioneers were able to convince their employers to let them either install a 220v EVSE or simply charge at 110v. Charging at 220v is optimal, but even charging at 110v for a typical work day can add about 25-30 miles or range to your EV. That may be enough to give those with a long commute the extra cushion they need to feel comfortable and not stress out about making the return trip home after work.

I firmly believe workplace charging is by far the most important secondary charge point after home charging. Let's face it, today's electric cars with roughly 100 miles ranges aren't meant to drive 300 miles on holiday. They are however perfect commuter cars and can drastically reduce your fuel and maintenance costs for this driving. Commuting to work in an EV has been perfect for me and many others that I communicate with. Talking to your boss and explaining why you drive electric and how little the electricity will actually cost him/her will go a long way in helping them to decide to let you plug in at work. Always offer to pay for  the electricity though, it's not fair to ask your company to pay for it unless they currently pay for your gasoline. There are obstacles, and many times it would cost too much to bring electricity to where you park and in that case you may be out of luck, but many times it is available and both you and your employer will benefit if you work together to come up with a way to allow you to charge while you work. You get the added security of a longer range and they get a happier employee, cleaner air and if they want to, I'm sure they can get some local press coverage about how they are encouraging green transportation for their employees and that's good PR for sure.

I wonder if the EVSE companies like AreoVironment, Clipper Creek, Columb and GE are approaching large companies that employ hundreds of workers at multiple locations. If not, they should be. My wife works at ADP and they have offices all over our area, with huge parking lots at every office and hundreds of cars parked at all of them. A big company like ADP could easily afford to install a bank of chargers at all of their locations, and could get an enormous amount of great public relations press coverage while inspiring their workforce to drive electric. They could even take it a step further and install solar carports that have the public chargers installed there. Big companies like ADP are always encouraging their workforce to represent the company in a professional manner and "do the right thing" here's a chance for them to lead by example.

Phil Blackwood and #411 stop by Nauna's for a Charge

Ever since I got a 50amp EVSE installed at my restaurant, Nauna's Bella Casa in Montclair, I have posted on the MINI-E facebook page and here on this blog that any other MINI-E driver that needs a charge can come over and "fill up" as needed. Many have taken me up on the offer. Actually much more than I expected, which is fine with me as I get to meet some of the others in the program, chat MINI-E, and then sell them a dinner or lunch while their car is charging.

This past Saturday Phil Blackwood stopped by with #411 for some quick electrons. Phil had driven from his home in Central Jersey to New York City to attend the Solar Road Trip rally, a movement to get the White House to re-install solar panels on the roof. Phil needed a little extra juice to make it back to his house and Nauna's was in a perfect location to stop off at on his way home.

Phil and I had a nice conversation, he had a late dinner and after about an hour charge he had more than enough juice to get home.
Thanks for stopping by Phil, it was nice to meet another MINI-E pioneer!

In the past year that I've had the EVSE at Nauna's I've probably had two dozen or so MINI-E's stop by to charge up. I'm thinking I need to talk to BMW about the installing a real public charging station in my parking lot when the ActiveE program begins and they can tell the ActiveE participants in the NY/NJ area that the station is available for them to use at no charge. We can get the press involved and advertise how BMW is committed to a sustainable future with alternative fuel vehicles... Hmmm

Public Charging Stations: Necessity or Luxury?

What comes first the car or the public infrastructure? A 21st century version of the old chicken and egg conundrum.

I have read a lot of articles that have basically taken the stand that electric cars need a complex network of public charging stations, like gas stations before people will buy them because they will be afraid they will be left stranded by the roadside without any place to charge.

Honestly I don't know if these worries are genuine or just scare tactics by groups that do not want to see electric cars become the method of choice for our transportation. I suppose it is a combination of that and legitimate concern by people that have not had the opportunity to live with an electric car like those of us in the MINI-E program have.

Public charge points will definitely help the long term success of EV's, but to claim that they need to be in place before the public will buy EV's is just not true. The majority of EV charging will take place at the owners home, probably as much as 80%. The second most common charge point would be at the owners place of work. I believe many companies will agree to install chargers on their property if they have employees that will use them. It won't cost much to install them, there's even a government program now to offer free chargers to about 5,000 locations (I've already applied for my restaurants parking lot). Then there will be private enterprises like McDonalds, Walmart, Home Depot, etc that will take it upon themselves to install them in their parking lots. This makes all the sense in the world because not only can they charge a small fee to park and charge there, but then they have a captured customer while their car is charging. Every time one of my fellow MINI-E drivers stopped by Nauna's to use my charger they sat in the dining room and bought a meal. It's a win-win situation in every way.

What also needs to be noted is that although the cars take a few hours to charge, when someone uses a public charging station, they are more likely going to only need a quick charge to finish their travels and get home. The won't need to completely charge the car so they won't be waiting 3 or 4 hours in most circumstances. I can speak with authority on this topic unlike most journalists and "automotive experts" because I have lived with an electric car for 13 months now and have developed a network of friends that are also driving one and we frequently share stories and talk about the benefits and challenges we live with by driving an EV. Most everyone agrees that after their home charger, having a charge point at their place of work like I have would be the first place they would like to have one installed. Many say they don't even need a charger at work but would use it if it were available and even more say they would have rarely ever use a public charging station if they were available.

Personally I think that private enterprise will provide for most of the public charge points needed to begin to transition from gasoline powered cars to electrics. If municipalities added one or two in each public parking lot that would even be better, but this thought that we need to install them everywhere like gas stations is just not reality, and is only causing people that aren't sure if an EV would work for them to worry about it. I wish the auto manufacturers and the government would listen more to people that have actual experience with EV's. If they did they might realize that they could do more with less.

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.

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.

At Least Someone's Charging Up!

It's been two weeks now since I last drove MINI-E #250. I guess the holiday season hasn't helped as the service technicians probably only worked a few days in the past two weeks.

At least my charger is getting some use even if it's not from my car. I had a couple pioneers stop by my restaurant to charge up recently. Jim McLaughlin and his lovely wife stopped by for dinner during a snow storm and topped off their charge while they were eating. They live in Princeton so they would need close to a full charge to get home from Montclair anyway. Then, a couple days ago, David Miller stopped by at lunchtime for a bite and about an hour of charging. He was coming from New York City and was worried if he would make it the rest of the way home so the charge was just enough to alleviate any range anxiety he might of had. Since I installed the charger at the restaurant in October I've probably had 10 or 12 MINI-E pioneers stop by and juice up and just about everyone had something to eat while they waited.

I think once electric cars begin to increase in numbers on our roads, it will make a lot of sense for businesses, and especially restaurants, to have public chargers at their location. Since you can't charge for the energy, you could charge a "parking fee" for the EV parking spot and the electric would be no extra cost. I own the property that my restaurant is located at and I have a 53 car parking lot that Nauna's & my tenant Quick Chek share and I would definitely want to have a public charging stations there if there are cars on the road that will use them. How about franchises like McDonald's? If every McDonald's had high power chargers there would be a network of public chargers that would make charging on the fly very convenient. Plus, they could charge for the parking spot as well as get the additional business as most of the people would likely go in and get something to eat while the car is charging. This doesn't only apply to food establishments though. How about places like Walmart? Charge while you shop! Plus, they might even get the customers to spend more money in the store because they would need to spend more time there because they were charging up. Instead of a half hour in the store they might spend one full hour there. It's already proven that the longer people stay in the store the more they buy. That's why the stores are designed to keep you in there as long as possible.

Anyway, I wish I had #250 back to charge up myself, but as long as I don't I'm happy the charger is getting some use.

Power Hungry

There is one thing that all of us in the Mini E program have faced at one time or another and that's we need to go further than the range of our cars will allow. Some of us on the East Coast are now facing the reality that we can no longer travel as far as we could the first four months we had the cars due to the effect lower temperatures have had on the battery pack. Even with the reduced range the car will still go 75-85 miles comfortably, which is usually plenty for most daily commutes. The problem is what do you do if you need to go further on a particular day? Well basically there are two choices: You can either use your 2nd car that has an ICE, or find somewhere to charge up during your day.
The easy way out is to simply use the other car. Maybe let your spouse use the Mini E that day, given they have a shorter commute. If only it were that easy. I'm hooked on the car, I admit it. I want to drive it every day, not just when it's easy to do it, all the time. Luckily for me, when Mini offered 2nd wall chargers I jumped right on it and got one to install where I work. This allows me the freedom to basically drive the car just about anywhere I want to because I can always charge up, whether I'm at home or at work. Since I got the second wall charger I have been averaging 120 miles a day and range anxiety is mostly a thing of the past.

However others in the program aren't as lucky and didn't have the opportunity to install a second charger where they work so they are basically limited to traveling less than 45 to 50 miles from their home or they won't be able to make it back. In California there are a limited number of public charging stations for EV's but I don't think many of them are compatible with the Mini E plug. Here on the East, public charging stations simply don't exist...yet, but I understand that may change in the near future. Until there are plenty of convenient public charging stations, EV owners will have to be creative if they want to drive for extended ranges. The other option is charger sharing. One of the Mini E trial lease participants created a website where others in the program could register their home charger and allow others to contact them if they were in the area in need of a charge. Don Young of Shelter Island, NY recently used the website to hook up with over a dozen chargers and complete his "Mini E Tour" of 1,019 miles before he returned home! He stopped about 20 times to charge up at various locations and basically traveled to the northern, southern, western and eastern most chargers that are in the program (and plenty in between). He stopped and used both of my chargers on different days to complete his mission. Charger sharing is the most effective way to extend your range, but it's not the only way. I'm obviously not the only one that doesn't want to use their other car on day's they have to drive further than the car's range will allow. That is evident by the fact that some others in the program have found that the car will charge perfectly fine without the wall box and are willing to "break the rules" and have made their own portable charging systems. You won't find any evidence of this on the blogs or the Mini E Facebook groups because it is highly against the rules, but I kind of believe Mini knows this is happening and since they really can't monitor or stop it they have no choice but to look the other way. These "outlaws" have been able to charge on the fly at any location that they can reach a 220V outlet that have a 40amp line and thus enable trips further from home than any of the rest of us can make. RV parks, for example have available outlets like this for motor homes to plug into while they stay there.

It's all about the power, we need power. Not Gordon Gekko or Bernie Madoff type power mind you, it's the juice that fuels our cars that I'm talking about. These cars are so much fun to drive that we want to drive them more than the range will allow and many of us just won't accept it. I know I didn't want to. Before Mini announced that they would provide a limited number of second wall chargers I had already contacted the manufacturer directly about purchasing one or more additional charging units. Back in June when I first got the car and I didn't have a wall charger yet I consulted a friend that is an electrical engineer about building me a portable cable with a 220v plug on the end so I could charge up on the fly, but luckily the wall charger came and I wasn't tempted to pursue that anymore.

It's really Mini's fault here, so don't blame us if you hear about people breaking the rules to get their electric "fix". Mini gave us the drugs in the first place, and now we're hooked. Electric drive is addictive, and I can't wait until the day when we are all "users".