NY Times Reports: MINI-E Drivers Have Bonded With Their Cars!

Yesterday the NY Times published a story on how the MINI-E trial lease participants love their MINI-E's. The story was based on a yearlong U.C. Davis study that found an overwhelming amount of MINI-E drivers love the cars and have found that they are comfortable living with the cars 80-100 mile range.

If you have been following this blog, you know I feel the same way. When the MINI-E program began, we were all sent emails asking if we wanted to participate in the study, I thought about it and since I didn't know how much of my time it would consume I never replied, so my thoughts although broadcast here on this blog, aren't included in the study. However judging from the results, it seems that I wasn't needed and the other MINI-E participants love their cars as much as I do and the big thing is that they don't feel constrained by the range either, a point that I have been trying to get across to non-EV drivers for a long time now: The limited range isn't a big deal! People that don't drive an EV worry about range anxiety more than the people that actually do drive one.   

Anyway, the results of this study don't surprise me one bit. The general public is going to love electric cars, they just need to get past their belief that they won't and give one a try. Another MINI-E driver, Peder Norby once wrote of the challenges facing the transition to electric cars: "Our greatest roadblock is the inertia of the status quo"   and this study further proves that point if you ask me. The people that HAVE had the chance to spend time with an electric car overwhelmingly like them and say they want to continue to drive electric. That's the case whether the car was an EV-1, a RAV4-EV, a Tesla, a Nissan LEAF or a MINI-E. We just need to convince more of the public to give them a chance, the cars themselves will do the rest.

Happy Independence...

The picture above is a Chevy Volt, an electric car with a small gasoline engine that generates electricity to recharge the batteries while you drive. This allows the car to continue to drive for as long as you want, all you have to do is continue to fill it up with gasoline. Kinda goes against the whole electric cars have no tailpipe and don't use any oil thing, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

The Volt will be going on sale, in limited numbers and in limited states starting this November. For those of you that don't know how the Volt works you are probably scratching your head about now wondering why an electric car needs gasoline and oil products to run. Well it does and it doesn't. The Volt has a 16kwh lithium ion battery pack (8kwh usable) compared to the MINI-E's 35kwh with 28kwh usable. So obviously the battery is  much smaller so it wound not be able to drive the Volt nearly as far as the MINI-E can go on a charge. Actually, GM is saying the Volt will go 35-40 miles per charge in battery only mode. Battery only mode? Isn't "battery only" how electric cars drive. Until the Volt, yes that's how they worked, but GM has brought a new twist to EV's. After you deplete 8kwh of usable battery, the small ICE turns on and acts as a generator to sustain the charge so you can continue to drive. It will not fully recharge the battery, but simply allow you to continue to drive. It is called an Extended Range Electric Vehicle or EREV. GM is betting that people will not want to live with the fear that they will be left stranded by their fully electric BEV so they will opt for an EREV. They do have a point, people that have not experienced living with an EV like I have are concerned that they will run out of power and get stuck. I have said many times here that that fear is way overblown and that once someone actually lives with an EV they quickly realize they really don't have to worry about it. Still, there are some people that will definitely need the added comfort that the car can continue for as long as necessary if need be. Then there are people that live in rural areas that drive 50 miles just to go to the supermarket. a 100 mile BEV just won't work for them and until battery technology gets better an EREV will be a great choice. Plus for those that frequently drive less than 40 miles a day, they will hardly ever need to buy gasoline. There are drawbacks though, as you will now need to maintain the whole internal combustion drivetrain; meaning oil changes, fuel filters, air filters, fuel pumps, water pumps, spark plugs, tune ups, mufflers, etc. All those moving parts wear out over time, which is why BEV's require so little maintenance. They have almost no moving parts and are extremely simple mechanically. The long term costs of a BEV will be extraordinarily  lower than that of an EREV with with you need to maintain BOTH systems.

That being said I do like the Volt and I will considering buying one when they become available in my area and the supply increases. I fear the initial buyers will be paying a premium for these cars because of the limited supply and I'm not going to pay a dealer over MSRP for any car. I don't even want to pay MSRP let alone more. I would use the Volt as a second vehicle that my wife will drive and for the few times we need to travel further than my electric car will take us. From now on I plan on driving a BEV for all my commuting and personal use as I have found it to be a very enjoyable driving experience as well as very economical. Whether an EREV like the Volt or a BEV like the LEAF is better for you and your style of driving, to me it doesn't matter. Both will help us begin to reduce our dependence on oil. The LEAF and other BEV's do it more dramatically, but the Volt is definitely a big step in the right direction and can be driven by many who simply couldn't use the LEAF because of their driving demands.

This year I am celebrating my personal independence as well as Americas. I have been driving the MINI-E for almost 13 months now and have driven close to 35,000 miles free of oil! I am no longer dependent on oil for my personal transportation! I charge my car from the sunlight that I capture in my solar PV system so I don't even need the grid to provide my fuel either. Independence, it's a wonderful thing!

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.

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.

MINI-E Lease Extension Details Arrive

To renew or not to renew, that is the question....

When I first applied for the MINI-E trial lease program the terms were simple; $850 per month for 12 months, everything included, even collision and comprehensive insurance. All maintenance and even wear and tear items were covered and a loaner car would be provided if and when the vehicle was in for service. Total cost: $10,200 plus license and registration fees. It looks pretty steep on the surface since you can lease a new MINI Cooper S for about half that amount, get two back seats and still have money left over for the gasoline you burn.

I've been reminded of the high lease price dozens of times this year when I promote the MINI-E's virtues on various blogs, message boards and in face to face conversations. What I try to remind everyone is that for many of the Trial Lease participants or "pioneers" as MINI calls us it wasn't about the money. It was about helping to promote the proliferation of zero emission vehicles. We knew the MINI-E was not going to make it to the showrooms, so it wasn't about helping to "fine tune" the car for production. This program, whether or not anyone admits it or not, was purely about gauging public interest and acceptance of electric cars (that and getting some CARB credits but that was no secret or never disputed) and gathering data on average daily driving and responses to things like range anxiety and regenerative braking characteristics. The majority of the people in the program feel strongly as I do that the automotive industry should move in the direction of electric vehicles and offer their customers a choice of what kind of fuel that they want to power their cars with.

When we first got word that we would be offered the option of a second year with the car initially everyone was generally very happy because I believe most in the program love their cars and would like to keep them as long as possible. We were not given any details, just that we would have the option to renew for another year so shortly after the announcement was made we all started guessing what the terms of the lease would be. Whenever you lease a car, the longer the term, the lower the monthly payments so we knew the second year would be less, but how much was a mystery. Over on the MINI-E Facebook page, where many of us converse, the guesses were generally around $500/month. Anything under $500 and I think just about everyone would choose to stay in. Perhaps BMW knew that and wanted to "thin the field" some to send the returned cars to other markets as we have been told would be the case with the returning cars. In any event, I think some that wanted to keep the cars just can't at $600/month and that's unfortunate.

For me the decision was easy. I drive the car so much (about 30,000 miles a year) that the fuel savings alone will be enough to make the difference. Driving 30,000 miles in my Toyota Tacoma I'll need to purchase about 1,700 gallons of gasoline. If prices stay at the level they are today($2.65/gal), I'll spend $4,500 on gasoline. The MINI-E will cost me about $1,000 for electric so the $3,500 in fuel savings cuts the lease payment in half.(Actually it will cost me nothing in electric because I'll be generating all the electric with my new solar electric system at my home but it's still "costing me" $1,000 because I could have sold that electric to the power company) I also won't need to do about 7 oil changes, there's another $350.00. I won't need to put a set of brake pads on the truck either, or be halfway to a major tune up. Plus, I'm not losing the depreciation that 30,000 miles on the odometer will have on the Tacoma's value. All in all, while $600 per month sounds like a lot of money for a two seat commuter car, it really isn't at all.

All the financial reasons aside, I'm keeping the car because I love it. I enjoy the electric driving experience, I like that I don't have to stop and buy gasoline and that I'm not polluting as I drive. I like meeting new people all the time that stop me on the street and ask about the car and I like knowing that I'm doing a small part in helping to advance the movement to electrics.

To renew or not to renew? To me there is no question.

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".

My first real taste of range anxiety

The first thing you realize once you begin life with an EV is the simply fact that the vehicle has a limit on how far you can drive before the need to "refuel" or recharge. "Of course it does" you say. "I know how 100% electric cars work. You charge the batteries and you can drive until they have no power left to move the car, everybody knows that!" Yeah you're right, it is that simple. But until you actually drive an EV and you watch the battery charge gauge steadily go down as you drive you really don't know what it is to have a set distance you can go. You don't know what "range anxiety" is unless you look at your gauge and it tells you you can only go 20 more miles but your 30 miles from your home. Then it hits you, "Oh crap, I'm not going to make it"! In regular cars, when the tank is low, it's no problem. Just stop at a gas station and fill up and you're good to go. Until there are public charging stations readily available in convenient locations, EV's will have a difficult time gaining widespread acceptance until they greatly extend the range the cars can go on a single charge. My Mini can travel up to 130 miles on a single charge but 100 to 110 miles is a more realistic range with a mix of city and highway driving. 100 miles a charge is more than enough for the majority of the population for their usual everyday use. But how about when you want to take a day trip? Remember, you if the range is 100 miles you can only go 50 miles from your starting point because you still have to get back home. Personally, I believe that a range of 175 to 200 is necessary for many people to consider an EV. That's not to say that I think if a car company tomorrow came out with a four seat sedan that had a real range of 100 miles that it wouldn't sell, because I think it would. However most of the purchasers would have at least one other car in the family so they could use the EV for most of the daily commuting and errands, but still have the other car for long drives.

That brings us to last night and my first real range anxiety. If you read my last entry, you know my wall charger failed the electrical inspection because of a lack of UL approval, so I'm stuck using a 110V, 12amp "emergency" charger. The problem with this is the 110V charger is very slow and takes over 30 hours to fully charge the car as compared to about 4 hours for the wall charger. Now, instead of leaving in the morning with the car 100% charged, it's only at 60 or 70% which limits how far I can drive that day. I could just use the car every other day and then it would be 100%, but after driving it for the past two months now, I want to drive it every day so I have to plan my day to make sure I'm not going to have to drive further than it will go. So yesterday, I left with 74% charge which should get me about 80 miles tops because much of my driving was going to be highway driving. I was only going to have to go about 63 miles which is round trip from my home in Chester to my business in Montclair, so I should have no problem. However, during the day there was a problem at a building in Oradell that I am a partner in and I had to go there. The building is about 18 miles from Montclair so I just added 36 miles to my daily total which would bring me to about 100 miles, twenty more than I could probably make. Not the end of the world though because I still have the 110v charger and I can plug in anywhere the cable will reach so my plan is to go to Oradell and back, and then plug in for seven or eight hours and Ill have just enough to make it home. Ah, the best laid plans of mice & men... I needed to stay in Oradell for much longer than I thought I would have to and I got back to Montclair at 5:00, so I had only five hours to charge up since we close at 10:00 and I really didn't want to have to stay later just to wait to charge up. At 10:00, I checked the charge gauge and I was at 27%, just about enough to make it home if I drove carefully, didn't use the A/C and didn't speed. Since I didn't want to wait, I started out on my journey. I decided to take an alternate route home, one that doesn't have much highway driving as opposed to my usual route that is about 60% highway driving. It was late and the roads were empty, so I could drive slowly which really extends the range. As I began my journey, the charge meter went down much faster than I expected it to. After only 5 miles, with 26 miles to go, I was down to 16% which could take me about 20 miles. The problem with the charge meter is sometimes if you check your charge level when you just unplug, it may give you a slightly higher reading than what you really have and I should have waited a little before checking it. So now the range anxiety really kicked it, for the first time I really didn't think I would make it. Luckily the roads were empty and I was able to drive really slowly, averaging only 35mph. When I was about 6 miles from home the range and battery charge meter both hit zero and I figured any second the car would just shut off and I'd be calling my wife to come and pick me up. She already thinks I'm crazy, this would confirm it. As luck would have it I was able to drive the final 6 miles on "empty" and limp into my garage, plug in and go to sleep. Just another day of zero emission driving.

I have to admit, it wasn't fun at the end. I had that feeling at the pit of my stomach that you get when you know something bad is about to happen and you can't stop it. I got lucky and made it but I learned a few things. First, Mini must have known that there would be idiots like me pushing the car further that they should so they must have designed the batteries to go for some miles even after the gauge reads zero, kind of like a reserve tank. Second, until I have my wall charger functional and leave the house with 100% charge, I cannot push it like I did last night. I'll just take my other car that day. (Poor me, I'll have to drive the Porsche!) And lastly, the best thing I learned was how amazingly quiet and peaceful the car is to drive. While I was driving at night, with the roads empty and the windows open, all I could hear was crickets as I drove. I knew the car was quiet, I've been driving it for two months now, but this is the first time I drove it with no other cars on the road at all. Usually, I have the radio on and the windows open so I get the wind noise plus the sounds of the other cars engines so it really isn't much quieter than driving an internal combustion engine vehicle. This was different. Driving slowly, 30 to 40mph with the windows open you don't get much wind noise and without the other cars it was so peaceful, almost surreal. It was like the recent Will Smith movie where everyone was gone and he was the last survivor walking around a quiet New York City alone. It's hard to explain, but as I was driving I had really good feeling knowing I was doing my part to help bring zero emission vehicles like the Mini-E to mass production, at least until the range anxiety kicked in...