After More Than 57,000 Miles, a 100 Mile Trip is Still No Problem

The other day I needed to go to a meeting at an office that I had never been to before. As always, I checked Google maps to see how far it was for two reasons: how much time will I need to drive there, and can the MINI-E make it or do I need to take my Toyota Tacoma that day. It's not often when I need to take the truck because I'll need to drive further than the MINI-E range will allow, but it does happen once every couple months or so.

When I checked Google maps it was exactly 50 miles away, and about one third of it was highway driving. My initial reaction was that I wouldn't take the chance, it's cutting the range too close and why risk having a problem. A big part of my reasoning because it has been unseasonably cool and rainy here in NJ and the difference of driving in 50 degree temperatures in the rain from 70 degree temperatures might be 10 miles of range or so.

Anyway, I then checked the weather channel and learned that the day I was to go to the meeting we were supposed to have a perfect day, clear and in the mid 70's. So then I started thinking about it, and it didn't take me long to come to the decision to take the MINI-E and take my chances. The plan was to drive there as slow as I could do safely, meaning 55mph on the highway, and the speed limit on the secondary roads using regen as much as possible, even trying not to use the mechanical brakes at all.

As my journey progressed it didn't take me too long to realize I wasn't going to have any problem. In fact, I arrived there, 50 miles later with 60% SOC. I had only used 40% to drive 50 miles! I did drive as efficiently as possible, and drove slower than I normally would, but this guaranteed me that I would make the 100 mile journey and I could even drive any way I wanted to on the return trip without worrying about being extraordinarily efficient.

So I the trip home I drove 70mph on the highway and didn't concentrate on using the regenerative brakes as much as I possibly could. I arrived back at the restaurant with 15% charge remaining which would be good for at least another 25 miles and if I really wanted to push it probably even 30.  I then plugged in and in under three house I was fully charged and ready for more another 100 miles if necessary.

When you add the 62 miles I drove to and from work that day, I drove the MINI-E 162 miles, not bad for a electric car with roughly a 100 mile single charge range. Anyway, the good news is that after more than 57,000 miles and over 1,100 charging cycles, the car still has the same range it had when it was brand new. This is significant because there are a lot of concerns about battery degradation in electric cars. It's going to start to happen at some point, I know that, but it is a bit surprising to me that I have been able to drive and charge the car as much as I have without noticing any decrease in range or battery capacity. This is good news for all electric cars in my opinion. 

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...

35,000 hard miles: No reduction in range yet

It's been thirteen months now that I've been driving MINI-E #250 and I just passed 35,000 on the odometer driving home from work last night. Long gone are the days that I would worry if I could make a destination, if the car had it in it to make a certain range. Once I had the car for a while and I understood it's range and the relationship between speed and range, I very rarely have to wonder if I can make a particular destination. Recently I started thinking how I haven't noticed any reduction in the cars range yet, but I wanted to take a quick look at my trip logs to make sure. If there were any reduction that I didn't notice myself, it would be there in the recorded numbers for me to see.

I drive the car hard, I don't pamper it at all. Actually I drive it harder than if I owned it because after all, I don't own it and I get to hand the key's back to BMW next June and I'm really not responsible for the condition the car(or the batteries) are in. One of the first thing I looked at was how many times I charged the car since I picked it up June12th, 2009. That would be 623 times in 396 days. Since I charge at work, many days I plug in when I arrive at work even if I don't need the extra juice, just to top it off. This was especially true in the cold winter months when I plugged in just to help keep the batteries warm. I also noticed that I plugged in when the cars state of charge was at or below 5% 52 times. I mention that figure because it is commonly accepted that deep discharge is not a good thing for these lithium ion batteries and below 5% would qualify as deep discharge. Additionally, 52 times in 13 months would also definitely constitute "abuse" and I would not want to do this if it were my $25,000 battery pack. You should know, although I keep talking about how I'm abusing the car, I'm not driving it hard to be spiteful or malicious, I'm test driving this prototype vehicle to find the problem areas and help BMW recognize what works and what need to be improved so I'm doing exactly what they want me to do with it; beat it up and find the weak links.

So, after taking a thorough look at 35,000 miles of trip data I can conclude there has been no recognizable reduction of range, even though I have charged the car way more then would be expected in 13 months, driven about double the miles you would normally drive and had frequent deep discharges of the battery pack. The only pattern to range reduction I can see is temperature related. Both extreme heat and cold weather cause the range to drop. I believe it's primarily due to the extensive use of the heater and the air conditioning because they both use a lot of energy, however the extreme ambient temperature does have it's own direct effect on the batteries also.

So thirteen months in the car is still performing as well as it did when I picked it up. It will be interesting to see it this continues or if the excessive driving and charging that I do with the car starts to get the better of it. Stay tuned...

Hot in the city tonight

I have often written here and on other blogs that the biggest flaw of the MINI-E isn't the lack of a back seat as others complain about, it's the lack of a thermal management system to keep the batteries at optimal operating temperature.

The cold weather seems to have a worse short term effect than hot temperatures do, since the range is dramatically reduced when temperatures drop below 30 degrees. However, I think the long term effects of overheating the batteries would be a concern if I actually owned the car and planned to keep it for 10 years of so. Supposedly, the life of these lithium ion batteries will be shortened if they were exposed to high temperatures (over 100 degrees) frequently.

Yesterday it was about 95 degrees outside with high humidity. I had a 50 mile drive that was mostly  at highway speeds. I had the A/C on and wasn't paying much attention to the temperature gauge until I got the warning icon that has a cog with a temperature symbol in the middle(see above). I think it showed 112 degrees at the time. When this icon comes on it means that the battery temperature is getting too high and the car in going to reduce the amount of regenerative braking that the car uses. I saw this icon last summer a few times and noticed the regen was less aggressive. As the temperature continued to climb the regen was less and less apparent until the temperature climbed up to 116 degrees and then the regenerative braking completely disengaged. It was the first time that has ever happened to me and it was really strange driving the car without regenerative braking at all. Having the car coast like a regular car does when you lift off the accelerator was strange after driving it for almost 13 months now with the aggressive regen that the car usually has. The reason the regen lessens and then completely disengages when the battery temperature get too hot is because charging the batteries causes them to get even hotter. This is good in the winter when I'm trying to keep the batteries as warm as possible, but when they are overheating like they were yesterday you don't want to do anything to make them even hotter.

The good news is that BMW realizes that the thermal manage system is necessary and the ActiveE and the Megacity EV's that they are making will both have sophisticated thermal management systems like Tesla has to keep the batteries within a certain range of temperatures (something like 80 to 95 degrees). This will help keep the car's performance nearly the same in the cold as they are in the hot weather, while also prolonging the life span of the batteries.

I get a visit from the MINI-E engineering team

I came to work on Sunday and left for a while, leaving #250 parked right by the front door of the restaurant. When I returned, one of my waitresses said there was a table of guys that were looking at my MINI-E parked outside and when they were seated they asked to speak to the owner. So I walked over and proudly told them "I own the MINI-E and yes it's 100% electric, not a hybrid" I said this because it's very common for a customer to ask about the car, and they almost always assume it's some kind of plug in hybrid.

Well, I was unaware of who I was speaking to. In fact, I might as well have been explaining how to make bolognese sauce to Emeril. The gentleman second to the left in the photo above is Anton Lesnicar, chief engineer for the MINI-E and the other four are all members of the engineering team at BMW. So after they wiped their smirks off their faces and said "yeah, we kinda know what it is, we designed it" I then knew what I was dealing with.

They told me they wanted to meet the pioneer with the most experience driving the car(referring to the 27,000 miles I've logged in the car so far) as well as get some of the great pizza we serve. So they ordered some pizza and I sat down to talk EV with them. We touched on subjects from the cost to be in the program, to the lack of a thermal management system, to future BMW EV's namely the ActiveE and the Mega City. They also told me they are aware of, and visit this blog occasionally.

I had a great time picking their brains and I think they liked the feedback that they got from me. I gave Anton a copy of my trip logs that details every mile I've driven in the car so far which I'm sure he will go over thoroughly. I then asked them to stand in front of #250 charging up on the side of Nauna's and they gladly obliged.

Thanks for stopping by guys, I hope to see you again sometime!

Nissan LEAF Tour visits New Jersey

My wife and I stopped by the Liberty State Science Center in Jersey City this morning to see Nissan LEAF. Nissan has dubbed it the Nissan LEAF Tour and they are stopping at various cities around the country to show off the car. I thought the car looked better in person and definitely was designed with aerodynamics as a primary concern. We got there at 9:15 am and nobody was there yet so I could really talk to the representatives. I voiced my concerns about the lack of an active thermal management system which is what I believe is the MINI-E's biggest flaw. It's acceptable in the MINI-E though because we know it's a test mule and not a polished and refined vehicle that will be offered for sale. The reps stressed that the Lithium Ion batteries that will be in the Leaf are superior to the ones in our MINI-E's and have tested well and will work better in cold weather. She also told me that Nissan has discussed this at great length and is prepared to install a thermal system if they see that there are problems with the cars. Anyone that had already bought a LEAF would have the system installed at no cost to them if they decided that it was necessary.

I do like the car a lot, but I am also concerned with size of the battery pack. It's only 24kwh. If you compare it to the MINI-E's 35kwh pack it looks underwhelming. The Leaf is lighter (by about 600lbs) and more aerodynamic though so that should help to bridge the gap in energy storage. Plus, it's been designed from the ground up as an EV, so perhaps it will come close to the MINI-E's true 100 mile per charge range. Nissan is claiming a 100 mile range, but remember the MINI-E was rated as having a 156 mile range and that's about as real as Santa Clause.

As much as I like the LEAF and want to support Nissan for having the guts to be the first major auto manufacturer to actually sell an EV, I think I'll stick with BMW and see where they are going with Project I. We have been told that the MINI-E trial lease participants will be offered another year extension, but we haven't been told what we have to pay if we want to keep the cars for another year. We have also read that BMW will transition some of the MINI-E participants into ActiveE leases in June 2011 which is when our second year lease will be over. Again, no promises and no word on what it will cost us. Even then, it's just a one year lease and we can't keep the cars. Hopefully, this possible three year lease odyssey will end with an offer to buy an ActiveE or Megacity or whatever BMW is going to call the EV they eventually sell. Leasing is OK for now, but in the end I want to own an EV. I give Nissan a lot of credit for bringing the LEAF to the market for sale. After checking out the car in person, I think they are going to make a lot of people that want to own an EV very happy.

New Garage Heater Installed

Mini-E #250 is still in for service but when she comes home it will be to a warm garage. I had always planned on installing a heater in the garage because I do a lot of work in there and it gets really cold in the winter, but this incident with the car made me do it now. I suspect the problem with the car was brought on by sitting for two days unused in the extreme cold. I live in Northern New Jersey and even though the car is kept in the garage, it gets cold out there when the outside temperatures are in the teens as they were when the car wouldn't charge. I can now keep the garage at about 50 degrees even when it's really cold outside and I suspect that will be all the MINI-E(and maybe an ActiveE in the future?) needs to maintain an acceptable battery temperature even in the coldest nights.

Now all I need is the car! I got a call from Morristown MINI yesterday and they told me that they figured out what was wrong but that they haven't fixed it yet. Evidently, a couple battery modules need to be replaced and the whole battery pack needs to be removed to change them. The service department also said they now have a loaner MINI for me to use so I don't have to spend so much on gasoline! I wonder where they got that idea from? Perhaps someone there reads this blog? Hmmmm. Anyway, after two weeks with the Dodge Ram truck I think I'm ready for a MINI but the problem is I just don't have the time to drive to Morristown and swap the cars. I wanted to do it this morning but I had to attend an early morning meeting so I couldn't get there. Hopefully I can go tomorrow because 1,500 miles is enough in this huge thing.

Another Fill-Up

Unfortunately, It's taking longer than hoped to get #250 back. I Haven't driven it in 11 days now and I had to fill up the Dodge Ram loaner truck again last night. Another $55 bites the dust. Hopefully the Mini-E "flying Doc's" (their description, not mine) can diagnoses the problem and make the necessary repairs. I'm sure the technicians that repair the MINI-E's are more engineer and less mechanic and have been involved in the MINI-E process from the beginning so they should know the car inside and out. I'm also sure that my problem is cold temperature related and this might be the first time they had to deal with problems caused by low temperature. I just hope that once I get the car back there aren't constant problems until the temperatures here get above 45 degrees or so. For all the great things about this car, the obvious weak link in its design is the battery temperature management, or lack thereof. I'm sure this was addressed in BMW's ActiveE. I'm really curious to see what they did and how much better it performs in the cold. This is a major hurdle for electric cars to overcome is the ever want to be sold outside of Southern California or Florida where it's warm all the time.

The Grinch Stole Christmas!

Look at him. All green and hunched over. Chuckling at himself as he loads up my MINI-E and whisks it off so it won't be in my garage on Christmas morning.

Well, he's not exactly the Grinch, but as far as I'm concerned he might as well be. Unfortunately MINI-E #250 needed to be towed to Morristown MINI this morning. The red battery icon came on last night when I was trying to charge it. I hoped that it might reset itself overnight, but it wasn't to be so I had to call the Grinch and let him do his dirty work.

I believe I am partially to blame for the problem which I think was caused by allowing the batteries to get too cold. During the past three weeks it's been really cold and I managed to keep the batteries above 50 degrees at all times, except for one time when it went down to 49 degrees. It wasn't much a problem because I drive a lot and I charge frequently, both actions bring the battery temperature up significantly. As long as you don't let the car sit in the cold for a long time (24 hours or so) without using it I believe the temperature will stay high enough that it won't cause any problems. The battery pack is very dense so it will retain heat for quite some time. The problem is that I didn't use the car since early Friday morning. I drive the car a lot ( I have 17,700 miles on it already) but the past two days we had a big snowstorm so I was driving my truck that has a plow. That, plus it's incredibly busy at the restaurant so I've been working 15 hour days and I didn't have time to make sure the car had some use. When I came home from work at 11:45 pm on Sunday, I turned the car on to check the charge status and record some data. Everything seemed fine; the car turned on and the state of charge was at 55%. I did notice the battery temperature was 43 degrees. I had never seen it so low, but since the car started, I figured I was in the clear. I then plugged it in to charge it up overnight. It started charging fine but after about a minute shut off. I was still in the garage so I realized that it stopped charging. I unplugged the cable and plugged it back in. This time it only charged for about 5 seconds and shut off again. This time the dreaded red battery icon lit up on the charge gauge and I knew I was in trouble.

When I woke up in the morning I checked it again and the red battery icon was still lit, just for kicks I plugged in the charger again but again, nothing happened. I then popped the hood and closed it. I understand that by raising the hood, the high voltage system shuts off so I thought by opening and closing it I might reset something, but nothing changed. As a final attempt, I bought out a portable electric heater and placed it in the cabin of the car, blowing directly into the air vents to the battery compartment. After about two hours, the cabin was as hot as a beach in Aruba but the red battery icon was still lit and I needed to call the Grinch. He arrives in about 35-40 minutes and whisked #250 away.

During the afternoon I got a call from Morristown MINI. They wanted to know if I was charging or parking the car outside. I told them that the car has been in the garage since I last drove it. Evidently, they had two other MINI-E's towed in for the same problem as mine but they were both parked outside that past day or so. My garage does get cold even though it's attached to my house. I recently bought an electric garage heater but I have not had time to install it yet. It has a built in thermostat so I can set it at 45-50 degrees. I think this will alleviate any future problems like this from occurring.

By now anyone following this blog knows I love the car and I'm very glad I applied to be in this trial lease. The one reservation(well two reservations, the other being the ridiculous high cost) was that I was concerned with how the cold weather would impact the batteries. I can live with a reduced range since I have two chargers, but hopefully I can keep the battery temperature high enough to avoid another incident like this. For all the great aspects of this car, the one glaring deficiency I have found so far is the battery temperature management. The car simply doesn't have one, (except for a fan that blows cabin air across the battery pack) and it would be a fatal flaw if they actually planned on producing and selling these. They don't, so it's not a problem except for the trial lease participants here on the cold East Coast. I know Tesla spent a lot of time and money working on the temperature management system in their roadster and GM is also paying a lot of attention to it while designing the upcoming Volt. I'm anxious to see what BMW has planned for the ActiveE they recently announced, I'm sure they have had their engineers working on this issue for quite some time now. They wouldn't make the same mistake twice now would they?

Yeah it's THAT cold

The temperature gauge read 19 degrees when I left for work today. The battery temp was 49 degrees which is just about as cold as I've seen it so far. After about ten minutes of driving the battery temperature got up to 65 degrees which is still low, but not so low that my range will suffer too much. My garage is insulated and it is always much warmer than outside but it still gets pretty cold when the temperature is this low outside. I just bought a garage heater that I will install sometime in the next couple weeks. I always wanted to get a garage heater, but it was never a pressing issue until now. I'm worried that when the outside temperatures get down under 10 degrees the battery temp will drop under 40 degrees overnight and that will really diminish their strength and thus cut further into my range. I'm not even sure the car will start if the battery temperature drops below 40. I vaguely remember a BMW representative telling me that 40 was basically the limit and anything lower than that is uncharted waters and they don't know what the car will do if the batteries get that cold. I'll set the thermostat to about 45 -50 degrees so the garage will never get colder than that. That should keep the battery temp above 60 since it will be charging overnight and that raises the temp a little. I suspect this will help keep my range from taking such a beating in the winter. So far I have seen my range per charge drop from 100-110 miles to 75-85 miles in this extreme cold so I want to do whatever I can to help the batteries maintain as high a temperature as possible. Even taking the car out for a short drive during the day rather than letting it sit in the parking lot all day without use can make a difference. The trick is to try to not let the batteries get too cold because they will lose the ability to accept a charge and even a short drive can raise the battery temperature 10 to 15 degrees. Parking the car in a sunny place is also helpful because even in the winter when it's cold out the cars cabin will be noticeably warmer if it's parked in the sunlight. I knew this was coming, and all I can say is that it's going to be an interesting 3 months..

15,000 miles in 5 months? How can that be?

Battery Electric Vehicles are little more than glorified golf carts that can be used for short trips and local city driving, right?
Battery Electric Vehicles really can't be used by people that do a lot of freeway driving or drive a lot of miles on a regular basis, right?
Battery Electric Vehicles are interesting, but they're not ready for prime-time just yet.

Really???

Then explain to me how I've managed to drive a Battery Electric Mini-E 15,000 miles in five months. I'm averaging over 700 miles a week and most of the miles (about 65%) are at freeway speeds. This glorified golf cart has been my primary means of transportation since the end of June and it has done just about everything my internal combustion engine Toyota can do for me. No it cannot drive 200 miles without stopping for fuel, but during the past five months I have only needed to drive more than the Mini's range about 5 times. I do understand that would pose a problem for single-car families, but I'm not here saying BEV's will work for everyone. I am saying they will work for most. I'm on track to put about 33,000 miles on the car this year, and that's more miles than about 95% of the population drives in a year. Part of the reason I have been able to drive so many miles is that I am able to plug in and charge up while I'm at work and I realize many do not have that option. I figure that has added about 15% more miles than I would have been able to do if I couldn't charge up, so I still could have driven close to 30,000 miles charging only at home, which is also way more than the average person drives in a typical year.

The point here is, BEV's are ready for prime-time. BMW slapped the MINI-E together in a couple of months by retrofitting an ICE Mini Cooper with mostly "off the shelf" parts. Can you imaging how much better the car would be if it was designed from the ground up as a BEV? If they took a couple years of research and built dozens of prototypes to work out the bugs and refine the final product? How much better the range would be if they spent more time improving the battery temperature management, reduced the weight by 500lbs and increased the aerodynamics?

Sure there are challenges, with charging infrastructure at the forefront and battery longevity up there too, but it's time to realize these cars can be made and driven just like their ICE counterparts, and oh yeah, people do want them. I can't believe how many people have stopped me to talk about the car and ask me questions about range, charging locations, cost, battery life, etc. I really didn't expect to find so many people energized about the prospect of being able to purchase an electric car sometime soon. I've been following the progress of EV's for a while now, but I didn't think there were so many others as interested in them as I am.

There has been a lot of talk about just what the MINI-E program is about. Some have questioned the true intent of BMW and the program. Was it only to satisfy the California Air Resource Boards ZEV mandate or was this a legitimate fact finding experiment. I don't know what BMW is up to but I can tell you that my time with the car has proven to me that I can live with an electric car as my daily driving vehicle, even though I drive over 30,000 miles annually. I also know that I have given dozens of test drives to friends, family and even strangers that were interested in the car and virtually everyone left impressed and said they would definitely consider buying an EV if one were available. Hopefully, BMW and the other auto manufacturers will follow Nissan's lead and give us what we want.

Thanks for reading my rant and have a Happy Thanksgiving.

What's up? Not our range.

Range. After cost, it is perhaps the most important feature of an EV. The range you can drive between recharging will determine if you can even consider buying an electric car. One of the the problem with range is it's not constant and there are many variables that can effect it. The Mini-E trial participants on the East Coast like myself are beginning to realize just how fickle range can be.

The temperature is dropping in the NY/NJ metro area and unfortunately so is our range. During the summer when many of us were using the air conditioning in our cars we noticed a small decline in the vehicles range, maybe 2-3%, but it was so small none of us really complained and many didn't even notice at all. That's not the case now. One of the participants (#486) had to be towed home recently. After 87.8 miles, he could go no further. He was driving the same route to and from work that he did all summer with his "E", why now couldn't the car make it? The car couldn't make it because it was in the 30's most of the day here in NJ and his lithium-ion batteries were freezing their kilowatts off. Another (#304) realizes he'll be driving the car much less during the winter months just to make sure he doesn't need to be towed. I think most of us knew the cold weather would have an effect on our range, but just how much was the question. The fact that the weather dropped so quickly also made it more surprising to see how much less we could go on a single charge. I've done a lot of research on EV's so I knew going into this that the winter months might be challenging, but even I was caught off guard by how quickly my range dropped. As I've posted a few days ago, I had a second wall charger installed at my business so I'll be fine. I can charge up any time I need to at work or home, but I'm the exception here as most of the others do not have that luxury while they are working. The reduced range has some of the participants worried that they may not be able to continue to use the car to commute to work and one person even told me that although they love the car, if they can't use it to drive to work they might as well give it back.

When I signed up for this I expected there to be problems. I new this was new technology and that Mini themselves really didn't know what to expect. I decided to do this to help advance the technology with the hopes of actually being able to buy an EV sometime in the near future. I had no idea how much fun the car would be to drive, that's been a pleasant suprise. I'm sure Mini knew there would be problems like this on the East coast. That's why they put 200 or so of us on the road here in the Northeast, to see how the batteries would fare in cold weather climates. If they are to eventually sell EV's, they can't just sell them in warm climates. The California participants are still driving around without any range issues, why would they, it's always freaking nice in Southern CA! Back here on the East though, some of us are getting worried. Perhaps Mini should have talked to the participants a little more about the potential issues before they issued the cars, just so everyone knew what to expect. While I knew there would be range issues in the cold, it seems that some of the others didn't and are really surprised and concerned now. I think an email to the East Coast participants a few weeks ago as a warning before the temperatures dropped would have been appropriate.

The Ugly Truth:
I have been keeping data on every trip I take since I got the car and I can see just when my range started dropping and just how much so. Up until October I had been averaging about 105 miles per charge. During that time I had single-charge trips of 120 & 123 miles and frequently drove over 110 miles. Since the beginning of October, I'm averaging 88 miles per charge, and only once hit 100 miles. On the day I did 100 miles, I drove the last 12 miles after my range indicator hit 0%. I thought for sure I'd be calling a tow truck myself, but luckily I made it home in reduced-power mode. On the colder days (those under 40 degrees) I'm only getting about 80 miles of driving range. That's almost a 25% reduction! What's going to happen when we get down under 20 degrees? I'm starting to wonder if the car will even work. Well, I'm in it for the long haul, regardless of how the cold punishes the batteries. I hope that whatever we go through this winter helps pave the way for better battery temperature management in future EV's. I'm confident I'll be able to make it back and forth to work now that I have a second charger at my disposal, and as I've said before, anyone in need of some juice can charge up whenever they need to at my restaurant, Nauna's Bella Casa, 148 Valley Road, Montclair, NJ.