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.

MINI-E Pioneers Get Exclusive Look at the ActiveE!

Aaron Singer of BMW explains some of the ActiveE features to the MINI-E pioneers

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Last night the East Coast Mini-E pioneers were invited to a sneak preview of the BMW ActiveE at the New York Auto Show. The show doesn't actually open to the public until today, but BMW wanted the loyal MINI-E pioneers to get the first look at the successor to the MINI-E, and the final test vehicle they will be making before the 2013 BMW i3 hits showrooms. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the i3, it will be the first all electric car that BMW sells, and is scheduled to be offered for sale in 2013. The MINI-E, and now the ActiveE were low production test vehicles, leased to customers to help BMW refine the hardware and learn and overcome the challenges of introducing an all electric vehicle to the public so when they do sell the i3, it will be the best electric vehicle available. 

MINI-E customers have been promised that if we want to lease the ActiveE this year when the MINI-E program ends, that we would be guaranteed to be the first in line for one, and last night BMW took the opportunity so show us here on the East coast the car in person. A similar event is planned for the West Coast MINI-E pioneers next month. After the roughly 45 minute Q&A and everyone had a chance to sit in and check out the car, we were all taken out to dinner compliments of BMW. I'd like to than Rich, Hugo, Marian, Teresa and Aaron of BMW for hosting such a great event and making the MINI-E pioneers feel special. Taking the time in a very busy Auto Show week to spend a night with some of your customers was really appreciated by all of us. 

The cost will be very similar to the MINI-E's lease price, $2,250 down and $499/month which comes out to  $593/month over the course of the term. We are currently paying $600/month for the MINI-E, but that included comprehensive & collision insurance and the installation of the home charger. The cost of insurance and home charger have not been mentioned by BMW, so I'm guessing that means it will be the lessees responsibility. I think they would have announced that it would be included in the lease price if that was their intention. To be fair, no other lease program currently includes insurance and the home charger like the MINI-E program did so I won't be surprised if we are told that those things are our responsibility. If you add the cost of the insurance and the home charger, I'm guessing that will add about $2,400 to the total cost, or about $100 per month. We all have the electrical lines running to our current chargers, so all we need are the new chargers hooked up. The AeroVironment chargers that the ActiveE will be using can be purchased for $1,000 retail. I'm sure we'll get a better price since BMW is buying about 800 of them and the installation will take all of 15 minutes. Personally I plan to do the installation myself if BMW wants us to pay for it. My personal electrician will do it for me for $100; permit and all, I already asked him. The insurance should only cost  an extra $500 or $600/year since we're already paying the liability insurance for the MINI-E.

In case why anyone was wondering why my picture is on the jumbo screen behind the car in the photo above, it's because they were playing a video advertisement for the ActiveE in which, for a brief second or two, they played a clip from one of the short films about the future of mobility that I was in, so I waited until that moment came up and quickly snapped the photo! 

Anyway, the ActiveE looks awesome and although I'm really going to miss #250, I think the amenities offered in the ActiveE will take the edge off missing this car. The active thermal management and ability to precondition the cabin and battery(warm or cool it while still plugged into the grid) should make the car much better for me to drive in the cold snowy winters here in the North East. Plus, having a backseat and trunk will be nice also.

I'll be posting more about the event and the ActiveE in a day or so on my BMW ActiveE blog (You know I had to make a successor to this blog, right?) so check it out if you want to know more about the BMW ActiveE. Maybe you even want to apply to lease one also? Details on how to apply to lease an ActiveE will be posted on my ActiveE blog as soon as they are announced which should be in a month or two.

Munich, We Have a Problem!

 

That icon you see of a plug with an exclamation mark is what the car is supposed to show if you have the car plugged in and charging and you try to start it up. The car will not start while it's plugged in so you cannot make the mistake of driving off while it's still tethered to the EVSE wall charger attached to your home. That would be like driving away from a gas station while the gas nozzle is still pumping gas into your tank, something that does happen every once in a while and is extraordinarily dangerous and at best only results in a destroyed gas pump and a huge insurance claim. At worst a spark ignites the spilled gasoline and the whole place blows up, along with you and the people working there!

The problem I have is that this icon is coming on and the car isn't plugged in. This means for some reason the electronics thinks the car is plugged in and won't allow me to start it. Plus, if I try to charge it the red protection light on the EVSE lights up which means it has gone into protection mode because there has been a problem detected. So basically I can neither start nor charge it, which leaves me with little choice than to have her towed in to Morristown MINI for the "flying doctors" to take a look at it. 

This is the first time I have had a problem and the car needed to be towed in about a year as the car has proven to be very reliable considering it is a prototype test car and even this time I believe I had a hand in on it's demise. On Sunday night I was charging outside at my restaurant in the rain. We had quite a storm and it was really pouring. When I unplugged the car, I quickly put the cap on the receptacle on the car as to not allow rain to get it wet. What I failed to realize was the the plastic cap had filled with rain water and when I slid it on the charge receptacle it flooded the area with water. 

I drove home without a problem, but when I arrived and went to charge the car, I noticed how wet the plug area was and that there was actually a lot of water inside the plug receptacle. I dried it off as best I could and left the cap off overnight to let it air out. I didn't need to charge the car to get to work the next day so that wasn't going to be a problem. In the morning when I tried to start the car all I would get was the icon pictured above, meaning the car believed that it was plugged in which it wasn't. By now the area looked dry, but I guess inside was still wet so I let the car sit all day and took my Toyota to work. 

This morning I got up and tried to turn it on again but I still get the plug icon. I figure that if it hasn't dried out in roughly 36 hours then the water probably did some damage that needs to be fixed so I called for a tow and it's now off to Morristown MINI. I figure this was 50% my fault and 50% the cars fault. I definitely shouldn't have poured water on the receptacle, but the car should be able to handle screw ups like this, there are plenty of idiots like me out there that make mistakes. I'm sure they could design the plug area better to prevent problems like this from happening and that is exactly what the MINI-E program is about; finding design flaws like this and correcting them so future EV's that actually make it to the showroom don't have them. The more I think about it, the MINI-E program was a brilliant idea. BMW is getting more real world data and information with this program than they could ever get with internal testing, and they are getting us to pay a lease payment to participate! Genius! So I sent Rob Healey, technical coordinator for the MINI-E and Vincent Immerso, MINI-E service adviser for the MINI-E at Morristown MINI an email that detailed the issue and a heads up that they should expect the car shortly.

Within an hour I got a call from Vincent and then an email from Rob to let me know they will get right on it today and get me that car back as soon as possible. Vincent asked me if I needed a loaner car, which I declined for the time being, and Rob informed me that Shaun Gillilan, one of the flying doctors was already en-route to check out #250. That is some great service!

So it looks like there is no need to call and complain to Richard Steinberg, manager of BMW's North American electric vehicle operations or Dr. Norbert Reithofer, BMW CEO to make them aware of this problem. The rank and file have this under control.

UPDATE: The car was fixed the same day and I already picked it up. As I thought, the problem was caused by excessive water infiltrating the plug recepticle. My bad!

Plugging In Beats Filling Up Any Day Of The Week

November 12th was my 17th month anniversary with MINI-E #250. I have driven it almost 45,000 miles and I am approaching my 800th recharge. I keep detailed records of every time I drive the car as well as every time I charge up so I know exactly how many times I have plugged in, and that would be 791 times so far.

Sounds like a lot of work, right? I often hear people say how they wouldn't want an electric car and one of the reasons is because it's so easy to drive to a gas station and fill up. When you do so, you're generally good for 300 to 400 miles of driving as opposed to only a hundred miles or so for an EV.

The thing is, it's really no work at all to plug in, and only people that have lived with an EV can honestly attest to that. When I arrive home at night, it takes less than ten seconds to walk over to my EVSE, grab the cable and plug in. The car charges while I'm sleeping, it's that easy. When you need gas, you have to drive to a station and wait for them to fill your car up before you can continue on your way. My other car, a Toyota Tacoma can go about 325 miles between fill ups so I would have had to fill up at least 140 times, and most likely would have done so about 150 times.

So what would I prefer to do?  Make 150 trips to the gas station or just pull into my garage like I always do every night anyway and take a few seconds to plug in my electric car? Continue to suck on the oil nipple that we have all been conditioned to believe that we need, or tell OPEC to shove their black gold up their a** and charge my electric car with clean renewable electricity that I make myself with my solar PV array.
Hmmm, let me think about that one for a while.........

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

MINI-E stars at the Green Transportation Expo

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a representative from Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company and asked if I could come to their Green Transportation Expo in Jersey City to display the MINI-E and talk to people there about the car and my experiences driving it. I agreed and headed out to the event early this morning. 

The Expo was held on the top floor of a parking deck in Jersey City, NJ very close to the Hudson River. Other than the fact that it was a very windy day which caused havoc for the tents and tables set up there, everything went well.

There were about 20 vehicles there, mostly hybrids but there was also a natural gas Honda Civic and a hydrogen fuel cell Chevy Equinox. The MINI-E was the only pure electric car there(a Tesla that had committed had to cancel) so it generated a lot of interest. In fact when the Mayor of Jersey City came(with the press in tow) the first car he walked over to was the MINI-E and he and I had a nice conversation about it as the cameras snapped pictures and a local television crew filmed. I was later asked by the TV crew to stand in front of the car and talk about it and the Trial Lease program I am participating in.

The highlights of the day for me were talking to the Clipper Creek representative Michael Paritee, about his products( the MINI-E uses Clipper Creek charge stations) and the possibility of converting them to use the new industry standard SAE j1772 plug.   The picture above is the j1772 plug attached to a Clipper Creek CS-40 charge station, the same one I have at my home to charge the MINI-E, except is has a plug specific to the MINI-E. All future electric cars in the US will use the j1772 plug so all public charging stations will have this plug. I also has a good time arguing with the Chevrolet representative who was there to show the Hydrogen Fuel cell Equinox. He was telling people that GM will have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in their showrooms for sale within a couple of years. I told him he was nuts and that either he is uninformed or flat out lying. Hydrogen as a fuel may sound great (It only emits water as exhaust), but realistically we are decades away from being able to use it as a fuel for transportation, it's just too expensive to make, compress, transport and distribute. Plus, it takes more energy to make it than you eventually get from it. If you just use the electricity that it takes to make the hydrogen to charge a battery for an EV, you eliminate the whole process necessary to create hydrogen, plus there is already an electric infrastructure and it would take billions of dollars to build out a national hydrogen supply chain. When anyone suggests to me that Hydrogen is the ultimate fuel, I refer them to this informative article on Hydrogen. It's a long article, but full of facts that point to hydrogen being nothing more than a red herring to keep up addicted to oil for as long as possible.

Plugging In

Recently I was talking to a friend about the future of electric cars and he said he thinks one of the obstacles will be that people(he) wouldn't want to have to waste time plugging in the car all the time. He said it's so easy to just buy gas once a week and it takes so little time to do so. I quickly snapped back "you waste more time buying gas than I do plugging this thing in, I'll tell you that" He didn't believe me, but as they said in Cool Hand Luke "Some people you just can't reach".

So I thought I'd do a little test to see just how much time I spend plugging in. I know it's not long, but exactly how long I wasn't sure. So for the next few times I plugged the car in (and then unplugged) I timed myself.

Six seconds.

Yep, that's all it take to plug the car in and another 5 or 6 seconds to unplug. So basically I spent about 24 seconds a day plugging in and unplugging since I charge the car twice a day on most days, once at home and once at work. I'm not sitting there waiting for the car to charge, like you have to go when you're filling up with gasoline. I'm either sleeping or working while the lithium ion batteries are recharging. I then went to a gas station when I had some time and parked over on the side by the air pump and timed some of the cars that were filling up.

Seven minutes.

The average car took seven minutes from the time they pulled in to the station to the time they pulled out full of dino juice. While this wasn't a scientifically controlled experiment, I think I'm pretty close to how long the average car takes to full up and I'm not even taking into consideration the time it took them to drive to the gas station. I'll assume it was on their way so they only had to pull into the station.

I have about 32,000 miles on my car in three weeks less than a year so I'm going to end up with right around 33,000 miles on the car this year. If I had driven my Toyota Tacoma truck all year instead of the MINI, I would have to had to stop for gasoline exactly 100 times as I can get 325 to 340 miles per tank.

Doing simple math I have spent a cumulative 2 hours and 26 minutes plugging and unplugging my car this year. If I was driving my Toyota, I would have spent over 11 and a half hours sitting at a gas station waiting for the tank to fill.

So I ask: Who's really wasting their time?

#458 Gets a Charge out of Nauna's

 Jim McLaughlin lives in Princeton, NJ and drives MINI-E #458. His daily commute takes him into Pennsylvania to his job every day and has a round trip of around 130 miles. Like me, Jim is able to charge while he is working, although it's at 120V, 12amps so it's a slow charge. Still, it adds about 20% to his state of charge while he works so he doesn't have to worry about the long 65 mile drive home. Because of his long commute, Jim has over 26,000 miles on his car and is second only to me in total miles out of all the 612 MINI-E's made. Over the weekend he and his wife stopped by Nauna's for some lunch and to top off #458 as they continued to their destination in New York City. The round trip was about 135 miles and slightly out of the MINI-E's range although Jim has made himself famous for getting exceptionally long single-charge driving range. He regularly gets 120+ miles per charge, but 135 mostly highway miles might be even too much for him to squeeze out of the MINI-E's 35kwh battery pack. Why take that chance when there is a friendly restaurant on the way in Montclair willing to let MINI-E drivers "fill up" for free? I've probably had a few dozen pioneers stop by and use the charger so far. I'm fine with that, I've let everyone know the charger is there and ready for anyone that needs it. Hopefully next year they'll be some BMW ActiveE's stopping by to get some juice because that would mean I'd have one parked out there too!

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!

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.

20,000 Zero Emission Miles in 7 Months

Electric cars get lots of criticism about why they just won't work for the masses. If you look around the internet where there are discussions about EV's you'll hear things like "Electric cars are a joke", "They are only for the rich that want to act like they care about the environment" "Battery technology isn't ready for prime time" and "EV's are only good for low mileage, local city driving". Well, I'm doing what I can to disprove the last one. I've had my MINI-E for a little over seven months now and I've racked up over 20,000 miles on it. That's with losing a combined month for two service visits (battery module replacements) so I've really only driven it for six months. I'm on pace for about 35,000 miles in the one year I have the car. 35,000 miles is more than 95% of the population drives in a year and I'm doing it in a 100% electric vehicle.

I have a unique situation because I own the building I work in so I was able to install a charge station at my place of business. This allows me to plug in during the day and charge up if I need to drive further than the available range will allow. I understand many others do not have this luxury, so they would be limited to the range a single charge can provide until they get home at night to charge back up. In the case of the MINI-E, that would be anywhere from 70 to 115 miles depending on the ambient temperature and the driving conditions (freeway vs city). Still, many others in the MINI-E trial lease program with only their home charging station are on course for well over 20,000 miles in the year. This is also more than what the average driver does in a year.

During my 20,000 mile joy ride the past seven months I have had a lot of fun with the car. I have met too many interesting EV advocates to list as well as many, many local folks that stop to ask me about the car.(Mostly wanting to know where they can buy one)I have also decided that EV driving is what I plan on doing from now on, even after this trial lease is up. I'm even installing a solar array on the roof of my home so I'll be driving on pure sunshine in about a month, plus generating enough electric to cover 3/4 of the overall electric bill for my home.

I haven't had to deal with the "problems that all EV drivers have to live with", whatever they are. I really haven't had to alter my life at all to accommodate the fact that the car has a finite range. I do everything the same as I did before other than taking about 30 seconds to plug the car in at night and again in the afternoon when I arrive at work. If you read the comments on blogs on the internet you would think it's such a hassle to drive an EV. That you have to deal with all kinds of obstacles and inconveniences and nobody will buy one because they won't want to put up with it. Funny thing is, the people that write comments like this have never owned or driven an EV. They've read somewhere how bad and unreliable EV's are so they've adopted the bad information as fact. They then write these negative comments that others read and the misinformation is perpetuated. So few people have actually had the pleasure of owning or driving an EV that there aren't enough of us to let everyone know how great they can be. I'm not saying that EV's are for everyone, but I do believe that they would work for a good percentage of the population. It's going to be interesting because very soon consumers will have a choice. EV's are coming to a dealer near you, and sooner than you think.

Some 20,000 mile facts:

Right now, there is over 1,100 gallons of gas that I didn't have to buy sitting in an underground storage tank of a gas station in Morristown NJ.

I didn't need to stop at that gas station about 75 times, which would have wasted about twelve hours of my life just sitting there while my tank was filled.

I didn't have to pay for five oil changes, and there isn't 30 quarts of dirty motor oil that needs to be recycled.

I've had a lot of fun driving the car and meeting a lot of interesting people along the way.

MINI-E Program Extended, Will Transition To The ActiveE!

While the trial lease participants haven't yet been notified, it appears as though BMW has announced what we all expected, they are going to extend the MINI-E leases beyond the one year we all agreed to. How many of the existing participants agree to continue will depend greatly on how much the monthly payment will be. We are currently on the hook for $850.00 per month which does include all maintenance and collision and comprehensive insurance. I think most of us agreed to be in this program because we wanted to be part of something that we believe in, not because we think the car is worth an $850 per month lease payment. I know that's way I got involved. I wanted to offer my help and support in the hope that I could help prove that there is a market and demand for electric vehicles. That many people are sick of polluting the air we breath and paying outrageous amounts of money for gasoline while we send billions of dollars for imported oil to radical regimes that are no friend to the US.

I would definitely like to continue and extend my lease for another year, provided the second year lease payments are much lower than $850. I do think BMW will be reasonable here since it is in their best interest to keep many of the same participants involved. We all have installed and inspected wall chargers and that was probably the biggest hurdle for BMW in getting this program off the ground. (Follow this link to read Richard Steinberg's MINI-E program overview.) To now remove all the chargers and install them in new locations just makes no sense at all as the cost would be about $2,500 per participant. Removing that cost alone should knock $200.00 off the monthly payment. I'm going to go out and say I expect the lease offer for the second year to be $450 to $500 per month. I think if the cost is in that range most of the participants will re-up and be happy about it.

Finally, the real carrot in continuing the lease is that BMW is planning on offering a similar lease program for the ActiveE and it's scheduled to begin mid 2011 which is when our lease extensions will end and they are planning on offering us the option to transition into an ActiveE. Now that's what we all have been waiting to hear. The only question I have is "Why another trail lease?" How much data and research do they need. Other auto manufacturers have already announced that they will sell EV's and extended range plug in hybrids in the near future. BMW needs to get out there and announce that they will be selling these cars soon, not only testing them. I believe we will hear a similar announcement soon because I do believe they are committed to selling an EV soon, and that they are just waiting for the right time to announce it. For now we'll have to live in the "research" stage. I'm up for it, the only question is: can I transfer my license plates to the ActiveE?

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.

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?

BMW introduces ActiveE Project i Vehicle

From the beginning we were told that BMW was never going to make a production version of the MINI-E and that the purpose of this trial lease program was to gather information for a future four seat BMW that had a been rumored to be called the Megacity. Many of us in the program wondered what did BMW have up their sleeve. Every now and then you would see an artists rendering of a guess of what the car might look like, but never anything from BMW. Well, we just got what we were waiting for and everyone that I have talked with likes what we see. Detailed information on the ActiveE can be found at this link. I noticed in one of the pictures that it has the same plug as our MINI-E's do which means the wall chargers and cables that the MINI-E trial lease participants have will charge the ActiveE. Hmmm, it would be real easy for BMW to let MINI-E trial lease participants do some real world testing of the ActiveE. Also, it would be a nice gesture to reward us for paying $850/month to help gather information for them. We all have installed, approved and working wall chargers (I have 2 of them) so that would allow BMW to quickly get these on the road without the hassle and cost of permitting and installing new wall chargers. Just in case I'm not making myself clear enough, I would GLADLY offer to do a trial run of an ActiveE would the offer come my way. I say that on the odd chance that some BWM execs might happen across this blog....

Wall Charger Passes Inspection! FINALLY!

It's been over five months since my wall charger was installed in my home and it finally passed inspection by the Chester Township electrical inspector. I don't want to rehash the issues the inspector had with it and why he originally failed it, I have written about it more than a few times on this blog already so if any is really interested, just look up the previous posts on the subject. What matters most is that six months to the day that I took possession of the car I finally have an approved, working wall charger in my garage. Richard Steinberg of BMW will sleep well tonight once he reads this post.

New Wall Charger (sticker included)

A couple day's ago I had the electrical contractor that installed my wall charger come back and install a new wall charger. The first one worked fine, there were no functional issues at all. The problem was it didn't have a sticker on it that said it was tested as a complete unit and my local electrical inspector failed it when he did the inspection. This has turned out to be the single biggest problem MINI has had to deal with in the whole program. In fact, there are rumors that Richard Steinberg of BMW wakes up at night in cold sweats screaming "It has the sticker, it has the sticker" but this has not yet been confirmed.
There are somewhere between 450 and 500 Mini-E's on the road now and only a handful have had inspectors fail them over this issue. Basically, the problem comes from the fact that the wall charger and the cable that is attached to it were both tested and approved by Underwriters Labs, but they were tested separately and not a complete unit and some of the New Jersey inspectors would not accept it. None of the 100 or so chargers in New York failed and I think only 1 or 2 out of the 250 in California failed. The crazy thing is, the new charger is EXACTLY the same as the one they took away other than a shiny sticker on the cable. In fact, the "bad" charger that was taken away will go back to the factory where they will put the sticker on the cable and ship it out to be used again, but now it's safe because of the sticker. That's one powerful sticker, let me tell you. I'm now scheduled for re-inspection next week, lets hope the sticker does it's magic and we can finally put this charger issue to rest.

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".

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.

Gotta Love Jersey

We'll my second wall charger seems to be put on hold until the State of NJ can figure out what it wants to do about the UL listing issue with the wall chargers. Last month I wrote that my wall charger at my house failed inspection because the two components of the charger, the wall box and the cable, were tested and approved by Underwriters Laboratory separately and some of the local inspectors were failing the units because of this technicality. Both items passed inspection and have UL approval, but I guess when you attach the cable to the box, it somehow becomes less safe. I know that UL testing is necessary. I can only imagine the dangerous junk that would be sold if there wasn't an entity to oversee and test electronic devices before they can be used by the public, but I think in this case the inspectors are being too strict.

There are nearly 500 Mini-E's on the roads of California, New York and New Jersey, and only in New Jersey is Mini and Clean Fuel Connections (the company Mini contracted to do the charger installations) having such extraordinary difficulties. The latest news is that they are requiring UL field inspections in addition to the regular municipality inspectors, and forcing Mini to replace the wall boxes previously installed with new boxes that have a UL sticker on them. Mind you, they are the SAME boxes as the ones they are replacing and using the SAME cables. The only difference is the cable (3 wires) is being attached at the factory, instead of having the licensed, NJ electrical contractor attach it at the time of the installation, unbelievable. New York and California inspectors have passed just about all the units, but here in NJ less than half of the installed wall chargers have passed.

It's really no wonder though. New Jersey is the land of corruption and payoffs. Rarely do we go a year without a major politician involved is some scandal involving "pay to play" politics. I guess Mini just didn't grease the right palms. Mini executives are now calling the fiasco "The New Jersey Problem". Way to go Garden State! Where's Tony Soprano when you need him? He'd make this little problem go away with a phone call!
Click the link below to read more about the charge box UL problems in NJ.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10357653-48.html