The emblems make a BIG difference

I was planning on taking a few weeks to see if the new emblems I put on the car made more people notice before I commented but that won't be necessary. In less than two weeks I have had about ten people ask me about the car or wave and give a thumbs up while driving. Just this morning as I drove around the "Green" in Morristown center, I had a nice encounter with a gentleman in a Volvo as we drove and stopped at three consecutive traffic lights next to each other. He started of with the usual "Is that a hybrid or all electric?" After I told him he immediately followed with "Where can I get one?" I hate to have to be the one to tell people that they can't buy one. They seem so excited when they see a 100% electric car on the road, no less a "cool" Mini Cooper, and then I have to hit them with "They are not for sale, sorry, it's a pilot program" Our conversation continued as we were stuck in morning rush hour traffic and our cars were side by side creeping along. "How do you like it?, How far can it go?, How long does it take to charge?, How much does it cost in electric to charge it?" We talked for a bit and then he asked a question that nobody has asked me yet, and it caught me off guard a little. He said:"You know they could have been building electric cars for a long time now, why do you think they'll ever really commit to producing these when we've been asking for them for years now?" He was right. Auto manufacturers could have been building electric cars for a long time now. There were electric Model T's in the 20's for God's sake. Why now, why after all this time will the auto manufacturers decide to invest in the greatest change the industry has ever faced? Well I think they will, and here's why: First, battery technology is getting better and better at a faster rate than it ever has in the past. You can thank laptop computers and other PED's for that. Second, nobody likes to be beaten at their own game and the auto manufacturers saw new upstart car companies like Tesla, Fisker, Aptera and others on the verge of putting Electric vehicles on the road and the huge public interest they were generating. They may not have wanted to get into the BEV business, but now they HAVE to, or lose market share. Thirdly, last years outrageously high oil prices were painful, but they helped to raise awareness about just how dependent we are on foreign oil and how the giant oil cartels can cripple our economy if they choose to do so. OPEC is no friend to the United States and more and more people are realizing that and want to do something about it. Even if that means paying a premium for an electric car and living with a limited driving range, more people are willing to make concessions now then ever before. I've had this car for three months now and yes, I've had to make adjustments. I never had to think about where I was going the next day to make sure it was within my range. With my other cars that thought never crossed my mind, but now it does. I have only had to take my other car twice so far because I knew I'd be traveling over 120 miles the next day so it's not often, but if it were my only car it would be a problem. There are still a lot of obstacles to overcome, but I do think the genie is finally out of the bottle. Nissan has announce they plan to mass produce an electric vehicle, the Leaf starting next year, Tesla has their second model, the Type S in early production, Chevy will have it's plug-in hybrid, the Volt on the road next year and many other manufacturers have announced they will release an EV in the next few years. Once the public gets a chance to drive these cars as I have they will be hooked, I guarantee it. Hopefully they will have emblems that proudly announce "Electric" on the cars, it would be a shame if they made the same mistake that Mini did.

What Mini should have done

Mini did a great job with the Mini-E. This car wasn't designed to be an EV, but they managed to remove the ICE and powertrain and replace it with the battery pack, motor and the electronics necessary to convert the car to what it is. It's a fun car to drive, has great acceleration and handling and has a pretty good range as far as EV's go, with 100 to 120 miles of real world driving. The one thing Mini failed to do properly is label to car so most people that look at it know it's an electric vehicle. This has been a point discussed by many of the people in the program, as they are a bit disappointed that most people that see the car don't really know what they are looking at. Mini's are notorious for all kinds of graphics. You can order your car with many different theme's from the Union Jack flag across the roof to about 20 different style rear view mirrors so the plug emblems on the Mini E just don't stand out enough to make someone look twice at the car. Nothing really screams "Electric car here!" and I think many of the people driving the cars like I am are looking for ways to show off what we have. Part of being in the program is to show others that electric cars can be daily driving vehicles, that they can be fast & fun to drive. That's not going to happen if the cars go unnoticed. Many in the program have ordered custom license plate holders that say "100% Electric" or "No tailpipe & No Emissions". Others are ordering chrome emblems like I did (see pictures above). There are a lot places on the internet to get custom car emblems, but many like me ordered them from a company called Third Planet Energy. They offer a variety different styles and phrases centered around electric cars and biodiesel, but can make custom phrases if you desire. So it cost me about $120.00 to do what Mini should have. They built a fantastic zero emission car but somehow forgot to announce it to the world. The experience of driving the car is worth the few extra bucks, plus I'm curious to see how many more people notice the car now and ask me about it. In the three months I've had the car I've driven it over 6,000 miles and only about a dozen people (that didn't read about me in the newspaper) stopped me to ask if the car was a hybrid or electric, lets see if the emblems make a difference.

Mini offering 2nd wall chargers while suppiles last!

Last Friday I received an email from Mini USA that said they have a few extra wall chargers available for participants that might want them. I responded immediately so I could get my request in before they allotment was all gone. Even better, most of the extra chargers they have are the 50amp ones, the chargers that mostly went to the Mini dealerships. Most people in the program have 40amp chargers at their homes, as I do. The extra 10amps will make charging even faster, cutting down a complete charge from about 4 hours to under 3. I plan on installing it at my restaurant in Montclair near the rear door where I can pull right up to it. I will also make it known that if any of the other Mini-E drivers need a charge and are in the area they can stop by and "fill up" for free anytime we are open which is 7 days a week 11 or 12 hours a day, depending on the day. I asked Marian from Mini about the availability of secondary chargers at the East Coast meet up we had, and she told me that they were working on it at the time but couldn't promise anything. I guess Mini realized that it would only enhance the program if they could place more chargers in the areas that where the cars were. Until public charging stations are readily available, convenient charging will be a major hurdle for electric cars. Currently there are companies out there now planning the infrastructure for locations of charging stations since so many auto manufacturers have EV's in development stages, but they are still a long way from mass deployment. It's kind of a chicken or the egg situation. Electric cars need public charging stations to become mainstream, but it's difficult to invest tons of money into charging stations if there aren't enough cars that need them. I believe that once electric cars begin to appear in numbers, franchises like McDonalds that have parking lots will install a couple chargers with dedicated parking spaces for them. They could charge you $5.00 to park in the spot and charge your car, plus they know you are probably going to eat at their restaurant to kill the 45 minutes or so you'll need to charge up on their high powered charger. This would be a quick way to get thousands of public chargers available quickly and paid for by private enterprise, not tax dollars. If you drove an EV and you knew that every franchise had chargers in their lot you could easily take trips much further than the range of your cars batteries without worry of getting stranded. The car could have a built in GPS with charger locations programmed in just like current GPS's have restaurants, banks, airports, etc pre-programmed. Well, that's all future talk. I'm happy that I'll be getting my 2nd charger now. It will allow me to drive this awesome car even more than I currently am, and that's a good thing.

Zero emission pizza delivery

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

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

East Coast Mini-E gathering was a success!

Today's Mini-E gathering was a great success. I played host at my restaurant in Montclair, Nauna's Bella Casa. We had nine pioneers attend, plus Marian Hawryluk, a representative from Mini USA. She also came in a Mini-E so we had nine of them parked out in front of the restaurant. There would have been ten, but unfortunately one of the cars is in for service. Luckily the owners, John Rathgeb and Alan Chadrjian live on the block behind Nauna's (crazy coincidence) and could walk to the gathering. It was really nice to meet up with other "E" drivers and talk about the issues we have had as well as how much we all love the cars. It was especially nice of Marian to come. She wasn't obligated to be here, but chose to come to answer any questions we might have and to listen to our stories and complaints. There were some complaints, as much as we all love the cars, but most of them were not directly related to the car itself, they were more about the lack of a two-way communication conduit between the people at Mini and us. There was one particular car that has been in service 5 times already and Marian promised to find out what was going on with it and get back to the owners, as they have barely been able to drive the car since they got it. Nobody else at the event had encountered anything like what they have seen and have been racking up the miles for the past two months and driving emission free. I think problems aside we all really love the cars and that we made sure she knew that. We had a nice lunch of fresh mozzarella salad, fried calamari, hotsy totsy shrimp, penne vodka & chicken francese. I think everyone left full and very happy with how the day went. My staff later told me that while we were having our meeting, people kept walking in the restaurant and asking them what was going on with all the cars outside. It looked really cool seeing all the Mini-E's parked in the lot all next to each other. I have to give props to Don Young. He came here from Shelter Island, NY, which is all the way out on Long Island, about 130 miles away. He had to stop halfway at Stu Greenberg's and charge up. Then charge up when he got to Montclair (at Sandy Bondorowsky's) and then halfway home again at Stu's. It must have taken him 18 hours for the round trip, that's dedication! I want to thank Marian Hawryluk, Don Young, Sandy Bondorowsky, Chris Neff, Paul Heitmann, Ken Barbour, David Miller, Michael Graham, John Rathgeb & Alan Chadrjian for coming. I definitely plan on doing this again, probably in 3 or 4 months and hopefully we'll have an even larger group for that one.

If you build them....

One of the aspects of being in the program that I have enjoyed the most so far has been talking to people that express interest in the car. Some people could care less, others ask a question or two and say something like "the auto manufacturers will never make these for us, it would make too much sense. Plus they're in bed with big oil anyway". But the last group, the one's who's eyes light up when they look at the decals on the car and realize they are looking at a zero emission vehicle, they're the ones I love to meet, and meet one I did today. I went to the bank this afternoon and when I came out there was a guy standing next to #250 admiring it. As I approached he looked at me and said "I've read about these. You don't know how jealous of you I am" I immediately knew this was going to take a while because he wasn't going to let me go before I answered all his questions. I wasn't in a rush, and I really love talking about the car, about our need to reduce the country's oil dependency, the need to reduce the greenhouse gasses we emit, and a host of other EV related issues. We stood there in the 90 degree heat for about ten minutes and I must have answered about 20 questions until I asked him the question he was dying to hear " Do you want to take it for a drive?" He lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. I handed him the keys and said "Lets go". We drove around town for about 10 minutes and I dropped him back off at the bank. He loved the cars power, the regenerative braking and the overall feel you get with an electric car, as it's really a different experience than driving a car with an internal combustion engine. He thanked me 100 times and told me he'd be reading this blog from now on. His parting words were the same thing I hear over and over again: " I just hope the car manufacturers finally realize that we want these cars, and that we'll buy then if they build them" You hear that BMW? GM? Ford? Chrysler? Toyota? Honda? etc.. Build them and we will come! And Robert, I enjoyed this afternoon as much as you did, keep the faith.

Baby it's hot outside...

and that means the battery packs in our electric Mini's are sweating just like we are. Last week, Chris Neff a fellow Mini-E driver(#402) asked me if I had noticed any reduced range with the hot and humid weather. I told him I didn't, but would look closely at my mileage spreadsheet where I log all the trips I take, (yes, every time I drive the car) and keep track of the mileage driven verses the battery percentage used. I know it seems like a lot of work, but I'm so used to it now that it's second nature. After looking at the recent data I was assured that I told him the truth, that my mileage wasn't suffering because of the weather. I guess he jinxed me because since then I have been noticing a distinct decrease in driving range. It has been really hot here in New Jersey lately, hotter than it's been all summer and accompanied by high humidity. The last few days now I'm seeing about a 15% reduction in range and that's not good. I need to have a range of 100 miles to feel confident I can accomplish what I need to during the day. My round trip from Chester to Montclair is only 62 miles, but I also need to drive around during the day as I own property in Florham Park and Oradell and sometimes need to go there without warning. This 15% reduction is really putting me right on the line of making it home at night or not. Where I was once comfortable with driving 110 miles on a single charge I'm now worried about getting 95. For example, today I have already driven 62 miles and I have 29% battery charge and a projected 27 miles remaining. I still need to drive home tonight which is 31 miles. I'll make it, I know I can push the car at least 5 miles further than the expected range provided I drive carefully tonight. The problem is, if it were cooler out, I would probably have 45-48% charge and a range of about 50 miles remaining and that's a big drop. Granted it's about 96 degrees out with high humidity, but I'm starting to think the car would have been better off it it were water cooled as opposed to air cooled as it is. Usually the battery temperature is between 85 and 100 degrees and lately I'm seeing battery temperatures of 105-113 degrees and that takes a toll on the batteries. I'm not an engineer, but I know enough about cooling to know that a good liquid- based cooling system would work better than the current setup. You need only look at Tesla Motors to see an example of an efficient liquid based cooling system. The battery pack in the Tesla Roadster is designed to have an average operating temperature of 77 degrees and a maximum operating temperature of 95 degrees. My Mini-E's batteries are operating at or over 95 degrees most of the time now that it's hot outside and the performance is definitely suffering. I'm also pretty sure the Chevy Volt will be liquid based as was GM's ill fated EV1. Perhaps Mini choose to do it this way to save time and get the cars on the road as fast as possible. After all, this car is a mule, pure and simple. It wasn't designed from the ground up as an EV, and I don't think BMW ever plans on selling electric Mini's. This car was made to test the components of the drivetrain for future EV's, not necessarily Mini's. I'm pretty sure when they do a ground-up EV design, the battery pack will have a more efficient means of cooling than what the Mini-E has, it better!