abasile
Well-known member
Today I ended up driving our LEAF down the mountain to an appointment in San Bernardino, the first time taking it all the way "down the hill" in a few months, as my wife was already using our new-to-us 2012 Tesla Model S for a separate appointment.
This gave me an occasion to fire up LeafSpy and check the stats on our vintage 2011 battery, which are now: 48.46 Ah, SOH=73%, Hx=53.38%, 66536 miles, 132 QCs, 4790 L1/L2s
The bad news is that, with that battery at a temperature of about 41 F and a starting SOC of 80% (not planned well), the regen was almost non-existent. Thankfully, earlier this year, we had our warped brake rotors ground down by our local shop, so it was tolerable to use the friction brakes in the cold rain.
The great news is that there's now a working EVgo CHAdeMO/CCS station, with two separate quick chargers plus Level 2, right at the base of the mountain. It's now, by far, the closest QC to the primary route to Big Bear! See https://api.plugshare.com/view/location/100484
So, all it took for me to return home was a single QC session, which raised the LEAF's charge to 59% in GIDs (an old metric that I'm used to) and the battery temperature to about 60 F. After driving 40-45 mph up the mountain, with traffic, and using the defogger sparingly, I pulled in our driveway with 11% in GIDs. There was no need for a Level 2 top-off! And there's a nice, new ALDI food market on the other end of the shopping center. That said, an EVgo a la carte quick charge is expensive, so we'll only do this occasionally, when the Tesla is not available. But if one already has an EVgo membership, this is a great option for visiting the mountain resort area in a LEAF or other EV.
This gave me an occasion to fire up LeafSpy and check the stats on our vintage 2011 battery, which are now: 48.46 Ah, SOH=73%, Hx=53.38%, 66536 miles, 132 QCs, 4790 L1/L2s
The bad news is that, with that battery at a temperature of about 41 F and a starting SOC of 80% (not planned well), the regen was almost non-existent. Thankfully, earlier this year, we had our warped brake rotors ground down by our local shop, so it was tolerable to use the friction brakes in the cold rain.
The great news is that there's now a working EVgo CHAdeMO/CCS station, with two separate quick chargers plus Level 2, right at the base of the mountain. It's now, by far, the closest QC to the primary route to Big Bear! See https://api.plugshare.com/view/location/100484
So, all it took for me to return home was a single QC session, which raised the LEAF's charge to 59% in GIDs (an old metric that I'm used to) and the battery temperature to about 60 F. After driving 40-45 mph up the mountain, with traffic, and using the defogger sparingly, I pulled in our driveway with 11% in GIDs. There was no need for a Level 2 top-off! And there's a nice, new ALDI food market on the other end of the shopping center. That said, an EVgo a la carte quick charge is expensive, so we'll only do this occasionally, when the Tesla is not available. But if one already has an EVgo membership, this is a great option for visiting the mountain resort area in a LEAF or other EV.
