Are you going to keep a driving log?

[planet4ever]

It is better to let people think your stupid than open your mouth and prove it.

You mean like by putting a typo in your tag line?

(Sorry, no offense intended; just giving you a bad time. )

 

[LEAFfan]

It is better to let people think your stupid than open your mouth and prove it.

You mean like by putting a typo in your tag line?

(Sorry, no offense intended; just giving you a bad time. )

That's not a typo planet4ever. It's a very common error that a lot of people make. You're being nice to call it a typo.

 

[planet4ever]

For nearly a year, now, I've been trying to jot down the mileage on my Civic the first time I got into it each day.

Can you publish the numbers (basically select a few ranges of miles and then the # of days you travelled those many miles) and your analysis of the relative advantages of Civic, Prius, Volt, and LEAF for that pattern?

My driving pattern is atypical, because I am retired, but I suppose it might be interesting, anyway. After all, there are lots of retired people around.

On some days I do not drive a car at all, and I have excluded those. For the days I do drive, the average distance I go is 27.5 miles, but that is misleading as you can see from the following table (which you will note is not a linear scale):

48.3% 1 to 10 miles
08.1% 11 to 20 miles
25.0% 21 to 40 miles
12.7% 41 to 80 miles
03.8% 81 to 160 miles
02.1% 161 to 320 miles

The maximum distance I drove in one day was 308 miles.

My calculations were focused on total fuel cost (gasoline + electricity) under the following scenarios:

1.Current Honda Civic
2.Current (Gen 2) Prius
3.Volt used for all trips
4.LEAF used for short* trips, rental car for longer ones
5.LEAF used for short* trips, Prius used for longer ones

I can plug in various assumptions, but I currently have:

75 mile LEAF “anxiety point” - my cutoff for a “short” trip
40 mile Volt electric range
4 miles/kWh in either LEAF or Volt
45 mpg average for Prius
37 mpg average for Volt (after battery exhausted)
30 mpg average for rental
Actual gallons of gasoline purchased for the Civic
$3.25/gallon gasoline cost
$0.12/kWh electricity cost (TOU, mostly at night)

So, with all that, my bottom line on fuel cost is:

$644 Civic
$416 Prius
$362 Volt
$395 LEAF + rental
$307 LEAF + Prius

Note: Since I have not included maintenance and depreciation for any of the vehicles, I also have not included rental charges, only calculating fuel so that the rental vehicle is returned with a full tank.

 

[evnow]

On some days I do not drive a car at all, and I have excluded those. For the days I do drive, the average distance I go is 27.5 miles, but that is misleading as you can see from the following table (which you will note is not a linear scale):

This is great info. So, how many days total is that ?

 

[planet4ever]

On some days I do not drive a car at all, and I have excluded those. For the days I do drive, the average distance I go is 27.5 miles, but that is misleading as you can see from the following table (which you will note is not a linear scale):

This is great info. So, how many days total is that ?

6483 miles in 236 days of driving spread over 11 months. (However, as I said once before, there were some days - I'm not sure how many, but perhaps a dozen or so - when I forgot, or was too rushed, to record my mileage, so I really drove on more than 236 days. I treated that as equivalent to failing to plug in overnight.)

 

[evnow]

6483 miles in 236 days of driving spread over 11 months. (However, as I said once before, there were some days - I'm not sure how many, but perhaps a dozen or so - when I forgot, or was too rushed, to record my mileage, so I really drove on more than 236 days. I treated that as equivalent to failing to plug in overnight.)

You can see what I was trying to do in the thread "1 car family ....". I'll have to do some extrapolation ...

 

[Rat]

If I can't get the charging stop time from the Leaf, I can probably get it from the TOU meter the utility company installs. I think those things show hour-by-hour, but I don't have one yet. The Leaf charging should be pretty evident there.

 

[planet4ever]

If I can't get the charging stop time from the Leaf, I can probably get it from the TOU meter the utility company installs. I think those things show hour-by-hour, but I don't have one yet. The Leaf charging should be pretty evident there.

Maybe, if it is a smart meter. The older TOU meters provided by PG&E, like the one I have, just accumulate kWh forever on three different counters, one each for peak, partial peak, and off peak. You might be able to estimate by getting the off-peak number in the evening and again in the morning, and also by padding out to the meter with a flashlight sometime after midnight to get the instantaneous rate, hopefully at a time when the refrigerator isn't running.

 

[Rat]

I went to the Leaf test drive today and learned that you can set the Carwings program to send you an email when it reaches the charge level you set it for, so that should obviate the need to log the times manually. I don't know what data will be in the email, but the header should at least tell you when it completed charging. I may still enter the distance/charge time data in a spreadsheet for a while.

 

[LEAFfan]

I went to the Leaf test drive today and learned that you can set the Carwings program to send you an email when it reaches the charge level you set it for, so that should obviate the need to log the times manually. I don't know what data will be in the email, but the header should at least tell you when it completed charging. I may still enter the distance/charge time data in a spreadsheet for a while.

And if you don't have a 'smart' phone, it will still send text messages to a regular cell phone.

 

[LEAFer]

And if you don't have a 'smart' phone, it will still send text messages to a regular cell phone.

Now THAT's the best news I have heard today

 

[planet4ever]

And if you don't have a 'smart' phone, it will still send text messages to a regular cell phone.

I'll take the email, thank you. Not only do my wife and I not have smart phones, we have cell phones on a "senior" plan that charges us 20 cents extra for each text message. Yes, I realize that's "only" about $6/month; it's still money.

 

[mwalsh]

I'll take the email, thank you.

I'm with you, but because I'm not a huge fan of the telephone (smart or otherwise) as a communications device.

 

[Coffee_Slurry]

I'm not a huge fan of the telephone (smart or otherwise) as a communications device.

Now that's the weirdest thing I've heard all day.
:ugeek:

 

[mwalsh]

Now that's the weirdest thing I've heard all day. :ugeek:

No, I'm serious.....I prefer writing. It allows me to be more thoughtful about what I have to say (though you'd never know that from some of my writings here. :lol: ). I'd just as soon the World jumped straight from the telegraph to the fax machine, and left the phone out of the equation altogether.