Everyday Leaf Driver's Experience -- what it's really like

I'm starting a new post for those of us who think of the Leaf as "just another car" . . . . point A to point B. What's it really like?

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So decided to take the Leaf up to visit friends in Santa Rosa. We knew we could get about 4.5 hours of trickle charge while there. Total trip distance -- house to house -- 110.9 miles. We live in Berkeley . . . so called Santa Rosa Nissan to see if I could drop in for an L2 charge, just in case, and they were very accommodating -- told me I could drop in anytime before 7pm (on Saturday). Arrived at friends with 3 bars and 22 miles to go and plugged in for trickle. Checked Carwings on my blackberry (twice! Wife about killed me ) and saw we were charging, but too slowly. We arrived at 6:30pm at Santa Rosa Nissan and they couldn't have been friendlier! We plugged in to their easily accessible Aerovironment charger (they have 4 chargers together out in the lot) and spent a half hour yakking with David, their Leaf rep. and a nice guy. Left with 5 bars and 47 miles -- not ideal to get back to Berkeley -- better would have been 60 miles. Anyway, we take off, and by the time we got to San Rafael we had 7 miles to go and low battery warning. My wife was adamant that we NOT cross the Richmond/San Rafael bridge without more "fuel" so we pulled off with the idea of a hour of trickle charge somewhere. Asked two gas stations and one of them -- the Shell station on 2nd street in downtown San Rafael -- agreed to let us plug in. They have an third-party ATM machine in front of their store that is plugged into a two-socket plug with the upper plug available. We plugged in and pulled out some reading, got some water, and talked to three different groups of people interested in the Leaf and what we doing. Told them all the Leaf is the real deal and time to start thinking seriously about changing over. Spent 45 minutes and then took off with 9 miles and one bar. At 8 miles got low batter warning with the nice lady letting us know along with other indicators. We crossed the bridge with 4 miles and one bar, but as soon as we got past the refinery, got zero bars, three flashing lines where the miles read out, and the nice lady telling me my battery was seriously low and did I want to find a charging station? I pressed "yes" and she gives me three options -- the closest of which is my own home at 3.9 miles. I selected this and she sets a course for home with zero bars and three flashing lines. We get off at Buchanan and when we reach Marin and San Pablo Ave., the dreaded Turtle appeared. We kept going and when we pulled up to Francis and Santa Fe, the car went into "golf cart" mode. We made it to the top and coasted down to our house, pulled into the drive way and plugged in! YES!!! Very much enjoying my victory gin and tonic!

Good post, Dave. I love your adventurousness. I hope your wife shares it.

There were many stories of the RAV and EV1 drivers attempting longer distances and coasting in at the end. We don't want to encourage draining the batts too many times like that, but when you gotta do it, go for it.

These kinds of extended range rides will get more interesting as the L1 and L2 infrastructure grows. Grocery stores should be a good source of emergency charges since several of the big chains (Ralphs, Whole Foods and Alberstons to name a few) have announced they are going to install in some regions.

Of course, the occasional look-see behind a vending machine will usually work in a pinch.

I just crossed over the 1000 miles mark. Here is my blogpost about hitting this milestone:
http://celticsolar.blogspot.com/2011/06/1000-leaf-miles.html

Pat, very nice blog. I like the chart..

interplaydave said:

Anyway, we take off, and by the time we got to San Rafael we had 7 miles to go and low battery warning.

Click to expand...

FYI, San Rafael's C street garage has two L2 Chargepoint charger stations inside. You have to pay for parking (except Sunday) but then the charging is free. It is best to get a Chargepoint RFID ahead of time: when I showed up the first time without one, they were supposed to be able to remotely activate the charge stations over the telephone, but they couldn't.

Cheers, Wayne

wwhitney said:

interplaydave said:

Anyway, we take off, and by the time we got to San Rafael we had 7 miles to go and low battery warning.

Click to expand...

FYI, San Rafael's C street garage has two L2 Chargepoint charger stations inside. You have to pay for parking (except Sunday) but then the charging is free. It is best to get a Chargepoint RFID ahead of time: when I showed up the first time without one, they were supposed to be able to remotely activate the charge stations over the telephone, but they couldn't.

Cheers, Wayne

Click to expand...

Thanks for the heads-up, Wayne . . . interesting that many charging stations are not shown when the car searches. Must only locate free locations or some such. Sure would have been nice to have known this on Saturday

I just did an 87 mile day with 10 miles left in the bank.... My trip involved multiple stops (festival, museum, antique shops, chow, etc.) with a light foot on ECO mode but the occasional heavy foot when running yellow lights and cutting off a car or two... All with the AC running and our favorite tunes blasting. My wife enjoyed every minute of the trip. I did, however, catch her looking at the SOC bar(s) a lot towards the end of our drive...

I've found the leaf to be a great 2nd car/every day driver. So much so that my motorcycle is missing the good weather here in Seattle!

This week for example, we had a mid week Seattle Sounders game. I drove the Leaf to work that day and back home a 44 mile drive. Got home and had to do a quick turn around, plugged in L2 for 30 minutes while changing into my Sounders fan uniform and then we left for the XBOX pitch.

When we got there found that BLINK had installed 2 chargers in the parking garage that we use. Thought, cool I'll get a charge during the game, but to no avail. Still needed an RFID card which I have had on order for 3 months and still have not gotten. So we went ahead and parked in a normal spot and enjoyed a 4-2 win.

Made it home with 4 mile showing on the gage and 86 total miles for the day. Not bad. Didn't feel like I was jumping through too many hoops all day either trying to conserve energy or charge the car....just going about my busy day. :mrgreen:

The LEAF has been such a great car that it's my primary ride! I've had to put the car away so I can ride my bike for a while. I've put 2977 miles on my LEAF in 48 days since taking delivery....

The Leaf is now our primary car, especially now that we have tested it at longer ranges. We still have the Murano, which USED to be our primary car, but now it sits there even on weekends. We've found that while we often drive over 100 miles on Saturdays, it's split up in multiple trips so we can charge at home between each trip and VERY rarely do we ever get worried about not having enough juice.

I think the Murano is getting bored and jealous... But we still use it occasionally for long trips, towing, or if we just need that second car and the Xebra isn't up to the job. I'm just surprised that we're using the Leaf as much as we are. I originally suspected that it wouldn't be adequate for a lot of our trips, but I'm finding that it's very few times when it's not enough, and it's almost always obvious (like a 300 mile trip across the state).