NC Leaf Owners

wferrell said:

My old car finally died and I am seriously considering leasing a Leaf.

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I contacted most dealerships by email. Looked at inventory online through the Nissan website and asked dealers for information. I was able to get a bidding war going that worked out very well for me. Unlikely to repeat itself.
Ended up leasing through Wake Forest Nissan. Tracy (he) is the internet sales manager (person).
Southern States reluctantly gave a decent price but the sales person walked away the first time I went for a test drive.
Leith Nissan in Apex is the big area dealership for Leafs. They usually have the most stock. I worked with Dwayne there. He seemed pretty helpful, they had decent prices, but he has lots of misinformation and comes off typical salesman like.

babynuke said:

I saw that Fred Anderson Nissan has opened on Wake Forest Road across from the Bali Hai restaurant and beside Southern States Nissan!?!.

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Lots of people have had good luck with Fred Anderson, but I had a horror story with Fred Anderson Toyota. Everyone was exceptionally nice, great price on a Sienna. Short story is that on the drive home buying a Sienna, I noticed a problem and immediately reported it. They saw no need to repair it in a timely fashion. They had my money, I was at the back of the line. It took 3 weeks and escalating to Toyota before they're repair it. An extremely bad experience. I will not and have not bought from them again.

Found out last night,(Friday the 13th), while picking up my LEAF!!!, that Fred Anderson Nissan bought Southern States Nissan.
A few pics of my new toy, er ah, electrical conveyance!!

The two new EVSEs at North Hills near Target are now operational.

http://api.plugshare.com/view/location/17212

Last minute reminder.

EV meetup tomorrow at Ropes Course Shelter at Bond Park in Cary NC. Saturday Sept 28th, 12 noon. Bring lunch and maybe a chair.
http://www.meetup.com/RTP-EV-meetup-group/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

FYI:

Host Sites Needed for Electric Vehicle Fast Charge Stations

Advanced Energy (advancedenergy.org), a nationally-recognized nonprofit based in Raleigh, N.C., committed to working with stakeholders to help them understand, plan for and implement successful emerging transportation programs, is seeking qualified sites in the Charlotte and Research Triangle Park metropolitan areas of North Carolina to host quick charge electric-vehicle fueling equipment for public access.

Host sites are locations at existing commercial or retail enterprises that are interested in partnering with Advanced Energy for the installation and operation of electric vehicle charging equipment at their location. Chosen sites will receive, free of charge, a Direct Current (DC) Fast Charger valued over $25,000. The DC Fast Chargers are ideal for high traffic areas at shopping centers, gas stations and convenience locations along major transportation corridors and can charge a typical plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) in 30 minutes or less. Host sites will benefit from increased visibility and foot traffic as well as a heightened sustainability profile for their business.

“We are seeking project ready partners that can demonstrate the ability to hit the ground running” notes Advanced Energy project manager, Charles Young. The deadline for host-site applications has been extended to October 11th, 2013. Installation of charging stations for this project must be completed by March 1, 2014.

http://www.advancedenergy.org/programs

Excellent job Nissan.

First public DC fast charge is a TESLA supercharger in Burlington..... Damnit I need one right there for the Leaf!!!!!!

FYI, I just listened to the NCPEV taskforce webinar that discussed DCFC for the RTP/Charlotte regions. They are planning 10 DCFC stations in the RTP and Charlotte regions. CHadEMO and SAE combo charging capable. Here is a map of the proposed stations that Advanced Energy is working on.





Also Brightfield is rolling out DCFC stations too. They are planning 20 DCFC locations in RTP, Charlotte, Triad, and Asheville at urban municipal locations: public, workplace, and retail. Here is one of their slides on cost:

They are considering $2.24 per eGallon for their DCFC.

Thirdly, Nissan will be rolling out DCFC at local dealerships.

Finally, the Tesla Supercharger in Burlington will be unveiled next Tuesday, 10/22.

MTNRanger said:

FYI, I just listened to the NCPEV taskforce webinar that discussed DCFC for the RTP/Charlotte regions. They are planning 10 DCFC stations in the RTP and Charlotte regions. CHadEMO and SAE combo charging capable. Here is a map of the proposed stations that Advanced Energy is working on.

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Neither of the attached images work for me. Can you provide a URL to the gm-volt thread?

dm33 said:

MTNRanger said:

FYI, I just listened to the NCPEV taskforce webinar that discussed DCFC for the RTP/Charlotte regions. They are planning 10 DCFC stations in the RTP and Charlotte regions. CHadEMO and SAE combo charging capable. Here is a map of the proposed stations that Advanced Energy is working on.

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Neither of the attached images work for me. Can you provide a URL to the gm-volt thread?

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I just used gm-volt to host the photos since I couldn't find a way to do it on this website. I'll try it again.

Note these are applications only. But considering there are only ten applications for ten spots so far, they are probably going to be fairly accurate.

It's a shame they aren't spread out a little further apart, say along the Interstates. Then they would be useful for trips. I can pretty much get anywhere in the Triangle I want. It would be nice to be able to do a road trip / beach trip though.

Pholz said:

It's a shame they aren't spread out a little further apart, say along the Interstates. Then they would be useful for trips. I can pretty much get anywhere in the Triangle I want. It would be nice to be able to do a road trip / beach trip though.

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Yes, and no.

While it's a dream of mine to take my LEAF down to Charlotte (from Raleigh) to visit my sons at some point before they graduate from UNC-Charlotte, that's not really what the LEAF was meant for. It would take at least 3 stops (probably 4) at DC FC to make that journey, adding at least 1.5 hours to a 2.5 hour trip just doesn't make sense, other than as a gimmick trip. Having said that, having DC FC halfway (or even better at thirds) between the Triangle and Triad, and the Triad and Charlotte would make more sense for those corridors where travelers would only have to make one stop.

Those kind of charging stations start to make a little more sense when you've got vehicles with 200 mile ranges because at that point they start being strictly commuter vehicles and start to be useful for longer trips.

DC FC within a metropolitan area, however, can make sense. As an example, with my wife's new working hours, on evenings when we are going to a hockey game, she doesn't get home until 5:00 and we need to turn around and leave at 5:30. That doesn't leave us enough time to get enough charge in to make it to PNC Arena and back. True, if PNC Arena had public charging, or her workplace had it, this wouldn't be a concern. But we would certainly use DC FC in those instances (and on a fairly regular basis) if it didn't take us too far out of the way.

Additionally I think it would open up the market to a new class of drivers that have more than occasional times when they need >70 miles of range. While I still firmly believe that the majority of people are fine at the 40 mile level, there still are many whose driving patterns have regular needs above that level.

lpickup said:

Pholz said:

It's a shame they aren't spread out a little further apart, say along the Interstates. Then they would be useful for trips. I can pretty much get anywhere in the Triangle I want. It would be nice to be able to do a road trip / beach trip though.

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Yes, and no.

While it's a dream of mine to take my LEAF down to Charlotte (from Raleigh) to visit my sons at some point before they graduate from UNC-Charlotte, that's not really what the LEAF was meant for. It would take at least 3 stops (probably 4) at DC FC to make that journey, adding at least 1.5 hours to a 2.5 hour trip just doesn't make sense, other than as a gimmick trip. Having said that, having DC FC halfway (or even better at thirds) between the Triangle and Triad, and the Triad and Charlotte would make more sense for those corridors where travelers would only have to make one stop.

Those kind of charging stations start to make a little more sense when you've got vehicles with 200 mile ranges because at that point they start being strictly commuter vehicles and start to be useful for longer trips.
...
Additionally I think it would open up the market to a new class of drivers that have more than occasional times when they need >70 miles of range. While I still firmly believe that the majority of people are fine at the 40 mile level, there still are many whose driving patterns have regular needs above that level.

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Hey Lance. I agree with your basic point that the Leaf is not meant for long drives.

However, you can go farther if you try. The hardest part is slowing down. The Leaf can go quite far if you drive slowly. We drove to Southern Pines, 83 miles on one charge, but kept the speed between 45-50. Avoided any high speed roads. We got to the Nissan dealership with almost 20 miles of range left. If we would have gone faster, we'd have to stop to charge at Sanford and it would have taken us longer to get there. YMMV. We have a 2013 which does better on regen and is "only" degraded down to 92% capacity.

You could go Raleigh to Asheboro Nissan, 75 miles, do a quick charge, its then 71 miles to downtown Charlotte. If you're going somewhere on this side of town its closer. If its much farther, you'd need to stop for another charge for a few minutes. I use Google maps telling it to avoid expressways.

Pholz said:

I can pretty much get anywhere in the Triangle I want. It would be nice to be able to do a road trip / beach trip though.

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I'd love to do a beach trip. We go to Atlantic beach. I researched it and it can be done, but with unrealistically long charge times along the way. If there were quick charge stations then we could do it.
Raleigh to Goldboro Nissan 63 miles.
Goldsboro to New Bern Nissan 76 miles. Worst part for this leg is that you really need more than 80% charge and even a quick charger would take longer.
New Bern to Atlantic beach, 33 miles.

As a disclaimer... I don't necessarily encourage folks to go that far on a charge without being very careful of range. Elevation change could be a determining factor as well as traffic, overall driving style, AC use etc.

dm33 said:

You could go Raleigh to Asheboro Nissan, 75 miles, do a quick charge, its then 71 miles to downtown Charlotte. If you're going somewhere on this side of town its closer.

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I'm on the far north side of Raleigh (let's just call it Wake Forest), so the route going through Asheboro is not really feasible. Going over to Durham via 98 and then taking 70 and 29 would be logical route for me. I figure I'd need to stop near Burlington, and then in Lexington, at a minimum. But more realistic would be something closer to Mebane, then High Point, then Salisbury so I could do it on 80% charges (except the first which would be 100%). And that's in 2013 with 11 capacity bars. By the time we get DC FC on the highways here, I'll probably need even one more stop to make the trip.

Yes, trips like these ARE possible. But even with quick charge, I wouldn't recommend it. Simply not worth the hassle. It would be cool to try it once just to say you did it, but if I was taking that trip regularly enough to warrant DC FC stations along the way, it would get old really soon.

Has anyone confirmed the DC fastcharge outside Charlotte? I just saw the indicator in Plugshare. Might be NC's first publicly available!

harryjpowell said:

Has anyone confirmed the DC fastcharge outside Charlotte? I just saw the indicator in Plugshare. Might be NC's first publicly available!

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I saw that...you missed the one at Leith Nissan...it's been up and down (due to permitting issues I believe) and in and out of plugshare over the past few weeks. It was successfully used on 12/31 and then again earlier this month, but it's also been reported offline due to said "permitting" issues in the intervening times. I can't say that that was the first, since who knows when the Salisbury came online (or whether it even really is online--while I do trust plugshare, it's not 100% reliable).

Also technically speaking, the first publicly available DC FC in NC was the Burlington Tesla superchargers. What we are talking about here would technically be the first publicly available CHAdeMO DC FC in NC.

BTW, I have done some mileage and route estimates. Between the Leith Nissan DC FC and the new Salisbury DC FC, it actually may be feasible for me to make the trip to Charlotte with "only" about a 2 hour stop at Asheboro Nissan--on the way there. On the way back though the wait would probably be more like 4 hours and pretty risky: not a lot of charging stations to fall back on between Asheboro and Apex along 64.

In other DC FC news: I also believe that there may be a DC FC currently open, or nearly open, in downtown Charlotte. I don't yet have details on exactly where, but its opening was "imminent" about a month ago. This is part of an Advanced Energy program that is paying for 30 DC FC units in the Charlotte & RTP areas (see http://www.advancedenergy.org/programs/nc-dc-fast-charge-project" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for more info). I believe there are about 10 candidate sites in the RTP area, and of those 2-3 are pretty far along. I don't have information on where those sites are, but I suspect one of them is at the McDonalds on Walnut St. in Cary, so keep your eyes on any construction there. There is another one that appears to be in North Raleigh, but I don't have any further details.

That program will not address the "highway" issue, but Brightfield Transportation is working on finding partners to create a network of up to 20 solar powered DC FC stations across the state ( http://brightfieldts.com/projects/brightfield-ts-solar-driven-experience/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; ) These stations will likely address more of the inter-city market. However, this program is not very far along at all, so don't hold your breath.

And then finally Nissan is of course rolling out DC FC at their dealerships. But good luck figuring out which ones and what timeline and whether the siting will make any sense at all. I've stopped to charge a few times to charge at Michael Jordan Nissan and I always ask about their plans for installing DC FC. The responses I've gotten have ranged from "I think maybe we have that already" to "We'll never get that because we'd have to pay for the charging station and installation ourselves". Maybe that's true...but I happen to be in the market for potentially another Nissan LEAF and I will probably choose my dealer on how committed they are to promoting electric driving, so Leith Nissan is going to be fairly high on my list at this point.

lpickup said:

and the new Salisbury DC FC

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I've been really out of touch! Could you give the location in Salisbury of this fast charger please?

SalisburySam said:

lpickup said:

and the new Salisbury DC FC

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I've been really out of touch! Could you give the location in Salisbury of this fast charger please?

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Don't worry, I only noticed it yesterday!

According to plugshare.com it's at Ben Mynatt Nissan 629 Jake Alexander Blvd S, Salisbury NC 28147
http://api.plugshare.com/view/location/2023" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Thanks Lance. I thought it might be there as the only local Nissan dealer, but I didn't see it mentioned on their website. I called the dealer and they confirmed the QC went "live" just yesterday (Jan 15, 2013). It is located outside, is accessible, and there is no charge (heh, heh, I kill myself) for use.