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SalisburySam said:
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.

Sounds great! Let us know how it works after you try it.
 
I used the newly-installed QuickCharge (QC - L3) station at the local Nissan dealer today. Since its installation January 15, I was the second user. This was a first for me; in the almost two years I’ve had my 2012SL, I’ve not even seen a QC device let alone used one until today. I’ll comment on two topics: the QC installation, and my QC experience.

The QC device is located at Ben Mynatt Nissan, the dealer in Salisbury, NC about half way between Charlotte and the Winston-Salem/Greensboro/High Point triad and just off an exit from I-85. It is correctly shown on PlugShare. The QC is a single unit with its own parking space on the south side of the dealer’s lot, next to two AeroVironment L2 charging stations and their separate two parking spaces. I had the pleasure of meeting with the dealership’s LEAF specialist, Kevin, and he confirmed that all three stations are open 24 hours and are free to use. I was impressed with the sheer size of the QC unit, and the size and weight of the connecting cable. The display shows percent charge, instantaneous amperage and voltage, and time charged in minutes and seconds. The control buttons are simple: Stop, Start, and a big red Emergency Stop. The charging nozzle is large, heavy, and had a lever to draw the nozzle tight to the QC port on the car. Having never done this before, it takes some getting used to but the charging won’t begin until the nozzle is properly connected and latched.

As to my experience: I began the charge on a sunny day, 34°F, battery temperature showing 4 bars, and the QC station showing I had 27% charge left on my battery. After syncing between the car and station, the charging began and showed a 72-amp draw at about 400 volts. As charging went on, I noticed the amperage decreased slowly down to about 11 amps, and the voltage decreased slightly to about 392 volts. After exactly 40 minutes, the QC display showed I had an 86% charge. The ambient temperature was now 36°F, and the battery temperature still showed 4 bars. This surprised me as I thought the high amps and voltage would heat up the battery a bit, but no change.

One other surprise: I had expected to fully charge to 100% from my 27% in less than 30 minutes. My actual charge went from 27% to 86% in 40 minutes, or just under 60% added. Although much, much faster than my L2 charger at home, still longer than I had expected. At another time I may try a QC from a lower state of battery charge to 100% and time it.

All-in-all, a pleasant experience close to home with friendly faces and easy access. All good!
 
SalisburySam said:
I used the newly-installed QuickCharge (QC - L3) station at the local Nissan dealer today.

Thanks for the post Sam! Good stuff. I too made my first visit to do my first DC QC at Leith Nissan in Cary/Apex (turns out I didn't have much of a choice--thanks to 4 Volt and 1 Ford Fusion drivers at work taking up the 5 parking spots available for charging at work. I was down to 2 bars (need about 5 to make it home) and despite my leaving notes on their windshields to text me when they moved their vehicles I got absolutely ZERO texts...grrrr! But that's another story).

So I pulled into Leith Nissan having reached Very Low Battery Warning. It did take me several attempts to actually connect the nozzle to the port. I'm still not sure what the correct procedure is. At Leith Nissan the quick charger is located out behind the service area, but there are no markings on the spot to reserve it for EVs. Fortunately it's located in probably the most inconvenient spot, so the spot was open. However, it was really dark in the back corner of the lot and I had trouble seeing what I was doing.

When I plugged in the display said 12% battery (sounds about right) and my initial readings were 100A @ just over 400V. Unfortunately I did not stay and watch it as I wanted to go say hi and thank you to the dealer and talk about the possibility of getting a second LEAF. At any rate, we ended up talking for quite some time and looked at a few cars, so I was not back at my vehicle before it completed. However, I did get my "Charging Stopped" text message so I can time the encounter, although by the time I got back to my car the display was back to its "Welcome" screen so I did not get to see any summary or stats if they had been displayed.

Anyway, my car charged to 80% as well. I believe that the software is fixed to only fast charge to 80% if it's below a certain amount. So it may not even be possible to do a 0-100% charge. Besides, the taper off at the top end is severe enough anyway that it would be wasteful for you to go the last 20% on the quick charge. It's probably just as fast to move the car to an L2 to top it off to 100% if that's what you're going for and free up the QC spot.

My charge session lasted just over an hour (63 minutes) to get from 0-80% (from the in car display, not the QC display, which as I said earlier started out at 12%, and I don't know what the finishing SOC% was). Of course this was slower than expected, but as you noticed I think it tapers off pretty quickly. I wish I had been around at the 30 minute mark to see what the actual SOC was at that time. I think in many cases, I would not necessarily need to charge all the way to 80% when using this QC unit. I would have been fine stopping at 60% for what I needed to make it home, for example. Still, it does go to show you that the manual's stated range of 30-90 minutes is actually accurate! Don't expect it to take only 30 minutes if you need the full charge!

Battery temp wise, I arrived with 4 bars of battery temp. Ambient temp was around 28F. After the quick charge I actually had 5 bars of battery temp, something I have not seen in the past month!

As for the hours of operation of this unit, when I spoke to someone in service (that's who the receptionist forwarded me to when I called to inquire whether it was really working before committing to go out of my way with just enough juice to make it there) told me that the sales dept closed at 7 and it would be available 'til then. I don't know if they de-energize it at 7 (I was actually there after 7, but so was the sales guy I was talking to). If it remains energized, there are no other physical barriers to pulling up and charging, so it would appear to me that it would be 24 hour access. Maybe someone local could check it after hours and see if it remains energized.

The coolest thing is that I got a new DC FC icon on my NAV map now! Cool!
 
Concerning the DC Quick charger at Leith Nissan in Cary, when Leith Nissan put on their Facebook page that the charger was available I ask the question "Is this available 24/7, during business hours, details please?" and the response I got was "The charger is available 24/7/365, as long as it's not in use by our Service Department, another customer, or it's blocked off. And it's FREE! So the short answer is yes."
I have been there once to check it out, but that was during normal business hours, so I will make a point to go after hours and report my findings.
 
NuclearLeaf said:
Concerning the DC Quick charger at Leith Nissan in Cary, when Leith Nissan put on their Facebook page that the charger was available I ask the question "Is this available 24/7, during business hours, details please?" and the response I got was "The charger is available 24/7/365, as long as it's not in use by our Service Department, another customer, or it's blocked off. And it's FREE! So the short answer is yes."
I have been there once to check it out, but that was during normal business hours, so I will make a point to go after hours and report my findings.

Where's the DC charger? If it's behind the building, by the existing L2 stations, then access should be available around the clock. I haven't been there in a while, but in the mid summer I did stop once late at night when I was running pretty low.

That's where I got my Leaf, and the sales person told me access is always open (with the same caveat as NuclearLeaf was told).
 
FYI,

Celebrate a belated St. Patrick’s Day with Advanced Energy’s Transportation Initiatives Division and learn about how you can Green Your Drive! Please join us at North Hills on Saturday, March 22nd anytime between 10am – 1pm to learn more about a variety of Plug-In Electric Vehicles. This event is open to the public and will feature many different vehicles on display, informational booths, and vehicles available to test drive. For more information please contact us at [email protected].

GreenYourDriveInvitation.jpg
 
Selling my 2011 SL, 20,000 miles, silver, small paint chip in the front and small scratch on drivers door. I've lost one battery bar and battery tested great on 20,000 mile test that was done last week. I love my car but my daughter has started playing on a travel soccer league so I often need to drive long distances. Call or text me if interested, 704-310-7288. I tried to post this on the for sale/wanted topic and it wouldn't let me post there for some reason.
 
Random rant...

My last three visits to the Whole Foods in Raleigh with the EVSEs have met ICEd spots. The last time I decided to bring up with the manager about paging the owners of those cars over the PA, but "they don't do that".

Whatever.

But I was also thinking that part of the reason we get "our" spots ICEd is because they tend to be very convenient spots. Part of that probably because power is more likely to be readily available close to the building rather than in the middle of the parking lot, but I wouldn't mind a bit of a walk if it meant lesser chances of being locked out.

OK, done complaining about my first world problems.
 
w6vms said:
But I was also thinking that part of the reason we get "our" spots ICEd is because they tend to be very convenient spots. Part of that probably because power is more likely to be readily available close to the building rather than in the middle of the parking lot, but I wouldn't mind a bit of a walk if it meant lesser chances of being locked out.

OK, done complaining about my first world problems.
I'm sure it's not a problem unique to Raleigh but I completely agree.

My worst spot is the McDonald's on kildaire farms road in cary. The staff is very good about finding the person who has ICEd it, but it makes it uncomfortable nonetheless. Their charge station is located right next to handicap right by the door. I'd much rather it be more remote and not always ICEd.
 
dm33 said:
My worst spot is the McDonald's on kildaire farms road in cary. The staff is very good about finding the person who has ICEd it, but it makes it uncomfortable nonetheless. Their charge station is located right next to handicap right by the door. I'd much rather it be more remote and not always ICEd.

I assume you mean the one near Trader Joe's? There's another McD on Kildaire Farm Rd and Ten-Ten Rd, owned by the same folks, which as an EVSE. I've never used that one.

And there's a third one owned by them, on Walnut St in Cary, which was recently renovated and has two EVSEs (free to use, Chargepoint card required or you can call them to have them unlocked). They get ICEd sometimes, though I emailed the management company and I was told they'd try to improve the signeage to make it more clear that those spots are for EV only.
 
dm33 said:
My worst spot is the McDonald's on kildaire farms road in cary. The staff is very good about finding the person who has ICEd it, but it makes it uncomfortable nonetheless. Their charge station is located right next to handicap right by the door. I'd much rather it be more remote and not always ICEd.

I assume you mean the one near Trader Joe's? There's another McD on Kildaire Farm Rd and Ten-Ten Rd, owned by the same folks, which as an EVSE. I've never used that one.

And there's a third one owned by them, on Walnut St in Cary, which was recently renovated and has two EVSEs (free to use, Chargepoint card required or you can call them to have them unlocked). They get ICEd sometimes, though I emailed the management company and I was told they'd try to improve the signeage to make it more clear that those spots are for EV only.
 
w6vms said:
Random rant...

My last three visits to the Whole Foods in Raleigh with the EVSEs have met ICEd spots. The last time I decided to bring up with the manager about paging the owners of those cars over the PA, but "they don't do that".

This is unfortunately all too common at Whole Foods and your experience is the same as the rest of us. They simply don't want to do anything about it. And I'm beginning to think that the people that ICE it know that. It seemed like at first it was an occasional issue, but now I think drivers see that those spots are not enforced so they figure whatever.

I'm finally getting around to creating a "report card" that I'd like to release on a quarterly basis that I would like to use to motivate parties to install charging stations and those that have them to better enforce them. Obviously I'd keep it as positive as possible, but hopefully get the message across.

I'm thinking of having several different categories:

Retail (e.g. North Hills)
Municipal (e.g. City of Raleigh, Town of Apex)
Grocery (e.g. Whole Foods)
Workplace (e.g. Cisco, Qualcomm)
University (e.g. NC State)
Residential (not sure there are any in this category yet, but an example would be an apartment complex that has charging stations)
Dealerships (e.g. Nissan, Chevy, Ford)
Restaurants (e.g. McDonalds)
Hotels (e.g. Umstead)
Sporting Venues (DBAP--I'll give them partial credit for the ATC stations--they are all owned by Capital Broadcasting after all)

Marks would be given across the following:
Number of stations
Charging level (120V, L2, DC FC, SuperCharger)
Uptime (have the stations been down/broken?)
Availability (how often are the stations fully in use vs. a spot available)
Signage (how effective is the signage and markings in preventing ICEing)
Enforcement (are the spots effectively enforced?)
Growth (are new stations being added to meet increasing demand)
Cost


Obviously I would need a lot of help with this. My thought would be to enlist volunteers to help me review charging stations in a particular geographical area. Workplace charging is even more difficult because some of the workplaces are physically inaccessible, but even aside from that you don't get a good sense for some of the marking categories without actually working there and experiencing things like availability and enforcement.

So if anyone would like to help with this, let me know. My goal would be to have something by the end of June that I could publish as far and wide as possible. I'll try to get some of my contacts in the NC PEV Task Force & Advanced Energy to help get additional publicity. The idea would be that if we can highlight the leaders and make it obvious to the "slackers" that we are making the grades available to the ever growing EV community that they had better think about not being left behind by ignoring this growing segment of potential customers / employees.

A parallel effort is to put together a basic 1-2 pager on why a property owner/manager would want to consider installing charging stations, including costs, an ROI argument, LEED credits, etc. Advanced Energy has a start on this I believe. I see a lot of construction sites and would like to catch the developers in time for them to at least prepare for future infrastructure before they lay down pavement, but this would be a good thing to distribute to existing establishments (along with the report card so they can see what their competition is doing) as well. Again, if anyone would like to help out with this, it would be most appreciated.

I am in the process of creating a new site (RTP-specific) that can be used as a repository and home for all this. This should be ready to go shortly.

Things have come a long way in the past 2.5 years, and certainly there is a good pace (especially with new DC FC stations now coming online), but demand is increasing as well so I feel that we have to still be proactive in this. The RTP area is just outside of one of the top markets in the country (which would attractive even more good attention) so I want to see what it would take to get us right up there!
 
I think North Hills Shopping Center should get commended for having 4 L2 stations and a DCFC now. They seem to control ICEing well too. We need more committed retail like this at the major malls. (I'm looking at you Crabtree, Triangle Town, and Southpoint).
 
Questions for folks in the triangle/RTP area ...
I'm investigating leases for a 2014 S with charge package and I'm being quoted about $10400 total payment for 3 year lease. Good or bad or about average lease for this part of NC ?

Thanks in advance.
 
ttd said:
Questions for folks in the triangle/RTP area ...
I'm investigating leases for a 2014 S with charge package and I'm being quoted about $10400 total payment for 3 year lease. Good or bad or about average lease for this part of NC ?

I don't have an apples to apples comparison, but we just leased a 2013 SV Premium for about $260/month (if my calculations are correct your payments are $289/month?) Granted, I had a generous employer discount and an additional $1000 bonus for being an existing LEAF owner, but even so that rate for an S model sounds very high. I would think you could get that for a lot closer to $200/month.
 
I'm also looking to lease a Leaf in the Charlotte area. Does anyone know of a good Charlotte area dealership to lease from? Also, I'm worried about range for my commute in to work. Worst case scenario it is right at 50 miles per day (this is with taking the dogs in to be boarded for the day, picking them up, and heading home). Could I conceivably get 50 miles per day for the next 2-3 years? Most of my travel is on I-77 so it will be 65-70 mph for part of the way. Thanks for all the help!
 
50 miles on 77 shouldn't be an issue. You will need to have an L2 charger as I have found. I run a deficit while trickle charging & working twelves. My plant at Lake Wylie is putting in a charger and I " should " have a GE Watt station installed this week at the house. With this set up, I am good to go for any work driving 55 daily in heavy lil town traffic from IndianLand to LakeWylie and maybe a 5 mile 60 mph run or if work requires, 77/ 485 from IndianLand to Huntersville. ( Lake Norman plant already has a number of chargers available).
I always need heat & lights in morning and air in afternoon.I always drive with traffic or a lil faster ;-)
As an experiment, I found I could recoup needed charge by leaving an hour early a few times a week and jacking in at a number of available charging stations between work an house. Again this was
Just to see possibilities .
The Leaf really works out very well for me as a get a round town / work car in the Charlotte NC / RockHill SC area.
Go to plugshare.com see the possibilities ;-)
Don
 
A few days ago we took our 2014 LEAF SL (which presently has about 2700 miles) from Asheville up to the Mount Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. Started out at 87% SOC (per the dash instruments) in town, down to 74% ten miles later at the NC191 Parkway entrance. Maintained 40mph during the 15-mile climb to the Mount Pisgah Inn, arriving at 36%SOC. Drove back down at 35mph using lots of B mode regen, and got to the NC191 exit at 46%SOC. Ten miles later we were back in Asheville at 34%SOC.

So the climb on the Parkway took 38% of the (nearly-new) battery capacity and the descent gave back 10%. The whole 50-mile trip used 53% which is less than I expected. Looks like we'll be able to do that trip even after some capacity loss.
 
Did Nissan just add 10-20 CHAdeMO DCFC to the dealerships in NC?
On Plugshare they all just popped up as DCFC this morning.
 
Called and confirmed the DCFC is operational, outside and available at the Burlington Nissan

1329 Huffman Mill Rd, Burlington NC 27215
 
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