dbrie said:
I am signing the papers on a '13 SV Certified Pre-Owned for $9,100+taxes in the Twin Cities, Minnesota today, 27k miles, has the 6.6kW charger on board, 12/12 bars on the battery gauge, CPO warranty goes through September 2020.. The only thing I'm wondering about in terms of "buyer's remorse" is how much I may be missing out on by not having the quick charger on board.
The car is for my wife, who should have a less than 20 mile one-way commute, and we plan on having level 2 charging installed in our home.
Those who don't have QC installed - have you found yourselves missing that feature regularly, or is it not a big deal? I figured that we wouldn't need to QC much if we're charging at home every night.
Thanks!
The twin cities has very few QC stations so even though my Leafs have QC I don't really use it, the 6.6kw charger is very nice though on my '13. I only used QC on my '13 once, it was last week in the bitter cold. I regularly make a trip from Burnsville to Plymouth and in the summer I'm able to do it with less than a 80% charge but in last weeks extreme cold I charged to 100% in Bville but it was down to 30% by Plymouth(never a good sign to take more than 50% of your charge at your halfway point
) and this was with very minimal heat. Anyway I charged 1hr in Plymouth on a 20a 240v circuit which got me up to 50% but I figured not enough to get back to Bville. I thought of waiting around another hr but wanted to get going before evening traffic started, so on the way home I swung by Wayzata Nissan(where I purchased my '12 SL) and made use of their free QC. No one was using it and 20 minutes later my charge went from 42% to 82%! very cool. Needless to say my trip home was nice and toasty warm as I had power to burn.
While it was nice to charge for only 20 minutes and gain 40% charge, this is by far the exception and not the norm for me, I normally plan my trips and charging so I don't have use the QC option and the only reason it worked was because there was a place right on my way and it was free, if it had cost I'd have probably just hung out another hour charging for free with my L2, while the QC was nice, I don't think I'd really pay much more for it. Now if I lived in CA or places with lots of QCs around it might be a different story but not around this frozen tundra.
While your wifes 40 mile RT commute should be doable in most all circumstances, even with a 100% charge it could get close in sub zero temps. It would be nice if she had the option of even a lowly 120v outlet to charge at work in those cases but it should probably be fine without too. My trip is/was 60 miles RT and again I normally do it with no problem in the bitter cold the range was more like 50 or even a bit less range.
Have you picked out a 240v(L2) EVSE? with a 40 mile commute it will be a MUST, 120v just won't cut it, the car would need to be charging basically all the time it wasn't driving, L2, especially 27.5a(max for your car) is very very nice, preheat also works much better, that is you don't actually lose charge preheating like you would with a 120v or even <16a L2 EVSE.