shrink
Well-known member
With all this recent talk of capacity loss especially in Phoenix, AZ where I live, I thought I'd post a more positive story about a Phoenix LEAF. I had a lot of driving around to do a few days ago (Friday, 5/25 to be exact) and was anticipating about 50 miles RT. Although we did buy a Volt about 2-3 weeks ago, I decided to take the LEAF instead of the Volt for this commute because I simply did not want to use gas.
My original plan was to drive 22 miles one way to an appointment (20 miles highway), then to the gym 1.5 miles farther away, then back home. Well, life gets in the way sometimes and that became the appointment, gym, family visit, family errand, hospital visit, lunch, and then back home. For locals, I went from midtown/central Phoenix to Chandler, to Mesa (Falcon Field area), south to I-60 in Mesa at Power Road, then home. This took me a significant distance off my planned route and made the commute much longer than I anticipated, but with the help of a couple public charging stations, the LEAF did just fine. I started off with 100% charge, plugged in at Blink L2 about 2 blocks away from my original appointment (which lasted 60 minutes), then on the way home I hit a Blink Quick Charger while eating some lunch. I didn't even need the QC to get home, but it was on the way, I was hungry, and had I not stopped there, I would probably have been at 1 bar pulling into the garage. The pre-dinner commute ended up being 81 miles and then with the dinner trip, the total for the day came out to 89.5 miles. The QC actually came in pretty handy for the dinner commute. I got home around 2pm and dinner was at 9pm. I did not charge during the time I was home because of Time of Use peak rates , but with the QC I had plenty of charge to get to and from a late dinner.
This was the most miles I had driven the LEAF in 1-day and I was pretty happy because the charging infrastructure in Phoenix made it possible. Thank you, Ecotality! There really are an impressive number of public Blinks in the Phoenix metro area. What was more impressive to me was that I did not have to drive out of my way to access that infrastructure, nor did I drive all that differently. A/C was on the entire way. The only time I noticed driving slower was on the highway. I set the cruise for the 65 mph limit. Arizonans drive quite a bit faster than that when traffic allows.
I hope the public charging infrastructure continues to expand here in Phoenix. It has already made longer highway commutes in Phoenix metro a lot easier. It was just be nice to go somewhere I was already going and be able to charger while I was there. On my commute, a charging station at the gym or hospital would have been really nice, too. I also think a faster charger like the 2013 LEAF 6.6 kW will make a huge difference. It would have been great to get just under 1/3 of my charge capacity back after my initial 1-hour appointment. I would also have been content with L2 rather than a QC at lunch with the 6.6 charger. I spent 45 minutes at lunch and when I got back to the QC, the message said it took only 13 minutes to go from 40% to 80% charge.
Despite the recent reports of Phoenix area capacity loss (including mine), my LEAF did a really great job taking me on just under 90 gas-free miles of daily driving errands with no major inconveniences or sacrifices. i think it's a testament to the car and the public charging infrastructure Ecotality rolled out in this area. I also hope it's a preview of more typical gas-free driving in the future.
My original plan was to drive 22 miles one way to an appointment (20 miles highway), then to the gym 1.5 miles farther away, then back home. Well, life gets in the way sometimes and that became the appointment, gym, family visit, family errand, hospital visit, lunch, and then back home. For locals, I went from midtown/central Phoenix to Chandler, to Mesa (Falcon Field area), south to I-60 in Mesa at Power Road, then home. This took me a significant distance off my planned route and made the commute much longer than I anticipated, but with the help of a couple public charging stations, the LEAF did just fine. I started off with 100% charge, plugged in at Blink L2 about 2 blocks away from my original appointment (which lasted 60 minutes), then on the way home I hit a Blink Quick Charger while eating some lunch. I didn't even need the QC to get home, but it was on the way, I was hungry, and had I not stopped there, I would probably have been at 1 bar pulling into the garage. The pre-dinner commute ended up being 81 miles and then with the dinner trip, the total for the day came out to 89.5 miles. The QC actually came in pretty handy for the dinner commute. I got home around 2pm and dinner was at 9pm. I did not charge during the time I was home because of Time of Use peak rates , but with the QC I had plenty of charge to get to and from a late dinner.
This was the most miles I had driven the LEAF in 1-day and I was pretty happy because the charging infrastructure in Phoenix made it possible. Thank you, Ecotality! There really are an impressive number of public Blinks in the Phoenix metro area. What was more impressive to me was that I did not have to drive out of my way to access that infrastructure, nor did I drive all that differently. A/C was on the entire way. The only time I noticed driving slower was on the highway. I set the cruise for the 65 mph limit. Arizonans drive quite a bit faster than that when traffic allows.
I hope the public charging infrastructure continues to expand here in Phoenix. It has already made longer highway commutes in Phoenix metro a lot easier. It was just be nice to go somewhere I was already going and be able to charger while I was there. On my commute, a charging station at the gym or hospital would have been really nice, too. I also think a faster charger like the 2013 LEAF 6.6 kW will make a huge difference. It would have been great to get just under 1/3 of my charge capacity back after my initial 1-hour appointment. I would also have been content with L2 rather than a QC at lunch with the 6.6 charger. I spent 45 minutes at lunch and when I got back to the QC, the message said it took only 13 minutes to go from 40% to 80% charge.
Despite the recent reports of Phoenix area capacity loss (including mine), my LEAF did a really great job taking me on just under 90 gas-free miles of daily driving errands with no major inconveniences or sacrifices. i think it's a testament to the car and the public charging infrastructure Ecotality rolled out in this area. I also hope it's a preview of more typical gas-free driving in the future.
