This 93 mile day is nothing compared to one of Tony's heroic trips.
(http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=6842) but it's one of my highest mileage days. It was remarked about Tony's 212 mile trip that
"people wonder why mainstream consumers haven't jumped on-board BEVs." But my travels were definitely mainstream, and driven without the meticulous planning that Tony does.
It started of course with the range chart Tony produced
via his meticulous planning and experiments, with inputs from others. I added up the miles, looked at the clock, and decided it was feasible if I kept my miles per kWh up to 4.0, with a couple of hours of charging, leaving me a margin of about 20 miles. Yes, I confess I've never even hit low battery warning. (What an EV wimp.)
First leg was Carmel Valley to Chula Vista for shopping, 32 miles, freeway almost all the way. On the highway I use D instead of ECO because I don't want minor speed corrections to alternately draw power and regen. When there was no car in front of me I'd drive the speed limit, 65, which still of course made me the slowest car on the road. But safe enough in the right lane. For much of the way I found a big truck going 55-60. I fell in behind him. Not close enough for drafting, but close enough to give me a splendid excuse for driving slowly. The slow speed cost me 6 minutes over the cars weaving the lanes at 75. It also kept my miles/kWh up to 4.4.
Next leg, Chula Vista to Broadway Pier to see the Americas Cup racing catamarans. 17 miles. Half freeway, and then the Nav system led me off onto Harbor Drive past the naval base for some new sights. It's worth noting that my preferred parking location, Ace, was no good because the Blink smartphone app showed all 3 J1772's being in use. (In fact it still shows them all as in-use, so I wonder if it's a bug in the Blink software rather than cars actually charging all the time.) If there had been available public charging downtown then even my little adventure would have been no adventure at all.
Next was 18 miles home for lunch, with 2 bars remaining, plugging in for some very rare on-peak electricity - which still costs a heck of a lot less than gasoline. Time to check my calculations. I figured I'd have enough energy for the next trip if I charged for at least 1.5 hours, and I'd have plenty of time for the drive if I left in 2 hours. 1.75 hours later we were off, back up to 5 bars, with a DTE of 45 miles and trip odometer B reset to 0.
Final trip was home to Qualcomm to watch the SDSU Boise State game, 31 miles round trip but it was a bit cold and there was light rain on the way home. I told my 11 year old we were fine so long as the sum of the DTE meter and the trip odometer stayed above 31. He enjoyed watching the sum slowly climb as much as I did. My route was about half freeway and half surface streets. It occurred to me to park at Ikea, walk to the stadium, and return to a 100% charged car. All chargers were available. But #1 it wouldn't have been very nice of me to tie up a scarce EV parking space all that time, even if there were adjacent spaces to which someone else could switch the cord - and there aren't. And #2 that shopping center really doesn't like people parking there for stadium events, and they will tow. So again, no destination charging which would have taken away all the drama.
With my bars and my DTE+trip looking good on the way home, I used plenty of heat to stay comfortable and keep the windows defrosted. Speedometer miles/kWh fell to 4.2. We made it back with 2 bars and 18 miles DTE. That's DTE+trip of 49 miles, 4 better than we started with. Total recharge time plus the charging at lunch implied use of 22.6 kWh for a total of 93 miles, or 4.1 miles/kWh.
Yeah, Tony could have made the same trip easily with no mid-day recharging, and driven at least another 28 miles on that last 18 miles DTE. But I didn't have to do anything special besides a couple of rule-of-thumb calculations from Tony's chart, and driving in the right lane.
