Randy and Malcolm, The long 111 mile ride home, 1-4-11

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leafme

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 22, 2010
Messages
108
Location
San Diego, CA
Wow. Randy and I made the drive from Fontana Nissan to San Diego today. What an experience. Vic (VKruger) decided to truck his down but Randy kept insisting to me, "We gotta drive it... I don't want to tow it any of the distance. I wanna drive it the whole way."

The quick story is we got 111 miles out of a full charge (with a 90 minute L2 charge boost in Temecula from Quality Nissan) at about 55 mph (eco mode the whole way of course and the last half of the trip with with the headlights on). It was difficult with all the cars riding our tail in the right lane but we only got honked at once by a dude (pissed off cuz we were so slow) and a "growled at" look from some gal. After seeing we were doing 51-52 mph I can see why. Yep. Too slow. We ended up keeping it at 55 after that and near the end of the trip I upped it a bit going the last 3-5 miles in non-eco mode to press the pedal to the metal for some "regular" action. Glad Randy was so insistent. It was a blast. We were on the phone with each other almost the whole way calling out each others remaining range (among other topics or course). We were amazed at what we were doing. At one point Randy said, "Hard to believe we are propelling 3500 lbs of car down the road for two hours on a battery just like it was a regular car."

Well, future driving won't be quite as conservative as all we were thinking on this drive was, "I hope this makes it." We really knew it would after doing all the math but none-the-less, until you get home you never know for sure if it's gonna be walking time or not. Very fun experience. It was interesting to see the "miles to go" indicator drop like a rock as we headed south on I-15 from Temecula and up the long hill. But I knew it would be ok so it was just entertainment watching the gauge change.

During the ride up there (Fontana sent driver Cody the 111 miles to pick us up - very cool I must say - thank you very much Joanna) I found out that SDG&E was setting my EVSE meter today at noon only 6 hrs before I pulled in the garage to begin "refueling." It did take a while at the dealer with all the details to go over and Randy, Victor and I were interviewed by LA ch4 TV which was aired at 6pm tonight (we were still driving when it was aired). As we understand it, Vick was the 8th, Randy was the 9th and I was the 10th LEAF purchaser in the entire "grit eating world" (credit to My Cousin Vinny of course). Cool.

Fontana Nissan is a fantastic dealer with Joanna and Danny very helpful (and fed us lunch) ! Special thanks to Mark at Quality Nissan who gave us both eJuice and popcorn for 1.5 hrs (added 18 miles) to settle our range anxiety so when I pulled into my garage the range still had 19 miles to go. Randy and I both bought the Nissan LEAF lic plate frames at Quality Nissan and they look sharp.

Ok, enough incoherent ramblings for a while.

Malcolm :geek:
 
Thanks for the trip report Malcolm! It sounds like you had a great adventure. Make sure you check Carwings in the next day or two. You and Randy will be in the World Rankings ;)
 
Good story! FYI, you could have left the lights on from the time you arrived at the dealer until you got home and you would have only sacrificed range measured in feet, very few of them.
 
We sure had a great time, didn't we Malcolm? I took a lot of photos and need to go through them....Fontana put our names on their big LED sign, and I captured that...

The link to the NBC4 story is here:

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/station/as-seen-on/Nissan_Goes_Green_With_Their_All_Electric_Car_Los_Angeles-112908739.html

I'm DVR'ing it at 11pm to see if they do anything different. Malcolm has the black cap on, I have the red jacket on, and Vic has the beard...

The parts guy at Quality said they JUST got the Leaf plate frames in yesterday, two each of two different styles. Malcolm bought two of one style and I bought the other two...Thanks for the juice, Quality!!!

And like I've mentioned before, dealing with Joanna and Danny at Fontana was outstanding....Thanks to all....

Randy
 
Malcom,

Thanks for the report.

Do I understand correctly, that you got around 110 miles on just the initial full charge, at 50-55 mph, mostly Freeway?

I'm calculating alternatives for my 230 mile drive? home from Petaluma.

Thanks,

Ed
 
We traveled 112 miles, started with a full charge in Fontana, and then charged L2 for 90 minutes in Temecula and picked up 18-19 more miles of range. When we arrived home, I had 19 miles left and I think Malcolm had about 17 miles left (we live in slightly different directions but about the same distance from Fontana).

When we put the car in ECO mode initially and got on the freeway in Fontana, the range number went up to 115 for me (it creeps up, not all at once). Malcolm said his went to 120 briefly. But you learn pretty quick that the number changes a lot and is quite sensitive to what you're doing at the time. It's not unusual for the number to go down 10 miles when going uphill or gaining several digits when you go downhill. That makes it difficult to determine what your total range will be without some history behind the wheel.

Danny at Fontana said not to pay as much attention to the range number since it moves around so much (and also is determined more by the recent history of driving habits) and to pay more attention to the bar graph display on the right side. When I pulled into the driveway last night, I had one bar left (above the two lit red bars). When you're going at a low speed on flat ground, the range number readout seems to stay in one place for quite some time (at least in ECO mode).

It'll definitely take some getting used to. As Tom from Nissan said to us before departing at Fontana, "it's all about wind resistance on the freeway". So we kept the speed down to 50-55mph.

Your best bet for L2 charging at this time is the network of Nissan dealers, otherwise the L1 trickle charging is going to take awhile....Best of luck!!!

Randy
 
Nice story on the local NBC news, guys. Great comments on your part and for once I didn't have to wince at some lame range anxiety or golf cart comment from the news team. I have to admit the red color is pretty nice but, I'm still happy with black and still hope pay a visit to Fontana this week to drive it home (< 60 mi).
 
Awesome! Thanks Malcolm for the report. I'll be picking up my LEAF sometimes in April from San Diego and driving it back to Orange County (about ~90 miles I think) on the I-5, so I'm glad to know that we can make it ! Thanks for the confidence data. They say pioneers gets their wagons burnt, but you guys certainly averted those flaming arrows ;)
 
Thanks for sharing! It gives me confidence that we'll make our drive from North Bay Nissan in Petaluma to Stockton this Spring. Depending on which route we take, it's either 92 miles with some hills, or 101 miles on more flat roadways.
 
Awesome post - thanks so much for sharing!! Getting more and more excited here sitting watching the rain outside and wondering if my Leaf is getting rained on now too (I hope!)...

This would make a great 'derby' car - maybe an annual Leaf Derby in Northern Cal / Southern Oregon?
 
cinmar said:
Thanks for sharing! It gives me confidence that we'll make our drive from North Bay Nissan in Petaluma to Stockton this Spring. Depending on which route we take, it's either 92 miles with some hills, or 101 miles on more flat roadways.
Cinmar,
Why did you order from Petaluma instead of Stockton Nissan?
 
Bassman said:
Cinmar,
Why did you order from Petaluma instead of Stockton Nissan?
Although I wanted to keep my tax dollars local, Stockton Nissan was not interested in 1) providing any discounts below MSRP (I ended up getting 5% off), and 2) they were not really knowledgeable/excited about the car. On top of the discount, I just felt more comfortable dealing with Ron at North Bay Nissan, so it was partly a customer service thing.
 
edatoakrun said:
Do I understand correctly, that you got around 110 miles on just the initial full charge, at 50-55 mph, mostly Freeway?

Their range matches up pretty closely with the range spreadsheet I modified using data from the Tesla Roadster. (It's a bit pessimistic at ~105mi @55mph and ~110mi @50mph).

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AmU-95A6CYcjdHV3M2tBV3hIb1RKemJvbFZzelZjZ3c&hl=en&authkey=CMeb8vEC

So if you have a 230 mi trip at highway speeds (meaning ~55mph) I'd expect you to need about 10 hours of charging to make it.
 
mogur said:
It's 68.9 miles from Fontana Nissan to my house so I should be able to make the whole trip at the speed limit or more...
Yep, should be able to squeak in the garage at 70mph depending on how many surface roads are on the route!
 
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