Leaf as taxi/shuttle

Was amazed to actually see a Lyft Leaf at the "EV watering hole” (as RonDawg calls it aka free public L2 charging near home) tonight. It was an S trim WITHOUT CHAdeMO (so it only had the 3.x kW on-board charger). Wow. I wouldn’t want to do rideshare that in that.

The driver showed up and I actually spoke to the him. He says he only does it on occasion and no more than 4 hours at a time.

He did have a Leaf before w/CHAdeMO and said he never used that inlet during his 2 year lease. On his current one, he originally hadn’t intended to do rideshare. He said he was well under his 15K miles/year on his lease so it's not big deal to him to rack up some miles before he returns his Leaf.

I am going to try using the Leaf for rideshare (Uber / Lyft) for this week. I did 20 rides in 4 nights. I started full charge. Hang-out in apartment areas 6pm+. Most rides were short from apartment to restaurant/bar/club or after dinner back to home. Distance was 2@20-30 miles, 12@10-20 miles, 6@<10 miles. Odometer was 9 miles per passenger. When GOM got down to 40, I clocked out and went home.

It works OK if you work an early shift and can charge to 90%+ by 9pm and then you only drive for 2 hours. Or if you are flexible, you could drive 2 hours each rush hour and charge in between. If you have DCFC subscription with unlimited charging and flat price, you can drive more than 2 hours. But you make 25% less hourly if you sit and wait for charging.

1/14: from 70% SOC, I got two rides totalling 35 freeway miles, plus a couple miles to each pickup. It left me at 12% SOC. Wish I could put a "no freeway" filter on.

With 80 rides using the Leaf my average is <10miles/ride; only 1 ride >20mi. I talk about EVs to maybe half of passengers. Probably 25% ask about it first.

I got a DCFC plan with unlimited 30 minute charges, so I can drive longer on weekends. For Fri/Sat nights, I drove for 7 & 9 hours, 104 & 97 miles:
- start at 100%
- drive to GOM <40
- DCFC 30 minutes to GOM=75 (24-30kw speed)
- drive to GOM <40
- DCFC 30 minutes to GOM=80 (28-33kw speed)
- drive to GOM <40
- quit and L2 overnight

My battery starts at 3 temp bars and only gets up to 5 bars after the 2nd DCFC, which I hope means the double DCFC is not doing too much degradation. GOM went down 150 miles and about 45 kilowatt hours, but I drove only 100 miles (need lots of heater for 8 hours in the car).

Where it's warm you should only need one DCFC to drive 8 hours like this. That saves 45 minutes of driving to the charger and sitting. But if it's hot, you probably don't want to DCFC every day you drive. You could still drive maybe 5 hours and quit when you get to GOM<40, and not do any DCFC.

I think I am using 5.5 kw hrs per hour. Other drivers say they are burning 1 gallon per hour right now (they can't turn the heater off either), so having more EVs do rideshare could save a lot of gas. But I am waiting where I will get lots of short rides on city streets so that I don't waste my charge on the freeway. This doesn't make as much money as freeway rides like airport runs, so most drivers wouldn't like it. It would help if the city commission forced uber / lyft to pay a higher EV rate and steer short rides to EVs or at least let EV drivers filter out freeway rides.