ActiveE at 22,222 miles

ActiveE at 22,222 miles by dennis_p
ActiveE at 22,222 miles, a photo by dennis_p on Flickr.

Some things that I have learned these past 22,222 miles… 100 mile range is fine, but as more and more folks start getting plug-in cars, whether hybrid vehicles like the Fisker Karma or the Chevy Volt or pure EV like the Nissan Leaf, the infrastructure to support the EVs will need to grow FASTER to keep up with the demand to run electric.  I find that many of the charging stations that I used to be able to rely on are now getting to be more crowded than before.

It’s great to see an uptick in demand, but that just means that the supply needs to increase as well, or the manufacturers will need to come up with something HIGHER ranged than 100 miles.  A fact that is driving me toward a Tesla Model S for primary EV and may get me to an i3 with Range Extender.

By the way, the picture above is me braking to a stop (thus the regen indicator (the one on the right) as regenerating quite a bit of power back into the batteries). I make the comment on the need for more charging stations because you will note that the PLUG IN NOW Exclamation Point indicator is on (meaning my SOC is less than 30%) and I’ve only gone about 59 miles one way on this picture.  Which is to say that my range is closer to 80 miles one way today and I would have to blame that on the distinctive LACK of traffic on the inbound route to work today which had traffic speeds decidedly HIGHER than the posted speed limit.

Oh, and a Happy New Year to you too!

2 thoughts on “ActiveE at 22,222 miles”

  1. Then it’s got to be employers, since it won’t be public J1772s. The price of J1772 hasn’t fallen in over two years. If it’s employers, then it can be Level 1, and price isn’t an issue. Or, we could standardize on something else cheap, like L6-20 or TT-30 or dumbed down J1772. Over $5k for a public J will be a dead end.

    1. Refitting a garage for power at L1 would help for a lot of folks. It would give me enough range to search for the next nearest L2 as L1 at 30% left on an ActiveE would probably mean 16 hours of charging.

      At 8 hours, I may get enough to get home.

      However, earlier on when I was lobbying for some power to be installed in my office building’s garage, the figure that came out was approx $2k just to get the power close to my parking spot.

      It seemed excessive to me for L1.

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