Other Electric Cars – Page 5 – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

BMWi World Tour – New York City Stop – 42nd and 6th Avenue, Across from Bryant Park – The second floor

So, the first floor of the New York stop of the BMWi focused on the upcoming i3 and i8 Spyder, the second floor was more lounge and other types of experience.

My wife and I met Karim, a nice young guy fom the BMWi team who was quite personable and was on his first trip to New York City. Aside from the pleasant company, the lounge in the second floor provided a section on non-BMW products that they identified as “Good Goods” by designers and businesses that have developed sustainable products for use. Such as wood jewelry, urban gardening, designer headphones made from fully recycled metals, and large wood ceiling fans. All of these things promote more Eco-Friendly products.

Additionally, there was an art installation entitled the Red Paper Heart that is activated when the viewer inserts a finger in a slot and the installation begins a light show from that.

I took stils instead of video –

Initial state –

After I followed the instructions

All this eco-friendly design studio was tied to the BMWi Lab which is where the BMW designers seem to have tied in the entire thing to the design of the BMWi vehicle line.

Recyclable components are what is shown here –

Now, it just so happened that the morning that we flew in for the BMWi Born Electric Tour was part of the sustainability Hackathon that they were holding in the cafe section of the second floor and I had an interesting conversation with Charlie Oliver. Charlie was working with others to assist BMWi’s DriveNow carsharing service come up with a solution for inventory management and enticing users to plug the Active Es that they rented for the short-term so that the inventory is always available for use. She seemed to have a good grasp of the problem and I hope that she and her team were able to come up with some good ideas for DriveNow to solve this problem. Another problem that was related to this issue was also the management of the fleet so that it is more evenly dispersed throughout the Bay Area. It would seem that a good number of the fleet would end up at the same locations.

BMWi World Tour – New York City Stop – 42nd and 6th Avenue, Across from Bryant Park – Initial reactions and pictures

A picture is worth a 1,000 words…

This one is worth a whole lot more

Yes, that’s the BMW i8 Spyder Concept Plug in Hybrid. Apparently, it’s only rated for 22 miles electric. That’s the down side. The price, not yet released, but I’m sure it’s an arm and a leg and perhaps more.

So, I was a little bummed that I was invited to an event on Tuesday that I was unable to make, so I’m hoping that the LA Auto Show event will be just as awesome. So, stay tuned.

We got to the BMWi World Tour location on 42nd and 6th Avenue slightly around 10:20am this morning EST after having left the Lakers leading the Suns at the end of the 3rd Quarter on Friday to catch American Airlines 30 from LAX to JFK departing at 11:40 pm PST (2:40am EST) and arrived at JFK 8:05 am EST (5:05 am PST). Upon entry to the exhibit, we were greeted by the staff and Mark from New York accompanied us as we walked around the bottom floor and we talked i3, EVs, i8, and our specific experience as Electronuts (those that use foursquare, use your check in and get some coffee/cappuccino on the second floor.)

Mark was very engaged in the conversation and he did his job well, he asked many questions as it related to our ActiveE and I finally saw the i3.

Here is one of me with the i3.

Unfortunately, the better half just does not like hatchbacks and she wouldn’t mind the i8.

Here’s a picture of me with the i8.

Mark accompanied us around the ground floor and gave specs on the carbon fiber build and the fact that the i3 will have a 22kWh battery and yet have the same range as the ActiveE. My wife asked about additional range and Mark mentioned the Gas Range Extender.

According to Mark, the void to the right of and beside the electric motor is where the range extender will be expected to reside, so adding it should NOT take much space away from the i3.

Here’s a close up of the interior of the concept –

And here is the i3 concept with both doors open –

Mark had spent a good deal of time with us downstairs, and we proceeded to go upstairs for the coffee and the gallery space. As I’m going to need to rest a little from the red eye, I’ll cover the upstairs and our few minutes with Karim on a subsequent post.

In the meantime, here’s my flickr stream of this space.

Additionally, I forgot to check out this interactive wall that BMW created to “transform” 6th Avenue traffic into i series vehicles.

Lastly, even with as much caffeine as I tried to drink at the BMWi World Tour stop, I know I start to get loopy when I decide to ham it up on a photo booth they had set up.

Now to take a short nap and recharge.

National Plug in Day 2012… Part 2… The Cypress event for Orange County.

Part two of my 2012 Plug In Day experience was down in Cypress. The Orange County event was held at the Mitsubishi North America headquarters and there was plenty of test drives around. This was an opportunity to try out the Mitsubishi i (formerly the MiEV) and see their Level 3 ChaDEmo charger in action.

One of the first things that I saw after I parked at the OC event was a Sparrow. Prior to my ActiveE, I was familiar with the Nissan Leaf, GM EV1, Chevy Volt, the Tesla Roadster and that was pretty much it. As I waited to be allocated my ActiveE, I started reading up on previous EVs and the Sparrow was one that caught my eye. It would never be a vehicle I would be getting, but it harkens to some of the trials and tribulations of EV predecessors to the current generation, after all, as George Santayana has written, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Orange County event had more EV conversions than the Los Angeles County event.

A converted Geo Metro –

A homebuilt 3 wheeler –

A converted Miata –

A converted VW Pickup Truck –

There was some speeches and now Congressman-elect, and former GM EV1 Driver, Allan Lowenthal was there to meet with his constituents.

The Orange County event provided me with the opportunity to test drive the Mitsubishi i (formerly the MiEV) and a Honda Fit EV (from Toan Ngo). I also let a few interested parties test drive my ActiveE.

The Fit EV –

Here’s a shot of the Mitsubishi i from previous trip to the same site in Cypress –

In all it was a successful day, filled with EV enthusiasts and curious folks who, hopefully, will become EV enthusiasts.

National Plug in Day 2012… Part 1… The El Segundo event for Los Angeles County.

There just have been too many things going on…

I attended my first National Plug in Day event in September and I had a lot of fun meeting fellow EV enthusiasts and even let a few folks test drive my ActiveE. I actually attended both the L.A. County and the Orange County event as they were both well within range of my ActiveE.

For the pictures that I snapped at both events, I created a Flickr set to view these in.

The Los Angeles County event was held in El Segundo at the Automobile Driving Museum. As part of the effort in encouraging ICE drivers to switch to EV, there were test drives provided by various EV drivers (Nissan Leaf, Plug In Prius, and Tesla Roadsters seemed to be participating) and I let the few folks that asked if they can check out my ActiveE have a ride as well. I met with a few other ActiveE Electronauts and had a good time talking with them.

Here’s a few shots of the line to test drive –

and another

Inside the parking lot of the museum were a bunch of other cars including a Tesla Model S.

To make you feel like you’re there… Here’s a panoramic I shot.

I planned on being at the event for the first two hours, so things were starting up when I got there. It was a festive scene with a DJ spinning in the back of the parking lot, Several EVs were well represented, including the Volkswagen EV Golf, Nissan Leaf, a new Toyota RAV4, Mitsubishi i (formerly MiEV), an ActiveE, Chevy Volt, Plug in Prius, Honda Fit, Fisker Karma, Tesla Roadster, and the rockstar – Tesla Model S. Blink Network was there getting people signed up and giving out some nice black baseball caps. The museum displayed their old EVs as well.

Across the street from the parking lot an Electric Motorcycle setup was provided.

There was a guy who also converts ICE to EV and he featured his converted Porsche.

Here’s one of the reasons that we do this… Future EV drivers-

In all, it was fun, quick trip as I had to make the drive to Part 2 of my day, which would be the Orange County event at the Mitsubishi North American headquarters.

Little Milestones reached today…

19,000 miles and 5 miles per kWh…

Here is 18,999 miles…

And now 19,000 miles…

I was parked at AAA Main Office in Downtown LA and used their charger while I did my business. They have you sign in to use their charger and I parked beside Toan’s Fit EV which I have still to write about for my Plug In Day event experience (here’s Part 1, which does NOT include the Fit Experience.) It was interesting to be parked beside someone’s car that I have actually test driven a month or so earlier. So, Toan, if you’re reading this. I accidentally interrupted your charging when I thought that the Aerovironment chargers worked like others (without RFID scan needed), I restarted the charge when I got the guy at AAA’s Smog Center to scan the RFID on both chargers for us!

It’s a nice ride… I like my ActiveE more, but his car is pretty good as well.

So. After my mid-day charge while I worked, I needed to run a quick errand and went flat for about a mile and change and noticed that I achieved a rate of 5.0 miles per kilowatt hour… This is insane. But I guess when you go between 20-25 mph and use regen to brake it could happen…

and further proof

Well, what do you know… Bumper to bumper traffic for about 20 miles after these shots ALSO allowed me to maintain the same rate!

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #6 in an ongoing series – Valley Road, Montclair, New Jersey – Nauna’s Bella Casa and ActiveE #1

I still owe you guys my first National Plug In Day experience. However, to be a little more timely, I figure to update my Charge It! series.

As many of my readers know, I’ve been writing on a series of great restaurants to go to while you charge. Today’s post is a little different. It’s nowhere to be found in the Los Angeles area. It’s in Northern New Jersey, approximately 30 minutes (with no real traffic) from New York city – Nauna’s Bella Casa. No, I didn’t take several weeks to go from Los Angeles to New Jersey to go to lunch with my ActiveE. For this trip, I rented a Nissan Leaf from Hertz on Demand. Hertz car sharing subsidiary which allows members the opportunity to rent either a Nissan Leaf or SmartEV in the New York city area.

Nauna’s Bella Casa can be found at 148 Valley Road, Montclair, New Jersey, 07042. (973) 744-3232.

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So, what takes me from New York City to Montclair, New Jersey. Frankly, I wanted to meet this guy, Tom Moloughney, aka Mini-E #250 and more importantly to me, Mr. ActiveE #1 and the top mileage leader that I foolishly challenged to try to “catch up” on top mileage use for all of the other ActiveE Electronuts. As of the writing of this posting (in-flight from JFK to LAX) my ActiveE is waiting for me at LAX Lot 6 with 17,902 and Tom’s listed mileage on wotnogas.com is 27,795… Needless to say, this is a TOUGH challenge.

Here’s a picture of Tom Moloughney and me in front of Tom’s New Jersey EF-OPEC (AKA Active E #1).

So, how’s the food. It was good, home-style Italian food at a great value. I had the lunch special which was Soup, Entree, soft drink, coffee (or tea, I believe) and dessert for $9.99. As opposed to other posts in this series, I have NO picture of the food. I was too busy enjoying the discussions between Tom and myself on the Active E, EVs, new BMWs, Teslas, Energy Independence, etc.

For my choice of soup, I picked the Pasta Fagioli. There were other choices, but I really like Pasta Fagioli so I had that. For my entree, I went with the Fusilli e Pollo which is the spiral pasta with grilled chicken & spinach. I really enjoyed the Fusilli e Pollo, but since I went out to Nauna’s in Day two of my trip to the East Coast, the meal was biologically breakfast for me, so the portion size was a little larger than I could finish, so I brought the rest to go. I skipped coffee and had ice cream for dessert (chocolate). The meal was very good and felt home-cooked.

How about the chargers? Nauna’s has two J1772 chargers, one on Chargepoint and the other on the Blink Network. If you’re eating here, the charging is gratis, otherwise, the network fees would apply, I believe that the Chargepoint is free, but the Blink is based on your membership plan, so to get that charging at no cost, check in with the restaurant before you plug in.

How did I do getting to Nauna’s. Well, I picked up the Nissan Leaf (was hoping for a SmartEV, but that will have to be a different post) from Hertz On Demand’s location at 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. This drive was approximately 20 miles away, but my consumption is closer to 35 miles from the range. This was my first time driving a Leaf for ANY extended period and I must say that it was not as fun as my Active E, at least it seemed to perform better than the Coda that I test drove a few months ago.

So, if you find yourself anywhere near Montclair, NJ. Even if it isn’t that near, give Tom a call and see if he’s available and you can enjoy a tasty lunch and have some fun “talking EV and stuff”. I’ll probably get around to plug in day 2012 (Part 1, Part 2 to follow) and my Hertz on Demand SmartEV rental fiasco.

National Plug in Day… Pre-event planning.

If you were sent here by this month’s BMW Electronaut Newsletter, welcome to my blog. I am STILL drafting my Real Goods post and need to come up with how to handle calculating cost per kWh over the solar array. Since Sunday, September 23, 2012 is National Plug In Day, I figured to write about that first. I was inspired to look into this event by a post on the Active E Forums by Keith Davidson and so I figured to participate.

One of the benefits in living in the southernmost city in Los Angeles County is that it is very efficient to go behind the Orange Curtain to Orange County for things. When I used to drive my Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars more often, I would often fill up at the Costco in Cypress as it is often significantly cheaper in gasoline to buy my gas there than at a Costco in Los Angeles County and the location is somewhat convenient to home.

My gasoline border incursions have gotten to be fewer and farther in between as I don’t often have to purchase petrol as I have taken to carpooling with the better half on many days as I attempt to catch up to Tom Moloughney and his challenging 100 mile a day average (sadly still behind).

This Sunday, September 21, 2012, is National Plug In Day. What can I say, I’m an Electronut and want to check out others cars and have the opportunity to be an EVangelist for electric vehicles, so I scheduled myself to visit BOTH the Los Angeles and Orange County Plug In Day festivities. (Recap of LA Plug In Day Experience here)

The one in Los Angeles will be held in El Segundo at 610 Lairport St, El Segundo, CA 90245 and this is approximately 25 miles away from home and the one in Orange County is at the Mitsubishi of North America’s Headquarters (a few blocks East of the aforementioned Costco at Cypress) at 6400 Katella Ave, Cypress CA 90630.

The Los Angeles County event goes from 11am to 3pm and the Orange County one goes from 1pm to 3pm.

So, if you wish to come down and say hi, come on over. I will have sufficient charge to get around and home, so may take a few interested parties out for a spin. Just leave me a comment and I’ll set that up. I plan on being at the Los Angeles County event from 11am (the start) until approximately 12:30 pm and at the Orange County event from 1:30pm to 3pm.

See you there!

The Los Angeles County one at El Segundo –

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The Orange County one at Cypress –

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Space… the Final Frontier. The difference between built Electric and a converted ICE Electric

This weekend, I was challenged by my better half to fit everything we needed to haul up to my sister-in-law’s house for our niece’s Fourth Birthday party. She thought that we needed to use our ever reliable X5 to do it’s hauling duty and I asserted that I thought we could take the ActiveE. Figuring that after many years of marriage, the worst that could happen was that I would have to accept defeat, I decided to prove it.

So, as Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother would say, “Challenge Accepted.” In retrospect, I should’ve taken pictures of all the items that I had to pack into the ActiveE, but we had a kid’s birthday party to help get set up, and didn’t really have the time to dawdle. So the picturess are of the stuff IN the car…

To remind everyone… This is what I had to work with:

I also have a backseat where the seats fold down to carry stuff with, which I used, but the electric motor hump really does take the space. (that’s the section that has the ActiveE written on the carpet.)

These next three shots are what was packed behind the front seats with the passenger seats folded down.

Here it is closed:

Right side of the trunk:

Close up –

Left side of the trunk:

Needless to say, we packed a lot of stuff.

Distributed throughout the back are 8 bottles of wine (for the adults, not the 4 year old kids, of course.) The rolled up dusty thing is a rug that we use to lay outdoors. You would’ve also noted a 3 course buffet server in the backseat.

So, not only was the challenge accepted, I was also able to accomplish the task. Being an Electronut means being very motivated to try to stay away from driving any ICE, EVEN something as fun to drive as a BMW X5.

The balloons, were for a giant popcorn display that my better half made for the party (it was a Princess party with a movie at the end of the night, Beauty and the Beast, if you must know.)

If you’re paying close attention, you may have noticed that we DID lose a couple of balloons, but these were lost AT the destination, and thus not in the transport or difference between traveling with the X5 vs. the ActiveE.

So, what did this exercise prove. The ActiveE can make a quick stand-in for the X5, in a pinch, but it’s definitely one of the reasons that my Costco trips have gotten cheaper. I really can’t carry much there. Just more than I initially thought.

Which leads me to the second part of the thesis. These challenges occurred because we’re using a converted 1 series BMW. The hump does not exist in the Coda or the Tesla Model S.

Here are two shots from the Coda’s cavernous trunk:

or the Tesla Model S

I am sure that neither one will haul as much as the X5, however, I would guess the upcoming Tesla Model X will. I am sure that either the Coda or the Tesla Model S CAN haul more than the ActiveE.

I would think that the upcoming BMW i3 will ALSO have more hauling capacity than the ActiveE.

More i3 Pictures here.

So, as much as I really enjoy the ActiveE, the only positive of having to give it back to BMW at the end of the two years is I have something to look forward to with the NEXT generation of EVs.

Just a few more pics from Lot 6… Finally got a charge…

Didn’t get a chance to post much (or drive much) this week as I’ve been on a business trip to Chicago…

Here are some pictures we took before the trip. My sister and her family were over and my brother-in-law, who is a car guy, was daring enough to take apart parts of the car to take a look… mainly the plastic cover thing, so I snapped some pics of the “engine” area of the ActiveE.

Additionally, it did provide me with the opportunity to get some updated pictures from my better half. She had her first day with the ActiveE and was a trooper.

She found LAX Lot 6 and was able to get us plugged in for the recharge for the drive back home.

and to verify that it was plugged in fine. She did a video of the blue blinking light of happiness!

Lastly, ’cause she thought it looked cool and teased me (I hope) with what she tells me she wants for her next car.

Yes, a Fisker Karma, what can I say, the better half has great taste!

Checking out the lower end of the electric car range… Introducing the Coda

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking the Century City Shopping Center –

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And ran across the Coda Experience Center… Having only driven my ActiveE, I wanted to have a frame of reference on what makes the ActiveE a fun electric car versus other electric cars. Granted this is like comparing a 328i with a Honda Civic… But I thought what the heck. I’d like to check it out.

Before I did the behind the wheel test. One of the things that I noticed at Coda was the price – $37,500 USD without any incentives. The other was the included battery pack – 31 KwH… That’s 4 more than the ActiveE’s usable charge, this means a longer range… They claim 125 miles on the current model whereas a previous model was 150 miles… Lastly, trunk space – it has it!

So, I went out on a test drive with one of the Coda Associates and it drives ok. The regenerative braking felt non-existent. My Civic Hybrid felt stronger on the regen. The power was akin to a Civic and it definitely does not fall into the “fun to drive” category that the ActiveE and other BMWs fall into.

Seeing that this vehicle really wasn’t targeted to the BMW or Tesla pricepoints, it took time to have to keep my biases from clouding my test. One of the positives that was touted for this car was that it charges at 6.6kWh not 3.3kWh as the Leaf. Of course, the AE goes at least as fast as this car, if not faster to charge, but the pricepoint is also much cheaper for the Coda.

The picture below shows why this car charges at twice the speed as the Leaf, it has two of these things vs 1 on the Leaf

One shortcoming of the demonstration vehicles that I tested was the GPS/Battery management system on the vehicles were non-functioning, and thus had to rely on testing it at the “experience center”. Looks nice below, but couldn’t tell while I was driving the demo.

Needless to say, I wasn’t overly impressed. The car has an old stlying, perhaps in the 80s, so as not to be so old as to be classic a la re-tooled Thunderbird or Mustang. I like the range in the vehicle and the faster L2 charging than the Leaf, but it is just too plain for me to want.

During my test drive, my sales associate mentioned that the batteries are a different chemical composition than other electric car manufacturers and that the company sells the cars with a 10 year warranty on the batteries. This is impressive, but I can’t really see myself wanting to drive this car for 10 years, whereas the 2 year lease on my ActiveE just seems TOO SHORT.

The Coda seems very smart to target a more “affordable” electric car segment than Tesla or Fisker, so in that manner I feel that they are smart to target that segment. However, the equivalent trim in an ICE vehicle would probably be less than half the $38k that Coda is asking for, so I don’t know how many folks would cough up the $38k for a utilitarian vehicle like the Coda. Frankly if they styled the car to be less utilitarian and more stylish, folks might like it better.

Just my opinion.

If you find yourself near the Century City Shopping Mall and have the time to take your own test drive, I suggest you do. It was definitely useful in reinforcing my love of my ActiveE and my continuing quest to figure out what my “next” electric will be.

For more pictures, click on the link to the Flickr photostream.

Link to Coda’s corporate website