ActiveE – Page 8 – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

Apple takes away Google Maps, but gives you MAP on the other hand!

Ok.

I haven’t yet enabled iOS 6.0 on my wife’s iPhone (have a few more challenges before I take that on.) But one thing that I did read about (aside from people complaining about Apple’s Maps versus Google Maps) is the launch of MAP (Message Access Profile) support on iOS 6.0…

I am upgrading my iPod Touch to see if I can get the ActiveE to read my mail on the iPod Touch, but won’t know until later.

[Update: 4:00 pm, tried to get my iPod Touch to read on the ActiveE, no joy. It may just be the fact that it is an iPod Touch and not a phone. The car sees it as a phone over bluetooth as I was able to pair it, but could not get music to play over the connection. I tried to see if Show Notifications on the device setting under Bluetooth (default off, I turned it on) would do anything, and still no joy. I had the iPod Touch connected to the Internet via a MiFi that I carry, so it had Internet access.]

I found the following articles to be helpful

I will report further once I have tested it out.

[Update: 9/27/2012 Noon PDT. I borrowed my colleagues’ iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s that were both running iOs 6.0. No joy on either. I was able to pair both phones to the ActiveE. I went into each one’s bluetooth configuration for the car and told each phone to allow Sending messages over that specific bluetooth link. I then sent text messages to both phones. Waited a couple of minutes and no messages were notified or viewable on the car. Messages were received by the respective iPhone. I wonder whether or not this is an iPhone 5 only feature or if it is user error or my impatience.]

Even though Apple may be removing the built in Google Maps and supplementing their own maps in iOS 6.0, they are at least giving you MAP access.

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #5 in an ongoing series – Mateo Street – East side of Downtown Los Angeles, CA (Arts District)

This update on Charge It! is a case of great food and Leaf/MiEV – CHAdeMO – Level 3 (L3) envy…

Huh?

Well, I love my ActiveE. It gets me almost everywhere. However, since the J1772 Level 3 standard is yet to be published, BMW released the car with Level 1 and Level 2 charging capability. Level 3 gets most L3 capable cars to 80% state of charge (SOC) in 30 minutes. Yes, you read correctly, you get up to 80% of your range in 30 minutes. Mitsubishi and Nissan support a Japanese standard called CHAdeMO. BMW, GM and others all decided to go with extending the J1772 format for L3 and that is not quite done yet.

Lucky for you that the food at Church and State is SO great and the wine selection is SO good that you want to stick around for several hours ANYWAY to wait for the L2 charger to finish.

So, what makes it Great! It’s definitely the food in one of the best French Bistro’s in Los Angeles.

We started our meal with the Beef Marrow and Bread. It was AWESOME.

You get some of the marrow and spread it on your bread and munch. No need for the butter, also as you can tell, it’s definitely carnivore food for that course!

To go with the Moelle de Boeuf, I went with the Tarte Flambee and it was a very good flat bread.

Since we were dining in the summer and it was a nice, hot day, figured a Riesling was in order and the one recommended by the Sommelier was very refreshing.

For our Mains we went with Scallops and Pork, the other white meat. Both were exquisite! I ordered the Pork, but swapped meals with the better half!…

The scallop was tender and plump. It went well with the wine that we chose as well the asparagus on the plate. The Better half let me take a bite of her, formerly my, pork dish and that was great! The Figs and Pork made great accompaniment with each other.

The dessert was scrumptious. We chose a nice, sweet chocolate tarte and paired it with a glass of the 2005 Prieure D’Arche Pugneau Sauternes that was on the menu.

I would say that Church and State rivals another of my favorite French Bistros in Southern California and gives Bouchon in Beverly Hills a run for its money.

Now the negatives, the Sommelier was very good and helpful, however, our server was not as interested in taking care of us. The restaurant had a lot of people, however, the restaurant also had adequate staff to cover all tables. Our server had a disinterested demeanor about her when she did get around to following up with us. Luckily, it’s a French bistro, so such behavior makes me think of other bistros I have been to in Paris… Wait, that’s not right, I’ve had better, attentive service in Paris.

However, the biggest negative for me is really the location. It’s on the scary Arts District on the way East side of Downtown Los Angeles. Fine in the summer, really dark in the Fall/Winter. The neighborhood directly between the restaurant and charging station parking lot is well lit, but the rest is really dodgy.

Here is the Google Map to the restaurant

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Here is the Google Map to the Parking Lot, it’s across the street from the restaurant.

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That being said, Church and State does have great food, well-lit blocks between it and the parking spot and charging stations. The parking spot is $5 to park, lots of ample parking on the street for free. Blink Network chargers and this was free to charge at the time that I used it, however, a lot of these have gone to whatever plan you’ve signed up for with Blink!

Coming up next on the blog will be my post on Real Goods Solar and how they won my business from Solar City with the partnership with BMW and good timing on the deal announcement as it related to my Solar City installation. I’m figuring out my math (and getting a whole new napkin to do that calculations with.)

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #4 in an ongoing series – Abbot Kinney Blvd – Venice, CA

I’ve been too busy enjoying the driving and eating to have updated the Charge It! series, but here’s a place that I went to a month ago in the Abbot Kinney section of Venice Beach.

The chargers are located in the aptly named Electric Lodge which has five Blink chargers on the wall located on 1416 Electric Avenue, between Milwood Avenue and California Avenue.

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However, after 7 pm, they CAN be ICEd by folks going to the Electric Lodge. The electric only restricted parking is only enforced during the day, 7am-7pm daily.

Since it’s after 7pm, THIS guy IS allowed to park there:

This area of town has been a “hip” part of Los Angeles for quite a while and two of the restaurants in the area have been in eater.com’s Top 38. I liked both Tasting Kitchen and Gjelina, but today’s post is about Gjelina.

We started our dinner with a nice bottle of a dry furmint Tokaji from Bottpince Winery. This was the perfect summer wine to complement our meal. It’s akin to a dry Riesling, but slightly sweeter.

The plates on the menu were categorized between smaller and larger plates and we opted to dine Tapas style and enjoyed two starters, the Copper River Salmon Crudo with lemon Aioli, Horseradishe, and Chive AND Grilled Monterey Bay Squid w/ Melon, Celery, Chili & Salsa Verde.

The Copper River Salmon Crudo was excellent. The fish was fresh and very refreshing. It was melt in your mouth good. The dish went well with the wine and would’ve been excellent without it.

The grilled squid salad and melon’s only flaw was the fact that I wanted a bigger dish. However, as a single starter it would have been better, but having to share it with the better half left me hanging for more of the dish.

Luckily, I had other dishes that were still to come as this is Tapas style, after all people and we ordered more dishes.

The anchovy burrata toast was yummy! Nope, not a loss for words, just required ONE WORD – Yummy!

The next several dishes were our warmer ones AND the the restaurant was getting darker, so I have to apologize for the photos having to be touched up to be seen, but such is the challenge of photographs with iOs devices with no flash.

Our next two dishes were both Pork dishes. Luckily, I’m not restricted from eating pork as both dishes were awesome. The Pork Meatballs were nicely sauced and very flavorful. The meatballs were a great contrast to the light seafood that we had to start our meal.

After the meatballs, the Crispy Niman Ranch Pork Belly was the piece de resistance. The pork belly presented the same protein in a different yet delicious way. The pork meatballs is comfort food with a nice solid bite. The pork belly was both crispy (as the name implied) and ideally marbled underneath the sauce and chili.

If it had been an Asian restaurant, the pork belly would’ve come with rice, and I suppose that would’ve made the rice that much better, but it would not have gone with the flow of the meal. So, no fault of the restaurant, but this dish would’ve been great with white rice. But that’s a matter of personal taste, and the dish was excellent without is.

The culmination to this meal was the Banana and Chocolate Bread Pudding with Fresh Cream and Caramel. The dessert was great. It doesn’t look great, but it sure tasted that way. As plain as it looked, the dessert spared no expense in taste. What it lacked in looks, it made up for in the packed flavor in each bite.

Oh and Tasting Kitchen was great too… But I’ll have to write about that at another time. Just too stuffed after this one.

Ping…

Yes, I’m still here.

I’ve been busy with our ActiveE and have been on vacation on top of that… I promise at least two more ChargeIt! articles for two really great food AND charging facilities (here’s one of them – Gjelina at Electric Avenue in Venice). [Here’s the other Church and State – Mateo Street Charger, now caught up for the Great Food series.] However, trying to decide on whether to do the next article on joining the Solar powered movement.

Still haven’t received my “official” PTO, but I did notice an off-cycle close to my SCE account this past Friday (August 17) (when I logged in to my SCE account on Saturday) and followed up with a call to SCE on Saturday morning. According to the telephone representative my permission to operate (PTO) letter went out last week and I am now generating my own energy via the Solar Panels on the roof of the house.

Thanks to BMW and its partnership with Real Goods Solar, I was able to get a system at a bigger discount than I had originally negotiated with Solar City. But that will have to be the subject of a subsequent post. As well as updates to my Back of the Napkin Math series (1) and (2).

As those that have followed this blog, I’m not an “environmentalist”, I just like to save money. As long as one has a “long” view, the money savings will follow those that do things that are “environmental.”

012345 on the way to 67890

Almost there…

Got there today…

Pictures say a lot more than words…

I like the count up… 012345, now the question is whether I can get to 67890 BEFORE I have to return the car to BMW.

One mile in four hours… That’s because I have to charge 3/4 of a mile away from the office.

It’s also fortuitous that I was able to take both pictures whilst parked in the garage as opposed to the other “significant” mileage times.

Here are 012345 points that I learned these past 012345 miles:

I really LIKE the car and truly enjoy driving EV. I’m not looking forward to February 2014.
The weight I originally lost in my first few months of at least a 3/4 of a mile walk (to plug in at the nearest J1772 plug to my office) has been regained because of my Charge It! series of blog posts (and other restaurants that I’ve been to since Post 1, Post 2, and Post 3 (as well as upcoming, not yet linked Post 4).)
The car really does have an unlimited range, as long as you have access to public charging and the TIME to wait for it to charge.
Have to factor in the potential LONG stays at the dealership during the service intervals.
Drive, baby, drive… Trying to catch Tom (and others) is going to be tough.

It will be a fun 19 months of trying to catch them and try to get to 67890 miles!

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.

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #3 in an ongoing series – Malibu Country Market

Been enjoying going to lunch at the Americana at Brand, but those are my work-day eateries and I will probably write about those later… However, today’s Charge It! location is Malibu Country Mart. To recap, Helm’s Bakery and Santa Monica Place were our first two locations for the series.

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The charging station at this location is not on either of the two charging networks that I use (Blink or Chargepoint) and thus its a matter of faith to determine whether or not the charger will be available when getting there. It’s an Aerovironment charger that Recargo’s notes says requires an RFID card, however, this was not the case when I got there (luckily). The charger station is right at the entrance to the Malibu Country Mart market area.

It works great (as has been my experience with OTHER Aerovironment chargers.)

The Nobu in Malibu has been in existence for over a decade (1999, I believe). Being Malibu, have to blend in with the natives and my better half requested that I NOT take pictures of our meal, therefore, a food entry with no pics. However, seeing that Nobu Matsuhisa has been in business for a while, I do recommend that you peruse the link to his website for the food pictures.

As with a lot of Japanese restaurants, Nobu is best experienced if you enjoy the meal sharing many small dishes with your dining companions. I did not enjoy the Miso Black Cod at this location, though that is quite a good standby for anyone who visits Nobu for the first time.

Since this was our first trip to the Malibu location, we decided to try a few of their specialties, so we had the Tai Sweet Shiso with Crispy Shiitake and several of their Mini Tacos. Additionally, the sushi at Nobu is top-notch. However, it is also priced higher than other Southern California sushi bars that feature fish at the same quality level. At the end of the day, a lot of less expensive restaurants feature food at the same quality as Nobu Malibu without the location or the expense.

Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy myself and the food was excellent. However, other restaurants have caught up to the quality of meal that Nobu provides at a fraction of the cost. Charging your EV may be free, but you’re definitely paying for the meal.

Public Charging stations and being mindful of the parking situation

Currently, the biggest challenge with public charging stations is when an internal combustion engine car is taking up a charging spot so that an EV can not use it. This is what is meant when an EV driver mentions that a spot is ICEd.

Most public charging locations try to solve this problem by properly marking up their spots AND in some locations actually ticketing violators of their signage.

See this BMW X5 at the Americana at Brand –

and a close up of the ticket issued to the driver –

I really appreciate centers and police departments that enforce these EV only spots as it hopefully actively deters the practice of ICEd locations.

This is an easy violation to spot.

The thing that I believe we need to come up with a solution for is the fellow EV driver that picks a charger that blocks out others from being able to use either the parking spots or other EV chargers at the location. Let me attempt to explain this. If you have a charging port on the opposite side of the car where the charging station is and a charging station that is on the same side of the car, some drivers will pick the one closest to their charging port, EVEN IF doing so will effectively make a spot or another charger unavailable for the next car to use. I don’t know what to call this violation, but here are a few pictures:

At L.A. Live, Lot W (West Lot), I’ve seen this Plug-in Prius park in spot 2 while using the charger from spot 3 to charge with.

I made this crude diagram to demonstrate the point. The Os are the Blink EVSEs.

By using the charger in Spot 3 while parking in Spot 2, the plug in Prius effectively blocked out use of Spot 3 for MOST cars.

Here’s the same Prius doing the same thing at this location at another day –

To solve this, and to allow others, should they arrive I moved from Spot 1 and parked in Spot 3 and used Spot 2’s EVSE to charge to allow Spot 1 and Spot 4 to charge, should some other EVs need to take the spot.

BEFORE

AFTER

However our cords were crossed during this time, and would’ve been a hazard. Mr. or Ms. Plug-In-Prius could’ve solved this by just taking Spot 4, and this is exactly the point I am trying to make. Pay attention to how the spots are configured and ensure that the charger and spot you are taking will allow the maximum number of fellow EV drivers to park in the location.

I don’t know what we should call this sort of EV violation. It’s not ICEing the spot, since the car IS an EV (yes, even Plug-ins with Range Extenders (gas engine backups are such), however, the person needs to be more mindful of what they’re doing.

Another example can be seen at the Americana at Brand on Thursday, July 12. The same day that the BMW X5 above was ticketed for ICEing the spot.

This Volt was charging while parked in Spot 2 using the charger on Spot 1. I understand that their charging port is on the driver’s side, but if the other spots had been taken, another car MAY not have been able to park in Spot 1 to use the charger in Spot 2 without possibly crossing Spot 2. The driver of the Volt should have used the charger assigned to Spot 2 and left the charger in Spot 1 available for someone else to use.

The charger was available AND long enough to reach the Volt’s front Driver’s side charging port.

I don’t know if we have a word for this fellow EV driver erroneously using the wrong charger, but if all indications are correct and there will be more of us on the road, we really need to be more mindful of what EVSEs are appropriate for whatever parking spot we decided to take.

Currently, there are still not that many of us on the road sharing these public stations, but there are definitely more EV drivers than in the past. And the projected sales figures show a little over 3x as many this year as last year. So, the EV community needs to be more mindful of how to approach this inadvertent blocking of the precious few charging spots and locations to charge.

Is it just me, or does it look like Blink is expanding in Southern California.

As much as I love using the Chargepoint network from Coulomb and the feedback that their well designed IOS app (as well as the very good BlackBerry App), I find myself thankful that Blink also exists. It seems to me that the Blink Network is growing in Southern California. Aside from the chargers in my long drive test to Northern San Diego and the chargers that popped up in L.A. Live that I previously wrote about, it seems that the network just added six more chargers at the Americana at Brand.

and on the other view:

As of today, June 20, 2012. The spots are not yet complete, but according to the Blink Network App, all six chargers are online. All that seems to be missing is signage on the parking spots to mark them as EV parking spots. Something that the management company on the Grove did not initially do to their chargers (at least according to Recargo/Plugshare) pics that I have looked at before (it does look like the signage at the Grove is now up) Which means that the owners of the Americana are learning from their mistakes from the Grove (same ownership.) They have 12 spots blocked off and 6 chargers, so it may be ideal for plug-sharing. [Update June 21st, actually parked and charged my ActiveE here today. They shrank down the spots from 12 to six to match the number of chargers.] Works great.

Anyway Bravo to the owner of the Americana and the Grove in installing such a high concentration of EV chargers at their two premiere shopping destinations. The parking at the Americana is free for the first hour, then $3 for 61 minutes to 90 minutes hours, then $1 for every 30 minutes to a $9 maximum. So, it costs money to park, but not to charge. Some restaurants add 2 more hours of free parking to the 1 hour for a total of 3 hours of free parking (and charging.)

Speedometer video test…

There have been numerous reports on the ActiveE forums about the speedometer of the ActiveE (and other German vehicles for that matter) as being grossly overstated.

I wanted to see this for myself, so to test this, I went ahead and installed my portable GPS in the ActiveE and compared the velocity that it showed on the GPS with the speedometer of my ActiveE.

So, the first test was to do this on surface street speeds.

As you can see from the video, there is a discrepancy at lower speeds. So, I figured to try this on the freeway…

It looks like the folks on the BMW ActiveE forums were right. The car does overstate its speed to the tune of 3-5 mph.