EV Charger – Page 2 – My ActiveE Made Me Accidentally Environmental

California EV enthusiasts or soon to be EV enthusiasts, make it easier on yourself! – Free EVSE charger offer

So, I’ve been meaning to post this offer on the ActiveE forum, but several of my fellow Electronuts have already done that…

So, I figure why not post it on the blog!

I received the attached email a week ago and promptly forwarded it to my office manager to forward to our new landlord. I also sent it to my wife for her people to send it to their landlord.

From: Lynette Mandal <lynette.mandal@chargepoint.com>
Date: September 12, 2012 1:21:25 AM PDT
To: Dennis
Subject: ChargePoint offer to: home charging station owners

Hello Dennis,
We have great news! For a limited time only, ChargePoint is giving away electric vehicle (EV) charging stations for the workplace. ChargePoint is making available one FREE charging station to any workplace location that doesn’t already have a ChargePoint station in their parking lot.

ChargePoint’s ‘JumpStart’ program is designed to assist you with encouraging your employer to install a FREE ChargePoint station. Any California employer with more than 50 employees is eligible! This is the perfect opportunity for anyone with sustainability agendas, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) programs, new construction and renovation programs.

To assist your employer in making workplace EV charging prevalent, ChargePoint can also assist in finding a low cost installation provider.

Why are we doing this?

With the ChargePoint JumpStart program, we want to help EV drivers like you get EV charging services at your place of employment. Some of the most progressive and forward-thinking organizations in the world including Google, SAP, 3M, Facebook, Dell and Adobe, provide ChargePoint charging stations for their employees. With ChargePoint JumpStart we’re putting the power to charge in the hands of drivers!

How do you apply?

You can either take the attached offer to the appropriate decision-maker inside your company or apply through the ChargePoint website by October 15, 2012.

Click HERE to apply online.

The free ChargePoint stations are available on a first come first served basis.

Sincerely,

Team ChargePoint

P.S.

This is not a secret. If you know of an employee that needs a free ChargePoint station at their workplace, please let them know about this great offer.

Seems like a pretty straightforward offer, but there is still resistance to installing EV chargers at people’s workplaces.

I am hopeful, but pessimistic that either my office’s landlord or my wife’s employer’s landlord will bite, but why not try.

Some of the concerns that I have heard directly and indirectly through others that folks have over installing public charging stations in their facilities:

Concern over the increase in their electric bill
The cost of the EVSE and installation of the charging station.
Loss of use of parking space
Commitment length for some of the “free” public EVSE installation. i.e. 7 year agreement of exclusivity for any EVSE installs on the property.

Granted this offer only covers concern 2. As much as you can explain that the cost to charge an EV is only $.10 per kWH (national average), this is still an incremental cost that the landlord/employer currently does not have. Others have said that an individual could volunteer to pay for this and it may well behoove you to do so, however, the nice thing about the Chargepoint offer is that it’s on network and there IS a way for the landlord to participate in what Chargepoint will cost per hour.

As for concern 3 on the loss of use of parking spaces, that’s just silly. I know that my EV takes up exactly the same amount of parking space as any other car. So, that’s an argument that can be discussed. Additionally, other solutions have been put in place, such as the one at the Electric Lodge in Venice. Their solution is to restrict EV only parking between certain hours and allow the spots to be ICEd at other times.

Either way, the spots get used and you don’t have to worry about under-utilization of a precious commodity like parking spaces.

As for commitment length. I would gather that it’s all up to negotiation.

So, if you’re interested in getting a free EVSE for your office and live in California. Make use of the offer above.

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.

Long Range Test… planned but not implemented… (or Long Beach to Santa Barbara, but chickened out).

Ok, so I live in Long Beach, the southernmost city in Los Angeles County (and the county’s second largest city).

According to Google Maps, about 135 Mile Trip between home and some of the Chargepoint Public Chargers on Anacapa Street in Santa Barbara.

So, to make it from home to Santa Barbara and back in the same day, I would have to seriously plan this out AND have the time to execute.

Under ideal circumstances I MAY make it there, but after 4 months of driving the ActiveE I know that this is near impossible for the way that I drive, so I needed to PLAN my trip between the two locations AND have the time to charge each way AND midway.

So, what was my plan…

I’ve always attested that the range on the ActiveE is UNLIMITED… You just have to make sure that you have enough time to charge in between stops. My destination was 135 miles away, there are chargers about 60 miles away and another around 90 miles away, so I had identified two locations. Additionally, to charge for the difference, I figured that I would need at least two hours before my appointment to ensure that I feel confident that I would have enough charge to make it to my destination.

So, I identified two possible charging stations.

1) Thousand Oaks – Janss Marketplace, 275 N. Moorpark Rd, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360. These chargers are on the Blink Network, and showed up as available on the application. (About 60 miles from home)

2) Ventura, CA – Pacific View Mall, between Sears and Red Robin. These are some non-networked Clipper Creek chargers that I would not have known the status of, until I got there (there are several pay Chargepoint chargers in the City of Ventura (another 5 or so miles further, if I had been more daring).

At the start of the day, I just couldn’t get up early enough to charge for a few hours mid-route, so we ended up ICEing it up to Santa Barbara. The weather was nice and we at least went convertible, so there was something that the ICE did that the ActiveE did not to minimize my “guilt” over ignoring the ActiveE for the day.

After my lunch in Santa Barbara, I decided to do a survey of a few of the city of Santa Barbara charging stations. The stations themselves are free, but parking will cost money. The first 75 minutes are complimentary, and every hour (or fraction thereof is $1.50. Parking is limited to 72 hours continuously and the lots are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Pictures of the two Chargepoints at 1221 Anacapa St, Santa Barbara, California 93101

Down the street from there are a couple of other Chargepoint stations at 1115 Anacapa St, Santa Barbara, California 93101.

So, having surveyed a few spots to charge along the way to Santa Barbara. With enough time to wait in between, a weekend drive to Santa Barbara may well be in the plans for the future… I just have to get my car back from BMW Service since they’re taken it for its 10,000 mile checkup (and now replacing the e machine…).

Re-Connect California Initiative and Dodger Stadium…

With the Lakers early exit in the 2011-2012 season to the Oklahoma City Thunder, we found ourselves with some time to go to the “other” L.A. sport teams events. One of the other teams that my wife and I both enjoy is the Los Angeles Dodgers.

So, with some extra time on our hands, we went ahead and picked up a Dodgers Mini Plan. As part of the EV lifestyle that we’ve embraced, I was very interested in the charger infrastructure at Dodger Stadium and was embarassed by what I’ve found there… Nothing but legacy SPI chargers.

In Dodger Stadium Lot N, are four legacy chargers. So, the operational Rav4s and their brethren can still charge at Dodger Stadium, but the new breed of ActiveEs, Leaf, and Volts can not. To their credit, there is ONE 120V charger “available”, but the covered EV pictured here (is that a SmartCar?) is already using that charger.

Well, all is not lost. Thanks to the Reconnect CA program, public charger facilities with SP1 and other legacy chargers are able to upgrade the chargers at no cost to the charger owners. They just have to fulfill the requirements, a very good summary was provided at the ActiveE Forums by David Woo.

Basically, as I understand it.

The property owner has to have at least two legacy chargers and Clipper Creek and the State will replace one and leave one legacy behind at no charge to the property owner. The owner just has to agree to let Clipper Creek gather the usage information on the new charger.

Seems like a no-brainer. However, our friends at Dodger Stadium ownership have been embattled and just recently completed a change in ownership (thank goodness) and the Agreement to get the replacements in place are stuck on the Dodgers side. So, if you, like me, are a Dodger fan and would love to use the chargers at Lot N while going to the game. Contact your Dodger rep (season ticket office – 323-224-1365) and ask them to upgrade the EV chargers and direct them to Clipper Creek before the grant program runs out (now August 1, 2012.)

Now if you find some other qualifying public spots, see if the owner is aware of or interested in applying for the program. Or contact Stacey at Clipper Creek (info below.)

The Clipper Creek contact’s information is

Stacey Barhydt
stacey@clippercreek.net
ClipperCreek, Inc.
Reconnect CA Program Support
530-887-1674 ex 300

Blink Network Chargers at L.A. Live (Abbreviated re-Post and update to West Lot)

So, it looks like some folks over at the Nissan Forums are not so interested in the Staples Playoff weekend, and in order to get them anyone else who may not be a Sports fan to the Charger information sooner, I’m reposting the sections on the TEN (10) Blink Network chargers at L.A. Live as well as updating some of the information.

[Updated for Kings game West Lot using a Kings pre-paid ticket, I believe that on game days, the parking at that lot is restricted to those attending the games during the game hours, but open otherwise.] The main takeaway from the game day update is this. You need to advise the attendant upon entry that you will be using the chargers. They will have you proceed forward and DOWN the level where they will then re-direct you to an exit and you will need to exit the garage at ground level and re-enter the same garage in Entry E. Pull a ticket and keep it on your car. Charge at the Blink charger as usual and you will need to exit the garage with the ticket that you took to enter the garage AND present your prepaid game parking ticket for Lot W so that they don’t charge you again for parking. It’s clear as mud.

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Across the street from the Staples Center is L.A. Live. An entertainment, retail, restaurant, office, residential, and hotel complex par excellence. Currently charging is free, but the parking could be free (on non-game days AND with a minimum at one of the restaurants at the complex) to very expensive $30-$40 for the day.

At Staples Center, there lies a total of TEN (10) Blink Network Chargers. Now, I must reiterate that the Blink Network Chargers require two things to operate.

1) You need to have a Blink Card. (If you don’t have one, get one. They’re growing in SoCal, not as many as Chargepoint, but definitely growing.)

2) You need to use your ZIP Code to activate the charging process (like the Gas Stations you used to use when you pumped for gasoline.)

There are four chargers in the East Parking Lot.

Two in Parking Level 2 that are back to back from each other.

and

The other two are side by side in Parking Level 1.

There are four chargers in the West Parking Lot, these are at GROUND Level, around the corner from handicapped and the entrance. It’s almost adjacent to 11th Street. This lot is also known as Lot W for those holding a Staples Center tenant pre-paid parking pass.

Three face forward, and the fourth is by itself on a column.

Here is another shot with the ActiveE in the foreground.

And lastly, there are two chargers in Valet Parking at the Ritz Carlton/J.W. Marriott. Though the actual chargers are in L3 of the West Parking Lot.

One word of warning, the Valets at the Ritz are very helpful, but you need to instruct them on how to use your charger and how to check if it is working. The helpful valet that assisted me ALMOST did everything correctly, except he plugged me into a non-working EVSE. I had to move to the operational charger. Remember to give the Valet your Blink Card AND Zip Code to charge the car.

The Valet Parking is $40 for overnight guests. Charging is free. An update to this information is if you’re visiting WP24 (the restaurant and lounge on the 24th floor of the Ritz Carlton), the parking is reduced to $10 for dinner and I believe for 2 or 3 hours if you’re only going to the bar/lounge area, contact the restaurant for further details Phone is +1-(213) 743-8824.

Here is my ActiveE in one of the valet spots:

and here is the other charger at the hotel Valet Parking.

Here is a photo of the non-working Blink charger at L.A. Live hotel valet parking (it should be fixed by now), it was stuck trying to read the RFID card. [It took them a week from reporting to get it fixed, but looks like it is now.]

If you’re interested in reading about the Staples Center Playoff Weekend, read the next post that this was abbreviated from.

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #2 in an ongoing series – Santa Monica Place

Been meaning to write another of these posts in a while. I had a good time this past weekend at L.A. Live, and thought to write about that, but decided instead to write about Santa Monica Place/Third Street Promenade first. MKnoll on the BMW Forums had a quick post on things she does in Santa Monica, which inspired me to go with what I would recommend in that area for #2 in this series. As a quick refresher, #1 was at the Helms Bakery District for breakfast at La Dijonaise…

The EV Chargers that I use in Santa Monica are in the lot corner Broadway and 4th Street (Santa Monica City Lot 7). It is in the ground level onramp toward the second level. There are four Chargepoint Network Coulomb chargers and One Clipper Creek J1772 charger. These Chargepoint chargers (at the time of my visit) are the older ones that do GFCI trip at times and it may take several attempts before the charge process takes. The Clipper Creek works great, but, as a good EV citizen, I only use those if all the Chargepoints are taken since all BMW ActiveE drivers are provided at least one Chargepoint RFID card to use, and I’m sure not all EV drivers have those.

The parking at the Santa Monica Place lots are Free for 2 hours 8 am to 6pm ($1 ea additional 30 minutes; $9 maximum daily) and $5 flat rate after 6pm. Zengo provides free valet parking, but that defeats the purpose of great food by public chargers.

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I figure #2 should be a place for brunch… namely Zengo. This place has a highly rated brunch and though I’ve been there for brunch, I prefer the dinner service. Additionally, next door to Zengo is it’s sister restaurant La Sandia, I’ve only had dinner at La Sandia and I was not as fond of the food there.

As I like to leave the better option last, I will cover La Sandia quickly here. Basically, the food was interesting, but I felt that it was somewhat overpriced and really a better bar experience than food experience.

The Kiwi Margarita was very good –

As was the Mango Margarita

This was the Guacamole Sampler that we tried… And yes, they had the edible insect on it on purpose (I ate these, the better half skipped on it)

I went with the Chili Relleno, which was top-notch, but I felt that it was a bit over-priced.

And the better half decided to go with the Carnitas Tacos. Again, tasty, just over-priced.

More La Sandia pictures.

All the photos that I have included in this article will be from dinner service that I had there earlier in the month.

So, brunch at Zengo is very popular aside from great food also provides unlimited drinks in its weekend brunches. The fine print on the menu states – that the unlimited brunch has a 2 hour time limit per table, the entire table must participate in it, it includes unlimited small plates & brunch cocktails- bloody mary / bacon bloody mary / mango mimosa / traditional mimosa / sake sangria / lychee bellini for $35 per guest. Thus if you like the things listed, it makes for a great deal.

When we went for brunch, we opted A La Carte as not everyone in the party would have made full use of the brunch deal. However, I do intend to take them up on that deal one of these days.

As I previously mentioned, I actually prefer the dinner at Zengo. The servers are very good at explaining that Zengo translates to Give and Take in English, I boil down Zengo’s dining experience as Latin-Asian Tapas. Their menu is split between smaller and larger plates and the mainstays stick around in the dinner menu and every month and a half to two months, they add a special “tasting kitchen” menu inspired by one Asian location and another Latin location, such as Hanoi and Havana (April 9 – June 30, 2012) or the previous menu of Shanghai and Sao Paulo.

On our third trip to Zengo, we had some dishes that stayed with us from the previous trip and we felt compelled to order again, and the Peking Duck-Daikon Tacos stood out from our previous experiences, and it was, once again, excellent.

Here is the Peking Duck-Daikon Taco ready to eat on my plate:

and another one

We decided on pairing our dinner with a Malbec that we found to be light in tannins, smooth, and very good with meat and duck.

We decided to go to the Pork Belly Steamed Buns next. I was expecting Char Shiu Bao, but got this instead:

And it was wonderful.

One thing that through us off was the next course, which I did not expect to be in a soup/broth form was from this Hanoi and Havana test kitchen menu of Morcillas. I had no indigation that it was in a soup/broth format and was my least favorite in the meal, but it was still very well executed.

We ended our mains with the Wok Fried Rice and it was excellent. It’s a main on it’s own, though normally a side in many Asian restaurants.

We did get dessert, but did not quite make the photo gallery. If you want to see more Zengo pictures just head over to my flickr gallery.

After a fun dinner like we had that evening, and since the parking is paid for the rest of the evening, a nice stroll down 3rd Street Promenade or some shopping at Santa Monica Place is quite easy to do from this location. Additionally, the Santa Monica Pier is also very close and navigable at this point.

For this particular evening, we opted to go to a nearby AMC Theater to catch the Avengers again. It made for a great date night with the better half.

After dinner and a movie, we got back onto our fully-charged ActiveE to head home.

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!

Range Anxiety and the Longest One-Way drive so far!

I’m sure others have done longer and I’ve had longer days (with multiple charge stops… personal record – 175 miles in one day (two charge stops)) however, aside from Las Vegas, folks around LA normally think of driving to Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, or San Diego to be a long drive, so I figured to try one out.

Since we live in the Southern Tip of Los Angeles County, it seemed best to pick San Diego as the destination.

Trip planned, remote charger identified. Time to conquer range anxiety…

Our planned stop – The North County Transit District stop in Oceanside. Ideal choice because on May 6, they were running extra trains for the weekend (Cinco de Mayo was just the day before and there were still festivals and a Padres game going on).

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This is a 65 mile journey one way, of which around 25-30 miles near the end there were not only NO public chargers listed on any of the Apps, but no gas stations Between San Clemente and San Onofre, so even ICE vehicles were warned of “no services for the next 20 miles” .

The plan was to get to the Train Station and hop on the Coaster to get down to San Diego. Blink Network and the North County Transit District had both installed 6 chargers at the station and taking the train from here would provide a day’s worth of entertainment.

I debated as to using the cruise control and setting it at a moderate 67-68 miles per hour on the ActiveE (it overstates it’s speed and that would get me around 65) but opted to enjoy the drive and use the pedal manually. I decided to go Eco Pro and also was not driving as aggressively as I normally do and found myself being passed by many cars (that last stretch by San Onofre Nuclear Power Plant tends to be a really fast one)

Though the navigation had recommended that I use the toll road around the El Toro Y. I opted around it as that route has a lot more hills and I decided on staying on the 405 to the 5 freeway as it is considerably flatter and I wanted to arrive at my destination with as much charge as possible (to minimize the charging time for a full charge.)

This conservative driving worked wonders for my range. I ended up at the train station with 25 miles left and State of Charge (SOC) around 20% (the car did its customary warning at 27 miles to go). However, plans #1 and #2 for the day was shot as I arrived at the chargers only to see the Coaster pulling away from the station and the Amtrak soon after. There were five chargers available as one was being used by a Leaf and I decided to plug in and charge.

Luckily, we had a plan #3. Four hours to charge the car and a few miles away was the Carlsbad Premium Outlets.

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So, we decided to jump in a cab ($23 one-way, $25 with tip) and get down to the outlets to do some shopping. This is a smaller outlet a stone’s throw from Legoland. It has a lot of the same stores one finds at other outlet stores around Southern California, but it does have a nicely stocked Crate & Barrel Outlet, not that we ended up getting anything there.

The shopping center was well attended, but not crowded and the sales were actually very attractive. Ended up picking up a few items that more than off-set the round-trip cab fare ($50, I did $25 with tip on the return cab trip as well.) Additionally, the food choices near the outlet stores were quite good (namely a PF Chang’s, and BJ’s across the street and Ruby’s Diner in the outlet stores) and it helps that Starbucks had the Frappuccino Happy Hour going to recharge during our 4 hour shopping trip (that’s about 3 3/4 hours longer than the better half can stand).

We made it back to the ActiveE right as the blue light stopped blinking. I literally saw the car blinking when the cab arrived at the train station, and stay off as I walked up to the car to get it disengaged from the Blink Network charger.

Having the confidence of making the range on the Southbound trip earlier, the Northbound trip was a lot more pleasant. I stayed on Eco Pro, but definitely drove a little more aggressively. I stayed OFF the Toll Road route as I wanted the opportunity to get off the freeway at any of the cities in between.

The roundtrip was approximately 135 miles with a single 4.25 hour charging session in between. I arrived home with about 30 miles left on the car and about 25% SOC.

Charge It! – Great food near public chargers #1 in an ongoing series

One of the things about charging my ActiveE at public chargers is trying to figure out what to do while I wait for a couple of hours. Shopping center public chargers are great ’cause there’s a ton of stuff to do at shopping centers. However, as much as I like to shop, it gets boring.

So, I figure that one thing that would be very helpful for readers of the blog is figure out what great food places there are around some of the public chargers that I use. The ActiveE has provided me with nice opportunities to slow down and enjoy life at times. So, rather than fast food, some great food near chargers (read walking distance). Though ever since I got this car, I’ve found myself walking more and more. (the L2 charger nearest my office is 3/4 of a mile away.) So I get a mile and a half walk most work days (for non-SoCal readers, that’s a long walk for Southern Californians.)

So, without further ado… Let’s go with the first one… Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so I figured to choose my first location accordingly.

The Helms Bakery District

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This place is great. Two Clipper Creek J1772 L2 chargers are available and parking is free. So, you can always shop for furniture and other home stuff at this location. But, how often does one need to buy a new couch, table, bed, or chair. At the prices that they are sold at the Helms Bakery District, not too often.

So, it makes it the ideal spot to grab something to eat. The question is what time of day are you at Helms Bakery. Breakfast or a snack at La Dijonaise is always great. I’ve found it a great place to grab a cafe au lait and a macaron. They make some of the best macarons that I’ve ever had. The one pictured below is a coffee flavored macaron. They have several different flavors, and the coffee is my favorite, the chocolate is pretty great as well. I’ve tried a raspberry, orange, almond, and others and the worst is better than most places macarons.

This one was a little too tart..

Just tried today – Chocolate Eclair.. It was good!

Really the only other thing I’ve grabbed at La Dijonaise has been a raisin roll. So, I can’t comment on the other food, (one of these days I will, just not today) but they really do the baked goods well.

Dinner or lunch (on some days) another popular place to go at Helms Bakery is The Father’s Office. I’ve been there once. The burger is good and it is very popular (there seems to be a good crowd at The Father’s Office making it a good place to hang out). It has been considered one of the top burgers in LA. However, I’m the wrong guy to pick burgers. I can tell good from bad, just not good from great nor any other superlative to describe burgers. According to experts, this burger is really good, so I take their word for it. If you prefer the reviews of others, it does pretty well on Yelp as well not too bad on Zagat either. In all, breakfast, lunch, or dinner, Helms Bakery is good.

The J1772 chargers and easy access 24×7 makes it a good place for an Electronaut or any other EV driver in LA to stop by the Helms Bakery. This place is a good place to go and charge it! (and get yourself a fill up as well).