Finding the chase and cutting to it

The last 12 months seem to have flown by, and we are approaching the first anniversary and service for the Leaf. It has covered nearly 5,000 miles as I write this. That is around 500 journeys to work, which seems about right.  After all, this is why we bought the Leaf: to provide a clean, safe, easy journey to and from work.  This it has done with aplomb and has become a valid choice for any journey.

To celebrate, I took it for a bit of run this morning in the -2°C environment to provide that essential service to mankind – picking the kid and his friends up from last nights’ sleep over 🙂

I don’t know if you live with teenagers but the whole ease of 24 hour communication means nothing is properly arranged any more, so armed with a postcode and house number and a fully charged Leaf, I plunged into the January chilled Suffolk Countryside and really returned to my roots.  I was heading to roads I last travelled as a 17 year old in a newly covered (insurance wise) version of my mum’s car.

In those days, I was driving a four year old Carlton 2 litre CDXi where the D stood for Delux and not diesel.  My mum adored that motorcar and as I was then limited to an automatic gear box, this was real freedom and so much responsibility.  I was armed with a map – a Phillips/AA car drivers version with a great spiral spine which allowed easy book marking of the current pages and my favourite mixed tape.  At 10am on a Saturday on the A14, the roads were easy and relatively quiet.

January 2015, I had a similarly colour painted electric car (the Cartlon was maroon, the Leaf is burgundy) and the spiral spine map’s function was being covered by the Google connected Sat Nav, my mum’s car phone by a bluetooth connected 3G smart phone and I was heading over to act as taxi. Very little changes as time goes by.

The biggest shock I have had driving since November has been how difficult it has been to achieve the 12% of battery use getting to work and 14% on the return journey.  De-misting the windows has been the biggest draw although I have found the following tips really help get the most from the lithium ion batteries:

1. Turning off the LCD screen gets around 4 extra miles from an 80% charge.  This is achieved from Menu->Settings->Display and change the “on” to “off”.
   Hitting the moon/sun button turns this back on permanently and turning off needs the same lengthy procedure.  If you want to flash view the map or battery consumption that will come up for 30 secs and then the display will turn off again – really useful if you need the Sat Nav to show a junction or roundabout layout!
2. By turning off the “heat” and “auto”, the fan can be used to demist the front windscreen using only the lead acid battery (another 4 miles per 20 kW/h charge).
3. The lead acid battery goes in to recharge mode (the right blue flashing light on the charging indicator is activated) in the small hours of the morning.  It is worth activating the charge timer to cover this and get back the 2%.
4. The climate timer is really not happy if the battery charge is below 80%!
5. Turn back to D mode rather than B when climbing up hills and if you’re really brave, turn off the Eco mode too.  Remember to switch B Eco when going down hill to get the most regenerative charging.
6. Charging at home or in Waitrose for 30 minutes gives about 10% on the battery charge which works out at around 50p.  An hour gives you 20-25%.  So an hours’ charge covers most of the next day’s run to work.
7. A garage means you don’t have to waste time or battery defrosting the car.

Today was the first real experience driving on sub-zero roads and snow and the car was beautiful: predictable handling and easy visibility – I made the most of the auto-wipers.  The rear seats meant the passengers were comfortable and the 50 mile round trip was a breeze.  In the summer though, I would not expect that to use 80% of the battery (much closer to 55%), so I was glad I had set up the route before hand while still charging in the garage!

I did find I switched on the head lamps rather than wait for them to come on automatically but that’s not really an issue as they switch off when the Leaf is switched off.

All very nice and informative: what about the power consumption for the year?

In a year, up until 15^th Jan 2015, we have covered 4764.4 miles with 1160kW/h or 1.2 MW/h of electricity.  That’s around 4.1 kW/h per mile, which is around 4.3p per mile (at 16p per kW/h).

Even with the recent drop in petrol prices (we have motorcycles and a diesel car so we still notice that) the Leaf provides very cheap motoring and we are not paying for every piece of electricity used to power the car.  Some of it is now coming from our own Solar Panels (958 kW/h have been generated since 23^rd August).  That distance, if we’d charged at home and paid for it, the year’s electricity would have set us back £185 (that’s 1160kW/h at £0.16 per kW/h).

The longest single journey was back from London on a charge (est. 124 miles) and I have spent 3.5 hours charging the car at fast chargers provided either by Nissan or Ecotricity during the year.

I still wish there was a fast charger in Ipswich but we’re heading in to London at half term as a family and the Leaf will provide a means of driving that distance which is much cheaper than taking the three of us by train from our home town and comparable in terms of time.  Both forms of transport are powered by electricity, doesn’t the 25 year old train look a little dated, expensive and inconvenient?

I wonder where we’ll go next year with the Leaf.