Kids and the i-MiEV

I think Dr. Seuss had a hand in designing the newer electric cars (except for the Tesla, which has serious Jaguar design influences).  I drive the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which is odd-looking at best.  And the Nissan Leaf is no better.  And BMW tried to give the new electric i3 a real sense of style, but missed the mark in my opinion.  While the Fiat 500 has a little bit of cute-ness going for it, its cramped rear quarters makes it an impractical choice for many.  And the Think City, the Scion iQ, and the Smart are just as peculiar to look at.  Surely these cars are examples of Dr. Seuss’ design works.  At least the i-MiEV has an ample interior.  A number of my passengers have remarked how they were surprised that the car has as much interior space for how short it is outside.  And, with four doors, that interior space is easy to get to.  (The i3 is similarly useful inside.)  But it seems that the biggest fans of this car are kids.



Dr. Suess' design influences

Dr. Suess' design influences

 

I have a niece and nephew (seven and five years old) who actually enjoy the car and its funky look on short trips.  They call it the “Purple Car”, which is the same color as their favorite afternoon hangout in San Jose - the "Purple Building" (also known as the Children's Discovery Museum).  Sometimes they call the car the “funny car” – I’m guessing because of its looks.  Of course funny car is both a compliment and a slap in the face from them.  Funny is endearing and welcoming, which I believe was Dr. Seuss’ goal in the design of all of his characters and their possessions.  The only problem here is that the people forking out hard-earned money for these cars are no longer children.

The BMW i3's awkward styling

Here is my theory on why electric cars look so off from normal.  Most normal looking cars attract a lot of buyers.  Sexy looking cars attract buyers in droves.  Only the price of these sleek looking sedans keeps the buyers at bay.  So, why aren’t electric cars sexy looking and affordable?  Manufacturers can only build so many electric cars in their early production runs (typically fewer than 10,000).  So, they need to reduce the demand for these cars.  There are two approaches: raise the price or mess with the looks.  Unfortunately, early electric car buyers have been very value savvy, so a jacked up price had better offer superior value (which is very hard to deliver).  So, rather than following Tesla’s expensive lead, manufacturers follow the alternative and lean on styling to dissuade most buyers.  Only those drivers with a sturdy constitution can find themselves heading down the street in a bug-eyed, Picasso-styled driving machine, allowing the manufacturers to meet the demand comfortably.  I expect that the volume electric vehicles to come next will be much easier to look at and be seen in.  (Check out the Chevy Bolt.)

More problems with the chargers at work

Talk about people behaving badly …

If you give something away, anything, folks will be motivated to take as much of it as they can.  You can see this at “fairs” (like health fairs and employment fairs) as people walk about with the bags, pens, calendars, and fliers from the various commercial booths they have visited.  Such is the case at work.  When employees feel under-compensated or under-appreciated, they look to any perks on the job to help them cope.  In this case, the perk is up to four hours of free electricity.  The funny thing is that it really does not add up to much value.  Most cars will top-off after just two or three hours, and they typically draw between 3Kw and 6Kw while charging.  This amounts to as much as 24Kwh of electricity, worth about $0.87 to $3.48, with most users getting about $1.80.  The value of the stuff collected at a fair is worth more than this.  If this were added up over five days a week for 50 weeks, that amounts to about $450 (or much less if you have PG&E’s favorable electric-car rates).  While this does amount to a meaningful lump of change, it does not amount to any kind of life-changing money, especially for folks that have spent $25,000 to $40,000 on an electric car.

So, back to my work situation.  Because the chargers are free for the first four hours, people feel motivated to charge up as much as possible.  But there is also a parking issue on campus, so it is very inconvenient to find a vacant parking spot once you do finish charging.  These two conditions have created a real problem.  Folks who connect their cars to the charging stations have to run back out to their cars before the four hours elapses and unplug their cars.  But they don’t move their cars away because there is no convenient parking.  Today I noted three cars still parked in front of the charging station while the charging cable was disconnected from the car (and hanging from the charger).  It is also causing desperate folks to park in spaces beside the charges that are not for parking.  In one case, it was blocking access to trash facilities, and in another it was parked along the curb where no parking is permitted, creating a slight traffic flow issue.  I have also heard of folks charges being interrupted by others desperate to get some juice who unplug others to connect to their own cars.

While adding more charging stations would ease some of the problems, I believe that the more affordable solution is to stop giving away the electricity.  If there are so many electric cars that 12 charging hookups won’t meet the need, I would say that the company incentive to encourage electric car use was a huge success.  Instead, I would suggest charging a very reasonable eight cents per Kwh delivered.  This would dis-incent those who only want something for free but can otherwise drive to-and-from work comfortably on a single charge, and it would still reward folks for driving electric by subsidizing (but not eliminating) their charging costs.  (That would be $1.28 instead of $3.48.)  The rate could increase dramatically after four hours of charging to ensure sufficient access to the charging stations during the day.  Of course, if it were up to me, I’d have a pool of portable solar panel roofs that you would just prop up above your car and plug in where ever you happen to find a sunny parking spot.  Your car would get some badly needed shade and you’d get some free juice for your battery too.  (By my calculations, you’d get about 13 to 14 miles worth.)

Solar panels cut my costs

Before I bought the electric car, the small solar-electric system on my roof would produce about $15 of excess electricity each year.  At the rates I pay with my solar panels, that amounts to about 135kwh, or enough electricity to drive over 500 miles.  Considering that I have been driving about 10,500 miles a year, that excess amount falls far short of my electric-driving needs.  Of course, I knew I would need more solar capacity.  So, I arranged to have four more 240-watt panels installed on my roof, with an emphasis on collecting energy from the west.  This means the panels will generate the most electricity during the afternoon hours when the summer generation rates are highest.  And, I have the flexibility to charge at night when the rates are the lowest, so I can multiply the kilowatts that my system generates to meet my needs.

My expansion solar panels that cover the extra cost of my 10,000 miles of driving.

The new panels on my roof have generated just shy of a megawatt hour (1,000kwh) of power per year.  Without the peak-hour generation benefit, that would be enough power to propel my purple car about 4,200 miles.  More than 75% of the energy produced by my new system is generated during the peak season, so I get a big benefit from the summer generating schedule.  I also charged about 130kwh on the ChargePoint network, which offsets about another 550 miles of driving.  This year, I over produced enough electricity to result in a $20 credit due to me (which PG&E drops because there was no over-production of electricity in my case).  So, the new solar panels produced enough energy (using time-of-use metering) for me to drive about 10,300 miles. 

So, the bottom line is that I spent nothing to drive 10,500 miles.  Of course, I had to invest $5,500 in the solar panel upgrade to eliminate my driving costs, otherwise my electric costs would have been closer to $260 for the year.  If electric rates remain constant, it would take over 21 years to recover the costs of the solar panels from a strictly financial perspective, but knowing that my car gets much of its energy from solar power provides an intangible benefit akin to the “value” of gambling in Las Vegas.  (If energy rates jump by 25% in the next 10 years, I can break even in fewer than 18 years.)  Now, if you factor in the savings over gasoline propulsion, the break-even time gets much shorter (to about four years).

Back up the mountain to Ridge Winery

After driving up successfully once, I was comfortable to drive up the mountain to Ridge Winery again.  This time, without the range-anxiety gnawing away at my mind every mile I drove, I was able to drive more relaxed knowing well what to expect.  Sure enough, on the way up to Ridge Winery, I used up four bars (about 25%) of the charge, and coming back down I regenerated about a bar and a half.  If nothing else, watching the bars reappear makes the whole trip worth it.  (That, and the fantastic wine at the top of the mountain.  … and the views.) 

The only oddity that I noticed was that towards the bottom of the hill, the regenerative brakes would fade momentarily and I’d be using the friction brakes.  My guess is that this is due to overheating, but it happened only once.  The other thing I noticed is that you have to get the car going about 25 MPH (or so) downhill before trying to use the regenerative brakes.  If you don’t get going this fast, the car will try to maintain the slower speed and you won’t generate as much electricity.  At the faster speed, more electricity is generated while you coast downhill.  It would seem that when going downhill at about 35 MPH, the car generates nearly the maximum electricity to keep the car from going any faster, but this speed is often too fast for many of the tight curves on this road.  So, it is better to maintain a somewhat slower pace.

1,800 feet up at Ridge Winery in Cupertino

Driving slowly

The thrill of driving a powerful gasoline powered car hard is sensational, from the forces exerted upon you to the sound effects emitting from the engine.  I should know, having owned a number of performance cars over the past three decades.  From my 1982 Mercury Capri with its powerful 5.0 liter V8, to the 1987 BMW 325i with its five-speed gearbox, to the 2001 Dodge Dakota Quad Cab with its pavement shredding V8 (coupled with trailer gearing), to my 2005 VW GTI turbo.  All of these cars are great fun to drive up hills, roar down the interstate, and pull away from a traffic light with great aplomb.  They also share the same drawback: trying to move slowly is a painful mix of lurching and clutch wearing strain.  Switching to an automatic transmission does little to resolve this either, as I have experienced in a Passat, an Audi A4, and a Toyota Corolla.  The fact is, gasoline powered cars were never designed to be driven slowly.

My (former) 1982 Mercury Capri in its new garage

Who needs to drive slowly?  Consider these situations …  You are stuck on I-405 approaching Century Blvd.  Finally, the traffic inches forward (literally, about 8 feet).  Or, you need to back into a gently sloping driveway.  Or, while visiting San Francisco, you have to stop at a stop sign on a 25% grade.  Or, you need to back your car into your underground parking space around the concrete pillar.  Too much gas, and you could slam your car into something not-soft.  Too little, and you could stall, changing your direction of travel unexpectedly.  Of all of these, the most annoying is trying to follow slow-moving traffic on the freeway that seems to lurch along.

I never expected that the electric motor would solve these issues.  The instant-on torque of the electric motor and the ability to deliver very precise amounts of current allow the electric car to thrive in these slow-motion environments.  In my Mitsubishi, the (software) engineers who programmed the motor controller were able to simulate the gasoline engine’s inability to stand still while in gear by allowing a small amount of current to flow to the motor while at “idle”.  The software does a spectacular job.  While backing into a gently upward sloping driveway, I was able to remove my foot from the “gas pedal” and the car backed itself up the driveway at about two to three MPH, allowing me to position the car deftly.  Another (software) engineering feat is just how smoothly the car transitions from standing still to a full run.  There is no jerk at all, and you can control the speed as slowly as you need, down to one or two MPH.  This came in very handy while inching into the parking lot for the electric car rally and parade recently, as the backup was over ½ a mile just to enter the parking lot.  (It takes a while to get 500 cars into a parking lot at the same time.)  While my electric car may be no faster than a cheap economy car on the highway, it more than makes up for it with its slow driving manners.

Replacing my Level-2 charger

As soon as my level-2 EV charger died, I went online to find out what was now available for home use.  (This was after a futile attempt to contact the now-defunct manufacturer about servicing my old charger.)  I found some units online at Lowes, but the only unit that looked promising was the GE charging station, and it was also the most expensive.  The less expensive models lacked the amperage or the plug that I was looking for.  I found similar results at Home Depot.  Then I remembered the EV charger that was being given away at the Electric Auto Association Silicon Valley rally at De Anza College back in September.  So I dug through the business cards in my desk drawer at home and found it: Clipper Creek.

One thing that I liked about Clipper Creek is that, not only are they an American company, but they are also a California company.  That, and the price of their 32-amp charger was about $150 to $300 less than the competition’s.  I checked the Clipper Creek web site and found some specifications and installation instructions for the model I wanted (with a 220-volt plug).  I had some questions about my installation and sent an e-mail to Clipper Creek.  They responded promptly with enough information to address my concerns, so I was ready to place my order.  One change that I would have to adapt was in the orientation of the electrical outlet and housing.  The cord for my (now broken) charger exited the housing from below and wrapped around to the charger box above.  This new charger (and all the others I found for sale) limit the length of the cord to just 12 inches, forcing the cord to exit the housing from above to feed directly to the charger.  (This was the result of a newly adopted national electrical standard.) 

Just then I remembered a recall for my car that concerned a particular EV charger.  At the time, the recall was not for my charger, so I decided to wait for my annual service appointment to address it.  But suddenly I remembered the charger brand in the recall and double-checked my recall paperwork – the recall involved Clipper Creek chargers.  So, I had to get the car serviced before I could buy the charger.  This further delayed getting the new charger, but only by a few days as the dealer was able to work on my car soon after I called.  Finally, I was able to place the order with Clipper Creek (which I did online).

My new Clipper Creek charger mounted on the wall

Much to my surprise, the charger arrived the next day (and on a Saturday, no less).  A few days later I had time to install it.  I needed to reorient the outlet, which was straight-forward and involved removing six screws, rotating the outlet in place, tucking the wires back inside the outlet box carefully, and reattaching the six screws in the new orientation.  (I also needed to cut a little more away from the opening of the plastic housing for the larger plug.)  After a couple of drill holes in the wall, two bolts, and connecting the plug to the outlet, I was ready to test the unit.  When I tested my first EV charger, I plugged everything in without worrying about problems.  This time, after having dealt with the recall (which was essentially a firmware update), I was more nervous because I wasn’t confident that the firmware update would work for my new charger model.  But, I threw the switch on the circuit breaker and the status light came on.  I connected the charger plug to the car, heard a loud click, and the car began charging.  And I let out a sigh of relief because I would no longer have to depend on the slow-charging level-1 charger that came with the car.  I could drive the distance again.

Pile it in

When you drive a car the size of a pill-box on the outside, it’s sometimes hard to believe what you can carry on the inside.  While my car is about the length of a Mini Cooper, inside there is much more room, especially with the rear seats folded flat.  Unlike the Mini (and most other tiny cars), the Mitsubishi i-MiEV was optimized for an electric drivetrain.  There is no bulky three- or four-cylinder engine, no transaxle with spinning cogs and flywheels, no muffler, and no gas tank.  The car is propelled by an efficient electric motor that is installed between the two rear wheels, with the batteries stored beneath each of the seats.  By raising the roofline to compensate for the batteries underneath, nearly the entire length of the car can be devoted to passenger (and cargo) space.  Admittedly, the car will carry only four people, which is an acceptable limitation for me.  (I can squeeze six into my four-door pickup on those rare occasions that I need the extra people capacity.)  But the real value of this car’s interior dimensions lies in its ability to accommodate cargo with the rear seats folded down.

On the few occasions I have taken my car in for service, I always toss my bicycle into the back with the front tire removed.  The bike fits easily like this.  (When taking my old 1987 BMW 325i to the mechanic, I would have to remove both wheels to fit the bike into the trunk.)  That the bike would fit came as no surprise.  What surprised me was when I undertook a repainting project that spanned a few weekends.  Even though I brought supplies to this apartment being repainted in multiple loads, I was astounded that I was able to return with all the supplies in one load.  See for yourself in the photos below, but the load contained several storage bins full of supplies, a few paint cans and a five-gallon can, drop cloths, cleaning gear, and a full-size dolly.  And, as you can see, my view to the rear was not obstructed by the cargo either.  Since that job, whenever I check out an electric car, I first look at the rear cargo area and whether the seats fold flat before I even consider the car for my future.  (Sorry Ford Focus, but this was a major deal-breaker.)

All this stuff just came out of the I-MiEV (see next picture)

 

All the stuff that fits easily inside the I-MiEV with the rear seats folded flat