Winter Update

Yikes!  We've really slacked off on the blog here  The last entry was over a month ago.  Some of the blame can be placed with season four of Downton Abbey and season two of House of Cards but it's also because there hasn't been anything especially interesting to report.  The LEAF has pretty much just become a car.  Getting us from place to place like any other car.  But anyway why not an update!  Read on.

First, the winter weather.  When we were originally contemplating the LEAF one of my biggest concerns was how the battery would hold up during a New England winter.  Note the blog entry I posted at the beginning of December where I thought 3 degrees was cold.  If you'd asked me to describe a worst case scenario for the first winter of driving an electric car I wouldn't have come up with anything close to as brutal as this.  Maybe a few stretches in the teens and twenties.  A few mornings in single digits.  In the time I owned the Maxima I saw the thermometer hit -1 once.  In ten years.  This year I've lost count of the number of days the LEAF thermometer has registered below zero.  And not just -1 but -3, -5, -7.  Three degrees below the freezing point of the lithium ion battery.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to Kerry that although this winter had been exceptionally cold we didn't seem to have had an unusual amount of snow.  Since then we've had something like five storms, the last three over a span of seven days.

WILL IT EVER END???

Had I known in advance what this winter was going to be like I may well have held off on the LEAF or reconsidered altogether but I'm glad we didn't because, as I noted in a post during the first polar vortex it's held up well to both the cold and the snow.  And it has continued to hold up.  I never feel the need to skimp on the climate control, wear my long johns or flying nun hat.  I will say that when the temperatures dip into the teens I will head into the office on the shorter but slower back road commute but as long as the day starts in the mid to high twenties I'm comfortable taking the 60 mile round trip highway commute both ways.

I've noticed that once the temperature gets to around 30 the climate control uses very little power after the first few minutes once it's warmed the car up to start with (and that's assuming it wasn't preheating while plugged in).

As I've noted in the past, the ability to preheat while plugged in (and in a closed garage without dying of carbon monoxide poisoning) along with the steering wheel heater and super fast heated seats make a big difference in the comfort level and efficiency of the climate control.  I find that in The Van I'm cranking the heat and still uncomfortable because my hands and butt are frozen.

So what about non-winter related updates?  We posted about not having a 240V charger but never really talked about having one.  If you have anything like the commutes we have you definitely need it.  It's freeing.  We rarely have to question now "is the car charged?".  And even if you don't need it, given our experience just with the 120V outlet, you should probably have an electrician stop by.

Speaking of electricity, how about or electricity and gas usage?  We only have 3 months of data so it's hard to show real trends, but what I do know is that we use the LEAF a lot more than we used to drive the Maxima.  To the point that we're currently exceeding our lease mileage by about 10%.  We drive the LEAF around town a lot when we would have previously piled into The Van.  As for our actual fuel usage and charges, it looks like we're spending between $150 and $200 less per month on gas.  We've never tracked the actual number of gallons so obviously that is subject to the volatility of  gas prices but I think it is a fairly accurate representation of the replacement of a gasoline car with an electric and the reduced amount of driving done in the van.

As for electricity, that's a bit trickier.  The first month we had the LEAF our kWh usage was actually less than the prior year.  It was about 100 kWh higher the second month and 400 kWh this past month.  At our prior electric rate that comes to about an extra $100 on our bill.  That 400 kWh number is about what we were expecting.

We did finally manage to switch to Viridian and buy 100% wind power for a little more than 1/2 the rate NStar was charging for their 100% wind program (NStar Green) so that extra 400 kWh should cost us even less now.  Given that, it looks like we're going to be saving a considerable amount on fuel with our switch from gas to electric.

Another thing I researched prior to committing to the LEAF was the local public charging infrastructure.  It's still a bit thin here in New England.  However, it turns out we've never really needed it.  We've charged the car at a public charger all of three times and only one of those times was it even vaguely necessary and mostly it provided parking in Cambridge that was cheaper than a meter spot and recharged the car.

So what are my overall feelings about the LEAF after the first three months?  I love it!  I'm pretty much over my range anxiety.  I'm really starting to just treat it like a regular car.  I like passing gas stations and not looking at the price.  I like the performance.  Pop it out of ECO mode and you have no problem passing or  merging onto the highway.  It's a great commuter/second/around town car.  It won't get us to my in-laws on Long Island, or my dad in Delaware or our friends in Asheville, NC but that's why we have The Van.  What it does is get's us to work, to the supermarket, to karate, and music, and Kumon.  Things we do a lot more often than drive to North Carolina.

Three months down, twenty one to go and looking forward to delivery of our 2016 LEAF.