Owning an Electric Car

I've owned an electric car for about a year and a half now, so for all of you out there wondering "what's it like?"  I'm going to tell you.

Range:
When new, the 2011 Nissan Leaf's battery has a capacity of 24 kWh and could probably go about 80 highway miles on a full charge.  My battery capacity is down to about 17 kWh and I'd probably max out at about 65 miles.  Plus that would entail running the battery down to near empty which isn't something you'd want to do on a regular basis.  A strong headwind will knock down your range noticeably as will below freezing temperatures (though high temperatures also extend it quite a bit).  Realistically I wouldn't be comfortable counting on my car (in its current state) for a one way commute of more than 50 miles.  Fortunately mine is 36, so I should be good for a few more years.

I also drive pretty slow.  Usually 65 mph (70 mph if I'm running late).  The car can obviously go faster, but drag increases exponentially with speed, so I drive slow.  Granted I only drove my Corolla 70 to get better gas mileage, so I'd already adjusted to life in the slow lane.  And for my commute going 70 vs 65 only saves me about 1 min 40 sec.  Driving 75 vs 65 saves just over 3 min.

Charging/Battery Care:
Lithium batteries do best when you avoid extreme states of charge (this is true for your phone and laptops as well), so the ideal battery cycle is charging to 80% and discharging to 20%.  Being in an extreme state of charge for a few hours won't do much (if any) damage, but I still typically use the car's timer to have it finish charging about an hour or less from the time that I'll leave.

The car comes with a 120 V trickle charger that you can plug into any household outlet.  It draws about 1.8kW of power and takes about 7-8 hours (faster in warm weather, slower in cold) to charge from 20 to 80%.  The public charging stations are typically 240 V and charge it at 3.6 kW, so the time is cut in half.  Newer Leafs can charge at 6.6 kW, which the public stations can do.  Tesla superchargers charge at an insane 120 kW.  That's freaking nuts!

None of the charging stations in Reno (there are 62 of them) make you pay to use them, but stations in other cities do.  For now I just have to worry about finding a spot.  There are two spots in the parking garage at UNR where I would park anyway, and the first year I had my Leaf there wasn't a single time that they were both full when I arrived.  This year they've been full probably 10 times.  When that happens I park right in front of my school until my lunch break.  Then I check if the UNR charging station has opened, and if it hasn't I go charge at the Silver Legacy.  It's about a 0.7 mile walk instead of the 0.4 mile walk from the UNR station, but it's not too bad for a plan B.

I charge to 80% at home and am down to about 25% when I get to work.  Since NV Energy changed my solar arrangement, I've started charging to 95% (that's as high as it goes now) at work.  I get home with about 45% charge remaining (it uses a little less energy coming home because it's slightly downhill), still enough to run an errand or two.

The actual charge status reported on the dashboard is represented by 12 charge bars and a Guess-O-Meter of how many miles you have left.  It's pretty useless if you want any detailed information at all.  Fortunately with a bluetooth OBD scanner and a smartphone app, you can extract all the data you'd ever want.  It tells me the state of charge to a tenth of a percent, as well as the overall battery capacity (definitely something you'd want to measure if you're ever buying used).

Only one time have I ever forgotten to plug in my car at night (usually I just set the timer and plug it in right when I get home), which was just yesterday.  I took our van to work and Lindsey was able to use the Leaf to get around town.

Other:
I believe it was the book "Status Anxiety" that talked about how one of the reasons that the novelty of our purchases wears off so quickly is because the upgrades are typically very similar to the devices they are replacing.  An iPhone 5 can do 99% of what an iPhone 6 can do, so in the end the new device isn't all that novel.  Whenever I start up my Leaf, I still get the "oh wow, this is different" feeling.  When I hear how loud a gas engine is I think, "listen to all that wasted energy."  Little things like leaving my car on after I close the garage door make an impression on me.  So yes, overall I love my car.

That being said, my car is certainly inconvenient.  I can only take it to Reno if I'll be going somewhere near a charging station, and if I'll be spending several hours there.  When Lindsey and I took a vacation to California last year without the kids and didn't want to drive the van, we had to swap cars with my dad.  If my commute distance weren't in the sweet spot (long enough to save a decent amount on gas money but short enough to be within range), it wouldn't begin to be worth the trouble.

The (near) Future of EVs:

Chevy is bringing the 200+ mile Bolt to market at the end of the year, but it would be hard to fork over $35k for the Bolt when you can get the Model 3 for the same price.  As of 4/7/16, Tesla reported they've taken over 325,000 pre-orders.  Unfortunately Tesla has an abysmal history of meeting production goals, so maybe some people will lose patience and go with the Bolt.  It's still a pretty impressive start for Tesla and represents significant interest in going electric.  Yet there are about 17 million new cars sold per year in the US, which means even if Tesla eventually meets their goal of 500k cars per year, that would only be ~ 3% of US auto sales.

I wonder if Tesla's greatest achievement is actually the marketing strategy of building its status as a luxury brand and then releasing a similar product with a below-luxury price.  Has this been done before?  Regardless, with the successful landing of the Space-X rocket today, Musk has had a pretty good 8 days.