Quercus Consulting

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Winter is Here!

It’s only November but it’s cold alright, and the impact on the Leaf is quite clear and dramatic. Throughout the summer and early fall, the car had a range of 120 miles when fully charged. As soon as the temperature dropped below 45 degrees (F), the range at 100% charged dropped to 91 miles, a loss of almost 25%. If the heat is activated, the range drops by another 14 miles. Ouch.

I have been fairly dismissive of charging stations at my destinations thus far, they simply haven’t been necessary for even my longest round trips of 80 miles. But now, the range anxiety is back as I worry about getting to my destination and finding the charging station already in use by another EV driver. I’m still new to these apps but it doesn’t look like I can reserve a charging port in advance. If that’s the case, then I would suggest to ChargePoint and EVGo that they enable reservations in the very near future.

In the summer I avoided use of the air conditioning as much as possible, and I am now testing the winter driving without heat. Comfort-wise it’s been fine thus far, although I plan to keep blankets in the car as the temperature plummets. Unfortunately, I have needed to turn on the heat to dissipate the window fog. Sometimes it goes away by opening the windows for a minute or two, but in other cases only the heat provides a clear view.

We are still charging the vehicle only overnight, so I have not been able to determine if the cold also lengthens the amount of time it takes the battery to charge. And yes, we are still on the 120V ‘trickle charge’! It turns out that running the 240V to the garage will take some effort. The garage is old enough that it is serviced by insulated wiring, not buried conduit, so we need to dig an 18” trench from the house to the garage. Now that the ground is about to freeze, I guess I should have checked into this over the summer while I was too busy not worrying about it!

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Cost Savings, and then Some!

It took a little bit of work, but reviewing the last two billing cycles and diving into the details of the bill online, I have calculated that it costs $2.55 to fully charge the Leaf. I then calculated that it would cost $13.20 to get 120 miles out of a 25 MPG conventional car, that’s a really big difference! This is a big part of the “total cost of ownership” calculation that is so hard to articulate for folks who might consider an EV, but are turned off by the initial sticker shock.

I have 14 years of utility data, but there are many factors that make a linear, apples-to-apples comparison difficult. Our building has had many energy efficiency upgrades over that time, from insulation and new appliances to LED light bulbs, and adding the weather and rate changes into the mix makes isolating the electrical consumption of the Leaf somewhat difficult. BUT, just using an average of the last three years after most of those upgrades were complete, it looks like the Leaf will increase our bill by 20%. This will add up to about $325 per year to keep the car charged to meet our needs.

Sparing you again from the weeds I dug through to calculate the annual cost of gas for our previous small car, which switched from a 25 MPG conventional car to a 40 MPG hybrid during the study period, and knowing how much gas prices have changed in the last three years, the annual average gas cost was around $900 per year. Should these estimates pan out, the Leaf will save us around $575 per year.

What I really like about that savings figure is the impact it could have on the regional economy if ownership of electric vehicles was widespread. In 2012, we produced a report for Clean Fuels Ohio that calculated such an impact, and it’s really impressive. To summarize, $750 of that $900 we used to spend on gas (86%) leaves the regional economy to pay for the primary activities of extraction and refining, leaving only $150 to be spent locally on job-creating activities like shopping and going to the movies. With the Leaf, we now have $575 in our pocket to spend, almost three times as much!

There are 1.9 million households in Chicago, and the US Census reports there are 1.1 vehicles per household. Now, imagine that extra $425 per household multiplied by 11,000 EVs, which is only 1% of those household vehicles, and the result is nearly FIVE MILLION DOLLARS being spent at coffee shops, movie theaters, restaurants, babysitters, taquerias, sports bars, hardware stores, and more, instead of leaving the region. That’s just in one city, in just one state. WOW.

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To Charge or Not to Charge?

I took the Leaf for its longest round trip today without charging at my destination, 22 miles each way. Now, technically, we know that the Leaf has a range of 120 miles on a full charge, so obviously it could make the round trip with no issue. But logical thinking like that is not how the ‘range anxiety’ mind works!

With range anxiety, a driver feels, in her gut, that the car will grind to a halt in the middle of the highway and she’ll be trapped with no help of rescue, because it’s not like roadside assistance travels with mobile lithium battery chargers. So frankly, her electric vehicle will simply become part of the roadway and she’ll lose all her money and never have a car to drive ever again.

I am pleased to report that after 12 days of driving, I have already become quite trusting of the car’s ability to get me from Point A to Point B and back again without being on a full charge at all times. In fact, today the car was down to 50% charge for the first time, and I may not even plug it in tonight! OK, I probably will but only after 9 pm, and only if it stops raining.

Thus far we plug in about every other day. I definitely don’t bother to charge if the car is at 80% charged or greater, maybe not even at 70%. I would definitely plug in at 60% or less. I’ll have to look back at this in a few months to see if I have lowered my threshold.

Livin’ on the edge! Only 50% charged.

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Leaf-ing Around Chicagoland

Five years after publishing a report on the positive economic impacts of electric vehicles, we finally got on board: Quercus Consulting’s company fleet now includes a 2017 Nissan Leaf SV! Today I took it for our first long drive, a round trip of 80 miles. Spoiler alert: it worked great and we didn’t run out of juice! Here’s what you really want to know:

Range: We made the purchase decision pretty quickly (minus the 5-year deliberation period), so we do not yet have a Level 2 charging port in the garage. In the past four days of driving the Leaf, all of our round trips have been five miles or less, so using the 120V “trickle” outlet from 9 pm to 6 am has been sufficient. Today’s trip was to visit our client at the College of Lake County, which just installed a ChargePoint station two weeks ago, lucky us!

We started the trip with an almost full charge and a range of 98 miles – it’s hot today so we had the AC on, which reduced the range by 11 miles – and arrived at CLC with 67 miles available, or 66% charged. That was more than enough to return, but we wanted to try the Level 2 charger and wow, what a difference from the 120V! In 2.5 hours of charging we were back to 100% charged with a range of 110 miles, including AC. How fast can I get an electrician to install a 240V outlet in the garage?

Cost to Charge: The rate to charge depends on the host site. At CLC it was free (thanks!), but looking at the ChargePoint app, another station along our route would have charged $2 per hour, so the cost would have been $5 for the 2.5 hours. Equating that to a conventional compact car with a 13-gallon tank at 66% full, the cost to top off would be just under $11.50 at today’s gas price. If you’re interested in the cost to buy the car itself, please see the post “We Heart Utility Rebates.”

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We Heart Utility Rebates

As noted in the post “Leaf-ing Around Chicago,” we made the decision to buy a Nissan Leaf relatively quickly.  Nissan offered a $10,000 discount off the MSRP of a new Leaf, promoted by ComEd, our local utility, but only for the month of June 2017.  That was a big incentive, but June was really busy, so we didn’t get to the dealer until the end of the month, but in time for the discount.  I don’t mind telling you what we paid because I think it’s important for people to know that these vehicles can be affordable, and hopefully this great discount will be repeated.  With the discount and our trade-in (a perfectly nice Honda Civic Hybrid), plus taxes and fees, our total price was $20K.  We will get the $7,500 tax credit as well, which really brings the cost to $12,500.  You can’t even get a Toyota Yaris or a Honda Fit for that price!

There is also the total cost of ownership to consider.  With an all-electric vehicle, there are no oil changes, no emissions checks, and no exhaust system upkeep.  I remember bursting into tears when a mechanic told me what it would cost to replace the catalytic converter on my first car, so it’s quite a comfort knowing I won’t have to face that again.

Yes, I have read about older model Leafs having expensive problems, but as of now I’m not worried about that for two reasons: (1) the battery on the 2017 SV has 20% greater capacity than the 2012 models which are pooping out around now.  Assuming we don’t drive like maniacs, this car’s battery should maintain optimal performance longer.  (2) I tend to retire vehicles before they reach 100,000 miles.  In my experience, repairs get expensive at 80,000 miles, and they’re unreasonable at 100,000, so whether it’s a gas car or electric, I’m in a new car before this point.

There are more reasons to love utility rebates.  Please visit our project portfolio to read about a study we conducted that showed the serious job creation/retention generated by investing in energy efficient technology.  

Update: Nissan has extended the $10K discount through September 30, 2017!  We had to contact multiple dealers to find the model we wanted, so if you’re seriously considering a Leaf, start searching dealer before the last few days of the deal.

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How’s the Drive?

We’ve only been driving the Leaf for five days, but so far it is very enjoyable. Here are a few first impressions:

Interior Space: The inside feels really spacious, especially compared to the Chevy Volts I have been in which felt dark and compacted. The Leaf has high head clearance and good elbow room between the seats. The driver is definitely positioned higher than our previous car, a Honda Civic Hybrid, which is preferable for visibility.

Bells & Whistles: I’m still getting to know the on-board display, and I identify as “not app-tastic” which means I have an aversion to apps and touch-screen functions that require more than two pokes. I was pleased with myself for figuring out the navigation system on the first try, but then it took me a lot of screen-stabbing to figure out how to end the trip and have the nice lady stop telling me where to turn. My travelling companion tried to connect my phone to the Bluetooth system, and finally gave up after 10 minutes. Later in the day we figured out that the car has to be stationary to connect the phone via Bluetooth.  I understand the safety objective, but I think detecting a phone quickly would be a better safety feature, and if it really can’t connect when the car is in motion, there should be a screen message saying so.

A word about ports: there aren’t enough. There is only one USB port, we’d like to see at least two in the front, two in the back for passengers would be great. There is also an audio-out port, what a waste of space. Do you know anyone who carries a male-to-male connecting cord for their 2005 iPod Shuffle? Me neither.

Giddy-Up: Today was our first drive on the highway, and the pick-up was great. In an electric car, there is no jolt as when a conventional vehicle jumps from one gear to the next; in the Leaf, the acceleration is very smooth. We reached cruising speed easily and with no fear of being the slow-poke at any time.

Gear Shift: The little gear shift fits perfectly well in one’s hand, but I do have a serious bone to pick with the designers for making Reverse a forward motion and Drive the backward motion. I remember driving various friends’ VW Jettas back in the day, and I know Reverse was also a left-forward motion on those manual transmission cars, and I didn’t like it then either. I’ll let you know when I get used to it, if ever.

Noises: I always give a little ‘toot-toot’ for pedestrian safety when exiting my alley. I am pleased to report that the horn sounds like a normal car, unlike the Honda Civic Hybrid which sounded like a dog’s chew toy; it was (almost) too embarrassing to use. Also because the car is so quiet, Nissan added a back-up beep when the car is in Reverse. It is a very polite beep, and the tone is unusual enough that it will make people look up and wonder what is making the noise, which is the point.