I just wanted to let everybody know that I decided to do the Coquihalla Challenge so I could comment on this from experience.
I was driving my 2011 LEAF with its current battery capacity of 59ah (about 90% SOH).
I left Surrey at about 11pm.
drove to chilliwack , and charged up for about 1/2 hour to give me comfort that I would not start the trip off with a tow truck just outside hope.
Got to hope at about 1am, charged up overnight. by 6:30 we were fully charged and ready to go. Off to grab a coffee and breakfast before we headed over the Coquihalla.
We got on the road by 7am, traveled at 60kmh until the main chain-up area, we followed a fully loaded semi trailer at 25kmh till we reached the summit.
The traffic started to get a bit busier, and there was road cleaning going on that restricted the traffic to 1 lane, so I had to speed up abit to 70kmh till we reached the Toll booth rest area, we arrived at 8am
by this time we had 35km left on the guessometer (4 bars), and 65km left in the trip (mostly downhill)
not wanting to take any chances I plugged in for 3 hours to give me a bit of a buffer. and it gave me lots of opportunity to talk to people about the LEAF. most were very interested and excited about the future of electric vehicles. A few people were upset that I wasn't paying for the electricity that I was "stealing".
everybody seemed to move over into the faster lanes going up the hill just fine, I would attribute that to them seeing the semi trailer and not so much about noticing my speed.
We left the toll booth area at 11am with 50km range, drove at 60kmh. We had a couple of incidents where some horns were blown because people took too long to pull over into the faster lanes, and the people following them were unaware of how slow I was going, I had my hazard lights on whenever people took too long to move over.
We were fortunate that there was very little traffic on the road or there would have been more issues like this.
We took the Coldwater road exit, which is very quiet and 60kmh is a good speed for that road.
We arrived in Merritt with 2 bars remaining and 31km left on the guessometer, using a total of 6kwh from the rest area to Merritt.
driving back we drove at 60kmh to the summit, we didn't need to stop at the rest area at all, and from the summit to Hope we used a total of 1.5 kwh, and we traveled at 74kmh (much faster down through the snowshed)
so it can be done, but not quickly and safely at this point.
Kelly
I was driving my 2011 LEAF with its current battery capacity of 59ah (about 90% SOH).
I left Surrey at about 11pm.
drove to chilliwack , and charged up for about 1/2 hour to give me comfort that I would not start the trip off with a tow truck just outside hope.
Got to hope at about 1am, charged up overnight. by 6:30 we were fully charged and ready to go. Off to grab a coffee and breakfast before we headed over the Coquihalla.
We got on the road by 7am, traveled at 60kmh until the main chain-up area, we followed a fully loaded semi trailer at 25kmh till we reached the summit.
The traffic started to get a bit busier, and there was road cleaning going on that restricted the traffic to 1 lane, so I had to speed up abit to 70kmh till we reached the Toll booth rest area, we arrived at 8am
by this time we had 35km left on the guessometer (4 bars), and 65km left in the trip (mostly downhill)
not wanting to take any chances I plugged in for 3 hours to give me a bit of a buffer. and it gave me lots of opportunity to talk to people about the LEAF. most were very interested and excited about the future of electric vehicles. A few people were upset that I wasn't paying for the electricity that I was "stealing".
everybody seemed to move over into the faster lanes going up the hill just fine, I would attribute that to them seeing the semi trailer and not so much about noticing my speed.
We left the toll booth area at 11am with 50km range, drove at 60kmh. We had a couple of incidents where some horns were blown because people took too long to pull over into the faster lanes, and the people following them were unaware of how slow I was going, I had my hazard lights on whenever people took too long to move over.
We were fortunate that there was very little traffic on the road or there would have been more issues like this.
We took the Coldwater road exit, which is very quiet and 60kmh is a good speed for that road.
We arrived in Merritt with 2 bars remaining and 31km left on the guessometer, using a total of 6kwh from the rest area to Merritt.
driving back we drove at 60kmh to the summit, we didn't need to stop at the rest area at all, and from the summit to Hope we used a total of 1.5 kwh, and we traveled at 74kmh (much faster down through the snowshed)
so it can be done, but not quickly and safely at this point.
Kelly
