Our road-and-sea trip was much less adventurous than other road trips reported here, so I won't give it a thread of its own but will add it on here as it may be of interest to some. Main observations:
- Tony's range chart is very useful
- Driving 55 saves a lot amount of energy
- Weseloh Nissan is great!
- Carwings seems useful now
- Complacency consumes a lot of energy
- Road trips will usually require QC to be practical
We went from near Carmel Valley, CA to Avalon, a round trip distance of 176 miles - 102 miles of which were traveled in the Leaf while 74 miles were traveled on the ferry from Dana Point. I planned the trip using Tony's range chart augmented by SurfingSlovak's tables correlating hours of charge time at 120V to a substitute state of charge meter that is much more accurate than dashboard bars. I planned to drive to Dana Point on I-5 and park at the harbor where there is no charging available. On return I planned to charge at nearby Weseloh Nissan for 1.5 hours and then return as much as possible on Hwy 1 at an average speed of 40mph.
We left April 9 morning with temperature about 55 under cloudy skies. I needed just a little bit of climate control occasionally to keep the windows clear. At various check points I projected what value of miles per kWh I needed to hit on that leg of the journey, and how much battery I should have left measured in bars, hours to full at 120V, and DTE. If any of those readings were unfavorable then I would have to slow down to conserve energy. My son was navigator and checked all the readings for me, so we knew we were on or ahead of our energy plan.
@Carmel Valley
Odometer 0/0 (planned/actual)
MPH 55/55
Miles/Kwh 4.3/3.7
Bars 12/12
Hrs 120V 0/0
DTE 99/91
@Manchester Rd
Odometer 8.1/8.3
MPH 55/55
Miles/Kwh 4.3/4.8
Bars 11/11
Hrs 120V 3/2.5
DTE 81/91
@Palomar Airport Rd
Odometer 16.6/16.3
MPH 55/55
Miles/Kwh 4.3/5.3
Bars 9/10
Hrs 5.5/4
DTE 72/88
@Hwy 76
Odometer 23.4/23.2
MPH 55/55
Miles/Kwh 4.3/4.8
Bars 8/9
Hrs 8/6
DTE 65/78
@San Onofre beach
Odometer 41.8/39.6
MPH 55/55
Miles/Kwh 4.3/4.8
Bars 5/7
Hrs 14/10
DTE 47/60
@Dana Point
Odometer 50.7/50.6
MPH 40/--
Miles/Kwh 5.9/--
Bars 4/5
Hrs 16/13
DTE 38/47
I put it in D so speed fluctuations wouldn't engage so much regen as with ECO, set cruise control to 55, and drove in the right lane of the mostly flat I-5, with fairly light traffic. Surprisingly driving 55 to save energy wasn't really worse than driving 65 - which you might do to be certain not to get a speeding ticket. Sure cars and even big trucks streamed around me, but if I drive 65 nearly all other cars also stream around me. And at 65 they sometimes can't estimate my speed, or think they can intimidate me into going faster if only they tailgate closely enough. But at 55 I actually got far fewer tailgaters as they moved to the left well before they reached me. A steady 55 gave me great mileage, and miles per kWh read from the center screen for each segment was generally better than expected from the range chart. Which is the right direction of error for a range chart.
Adding up those figures for each segment I get a total of 10.1 kWh used for 50.7 miles and 5.0 miles per kWh. Carwings reported 10.2 kWh (+1.5%) for 49.3 miles (-2.8%), and 4.9 miles per kWh (-2.9%). I used another 0.2 kWh moving the car from the harbor office to designated long term parking, 0.1 kWh driving back from parking to the harbor office, and 1.2 kWh driving from there to Weseloh Nissan.
There is no EV charging at Dana Point Harbor, so I had to charge before our return. The harbor would do best to have a few J1772's for people out for just an afternoon, plus more plain 120V outlets for people who like me were away for several days.
Louie and all the people at Weseloh Nissan were great, letting me know ahead of time that I was welcome to charge there, and making sure that I had a space to do so. PS, if you're looking for one, Weseloh has two 2011 demos that they're selling at a good discount from MSRP, which you could drive off the lot today. (And they did NOT ask me to write that in exchange for charging.) Weseloh is located across the street from the Marriot Residence Inn that will host one of the first EVOasis DC Quick Chargers, supposedly opening any day now. But not in time for this trip.
I had done so well on the trip out that I figured I didn't really need the full 1.5 hours charging to make it home. However by the time we had finished a late lunch and done some shopping, two hours had elapsed. So I was feeling complacent about my charge state. The ferry crossing from Avalon had been trying, with a driving storm soaking us as we waited to board, with cancellation threatened, and rolling waves sending many of our fellow passengers to the rails - and worse - with seasickness . So we were eager to get home and I let complacency get the better of me.
Discarding my table of check points and forgoing the tranquil Pacific Coast Highway, I set off for home on I-5 relying just on the guess-o-meter (DTE) and hours-at-120 meter. Temperature was about 50 with light rain. The car interior was very humid from our wet clothes and needed frequent defrosting to keep the windows clear. I drove at 65 mph until I found a truck going 60 mph I could follow at a respectable distance.
By the time we reached Santa Fe Drive I had burned through all the kWh I had hoarded on the outbound trip, and I knew I had to conserve. The range chart told me the situation wasn't bad enough that I would have to stop again at Scripps Hospital to recharge some more. But I continued on Pacific Coast Highway at 40 mph, back to original plan with originally planned battery capacity remaining. As I climbed the hill inland on Del Mar Heights road I got my first ever LBW with 11 miles on the DTE and 5 miles to go. As I entered my neighborhood with less than a mile to go I got VLBW. Carwings reported the entire return trip as 12.6 kWh used for 50.9 miles at 4.1 mi/kWh.
My wife thinks that while they're great in the city, taking an EV on the road is just too much bother. I think that had the EVOasis QC station opened a week earlier than planned, this trip would have been completely uneventful. We could have driven on any route at 65 or 75 with the flow of traffic and not worried about it. This summer I expect to make a trip to LA by myself, and I *hope* that by then some of the long promised QC stations are finally open. An easy trip will put the Leaf right back into the picture for short road trips like this.
