I drove 275 miles in under 12 hours

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Computerizer

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 21, 2012
Messages
190
Location
Bellingham, WA, US
Yesterday I drove my LEAF, packed full of camping supplies, plus my wife and dog, 275 miles from outside of Tillamook, OR to Lynnwood, WA. My wife wasn't feeling well so we were trying to get close to home to complete out road trip. Ambient temperatures during the afternoon were around 80 F, but it cooled off quickly in the evening which allowed us to pull off a couple more quick charges. In total we did 7 quick charge sessions, although most were only from about 40% to 80%, so not very long. We were driving on highways, typically 55 to 65 mph.

We were only at 9 temperature bars when we decided to stop around 10pm. We could have thrown in another quick charge and another 60 miles of driving, for sure, but we were tired and close to a relative's house, so we decided to stop.

What's the farthest you've driven in one day, and how did it go?
 
I drove from seattle, washington, to priest lake, id. Via highway 2. Last summer. 3 level 3 charging stops, and 6 level 2 stops. I had to carry my own evse. Just under 400 miles. 22 hours. But only because I fell asleep at the last charging stop. Woke up with charging stopped and 100 percent in there!

I went to priest lake again this summer, but took the i90 route just to spokane this time, and rode with sis to the lake in her car, leaving my leaf on level 1 in spokane. That was a 280 mile trip in 12 hours. 1 level 3 stop and 3 level 2 stops. 2 with my own evse and 1 with the public one in moses lake.
 
johnrhansen said:
I went to priest lake again this summer, but took the i90 route just to spokane this time, and rode with sis to the lake in her car, leaving my leaf on level 1 in spokane. That was a 280 mile trip in 12 hours. 1 level 3 stop and 3 level 2 stops. 2 with my own evse and 1 with the public one in moses lake.
net MPH of just a shade over 23 MPH.
I'm sorry but I just don't see how anyone could be pleased with this level of performance. The LEAF is a good car but it just isn't the right car for trips like this
 
apvbguy said:
johnrhansen said:
I went to priest lake again this summer, but took the i90 route just to spokane this time, and rode with sis to the lake in her car, leaving my leaf on level 1 in spokane. That was a 280 mile trip in 12 hours. 1 level 3 stop and 3 level 2 stops. 2 with my own evse and 1 with the public one in moses lake.
net MPH of just a shade over 23 MPH.
I'm sorry but I just don't see how anyone could be pleased with this level of performance. The LEAF is a good car but it just isn't the right car for trips like this

In my case I kept stopping at rest areas and extra chargers because my wife had come down with a stomach bug (which is also why we were driving the long distance, to try to get home) and she needed the stops. We also had to let the dog out from time to time. Otherwise the trip could have been a little faster.

In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
 
Computerizer said:
In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds
 
Computerizer said:
In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds, that distance is a 5-6 hour trip at reasonable speeds
 
apvbguy said:
Computerizer said:
In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds, that distance is a 5-6 hour trip at reasonable speeds
While I agree with you that a sub-100 mile BEV is a poor vehicle for this trip, from the OP's sig it appears that he's ignoring a 'car that is capable of making the trip at normal speeds', because he doesn't own one.
 
GRA said:
apvbguy said:
Computerizer said:
In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds, that distance is a 5-6 hour trip at reasonable speeds
While I agree with you that a sub-100 mile BEV is a poor vehicle for this trip, from the OP's sig it appears that he's ignoring a 'car that is capable of making the trip at normal speeds', because he doesn't own one.

That is correct. As far as I'm concerned, a gas car is not an option. Period.
 
TomT said:
Computerizer said:
That is correct. As far as I'm concerned, a gas car is not an option. Period.
Each to their own, of course, but bringing a knife to a gun fight is, well... :roll:
This is the OP:

"1,500-Mile Nissan LEAF Zero-Emission Road Trip Complete"

http://insideevs.com/1500-mile-nissan-leaf-zero-emission-road-trip-complete/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
TomT said:
Each to their own, of course, but bringing a knife to a gun fight is, well... :roll:

Computerizer said:
That is correct. As far as I'm concerned, a gas car is not an option. Period.

Who said this was a fight? It's a road trip, a vacation. Vacations are all about wasting time, whether we decide to waste it at the destination or on the journey is a matter of interpretation of what a waste is.

I drove my car at normal speeds. So there was no time wasted there. I threw my bicycle in the back and had adventures at every stop. It's amazing what you can see in "fly over" country if you just explore a little. I had a great time the entire time. Peaple always are doing things the hard way on purpose just for the challenge of it. Nothing wrong with that, as long as they are having a good time. They are not you. My family all understands that now, even though they are still rolling their eyes at me when I talk about taking 12 hours for a trip that should take 4. I'm sure the our intrepid op has similar good memories of his adventure.

for the record though, my long distance road trips in the leaf are over. I've had my fun, now its time to move onto something else. No more than one quick charge per direction. It's really not good for the battery on a car with no cooling system for the battery. I had 11 temp bsrs on the way back. I wonder what that did to my capacity? I no longer have a aerovironment account. Just nissan dealers and my or friends houses or an occasional rv park from now on. I bought a patch of land in Sequim, 71 miles from seattle, just within range for my car at least for a couple years. I'll be to busy scratching on that to take any more 22 or even 12 hour road trips. But it was fun doing it that couple of times, and I wouldn't do things differently. As time goes by though, my car is becoming more of a tool and less of a passion.
 
I am glad that you were able to come up with ways to make interesting use of the excessive downtime. my comments were summed up when you said your car was becoming less of a passion. that has been my point all along, the car is a tool and long distances tripping is the wrong tool for that task.
 
GRA said:
apvbguy said:
Computerizer said:
In any case: It's a heck of a lot easier and faster than riding a bicycle, a horse, or walking, which I think are my only other options...
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds, that distance is a 5-6 hour trip at reasonable speeds
While I agree with you that a sub-100 mile BEV is a poor vehicle for this trip, from the OP's sig it appears that he's ignoring a 'car that is capable of making the trip at normal speeds', because he doesn't own one.
while the op may not own any gasmobiles they have places where a person can rent one of those when necessary
 
Nubo said:
"Excessive" is your personal value judgement.
Maybe it is MY value judgement. IMHO taking 12 hours to complete a trip that can be done in 5 hours while driving at a leisurely pace is excessively long in a motor vehicle. the point isn't really the amount of time the trip took, the point is that the LEAF is NOT the proper tool for that job, if you are willing to devote that much time to getting from here to there, you could use other modes of more efficient transport
 
apvbguy said:
GRA said:
apvbguy said:
you ignored a car that is capable of making the trip at "normal" speeds, that distance is a 5-6 hour trip at reasonable speeds
While I agree with you that a sub-100 mile BEV is a poor vehicle for this trip, from the OP's sig it appears that he's ignoring a 'car that is capable of making the trip at normal speeds', because he doesn't own one.
while the op may not own any gasmobiles they have places where a person can rent one of those when necessary
Sure, but as the OP made clear he's committed to no gas, so barring the ability to afford a Model S or X his LEAF is the only car option he has. Of course, most people are like johnrhansen, and once they've pushed the limits a few times as an adventure and the novelty wears off, they start treating the car like a tool instead of a hobby, and use the appropriate tool for the job. Whether that will be the case with the OP remains to be seen, although I suspect he's more committed than most, and is willing to make the occasional time sacrifice until he can upgrade to a Model 3 or similar.
 
apvbguy said:
Nubo said:
"Excessive" is your personal value judgement.
...the point is that the LEAF is NOT the proper tool for that job...

One of my favorite passages from "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" has something to say about "the proper tool for the job"…

His handlebars had started slipping. Not badly, he said, just a little when you shoved hard on them. I warned him not to use his adjustable wrench on the tightening nuts. It was likely to damage the chrome and start small rust spots. He agreed to use my metric sockets and box-ends. When he brought his motorcycle over I got my wrenches out but then noticed that no amount of tightening would stop the slippage, because the ends of the collars were pinched shut.

“You’re going to have to shim those out,” I said.

“What’s shim?”

“It’s a thin, flat strip of metal. You just slip it around the handlebar under the collar there and it will open up the collar to where you can tighten it again. You use shims like that to make adjustments in all kinds of machines.”

“Oh,” he said. He was getting interested. “Good. Where do you buy them?”

“I’ve got some right here,” I said gleefully, holding up a can of beer in my hand.

He didn’t understand for a moment. Then he said, “What, the can?”

“Sure,” I said, “best shim stock in the world.”

I thought this was pretty clever myself. Save him a trip to God knows where to get shim stock. Save him time. Save him money.

But to my surprise he didn’t see the cleverness of this at all. In fact he got noticeably haughty about the whole thing. Pretty soon he was dodging and filling with all kinds of excuses and, before I realized what his real attitude was, we had decided not to fix the handlebars after all.

As far as I know those handlebars are still loose. And I believe now that he was actually offended at the time. I had had the nerve to propose repair of his new eighteen-hundred dollar BMW, the pride of a half-century of German mechanical finesse, with a piece of old beer can!

Ach, du lieber!

Since then we have had very few conversations about motorcycle maintenance. None, now that I think of it. You push it any further and suddenly you are angry, without knowing why.

I should say, to explain this, that beer-can aluminum is soft and sticky, as metals go. Perfect for the application. Aluminum doesn’t oxidize in wet weather…or, more precisely, it always has a thin layer of oxide that prevents any further oxidation. Also perfect.

In other words, any true German mechanic, with a half-century of mechanical finesse behind him, would have concluded that this particular solution to this particular technical problem was perfect.

For a while I thought what I should have done was sneak over to the workbench, cut a shim from the beer can, remove the printing and then come back and tell him we were in luck, it was the last one I had, specially imported from Germany. That would have done it. A special shim from the private stock of Baron Alfred Krupp, who had to sell it at a great sacrifice. Then he would have gone gaga over it.

That Krupp’s-private-shim fantasy gratified me for a while, but then it wore off and I saw it was just being vindictive. In its place grew that old feeling I’ve talked about before, a feeling that there’s something bigger involved than is apparent on the surface. You follow these little discrepancies long enough and they sometimes open up into huge revelations. There was just a feeling on my part that this was something a little bigger than I wanted to take on without thinking about it, and I turned instead to my usual habit of trying to extract causes and effects to see what was involved that could possibly lead to such an impasse between John’s view of that lovely shim and my own. This comes up all the time in mechanical work. A hang-up. You just sit and stare and think, and search randomly for new information, and go away and come back again, and after a while the unseen factors start to emerge.

What emerged in vague form at first and then in sharper outline was the explanation that I had been seeing that shim in a kind of intellectual, rational, cerebral way in which the scientific properties of the metal were all that counted. John was going at it immediately and intuitively, grooving on it. I was going at it in terms of underlying form. He was going at it in terms of immediate appearance. I was seeing what the shim meant. He was seeing what the shim was.
 
My point was completely missed. Yes it took 12 hours to get to spokane, but none of it was wasted. I enjoyed every minute of it. You see, if you enjoy the points in between, not a second is wasted, but if you just treat the journey as something to be endured, then 4 hours is wasted. I just cant understand a to b people, but well they can't understand me either. I never thought driving an electric car would teach me a life lesson. Slow down, smell the roses, enjoy every moment. Life is a lot better that way. Yes, I probably wont be taking the leaf again. But it still will probably take me more than 12 hours. Ill probably end up taking the north cascades highway and take 2 days!
 
I have regularly been making the trip between Fort Collins and Golden in my Leaf. In the ICE, it's a 2-hour, 130 mile "turn and burn." In the Leaf, it takes me about 3.5 to 4 hours due to taking the back roads and stopping twice for QC (halfway there and halfway back since there's no QC in Golden). I've been doing this about once every other week to visit and take supplies to my son in college.

I'll agree, it's not the right tool for the job. However, I'm still loving the car and having some really nice drives. I am more than willing to hang out and read a book for 2 x 20 minutes each way in order to not burn half a tank of gas. I've also found some really cool potential future homes on these leisurely trips. I am sure I'll have to switch over to the "Earth Murdering Giant SUV" (as I now call my wife's Pilot) soon due to cold weather and snow, but I'm going to miss the car on those trips.

I'm still looking forward to the day I can chose to take the back roads in my electric car as opposed to having to.
 
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