Sacramento area Leafs, how far have you driven?

New to my Leaf and curious where (and how far) you have driven your Leaf, leaving from the greater Sacramento area (including Davis, Elk Grove, Roseville, Folsom, etc).

With L2 charging available in Jackson in the foothills on Highway 49, I'm thinking of my first 'longer distance' drive. It's only 50 miles from my house, but respectable amounts of elevation change to get there.

I think Jeremy has the record for the most long distance trips and he could probably tell you where to charge if you were headed out of town. He was amazing in his use of the vehicle. He took it places I did not even think about attempting...I'd just take the Prius on those days.

I've driven from Davis to Calistoga, to San Francisco, to Santa Rosa, to Petaluma, to San Rafael, and I go to Berkeley twice a month. The quick-charging infrastructure is building up along the I-80 corridor, which really helps.

To take a longer trip, you just need to determine where you can recharge and how long it will take. For an overnight stop, you can plug in the trickle charger almost anywhere.

I like to use plugshare to show me where the quick chargers are within a given radius of my location, and use that information to plan the trip.

alcalira, impressive, those are all 70-80 mile trips. Do you charge mid-trip?

I've done 300 miles in a day- Folsom to Palo Alto and back. Did it several times. Two or three QC's each way. On my phone at the moment, will post more details later tonight.

I'm looking into leasing a Leaf and need some help on driving range in Sacramento.

I want to commute from Folsom to downtown Sacramento and then back without charging. 41 miles roundtrip. 34 freeway miles on Highway 50 and 7 miles on side streets. Will I have comfortable range to run my heater and AC like I would in a regular car? Any commuters out there from Folsom?? Thanks in advance.

While we don't do it regularly for commuting, we do drive from our Pocket neighborhood home to Folsom all the time for shopping and visiting friends. No problem going there and back on a single charge, even after 3 years and about to lose our first bar (I think). You have to strictly obey the speed limits (after some battery degradation) but you don't have to drive super slow. Heat in the summer is absolutely no problem, but the heater in winter will cause a hit to the range. Newer vehicles have a more efficient heater and won't cause as large a hit as our 2011. Seat heaters do most of the work for us. Very rarely do we use the cabin heater and usually just for the early morning outbound direction where we can preheat the cabin while plugged in at home.

There are some other folsom owners on this forum, perhaps one of them does a commute and can provide better first hand experiences. Also, there are lots of charge stations in the downtown parking garages, and they are free to electric vehicle owners as well (parking and electricity). Heck, at $185/mo for parking in the garage, it is almost a no brainer to lease a Leaf and get free parking, even if you don't plug it in. We never need to plug in at the garage, but its great to get easy access to free downtown parking.

Thanks for the info Michael. That's good to hear you can drive from the Pocket area to Folsom and back without a charge. That's more miles than my commute. I just want to make sure I can make it downtown and back for the 3 year period of my lease.

Charging downtown doesn't look like it will be an option. Every charger down here is full. At the City owned Capitol Garage last week I saw 6 Leafs charging and 4 parked nearby. Every charger I could find in the downtown area was full. There are a lot of electric vehicles in downtown Sacramento these days.

BTW - Folsom Nissan just installed a DC Quick Charger last week.

Hopefully someone from Folsom who commutes downtown will chime in.

Thanks again!!

There is now a DCQC open at the SMUD headquarters off Hwy-50 (it's in the parking lot with all the solar panels). There will also be new DCQCs at both Future Nissan locations in Folsom and the Roseville Auto Mall by the end of the month.

GeekEV said:

There is now a DCQC open at the SMUD headquarters off Hwy-50 (it's in the parking lot with all the solar panels). There will also be new DCQCs at both Future Nissan locations in Folsom and the Roseville Auto Mall by the end of the month.

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Are these on the ChargePoint network?

SMUD is their own system. No membership needed, but you do pay at the "pump." I believe the Nissan dealerships are AV units and free (at least for the time being), but I'm not sure about that.

For the SMUD QC on 65th streeet, does the "pump" accept a regular credit card or do we need some RFID card for it?

My wife and I did our first 100+ mile adventure this weekend knowing we would need to charge to make it home. (Hence the reason I called it an adventure.) The plan was to leave Rocklin on 100% charge, eat at Sonic Burger in Vacaville since the Bella Vista park and ride is right there with L2 & L3 charging, then go a few more miles to hike at Pena Adobe Park in Vacaville. We arrived at the park and ride with 31% charge remaining after driving 55 miles. I had hoped to used the quickcharge but there was a Leaf sitting there mostly (but not completely) charged with no one around. We plugged into L2, ate lunch and ended with 44% charge. After lunch, the other Leaf was still sitting at the QC fully charged, no one around.

We drove a few miles down the road and hiked at the park for a couple of hours. Too bad there's no L2 at trailheads and in general, in places you actually want to spend time. We headed home and decided to stop by the park and ride again to see if the QC was available, but this time there was a Leaf plugged in and a second one waiting. We had 38% remaining charge and enough to make it the 20 miles to Davis.

Arrived in Davis with something like 25% remaining and found the QC was out of order. Darn. I knew there was another QC a few miles up the road at Davis Nissan, but the QCs at the dealerships are almost always taken. I was trying to make this experience as comfortable as possible for my wife, so I didn't want to drive to a third QC only to find it taken, then have to hang out at the dealership for nearly 2 hours to get home. Decided it was best to stay in Davis, plug into L2 and go for a walk through the UC Davis arboretum with the wife while the Leaf charged. 1.5 hours later we had 55% charge, enough to make it back to Rocklin. Arrived home with 14% remaining, total trip mileage was 111 miles.

I learned three things. Driving anything less than 72 MPH on Interstate 80 is unsafe. If you are driving less than 75 mph you SHOULD NOT be in the fast lane unless you want really want to make EVs look bad, and you learn quickly by driving in the slow lane that people do not know how to merge with traffic at on-ramps, so you're constantly adjusting your speed to account for people's complete lack of driving skills.

Second, always assume the worst for public charging. I had 3 QCs I could have used on my way home, but none were available. There were a dozen L2's so I felt pretty certain I wouldn't be stranded, but you never know.

Third, people have a lot to learn in the charging etiquette department.

My Leaf is great for what I bought it for, but I'm not sure I want to drive the car beyond its range much, unless I have a lot of time to kill.

asimba2 said:

After lunch, the other Leaf was still sitting at the QC fully charged, no one around.

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I think if the car is fully charged it is perfectly acceptable to unplug the car and use the charger if you could maneuver your Leaf into position.
What percentage did the QC say when you looked?

dan2112 said:

asimba2 said:

After lunch, the other Leaf was still sitting at the QC fully charged, no one around.

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I think if the car is fully charged it is perfectly acceptable to unplug the car and use the charger if you could maneuver your Leaf into position.
What percentage did the QC say when you looked?

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I'm not as familiar with the Eaton-branded QCs but the red progress bar had moved nearly all the way to the right. When I came out after lunch it showed charging was complete.