Vancouver to Bellingham in one charge?

We are almost ready to buy leaf... If we can get Port Coquitlam to Bellingham in one charge. It's 45 miles, roads a mixture of urban highway 45mph and freeway 55mph. Probably equal. Few hills. Will the freeway portion maybe with a/c eat up the battery? Thinking of 2015 Sv with quick charge. Thanks
Michael

Is there a question in your post anywhere? If the question is "will it make it" the answer would be yes.

Hello, I drive from Bellingham up to Surrey / Langley area quite a bit, and can make a round trip quite easily. There are lots of charging stations in the lower mainland (BC), not as many in Bellingham / Whatcom county but they can be found (a few that I use often are the two near the Barkley move theater, and the two by the Starbucks on the south end of town). Are you estimating your round trip at 45 miles, or 90 miles for the day's travel? I don't think you could consistently make a 90 mile return trip without charging... but with a 45 minute re charge somewhere in Bellingham or on the way home in BC and you should be easily able... good luck, let us know what you do!

The one way trip is 45 miles... We realize that we would have to recharge in Bellingham, but that's OK since we always overnight it.

We have put down a deposit on the car, really love the way it drives... I like the headroom. We were also checking out the Kia Rondo... Few thousands cheaper. But then came the kicker... Estimated fuel about 4 to 5 times that of the Leaf.. Plus the cost of oil changes and at 48 months mark the service is $699! We really want this to work! PS.. The quick charge option is the 20 minute one right?

mtn said:

It's 45 miles, roads a mixture of urban highway 45mph and freeway 55mph. Probably equal. Few hills. Will the freeway portion maybe with a/c eat up the battery? Thinking of 2015 Sv with quick charge. Thanks
Michael

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Not familiar with that specific route, but I do 60 miles 1 way with my 2012, and no problem at all with AC...
That's mostly highway, 55-60MPH with a small mountain pass in the middle.
Heat will eat up a bit more, but I can do 60 with some heat and still make it in my 2012.
I would be pretty confidant in a '15 with it's better/newer battery and the heat pump making that without issue for years to come, especially in the PNW.

desiv

You should be fine. The only trouble would be in heavy snow/rain/wind with a 3+ year old battery. Even then, you will just slow down a bit and still make it. Plus, there are several chargers showing on Plugshare.com (Blaine, Custer, Ferndale, etc.) if you ever need a few minutes of boost charging.

I do 90 miles round trip for work with a 10hr L1 charge at work. I can do it round trip without the L1 charge in the summer with careful driving.

The winter was another story though. I have a 15 with the newest (until 2016) battery and found that the 10hrs on L1 only gave me about a 40-45% bump in the winter and on the worst days I had to stop for another L2 or L3 charge. The very worst day all winter (which got as cold as -35C or so) took me about 85% of the battery to do 1 way 45 miles. Average for winter was about 70% and my best ever in summer has been 35%.

If you're going to have an L2 at your overnight stop then you'll always have 100% for your 45 mile trip.

My advice is to wait for the 2016 with the rumour of an extra 6 kWh of battery. This should be perfect for you to do it carefree round trip no charge needed for most of the year and let you do it with an overnight charge and liberal use of heat in the winter.

It shouldn't be too long before they are out, after all the 2014 and 2015 were released in Canada in June/July each year.

Well, thank you for all the replies. We have thought long and hard about this one. We do have a backup plan-- we have a Matrix we can use if the Leaf won't make it. So, we are now off to pickup our new Leaf!!!!! I'll introduce myself when I'm officially a Leaf owner.

You won't regret it!!! Good luck :mrgreen:

Well we are now the proud owners of a 2015 SV Leaf... bought new, Cayenne Red. We will take our 2003 Nissan Sentra to the scrapyard for a $3250 rebate. It only has 145,000km on the clock, but just lately has been acting up. It may be heat related, but sometimes it acts as though it has a torque converter issue.. engine revs but that doesn't result in an increase in speed. Other times, it runs fine. So because of this we wouldn't feel right about selling it or trading it in.
There is so much to learn about the Leaf...
I'm sure we will be visiting here often for advice and tips. Already I'm a bit disappointed that I cannot get text confirmations from Carwings. My carrier isn't supported. I will search for advice on the Nissan ASP extended warranty..
We live in a suburb of Vancouver, BC and my wife will use the Leaf to commute to her work (14km round trip) and every two weeks we will drive to Bellingham to visit my mother-in-law (roughly 45 miles one way). We stay overnight and will figure out a charging plan. If it is too much aggro, we will probably go back to using a gas powered vehicle. But we will give the Leaf a chance!

Well this August 1st weekend we made the trip to Bellingham... We started out with almost a full charge with 149km range. Not trusting the GOM we stopped in Surrey for a free Level 3 charge at the museum, this would roughly be halfway. Left with having replenished 25% and 150km . arrived in Bellingham with about 92km remaining, so no doubt would have made it without charging . Tried to fast charge at local Nissan dealer, charger broken. Went to REI mall at seholm village, fast charge expensive at $7.50, thank goodness we are paying with US dollars purchased when our dollar was at par. AV will not give you a fob unless you go for the unlimited monthly option which we may do since we are down here twice a month. So had to phone. On the way back decided to stop off at the Surrey Level 3 charger again. This time, a different story: apparently someone had pressed the e-stop button, so it was out of service. It is the same brand (Eaton) as the Nissan dealer so maybe this is a common occurrence. Went to L2 at Willowbrook mall for a topup, and did some grocery shopping while waiting. Later in the day went to a local L2 and went for a 90 minute walk while charging. (Beginning to think owning a leaf is like owning a dog, you get plenty of exercise.)

So will we repeat this adventure next time, or will we take the gasser? My wife wasn't too annoyed at the inconveniences, and apart from the L3 in Bellingham, all charges were FREE! So we may!

Congrats on the purchase. For your old Sentra, you should hold a "funeral" for it the way this guy did :lol: :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y19dey8lzs

We were quite sad to see it go to the crusher, other than the power problem, it was in great shape.

Can you charge at your overnight destination in Bellingham? Even if you can only do L1 at 120 V, that would make the trip really easy.

My Mother-in-law lives in a townhouse.. no access to outside plugs without being reported to the strata council. But local grocery store has a free L2 (x2) which we can use to top up before heading home. Two hours there gets full charge since we've already topped up at L3 which is really about 1/3 of the way to Bellingham (not 1/2 as I originally posted.) So to end the tale, yes Vancouver to Bellingham is do-able, even for people like us with "range anxiety". Charging at the L3 in Surrey is great especially since its near a supermarket, but I'm not sure about the neighbourhood at night. The EVSE seems to go offline quite a lot (vandalism or just power outage, or somebody pressing the estop?)

Welcome to the world of Leaf mtm, join the Canadian Leaf group on Facebook, you'll find lots of good local information

Bigboler said:

Welcome to the world of Leaf mtm, join the Canadian Leaf group on Facebook, you'll find lots of good local information

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Thanks for the tip..will do!