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Pipcecil, I talked to the Blink rep who was at the Plug In Day in Frisco on Sunday. He had a map that showed proposed Blink stations vs installed Blink stations and according to his map, there seemed to be a LOT of stations that are still in the works of being installed. Additionally, he said that they were in the planning stages of installing 3 L3 chargers somewhere around the Metroplex. They hadn't decided where they were putting them yet and asked us where we'd like to see one go in, so we told him one in North Dallas (Plano, Frisco area), one in downtown Dallas, and one out to the west, maybe around Irving. But I got the distinct impression from him that they were not ready to pack up and move out just yet.

Edit: Changed "Saturday" to "Sunday"
 
Vicki,

I was there from 10 to 11 am with my blue Leaf and was talking much of the time with Steven (Cheezmo) and his family with one Leaf and two Volts. The Channel 5 guy took a few shots of me popping my charge port door and going through the charging process with the Blink equipment.

A roadster owner was very kind enough to take me and a few others for a joy ride and some splendid acceleration.

-Jay
 
mkjayakumar said:
Vicki,

I was there from 10 to 11 am with my blue Leaf and was talking much of the time with Steven (Cheezmo) and his family with one Leaf and two Volts. The Channel 5 guy took a few shots of me popping my charge port door and going through the charging process with the Blink equipment.

A roadster owner was very kind enough to take me and a few others for a joy ride and some splendid acceleration.

-Jay

Yes, I saw the Blue Leaf driving up to the charger, but I was down at the other end of the row so I didn't see you. Course I wouldn't have known it was you even if I was close by. :? :lol: And I did see a guy with what appeared to be his wife and daughter getting LOTS of pictures taken by some guy with a camera (must have been the news guy). After seeing the picture posted here on the forums, I realized it must have been Cheezmo. I talked to a couple of the guys from the NTEAA when we first got there, then we spent a lot of time talking to the guy (who works at the Ft Worth Zoo) who had the dark charcoal plug-in Prius right next to the NTEAA cars (my husband is lusting after the plug-in Prius now). He was really knowledgeable about all the features of his new car. We had a good time there except for the heat factor, I would have preferred it to be about 20 degrees cooler while we were all standing around on the concrete! :)
 
vrwl said:
dfwcre8tive said:
Sorry we didn't make it out; looks like fun!

In other news, DFW Airport is now offering charging (Park 'N Fly has been offering it for a while off-airport and cheaper):

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2012/09/suffering-from-range-anxiety-dallasfort-worth-airport-offers-charging-stations-for-electric-cars.html/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's good news! Our last couple of trips have been in the summer and we didn't want to leave the car outside baking in the sun for a week, but we'll have to remember this if we take any cool weather trips. :)

This charger is INSIDE Terminal D, so no "baking" required :p
The only problem is it seems to require valet parking/service, so that kind of kills it for me. However, I plan on checking it out next time I travel; if it receives lite use, maybe they would allow you to charge on a brief in/out (like picking someone up).
 
Is the owner of the blue Nissan LEAF "NOFUEL" here on this forum? I saw your car this morning in the parking lot of Rick's Kicks & Texas Family Fitness. That's the first one I've seen here locally in my neck of the woods. :)
 
I have a list of where Blink is planning to install the remainder of the chargers. The reason I know they are wrapping up is because my work has been working with blink to help install chargers was told, but David Ashem that we needed to get request in BEFORE the end of the year since this is the timeline when they will no longer accept request to install chargers in DFW and will be moving to Houston to expand that network. I know they are backlogged on request and getting stuff placed, but its part of their grant with the feds and they will stop very soon.

Although, that issue is only with the montetary grant from the feds, there is nothing preventing companies or blink itself from installing and operating on their own dime, but why do that when you can get free money for your installations!

I didn't know about the QC stations being installed. I or my work hasn't received any info about their installations. I was assuming that since other places like california, arizona, tennessee and such were getting them, we were glossed over because of eVgo. It is great news if they can get some installed in. As for places:

Fort Worth Definetely, up north (frisco/plano - near 121/US 75), denton, arlington/irving, and probably one near Red Oak or Cedar Hill down south (prefer Cedar Hill...but thats me being selfish!).
 
Pipcecil said:
I have a list of where Blink is planning to install the remainder of the chargers....

Can you add the proposed/planned sites to your Google map (maybe with a different color?) so people can have some idea where the new ones are supposed to go in?
 
We saw a Fisker Karma today. My wife and I were in the Leaf driving down I-20 headed westbound at the interchange with 287. We drove right up next to it (it was going about 70 mph) and tried to wave at the driver. It was a woman talking on her cell phone so she didn't see us or didn't care. Funny, I never thought I'd see one of those driving through DF/W.
 
There is a Fisker dealership in Plano, just south of Park & Tollway (Sewell Fisker/Mini). I'm sure there are a few around.
 
I saw a fisker the other day as well, such a pretty car, so sad it catches fire (tee hee) and has deplorable range via battery and gas engine...but dang, it's beautiful!

I thought about adding the proposed stations, but they seemed to be more "in flux" and sometimes were just removed from the list. Additionally, my work only wanted the existing stations, so since the map has become duel purpose (i.e. my own personal venture and work related), I need to comply with work's request.

BUT have no fear, here is David's map from Blink showing were the potential locations of the stations are. I will caveat that sometimes there are descrepancies between David's map and the offical Blink map - both have stations that the other doesn't, which makes my job a bit more complicated, but that's just the way it is:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=210228886621122039571.0004a584cecedf2bff165&msa=0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
Well time to rejoice for all you non-eVgo CHAdeMO equiped Leafs in DFW - Blink has its first pending DC fast charger coming soon to the Bass Pro Shop in Garland (off of IH 30 on the west side of Lake Ray Hubbard near the terminus of PGBT).
 
Pipcecil said:
Well time to rejoice for all you non-eVgo CHAdeMO equiped Leafs in DFW - Blink has its first pending DC fast charger coming soon to the Bass Pro Shop in Garland (off of IH 30 on the west side of Lake Ray Hubbard near the terminus of PGBT).

Great news!
 
Did you guys know there's an EV/AltCar "expo" at the Plano Civic Center Nov. 2-3 (http://www.altcarexpotexas.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)? Also, you need to start coming to the North Texas Electric Auto Association meetings the 3rd Saturday of every month (http://www.nteaa.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Someone brought their Tesla Model S to the one last weekend and it was super cool (I got to ride in it)!
 
Stanton said:
Did you guys know there's an EV/AltCar "expo" at the Plano Civic Center Nov. 2-3 (http://www.altcarexpotexas.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)? Also, you need to start coming to the North Texas Electric Auto Association meetings the 3rd Saturday of every month (http://www.nteaa.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;). Someone brought their Tesla Model S to the one last weekend and it was super cool (I got to ride in it)!
Didn't know about the expo. I'll check that out!
 
An FYI for those of you in the North Dallas area...

The Nissan dealership in Richardson appears to be VERY inexperienced in LEAF body repairs. They didn't seem to know about the special needs our cars have regarding paint and paint booths (and not baking the battery). I was originally told they have a body shop there by the dealership in McKinney, so I went over there to see about getting my car fixed. (A guy slammed his car door into my rear quarter-panel and dented it pretty good. Luckily we witnessed the event and I was able to get the guy's insurance information so I could get my car fixed.)

After the fiasco in Richardson, I went back to Nissan of McKinney to see what we could do to get my car fixed without killing my battery in the process. After speaking with their LEAF specialist and also having them phone the body shop they use, they told me that it would probably be a much better move on my part if I took it to Trophy Nissan in Mesquite where they have an enormous body shop there on the premises and have experience in fixing LEAFs.

So today I took the car to Trophy Nissan and talked to the guys there. They have done paint and body work on 4 LEAFs prior to mine and have a special paint booth set up for the LEAFs. Essentially what happens is that instead of baking the car in the booth for a couple of hours, they let it sit in the booth with NO HEAT for 48 hours. It means repairs involving paint take longer to do, but hey, that's ok if they're not baking the battery. The guys I talked to (primarily John Trent) appeared knowledgeable about the LEAF and I felt comfortable leaving my car with them to get the work done.

So if you need any body/paint work done on your LEAF in the Dallas area, Trophy Nissan in Mesquite (at this point) seems to be the best bet for our special needs car.
 
vrwl said:
So if you need any body/paint work done on your LEAF in the Dallas area, Trophy Nissan in Mesquite (at this point) seems to be the best bet for our special needs car.
I had some PDR done to my leaf for hail damage a few months back. Obviously no need to bake. HOWEVER, I got a really nasty scratch on my passenger door recently that is going to require paint work. I haven't yet figured out where I'm going to take it. Do you think they'd normally bake a car just for painting a door?
 
adric22 said:
vrwl said:
So if you need any body/paint work done on your LEAF in the Dallas area, Trophy Nissan in Mesquite (at this point) seems to be the best bet for our special needs car.
I had some PDR done to my leaf for hail damage a few months back. Obviously no need to bake. HOWEVER, I got a really nasty scratch on my passenger door recently that is going to require paint work. I haven't yet figured out where I'm going to take it. Do you think they'd normally bake a car just for painting a door?

If you don't take it to a Nissan body shop, you need to BE SURE whoever does the work understands they cannot bake the paint job. I tend to think "paint" and "bake" go hand in hand. One of the guys at Trophy told me that most body shops have a hard time complying with the request because it delays the shop's entire work load if they only have one paint booth and have to wait for 48 hours for the paint on your car to dry/cure naturally, then it screws up their entire line of work by delaying everything. That's why I checked ahead of time to find out what can (and would) be done to help protect my battery. Luckily Trophy has one paint booth somewhat dedicated to LEAF repair work, or so I was told, so it doesn't throw a monkeywrench into their other repair jobs.

I just dropped the car off today, so hopefully, within the next week, I'll be able to report back and let you know how the job was done. One other thing I like about this dealership... they have an online repair tracker, where you can log in and see what step your car is at in the repair process. I REALLY like that, so I don't have to call and bug them about it. So far, based on the conversation I had with them today and their online repair tracker and their automated email notifications of the progress, I'm fairly impressed.
 
I do find it funny/ironic that when the Leaf's first came to texas, there were numerous reports that Trophy Nissan had bad tactics and to avoid buying there at all cost (there were a few complaints on this board).

Funny that they are now the super knowledgeble Leaf repairs guys. Its just goes to show how each side (sales vs repairs) can be totally different.
 
Couldn't they bake the paint at a lower temperature? For example, 110 degrees? After all, a Leaf here in Texas easily reaches this temperature (or more if sitting in the sun) during the Summer.
 
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