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I just watched mine balance (my entire house electrical system is instrumented -- I watch my fridge defrost sometimes ...) and the charger will turn on and off several times, trying to figure out if its done. For my batteries, once the bulk of the charge had completed, there were three periods...

First, to dispel a myth -- crippleware =does= save companies a significant amount of money in maintenance expense, especially when the "low cost" version of the software is the more common in the marketplace. I've been a software engineer for 34 years and I assure you, I could sell a stripped...

PV. I charge from the grid during the day when the sun is shining and I don't want to lose $0.033 on the buy / sell spread. If the PoCo wants my electricity during peak demands, they can damned well pay me the spread.

I own two gasoline-powered cars -- an '02 Gran Prix and a '79 Corvette. In the end, I decided I didn't need a car with a gasoline motor in the trunk when I already had two with a gasoline motor under the hood. My son is going to get one of the cars and the other will most likely be sold. When...

Solar. I have 2.8kW DC (keeps 25kWh of batteries topped up and feeds back to the grid) and 2.1kW ACPV (AC solar modules). That's how I fight the utility (Reliant). Bill last month was $2.30 (I paid $43.00 -- I'm on average billing, tho my new Leaf SV will make that go up, unless I add more...

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't have a choice -- we're still trying to close the financing (I started a company 4 years ago and have lousy credit as a result -- not all small business owners get rich!) and the car was on loan. I'll likely have to resort to using a NEMA 5-15 ("standard" 120...

I'm not sure they can legally NOT pass it along. The residual value of a Leaf reflects the credit because that's what a Leaf is worth -- the MSRP, minus the credit, depreciated in the usual manner. Try selling a Leaf and asking for more than that amount by saying "I didn't get the credit."...

Companies are already setting up business models where used EV batteries are being used for energy storage purposes. EV batteries are too high voltage for most solar gear. I have a 48 volt system and that's as high as residential solar gets. The other issue is the charging profile for Lithium...

I'm borrowing an SV for the weekend before wrapping up wrangling on an SL. In the interest of seeing how long it would take to recharge one from fairly empty (it was low on e-fuel and I had to hook up the e-hose to e-fill it :D ) and how hot it would get, I plugged it in to a 120 volt outlet...

For the same reason I call it "pressing the gas pedal". I like "e-hose". I'm going to use it because it needs to catch on, like "e-mail".

It wasn't an estimate. It's way of showing that even IF the pack were $18K, leasing a new Leaf every two years would be a worse decision that buying one, replacing the battery at 6 years, and owning it for another six years. Here's a web page I found which explains the two approaches. It's a...

How do you get the Federal Tax Credit on a lease? You don't ever own the car, unless you purchase it at the end of the lease. The spreadsheet I found here produced numbers relatively close to what was being quoted at the dealer and it also included a dollar amount which explained whether...

If "if" were a skiff ... If you make all your decisions based on "what happens if ..." and they are financially sub-optimal, all you do is waste money on "what if?" Is there likely to be a newer and cheaper battery technology down the road? Sure. Estimate how long that technology will take...

Pick a number, just about any number will do. The residual value on a 2 year lease is about 60%. That's 20% per year (straight line equivalent) depreciation, or an entire car in 5 years, or 2.4 cars in 12 years. Pick "the price of a new car" as the battery replacement price and you still come...

Sales people are slime, for the most part. You really have to understand finance and how dealerships price deals to get them to where you want to be. Most dealers fear people who own two cars and have creative ways of financing a new one. They can't do the "well, your current car is 5 / 7 /...

We ran out of time to close the deal on a 2013 SL -- dealer closed at 8pm, but I was there past 10pm. I've bought a few cars on Saturdays before, but usually much earlier in the day when things were easier to figure out. On Monday I should be able to secure the financing, then the BLUE (!)...