Choosing where to live

[Swifty]

I live at the top of a 360' (109m) hill with a narrow, winding 2 mile (3.2Km) country road to the bottom. When I first had my Leaf (79 days ago) I had no charging post, so charged with the supplied cable/charger, which took the battery to 100% overnight.

So, at the start of my journey, I have 100% battery and a lot of Potential Energy. Going down the hill, using the brakes to stay within the 30mph limit, the Potential Energy that I'm losing has nowhere to go than heat in the brakes. I'm never going to get that back.

Now that I have a charging post in my garage, I've set the timer to charge to 80%, and I waste little energy coasting down the hill.

So my recommendation for you folks who like to charge to 100% — move house to somewhere in a deep hollow! You'll then pick up a few extra miles at the end of your homeward journey.

Of course, it's probably better to be somewhere flat, like Holland, in the first place. I'm somewhat averse to such flat places, because they are murder if you're a cyclist, and you have a 60Km ride into a headwind ahead of you… I had one such trip at the age of 17; all day we could see the spire of the cathedral at our destination, as we crawled slowly towards it.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

I chose to live close to things. I'm 2 miles from work, 0.5 miles from my children's school, 5 miles from my church and 4 miles from the grocery store. Everything I need is within 20 miles or so from my house. No, I don't have a huge backyard abutting open woods. Sometimes I miss that. But life is full of compromises.

 

[johnrhansen]

I took a trip to a wind farm recently, and plugged in to their power to charge. the road leading up there is a 800 foot climb, and the road goes down another 2000 feet after that . One time I was there I stayed too long and charged to 95 percent. It really hurt to have to waste all that energy. The next time I only charged to 80, and made the same distance.

 

[dgpcolorado]

OK, I'll play. I chose to retire out in the boondocks because I had lived in cities or suburbia my whole life and I wanted privacy and wild critters as my neighbors as well as scenic mountain vistas. The downside is that one must drive everywhere since distances are great and public transportation is nonexistent. (I do bicycle down to town when I can, and it is quite a workout to get home.) I realized early on that an EV fueled by solar power was a good solution to the problem of having to drive long distances for routine things.

Living crowded together in a city is way more efficient for the environment, but at a gigantic reduction in the quality of life. I am willing to pay for the peace and quiet and prefer chipmunks and scrub jays as neighbors, although I'm less fond of the bears. And seeing mountain lions and bobcats outside the windows is fun.

Those of us who live on hills and go downhill to get anywhere learn to charge to less than "100%" for regen brakes when we can. But I've found that there is no way to regen my way anywhere close to 100% when going downhill, so if I want maximum range charging to 100% and using friction brakes gives me more charge at the bottom of the hill. My hill is so steep that the regen is too weak in my 2012 LEAF to slow my descent enough to avoid braking, and that was before the P3227 software update made it much worse in cold weather. So I envy the 2013 and newer LEAF SV/SL owners with B mode.

Part of the view from our neighborhood picnic area two weeks ago.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

Gorgeous view! I can't say I'm not a little jealous...

I used to live on top of a "mountain" (1000' elevation - not even base altitude in Colorado). The view was great, our property was almost 2 acres, and behind us was DEC owned and protected land. I loved listening to the howls of Coyotes echo off the hills as they made their way through the woods. And the sound of crickets and tree frogs was louder than life in my current suburban neighborhood. I will probably move back uphill when I retire but right now, with a full time job and kids in school, it's also nice to live close to everything I need. I'm still not "crowded" per se. I have 1/3 of an acre - not a whole lot, but enough for us. I personally think that it's a good thing that most people live in more dense areas. We don't have to travel as far. And it leaves more open space for everyone to enjoy (I'm a big fan of back country hiking/biking/etc).

One thing I do long for is a better planned locale. The current pattern of suburban sprawl that is removed from businesses and shopping only reinforces our car culture. There are very few places that one could honestly live without needing a car. In many more places it's just plain unsafe to travel by any other means - by foot or bicycle for example.

 

[MikeinDenver]

I definitely notice the lack of regen braking if I charge to 100% especially on the way to work which is a slow decline of several hundred feet.

 

[abasile]

If I charge to 100% and descend the mountain I live on, I have to stop a couple of times on the way down to let the brakes cool off.

We truly enjoy living high above the SoCal sprawl, heat, and traffic, while being only 1.5 hours away from downtown Los Angeles for those occasions when we need to return to the LA area.