When an accident rendered my wife’s beloved 1987 Volvo station wagon unsalvageable earlier this year, there was a bright side to the loss: retiring the Volvo, our only car, gave us a chance to tackle a troublesome wedge of our household carbon footprint.
Our home has rooftop solar panels, which make it possible for us to send more clean electricity to the grid than we use, but our stout, tank-like station wagon did not sip gas. So, in January, we ditched oil for our own carbon-free solar power and California’s increasingly clean electricity grid and signed a three-year lease for an all-electric 2013 Nissan Leaf.
Contrary to persistent, uninformed reports, US sales of electric cars have not stalled: through April, Leaf sales were up by 33% compared to 2013. As of 23 May, 50,000 Leafs had been sold in the US and nearly 115,000 have been sold worldwide. And sales will likely increase: Navigant Research projects that US sales of light-duty plug-in electric vehicles will exceed 514,000 annually in 2023, up from the nearly 100,000 sold in North America in 2013.
So many electric cars have been sold in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I live, that cities are scrambling to deploy infrastructure to accommodate them. What’s it like to be an EV early adopter? Four months into life with a Leaf, here are some notes and lessons that we learned:
Electric cars will work for most people – today: My wife and I consistently cover about 85 miles on a fully charged battery. That works for us: we both work from home, and our default option is to walk 15 minutes to a nearby regional train station. My wife, a city planning commissioner who also sits on several non-profit boards, drives about 75 miles each week to and from community meetings. For out-of-town trips, we borrow my brother’s Prius.
However, even if one of us held a job requiring a commute equivalent to the average American’s daily round-trip commute by car – less than 30 miles, according to the US Department of Energy (DOE) – the Leaf’s range would be more than sufficient. In fact, unless you’re a “megacommuter”, why base the decision to purchase a car on the handful of times each year you might need a car with a 250-mile range or more for long trips?
Expect the EV owner’s initiation: In the four months that I've been driving a Leaf, I've already discovered that there are several EV pitfalls. There are charge hogs who remain tethered to a charging post long after a full charge or, worse, squatters who park in an EV-only charging spot and do not charge.
I’ve had a charging session inexplicably end minutes after sitting down at a nearby cafe when the charging station malfunctioned. I’ve rolled up to a station and been unable to withdraw a hopelessly stuck charging nozzle from its holster. And I’ve been ICE’d – blocked from charging by a gas-burning SUV. In the last case, I reported the scofflaw to a parking garage attendant and – I won’t lie – smiled when a ticket was waiting on the offender’s windshield when I returned to the garage.
More charging stations needed, free public charging won’t last: Backed by funding from DOE and the stimulus, the number of charging stations, installed by companies like Coulomb Technologies (now ChargePoint) and ECOtality (later purchased by the Car Charging Group), have already spread quickly, especially in first-mover markets like California. According to DOE, there are now some 8,200 EV charging stations and nearly 20,000 charge outlets in the United States.
Even though a majority of charging is done at home or at work, more public charging stations are necessary. In my part of the Bay Area, competition for available charging outlets is already fierce, and my hometown of Concord, population 125,000, has yet to install charging stations at any of the customary spots: City Hall, the library or city-owned parking garages.
For now, charging at many public stations is free – more than 70% of the stations in ChargePoint's network, the nation’s largest, provide charging at no cost – and without time limits. But, alas, free public charging is unlikely to last for long. To recoup the costs for electricity, maintenance, and vandalism, Bay Area cities have already started to roll back this incentive. In March, one city, Martinez, began charging $1 per hour and limited sessions to four hours. At the end of June, Pleasant Hill plans to charge $0.20 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and limit charging sessions to three hours.
To put this in context, our Leaf has a 6.6 kilowatt (kW) onboard charger. Charging it at one of Pleasant Hill’s Level II 240-volt charging ports for three hours would cost us $3.60 (18 kilowatt-hours X $0.20/kWh).
Nissan has stepped in to help with the charging situation. In April, it introduced a program called EZ-Charge, which would enable Leaf owners to charge in four networks – AeroVironment, Blink Network (operated by Car Charging Group), NRG eVgo and ChargePoint – with one access card. Nissan’s “No Charge to Charge” promotion, which launches on 1 July, will provide two years of free public charging with the purchase or lease of a new Nissan Leaf on or after 1 April 2014.
On 20 May, ChargePoint withdrew from EZ-Charge; Nissan says the program will still launch on 1 July as planned. A little-known perk also allows Leaf drivers to charge for free at any Nissan dealership, provided the charge posts are not being used by dealership cars.
Lease or buy? Betting on better batteries: Every car shopper must grapple with whether to lease or buy. In our case, my wife and I decided to lease our Leaf because we are confident that innovation will continue to drive down the cost of batteries and increase their energy density, extending an EV’s range.
For these reasons, Consumer Reports recommends that EV drivers lease – for now. By 2017, when our lease is up, we’ll likely be ready to buy. As it turns out, our timing could be perfect: Nissan’s Andy Palmer recently told Automotive News that the automaker plans to use a new battery chemistry that will significantly increase the single-charge range of the next-generation Leaf, which should roll out in 2017.
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