I finally pushed it too far with my 2014 Nissan LEAF last night. My SV and me and my two daughters came up 300 meters short of our home, running out of charge just about 50 meters beyond a very dangerous left turn we have to make across three lanes of traffic with cars traveling 55 to 60 m.p.h.
This happened at precisely 12:15 a.m. Denver time. I had to wake up my sleeping kids, pull them out of the car, roll the car backwards down a hill I wasn’t going to make it up, and park it on the street.
We then trekked 300 meters home in the chilly January air, and hopped into bed.
Well, I didn’t hop into bed, I hopped online and mused over whether I should finally get an Aeroenvironment AV TurbCard 240 Volt portable plug-in EV charger, which can charge my LEAF three times faster than the trickle charge I am using exclusively now.
I’ve been “trickle” charging my 2014 LEAF for the entire 11 months I’ve had it, meaning I’ve been charging it exclusively with the 120 Volt plug-in EV charger that comes with the LEAF. The 120 Volt charging cord/set is incredibly slow in re-charging the LEAF’s battery. From a zero charge, it takes 21 hours or so. And that’s my core problem — I’m charging exclusively at a slow rate when the LEAF is my ONLY car!
So, it’s kind of “my fault” that we ran out of charge last night. But not entirely.
We were coming back from my brother’s house in Boulder, Colo., which is 45 miles away from my home in Aurora, Colo., with 90 percent of the driving consisting of highway driving — highway driving uses up the battery’s charge the fastest.
My brother has a Tesla Model S. That means I cannot use his 240 Volt charging station unless he buys/I buy an adaptor — because Tesla has an exclusive charging sytem/unit/plug-in “hole”. I’m forced to trickle charge at his house. That’s really annoying!
I bring my daughters up to my brother’s house 45 miles away from us once every two weeks, and I’ve cut it close a few other times with a 90 mile round-trip and only trickle charging at his home. I thought about buying a portable TurboCard unit just for that purpose — plugging into a dryer outlet he has in his garage.
I do not have a 240-volt outlet in my garage in Aurora. I’d have to shell out $300 to $400 to have one put in + plus another $599 for the TurboCard portable charger — the charger’s portablity is very attractive to me. So attractive that I would definitely not want to buy any other kind of charger for my garage.
So, why not just spring the $1,000 for the entire set-up?
Well, since my wife moved out after we separated in August 2014, taking our gas car with her, I’ve been thinking seriously about moving and selling our home, and I didn’t want to invest $400 (I’d take the TurboCard charger with me when I sold the house) to get a set-up that works. I know I will not recoup that $400 in the sale of our home.
I also don’t have the money — it would immediately go on to a credit card bill I can’t pay off (BTW, I’m not living the high life here, just trying to survive on a split family income and a journalism professor’s income — a business or law prof’s salary we do not get ;-).
On the other hand, what I’m doing right now is probably downright unsafe — what if my LEAF had completely run out of power as I was making a left across three lanes of oncoming traffic traveling at 60 m.p.h.?
It would all be solved if I could actually plug in wherever I went — yesterday morning I drove 24 miles round trip to our church and back before I had to do the 90-mile trip to Boulder, Colo., and back.
But the reality is not charging stations everywhere, a reality which would essentially solve all my problems. Instead, it’s one where I was forced to knock on a stranger’s door and ask if I could snake an extension cord into her home so that my LEAF would have enough charge to make it the final 300 meters to our house.
She said yes, though I think she doesn’t have a clue what an electric car really is.
I’m definitley grateful for the kind neighbor :-), and that everything worked out. But I’m thinking I’m going to have to spring the $600 for the over-priced Aeroenvironment 240 volt charger at this point. What do you think?
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