% She loved her Leaf EV but lacked charging. Her experiences reminded me of way back in the 1990's in CA of how much I loved my EV even though there was no public EVSE infrastructure & you just took what charge you could arrange/get-permission for %
http://mini.iol.co.za/motoring/cars/nissan/a-nervous-week-with-the-nissan-leaf-2002671 A nervous week with the Nissan Leaf 30 Mar 2016 Gabi Falanga [images / Simone Kley http://classic.iol.co.za/polopoly_fs/iol-mot-pic-mar30-nissan-leaf-1a-1.2002669!/image/2859548911.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_600/2859548911.jpg (Leaf EV) http://classic.iol.co.za/polopoly_fs/iol-mot-pic-mar30-nissan-leaf-2-1.2002670!/image/3034359956.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_600/3034359956.jpg (crowd watching plug-in) ] Johannesburg - How I fell in love with my new green charge, taking the 100 percent electric Nissan Leaf for a test drive of note. MONDAY I’m excited to receive the Nissan Leaf on this rainy afternoon. The men who dropped it off had brought it from Pretoria, so it had only 44 percent charge left, not that that really means anything to me. I can't wait to use it and immediately go to pick up the toddler I babysit in the evenings. I watch apprehensively as the percentage drops while I sit in horrendous traffic on the way to the creche, which is only eight kilometres away, not sure how far that 44 percent will get me. I must say, I feel quite smug as people check out the heavily branded car. I mean, I am emitting zero noxious fumes, while their exhausts are shamelessly polluting the air around us. The car is completely silent and doesn't vibrate or shake at all, not even as it's switched on. At one point I get distracted and can't even remember if I have already switched it on or not. I get home and rearrange our whole block of flats - or at least that's how it feels - to organise a place to charge the car overnight. Our parking area doesn't have any plugs, so I swop parking spots with somebody who parks next to the boiler room, get the body corporate to give me their spare key, ask my boyfriend to bring me an extension cord just in case, take the charging cable (which looks like a laptop charger on steroids) out of the boot and voila! I plug in my new ride for the first time and watch as three flashing blue lights on the dashboard indicate that it’s charging. TUESDAY I wake up and the car hasn't charged. The DB board in the boiler room isn't working. Typical. To make matters worse, I have a cold shower. With my tail between my legs, I take my normal car to work and remain quiet as my friends laugh at me. By Tuesday night, the electrician still hasn't been and the car stays put. Useless car. Frustrated me. I take an Uber to the gym. My normal car is parked by the woman I swopped parking spaces with. The electric car is almost flat. Great. Maybe this electric car thing wasn't such a great idea after all. WEDNESDAY MORNING I wake up a bit more positive and decide to head to a nearby Nissan dealership to use their fast charger. With only 16 percent battery, it goes without saying that I’m sweating. OK, that also may be because I switched off the aircon to save battery. I ditch all my normal (bad) driving habits and crawl along Malibongwe Drive, praying there’s no traffic and annoying the impatient taxis stuck behind me. Watching the power-usage graph on the dashboard becomes a game. How can I drive so that the little power usage dots don't run up too far? I do as much free-wheeling as I can, watching the dots go in the opposite direction as power generated is returned to the battery. I am right chuffed with myself when 15 percent goes back to 16 percent. But I am a bit stressed out. What happens if I get stuck on the road with a flat battery? This perturbing dilemma is foreign to me. It's not like I can run down the road to get some petrol in a two-litre Coke bottle. The kind man at Nissan helps me to plug the car into the fast charger and informs me that, had I run out of battery charge, the car would've had to have been picked up by a truck. Eish! Forty-five minutes later, the battery is almost full and one of the Nissan staff members jokes with me as I unplug the charging cable from the car. “You're spilling petrol!” he laughs. After that, I attract a huge crowd in the street where I’ve parked in Newtown to do an interview for a story. Passers-by want to see what the car looks like inside and under the bonnet. Some even crawl underneath the back just to double-check that there really isn't an exhaust pipe. WEDNESDAY EVENING As I leave work, I realise again that this car drives like a dream. I also start fully appreciating its beautiful, tasteful interior (it's certainly an upgrade from what I'm currently driving). I feel safe as I put it through its paces in the pouring rain on the highway - it feels sturdy. I watch, fascinated, as the battery charge drops faster, the faster I drive. Now that I'm more comfortable with the car, I figure out how to call up the energy usage graphs on a screen at the radio and watch how switching the air con, or even the wipers, on and off makes a difference to the power consumption. All in all, I manage to do close to 60km throughout the day using only 44 percent of the battery charge. I let my boyfriend take the car for a spin - he's been cynical from the moment I mentioned electric cars. But his rolling-eye attitude changes when he pushes hard on the accelerator and the car shoots forward effortlessly. “Yoh, it moves!” he exclaims and the longer he drives it, the bigger his smile gets. THURSDAY MORNING 3AM I wake up with a start, worried that the car isn't charging, probably because of the initial charging failure on Monday night. The lights on the dashboard aren't on when I go outside. Apparently it's supposed to show three solid blue lights when it's fully charged. So, I climb inside and switch it on. 100 percent. Relief. THURSDAY AFTERNOON I get annoyed when I take a colleague for a spin through the CBD and people don't move out of the road for me. But then I realise that they can't hear the car sneaking silently up on them. FRIDAY I feel as though driving this car forces me to drive more responsibly, as I remain conscious of how much power I'm using. I am even more in love with the car than before I had the opportunity to drive it myself. But I would only consider buying one if my living and financial circumstances were different. Hopefully, in a few years' time, once the technology is a bit older and if the government gets on board, it will become more affordable to buy. [© mini.iol.co.za] ... http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=eish Eish! ... http://api.plugshare.com/view/location/65463 Nissan Melrose Johannesburg, SA J1772, CHAdeMO DCFC For EVLN EV-newswire posts use: http://evdl.org/evln/ {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Ill-informed-nor-prepared-Leaf-driver-za-stresses-w-o-public-EVSE-tp4681362.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
