Most likely Lawrence's route was Hwy 101 south (flat) to Hwy 85 (small slopes) to Hwy 17 (1000' climb) down to Santa Cruz, CA. Here is a map https://goo.gl/maps/UnjxpeCFwLx Hopefully he left around noon to miss all the traffic.
If Lawrence's choir was at UCSCruz they have a free EVSE to use. Plugshare.com shows plenty of L2 and a couple of L3 in Santa Cruz. Checking the driver's comments sadly shows some of the public L2 are down, but the Nissan dealership L3&2 are 24/7 and seem always up. While I congratulate Lawrence on doing his homework, and then having the gonads/chutzpah to step-up to bust an EV myth, with a ~85mi range EV, I would always arrange to plug in, even at L1, while I was in Santa Cruz. There is a mountain range that runs from San Francisco south that separates the Pacific Ocean and the SF Bay area. While there are several earthquake faults in the SF bay area (odd how the most earthquake prone areas are jammed with humans), the most known fault, San Andreas, runs along that mountain ridge near a road called Skyline Blvd https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Flat_eq_map_anotated.png There are several passes (lower-points) to cross over on Skyline Blvd. The Patchen Pass is the one at summit road that Cor mentioned, it tops out at 1,800 feet, and the one Lawrence climbed. >From the Mt. base at Los Gatos, the four lane Hwy 17 becomes narrower, and the turns tighter (less margin for error). Though the speed limit is in the 50's, locals drive through those tight turns switching lanes like mad/crazies, so even if you are a careful steady-speed EV driver in the right lane, it can get hairy/scary. The 1,800 ft climb is not that high nor severe when compared to other passes climbing to skyline blvd. I drove my 132VDC 2ton Blazer EV up Route 9 to Skyline (a 3,000' climb) at a steady 30mph in second gear, plus plenty of turn outs to let the local hopped-up speed demons pass. With my inefficient Blazer, that 7 mile 3,000' climb used 3x times more power (since I had no regen, I regained nothing on the way down except brake-shoe wear). To answer Mark's question, it would be possible for Lawrence to leave SF, cut over west to Hwy 1 via Daily-City. Hwy 1 runs fairly flat along the Pacific coast except for the 1,000' climb near Devils slide near Pacifica http://www.mapmyride.com/us/watsonville-ca/watsonville-santa-cruz-pacifica-san-fran-route-18649516 There is a whole lot less public EVSE along Hwy 1, than along the SF Peninsula route Lawrence took. Perhaps the next time Lawrence drives to Santa Cruz, if he secured charging while he was there, when he left fairly charged, he could take the Hwy 1 route back to SF. Similar to the way I did with my 50mi range PbSO4 EV by trying short trips to know what was possible, and building from there, with a good charge Lawrence could try returning to his SF home via Hwy 1 and arrive with charge to spare :-) 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/Driving-a-Leaf-from-San-Francisco-to-Santa-Cruz-and-back-tp4682604p4682614.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)
