Taxpayers' Leaf: Four Recharging Stops Needed to Go 180 Miles
Submitted by Paul Chesser on Tue, 01/03/2012 - 07:38
 Consumer Reports has painted an ugly picture of the Nissan Leaf, as did an early enthusiast based in Los Angeles, who described his frustrations with the heavily subsidized, all-electric car in a recent column.
Now comes what must be the definitive example of the Leaf’s impracticality – this time from a (still) hard-core advocate, whose 180-mile Tennessee trek to visit family over the holidays required four lengthy stops to keep the vehicle moving.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20111226/NEWS01/111226001/Electric-car-gets-better-mileage-from-Crossville-Cookeville?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE%7Cp
Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, set out from Knoxville on Monday with his wife and son, headed for the Nashville area. His plan (appropriately) was to follow Interstate 40 West, where a series of Cracker Barrel restaurants – equipped with so-called “fast” vehicle chargers (if you want to call 30 minutes or more “fast”) along the route – would provide an electricity security blanket as the Leaf’s charge diminished.
Only problem was, the Leaf’s charge dropped more rapidly than promised. In what has to be a public relations disaster for Nissan, Smith’s EV was unable to travel no farther than 55 miles on any leg of the trip – and for the most part, much less. The company, and its government backers, proclaimed the Leaf was “built to go 100 miles on a charge” (large print), with a footnoted disclaimer (small print) that it travels shorter distances (like, 70 miles) if the air conditioning or the heater is used. Turns out even that was an exaggeration.
It was about 35 degrees in the Volunteer State when Smith departed Knoxville on Monday, and Mrs. Smith and his five-year-old son apparently were not willing to forgo heat in order to make the EV cause look good. A trip that should take – according to map Web sites – less than three hours, ended up lasting six hours for the Smiths because of all the stops they had to make. The approximate intervals where they paused for recharging were as follows:
- Knoxville to Harriman: 45 miles
- Harriman to Crossville: 31 miles
- Crossville to Cookeville: 31 miles
- Cookeville to Lebanon: 50 miles
- Lebanon to destination in Antioch, just south of Nashville: 22 miles
Hence the Smiths required four recharges in order to travel approximately 180 miles. According to the account in The Tennessean, they experienced their first “hair-raiser” range anxiety before they even reached Harriman.
“The display on the dashboard of their Nissan LEAF showed a drop in available range from 100 miles to about 50, when they had only traveled about 40 miles,” reported the Gannett-owned newspaper, which also owns USA Today, a cheerleader of all “clean” energy projects regardless of viability.
If the specs promised by Nissan and Leaf advocates were to be believed, the Smiths should have been able to travel about 25-30 miles past Harriman (where it took 20 minutes to boost the battery to 80 percent) before they’d need a recharge, even when using the car heater. But because of the limited availability of so-called “fast chargers” (440 volts, 30 minutes), the intermediate stop was necessary in order to climb the upcoming Cumberland Plateau and reach the next Cracker Barrel “fast charger” in Crossville. The chargers (which, by the way, don’t work for the Chevy Volt and won’t for many future EVs planned for release) are sparse because they cost $40,000 each, and companies like Ecotality apparently can only do so much with the $115 million Department of Energy grant it received to deploy the equipment.
At Crossville, according to The Tennessean, the Smiths’ battery gauge failed them again. The reading at Harriman said they could go another 70 miles, but after 31 miles, the gauge indicated they only had 20 miles of range remaining. Obviously that wasn’t to be trusted.
“It was a little nerve wracking,” Stephen Smith told the Nashville-based newspaper. “I’m finding the range is not 100 percent accurate.”
But heading west from Crossville, according to Smith, would not be as taxing on the Leaf: “Cookeville will be about the same distance but it will be flat or downhill.” It turned out his battery gauge maintained accuracy on that leg of the trip, but when he reached Lebanon (50 miles), he found that the Ecotality “Blink” fast-charger at the Cracker Barrel was, uh, on the blink (he should have known that was possible, if not likely). So instead he had to plug in to another slower charger at the restaurant, which took an hour to boost the battery enough (they hoped) to travel the remaining 22 miles to their destination.
The Smiths arrived at their destination in Antioch with what the Leaf told them was six miles of range remaining. All that after an anxiety-filled six-hour trip that was more than twice as long as it would take in a gasoline vehicle, which could probably have been accomplished with a single stop for a bathroom break.
The Smiths’ experience echoed that of a Consumer Reports reviewer and Los Angeles columnist Rob Eshman, who called his Leaf his “2011 Nissan Solyndra.” Eshman, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal, experienced the same gauge inaccuracies and range anxiety that came from traversing hills and mountains and the use of his air conditioning in hot, smoggy L.A.
“My life now revolves around a near-constant calculation of how far I can drive before I’ll have to walk,” Eshman wrote. “The Nissan Leaf, I can report, is perfect if you don’t have enough anxiety in your life.”
Of course, you won’t hear words like that from the lips of passionate “Green” energy advocate Smith, who chalked up the experience to being an “early adopter” and a pioneer.
“It’s good knowing we didn’t use a drop of oil getting down here,” he said. He must have had a similar fuzzy feeling on his return trip, which "only" took five hours, since the Lebanon charger was working later in the week.
As for the heavily coal-generated electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority that powered his trip, well, let’s not go there. Let’s just pretend that windmills and solar panels could have just as easily done the trick, if the EPA and Department of Energy would just do their jobs and eliminate all coal power plants and “invest” billions more taxpayer dollars in “renewables” deployment.
As for “why Tennessee” as part of this EV system rollout, you might ask? Thanks be to taxpayers there, also, as Nissan has in its back pocket a $1.4 billion federal loan to retrofit a plant in Smyrna – just outside Nashville – to mass-produce the Leaf. As company CEO Carlos Ghosn has said publicly, Nissan will produce EVs wherever government will produce the financial incentives.
And that’s what it takes in order for the “Green” energy industry swindle to survive.
http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/12/29/taxpayers-leaf-four-recharging-stops-needed-go-180-miles
Taxpayer-Subsidized Electric Vehicles Disappoint Consumers (Except Jay Leno)
Submitted by Paul Chesser on Mon, 11/21/2011 - 10:24
 Last week NLPC reported about a Consumer Reports reviewer’s unpleasant experience driving the all-electric Nissan Leaf. Despite Liza Barth’s frequent range anxiety and endurance of freezing temperatures so as to avoid using the Leaf’s heater to preserve its power, she declined to give it a “thumbs down.” Instead, she seemed to chalk up the inconveniences (like “numb fingers and toes”) to her own inability to adapt to new technology, rather than calling the electric vehicle what it really is: a failure that is massively subsidized by taxpayers.
Last month another Leaf customer wrote about his experience, and as opposed to Barth’s presumed objective perspective, this driver went into his purchase with eagerness and enthusiasm. Now he calls his EV “my 2011 Nissan Solyndra.”
“I am ready to turn over a new Leaf – my own,” wrote Rob Eshman, editor-in-chief of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.
Eshman explains that he went into the experience with the idea of doing his patriotic duty, after he watched a CNN interview with a descendant of Saudi Arabian royalty who said his country wanted to lower oil prices, because they don’t want Americans to seek alternatives.
“A viable set of alternatives to oil would deprive oppressive Middle East regimes of their single most important source of power,” Eshman wrote in an earlier column in June, about his actual purchase of the Leaf. “It would shrink the wallets of those who fund terror and who spread the most extreme forms of Islam. It would deprive many of Israel’s enemies of their geopolitical influence. It would help save us from the doom of climate change.”
So Eshman swung into action, contacted Nissan, and “arranged delivery of my Leaf.” Take that, Saudi prince!
Now, four months later, he rues the investment he made to help divest Americans from their dependence on Middle East oil brokers. As is the case with others, Eshman has found that the 100-mile range promised by Nissan ( even to this day) – as Consumer Reports’ Barth also discovered – is a fantasy. His three most recent measurements showed he traveled less than 60 miles on a full charge each time.
“My life now revolves around a near-constant calculation of how far I can drive before I’ll have to walk,” Eshman wrote last month. “The Nissan Leaf, I can report, is perfect if you don’t have enough anxiety in your life.”
And just as Barth conveyed her own encounter with EV range anxiety, with extra road tolls and frozen feet, so also did Eshman tell about one representative experience:
My gauge said I had 82 miles available, and I decided that was enough to drop off my son at Camp Alonim in Simi Valley….
Alonim is 35 miles from our home. I drove below the speed limit on the freeway, windows down so I could keep the mileage-guzzling AC off. Nevertheless, by the time I arrived at camp, I had only 31 of the original 82 miles left. That’s been my experience day in and day out — the gauge reports a best-case scenario that lures me into magical thinking. I left Alonim and drove another 10 miles to Mission Hills. Reported miles: 82. Actual miles driven: 41. Now the gauge showed me having three miles to go.
Knowing that charging stations are as rare as monorails in L.A., I decided to pull off the freeway and drive very slowly to the closest Nissan dealership, where I could put in more juice. I called my office and told them I’d be late, as I had to charge enough to drive the next 20 miles. That would take two hours.
So not only does the Leaf require that drivers not adjust their climate settings so as to maximize range, but even with that, they should not trust their power gauges. Must be a pleasant ride during a Los Angeles summer, inhaling fellow travelers’ exhaust in 90-plus degree heat while at a standstill on I-405. And as to whether he thinks the Leaf is still economical, Eshman responded, “if you only drive 20 miles a day, is your gasoline bill high enough to justify the Leaf’s nonsubsidized cost?” In addition to the federal tax rebate of $7,500, Californians also receive from the state an addition $2,500 rebate (it was $5,000 until the money ran out) plus a $2,000 rebate for the installation of a charger in their home, plus insurance discounts and use of HOV lanes regardless of the number of passengers in the vehicle.
Apparently the deception of the Leaf’s gauges is matched by Nissan’s dealers. Eshman discovered after signing the leasing papers that promises made about EV’s capabilities were a bit overstated. “The dealer told me AC uses 30 percent more power,” he wrote in June. “I’m seeing it’s more like 50.”
And then there are the chargers (slow, unless you have access to a 440-volt port), their availability (slim), and their cost ($6,000 for a 220-volt model, minus a couple thousand dollars from a taxpayer rebate). “The dealer proudly pointed out that my model comes with a 440-volt charging port,” Eshman explained. “‘Where can I find a 440 charger?’ I asked, all excited. ‘I think in Germany,’ he said.”
The defenders of EVs, particularly the Leaf, had strong words for Eshman in the comments that followed his piece:
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->“I’m sorry man, you must REALLY be driving it wrong.”
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->“The car is absolutely capable of 100 miles range if driven efficiently. I’d be happy to go for a ride with you and teach you these simple techniques.” (this was a salesman at a Nissan dealership)
<!--[if !supportLists]-->· <!--[endif]-->“Like any alternative technology you must adapt to it, not the other way around.”
So while the strategy by Nissan and its dealers was to promote a vehicle as though under normal use would still get 100 miles, its California apologists – who all think taxpayers across the country should pay for their EV fetishes – pig-pile on dissatisfied owners for their “misuse” and wrongheaded expectations.
Perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the whole EV experience is that taxpayers are subsidizing cars and chargers ($2 billion and growing) for well-heeled, elitist buyers who can afford the Leaf or Volt without the help. After my last column for NLPC about the Leaf, a Los Angeles owner who works in the entertainment industry emailed:
“Why oh why would anyone NOT charge every night? To do otherwise is simply silly and self-defeating. The Consumer Reports tester should be duly chastised for being so foolish and unaware.”
And “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno – a car enthusiast who has an enormous garage full of vehicles at his disposal – says since he received his Chevy Volt semi-hybrid nearly one year ago, he has not added gasoline once.
“It’s my daily driver,” he told the New York Times. “It really is. I commute in it to work every day. My commute, and all my other daily running around, totals less than 35 miles.
“You get 40 miles free, as they say. Because of the way I drive it, it almost never kicks into gasoline mode.”
So congratulations to rich California liberals: You convinced Washington to make taxpayers cover the cost of your daily driving habits, none of which diminish Middle East oil imports, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or any other made-up societal problem you cite to justify this social engineering.
http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/11/17/hollywood-liberals-love-ev-everyone-else-not-so-much |
