I’m joining the EV club

  • Thread starter Thread starter gooki
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I picked up the Leaf today. Drove 16km home, and the GOM only dropped 4km ;)

Bonus, the charging cable was still in the boot, I was worried it might end up stolen while sitting around at the ports, as the shipping companies advise you to remove all items.

It’ll be interesting if it’ll make the 104km round trip to my kids favourite fishing spot. I can shorten the journey to 80km, but that involves a long/steep hill climb each way. I’ll give it a month or so to get a feel for the cars range, before attempting it.
 
I just used PlugShare.com to look for J1772 chargers and there was a fair number. Then I used CHAdeMO and both islands were covered. I suspect you'll have no problem doing 104 km trips with charging options along the way.

Bob Wilson
 
Cheers Bob. There’s one type2 charger along the longer route. Most of them are bring your own cable. But hey, I can always buy one.
 
gooki said:
Cheers Bob. There’s one type2 charger along the longer route. Most of them are bring your own cable. But hey, I can always buy one.
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My understanding is the Leaf uses a CHAdeMO socket for fast DC charging. Perhaps you might share a photo of the charging port(s) and the adapter plug?

My understanding is "Type 2" is a Menke plug.

You can create a free, plugshare account that shows your location and vehicle. It used to be all possible connectors were shown but I noticed only the North American plugs today. There is a trip planning function that I use when planning my trips. BTW, there are other EV planning web sites but I am used to PlugShare.

I just cranked up abetterrouteplanner.com and plotted a route from Ivercargill to Blenheim with Menke plugs along the way.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson
 
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Yeah it has a Chademo DC port.

So I managed to go 65km of 52% of the Leaf battery at mixed speeds. That 104km journey is looking more achievable.
 
My standard test method for all cars:
  1. Climb the steepest, tallest hill from a dead stop with maximum accelerator. There are no speed traps on climbing roads and other cars are easy to spot. This measures worst case consumption and with a timed climb, a good metric for vehicle power. Be careful about turns at high speed at the crest.
  2. Three benchmarks of 16 km each way returning to the starting point with the vehicle indicate consumption:
    • 40-55 kph
    • 70-90 kph
    • 105-120 kph
    • Plot these points into Excel and use the trend line to plot a quadratic function ( Ax**2 + Bx + C) to get a curve showing the consumption as a function of speed.
Once you have the consumption vs speed curve, you can investigate tuning tricks like higher tire (tyre?) pressure, wheel alignment, and aerodynamic mods to reduce low and high speed drag.

Bob Wilson
 
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