As you can see from the image above, the car averaged 13.7kWh/100km in April. This is a reasonable improvement over the 14.9kWh/100km observed in March. The improvement is most likely down to a change in weather.....warmer air temperatures make the batteries more efficient.
This works out at a cost of €1.73 per 100km (charging at home). By way of comparison, a reasonably good efficiency in a petrol car would get about 5l/100km. At current petrol prices around Galway (€1.46-ish per litre), this equates to about €7.30 per 100km. Over the distance travelled in April, such a petrol car would have cost about €45 in fuel.
Would you rather pay €45 or €11 for your entire monthly commute?
Interesting to note that over the past month or so, petrol prices have risen by about 10cent per litre. This can have a big effect over a longer period of time. Fossil fuel is not only running out, its price can fluctuate wildly. In the 18 months or so that I've had my LEAF, the price I pay for electricity has barely changed at all. So, at a time of year when the EV is getting more efficient to run due to warmer weather, and fossil fuel prices are rising, the overall savings are getting even better.
*A note on the stated CO2 Savings shown above:
This figure is calculated by Nissan, not by me. Please refer to the note on this page for more information about this.
As you can see from the image above, the car averaged 14.7kWh/100km in February (down slightly from the 15.6 in January). This is the best fuel economy that the car has returned during this Project, and is probably down to unseasonally mild weather for this time of year. There's an irony in a car with no emissions gaining an advantage from global warming!
This works out at a cost of €1.85 per 100km (charging at home). By way of comparison, a reasonably good efficiency in a petrol car would be 5l/100km. At current petrol prices around Galway (€1.35-ish per litre), this equates to about €6.75 per 100km. Over the distance travelled in February, such a petrol car would have cost about €59 in fuel.
*A note on the stated CO2 Savings shown above:
This figure is calculated by Nissan, not by me. Please refer to the note on this page for more information about this.
As you can see from the image above, the car averaged 15.6kWh/100km in January (down slightly from the 15.9 in December). As before, I would say this is pretty good for the time of year, and is reasonably consistent over the three-months of this Project so far.
For the month of January I did the vast majority of the charging at home. I used the rapid charger near Carnmore Cross a couple of times, but not much in the scheme of things. The total cost of €26.52 is therefore a reasonably accurate reflection of "fuel" costs for the month.
This works out at a cost of €1.99 per 100km. By way of comparison, a reasonably good efficiency in a petrol car would be 5l/100km. At current petrol prices around Galway (€1.35-ish per litre), this equates to about €6.75 per 100km. Over the distance travelled in January, such a petrol car would have cost about €88 in fuel.
Something worth noting in the image is the amount of electricity generated by the car. You hear a lot about "self-charging" cars in the media at the moment. Leaving out the fact that any car with an alternator is technically "self-charging", the figures for the amount of energy regenerated by an EV are quite good. The car generated 49.2kWh by utilising the motor as a dynamo during slowing-down in January. If we work off 15.6kWh/100km, this means that the car generated enough power to cover 315km all by itself. 315km absolutely for free! How far can some of the "self-charging" cars go by battery power? Reports from The Netherlands suggest its a matter of 2-3km per charge. Just saying!
*A note on the stated CO2 Savings shown above:
This figure is calculated by Nissan, not by me. Please refer to the note on this page for more information about this.
There is quite a famous (infamous?) episode of Top Gear (Series 17, Episode 6) where Mssrs. Clarkson and May take a test drive in a Nissan LEAF and a Peugeot iON. Apart from sensationalising range limitations (which I believe was a stunt involving deliberately running down the battery levels prior to starting to film), the episode makes certain claims about how long batteries will last and how much they cost to replace.
One claim is that you can ruin the battery pack in 3 years if you fast charge all the time, and a related claim is that if you slow-charge then the battery pack will last "maximum 10 years, possibly 5" with a replacement cost of £7,000.
At first glance this seems terrible. Why would you buy a car where you had to spend £7,000 every 5/6 years? It would be the equivalent of buying an ICE car in the knowledge that you had to replace the engine every 5/6 years (or 3 years if you go hard on it). You simply wouldn't do that.
However, the reality has been shown to be very different to the claims made in that episode.
It is generally accepted that Nissan LEAF batteries degrade at about 3 to 4% per year, with degradation more linked to age than mileage. There are variables that can affect this, but that's the accepted degradation rate. So, I decided to put my own car to the test.
My car turns 4 years old this month (January 2019), so I'd expect somewhere between 12 to 16% battery degradation in that time. To test this, I connect an OBD2 dongle into the computer in my car, and using an app (called LeafSpy Pro) on my phone, I am able to view a lot of data about the car that is normally hidden.
The image below shows the battery cell report:
The blanked out part is the VIN, and the value highlighted in red is the State Of Health (SOH) of the battery pack. The "odo" reading is the mileage of the car, and the QC refers to number of Quick Charges, while L1/L2 refers to the number of slow charges.
As you can see, after 4 years and 72,242 kilometers, the battery pack still has 87.74% of its original capacity. This is at the lower end of what would be considered normal degradation, so no complaints there. I can easily get 100km at worst from that capacity, so all things being equal in another 4 years the car will have about 75% battery capacity and a range of about 90km at worst.
The reality is that I will not have to replace the battery any time soon, if ever. This is a long way from the claims made by Clarkson (remember: as little as 3 years if you fast charge, 5 if you slow charge before requiring a replacement costing £7,000). It just goes to prove that some anti- EV claims made in mainstream media really need to be taken with a sack of salt.
For anyone in the Galway are who has a Nissan LEAF, I'd be happy to meet up with you and test the battery health in your car for you using the OBD2 dongle that I have. Just comment below, or drop me a line.
There are generally five arguments made against choosing an electric vehicle over an internal combustion engine vehicle.
They are too expensive
They don't go far enough
The charging infrastructure is poor
There is not enough choice in vehicle type
They have poor performance
I've heard some of these in the time I've been talking to people about my EV experience, and to be honest, most of these perceived issues are either already addressed, or are well on the way. Here is how I usually respond to these claims:
They are too expensive
Well, it depends. If buying brand new, EVs are almost on par with a petrol/diesel equivalent at this stage. I say almost, because they are still a bit more expensive. But if you consider running costs (where an EV can easily save the average driver the best part of €2,000 per year), then over a 5 year period of ownership, you have to add €10k to the sticker price of a petrol/diesel car to get a better like-for-like price comparison. Added to this, battery manufacture technology is becoming more mainstream now, and so battery pack costs are dropping year-on-year. So, the sticker price for EVs is going to drop over time.
Buying second hand is a different matter. Have a look on the car sales websites and compare something like a 151/152 Ford Focus to a 151/152 Nissan LEAF. Go ahead, I'll wait here.....
Well, what did you discover? (For anyone that cheated and didn't go looking, get ready, spoiler alert!). Yep, that's right, they're both about the same price, all things considered. So EVs are not really more expensive at all, if you think it through.
They don't go far enough
How far is "enough"? That will depend on user expectation, and is likely to differ for everyone. But as a starting point, even older EVs with the smaller battery packs should be good for 100km from a charge. So, if your daily commute is up to 100km, you're fine. For the majority of drivers, this is more than enough. For longer trips, you can plan around the location of rapid chargers. Of course, there will always be outliers and drivers that need more range, and that's where the newer EVs that are being released will help. 200km range is now about the "norm", with 300km being the likely norm in a year or two. I suggest keeping a log of your daily distances over the course of a month or so (I did this leading up to buying my EV), just to record how far you do actually drive every day. Psychologically, a 200 or 300km range may be a comfortable number, but in reality you might find you don't need that from a charge.
The charging infrastructure is poor
You might have a point on this one! By "poor" here, I'm referring to two issues: the chargers can be unreliable, and they can be occupied when you need them. Except, (and here's the big news) it actually doesn't matter for most people. Why? Because you can charge at home! The majority of people with an EV do not need to use the public charging network. So much so, in fact, the SEAI provide a grant to have a home charging point installed.
However, let's say you do need to use the public network occasionally. What about reliability/availability then? Since about 2012, the ESB has provided free rapid charge points around the country (about 70 of them at this stage), and therein lies the problem. They are free. What happens when things are free? They get abused.
There are two problems with the free model. Firstly, users will park up and get a free charge even if they don't really need it. Anecdotally, EV drivers will tell you about "Mary" or "Joe" who they know lives just a mile away from the rapid charger, but who will plug in at it instead of at home just to save a few cents. This is called "hogging" and is frowned upon, as it can block a user who actually really needs the energy. Secondly, with the no-cost model, the operator (ESB) has no incentive (or perhaps budget) to maintain charge points that need to be serviced. So, charge points can be unnecessarily blocked or simply not working when you drive up to them.
The simple way around this is to charge users to plug in at the rapid chargers. This will ensure an income for the operators to help maintain the units and install more of them, and it will discourage users from plugging unless they really have to. To this end, the ESB has announced that from mid-2019 onwards, there will be a charge associated with using the rapid charge points on its network. It should be noted that this applies to the rapid chargers only, and the slower ones will remain free to use for now.
There is not enough choice in vehicle type
This might have been true in the past. Up until a few years ago, the choice in Ireland was basically Nissan LEAF, Renault Zoe or Fluence, and Mitsubishi iMiEV. I'm not including hybrids here, because they are not EVs. However, more recently this choice has expanded, to include models from Kia (Soul), Hyundai (Ioniq and Kona), VW (Golf), BMW (i3), Tesla, and more from Nissan (the eNV200 van), plus other models too. So there is an EV option in a number of classes now. This is further expanded if you include Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, but I'm focusing on pure electric vehicles here. And there are even more EV models coming to market in the next year or so. I don't see lack of choice as a barrier at this point.
They have poor performance
Really? Have you ever driven one? My own driving experience with an EV is limited to the Nissan LEAF, so I won't refer to the 0-100kph acceleration stats for a Tesla Model S (it's 2.5 seconds, just to save you having to look it up), or the fact that VW blew away all competition and set a new world record for the infamous Pikes Peak race using an EV (in some ways helped by the fact that at altitude EVs perform better than internal combustion engine cars because thin air does not affect them).
No, let's keep it more realistic. Even with a humble Nissan LEAF, the "off the line" acceleration is very impressive. Sure, it tapers off as you get above 60/70kph, and so the unofficial 0-100kph is a fairly ordinary 10 seconds or so, but the initial burst is more than enough to get you away from the lights ahead of most cars (I'm not suggesting you go street racing in it, or do anything that would get you in trouble with the law, but take one for a spin and you might be surprised). The top speed on my Nissan LEAF is just over 150kph, so again, it's not a slow car considering the maximum speed limit in Ireland is 120kph.
Still not willing to take my word for it?
In that case, take 18 minutes to have a look at the video below. It's UK-centric, but the mains points are still valid in Ireland. I recommend the "Fully Charged" channel on YouTube, if you are interested in watching more videos about EVs.
First properly cold morning, this morning. The perfect morning for dowsing the windscreen with a bit of hot water.
Except if you have an EV.
One of the best (and most often over-looked) features of the Nissan LEAF is that you can remotely control the heating and cooling system, using an app on your phone. The benefit of this on a cold morning is that it not only clears frost from the windscreen, it pre-heats the whole cabin so that it's nice and toasty when you start your journey (I have mine set to 23 degrees). No need to wait for an engine to warm up. In the summer time, this function can be used to pre-cool the car as well.
This, of course, comes at a price. To carry this function out, the car will use some battery power, and so will take some range away. In my experience, pre-conditioning the car for about 15 minutes (which is plenty) uses about 3%, and so takes about 3km off the range. I don't have any hard science to back it up, but my guess is that running an engine on a regular car to do the same job would also take about that amount of range from the tank.
To overcome such losses, there is an easy fix. If you have the car plugged into a charger at the time you carry out the pre-conditioning, the energy used comes from the mains and not from the battery. That means if you have the car plugged in overnight, you can get into a pre-heated car and still have 100% battery when setting off. That's just not possible in a regular car (unless you have your own petrol/diesel pump at home).
And yes, I get the irony of having to go outside on a cold day to take these pictures which are supposed to show "remote" pre-heating. :)
In terms of maintaining an EV, there is very little required, and even less that you can do yourself. No oil change, no timing belt, no gasket seal that can break.
As part of the regular service carried out by the main dealer (around €120), the cabin pollen filter gets changed, and that's about it. Obviously, if wear and tear items such as wipers and brake pads need to be replaced, then that has to be done too, just like with any car. The service carried out by the main dealer is required mostly to get the service book stamped, as the warranty depends on a full history. The warranty with the version of LEAF I have is 3-years bumper-to-bumper and 5 years on the batteries and motor. My car won't be 5 years old until 2020, so I will get the service from the main dealer as necessary to keep the warranty in place.
But apart from that, the car is pretty much maintenance free. Top up the brake fluid if necessary (it hasn't been necessary on my car so far), and keep the windscreen washer tank filled, and away you go.
