Pictures from our 1000 mile trip

It has been a couple months since we moved out of the support area around New York city, and had to give back the electric Mini E. But before we left, we took a drive to North Carolina from New Jersey in the electric. That post is here. Now that we are settled in after the move, here are some pictures for the big trip in the Mini E:

This was our first charging stop at Ken's house, charging at 50 amps with Ken's Mini E in the background. (Ken has since returned his Mini E as well, but he still has home made electric Metro I bet.)

The next stop is one of our favorites, Bar Harbor Marina and RV park in Abingdon, Maryland. They are friendly, the fee was $10 (shows as a dump station visit on the receipt), the place is pleasant and shady, and best of all their electric service is well maintained. We had charged at 50 amps at this particular parking spot last winter for three hours with no trouble. This time it was summer and perhaps because it was warmer, the breaker did trip after an hour of charging. No problem, we pulled into an adjacent spot where we completed charging without further interruption. And, the maintenance guy came over to work on the outlet and breaker box as soon as he heard we had trouble. His question about the Mini E was unique, he wanted to know if it could be towed behind an RV and charge the Mini E battery by Regenerative braking while it was being towed. (I wonder what Mini would say to that...)

Our next stop was just as friendly, same $10 fee, at much larger RV park near Washington DC. But we had much more trouble with keeping the breakers on at 50 amps. Ken told me he had charged here also, but perhaps it was in cooler weather. In any case, after plugging in and starting to charge at 50 amps, we heard a sound you might describe as "Snap, crackle and pop" coming from the breaker box for 10 seconds or so. Something was heating up and perhaps boiling off moisture. We noticed this at many campgrounds. It was early in the season, perhaps there was a lot of condensation in the boxes from winter. But the car did not charge for more than twenty minutes before the breaker tripped, and the breaker felt quite warm. This is caused either by wires that are not tight, corrosion on contacts, very old breakers that have tripped many times, or under sized wire. In the picture above, you can see that we tried an adjacent outlet without moving the car, an unexpected benefit of the very long six gauge cable that I added to the Clipper Creek box. In the end we moved to an adjacent camp site that was more in the shade, where we found an outlet that did not trip. This was a frustrating stop, but I did not complain. We did not know at this point that we would have this problem at many more campgrounds.

There were many good stops, some where they asked us what we thought we should pay, and we never had a single breaker trip. We even stopped at one place where they did not want to take more than $2 to charge the car. The stop in Amelia's Court House, Virginia, was just plain delightful. At other stops they insisted on full price like an overnight RV stay (usually around $35) even though we expected to leave in 3 hours, but there was no breaker that would stay on for more than 15 minutes. So much for high price meaning high quality.

One very friendly KOA where we stayed overnight was an interesting situation. They had mostly the older hookups, which are only 120 volts. Usually there are two of the common household outlets (NEMA 5-20) and one Travel Trailer connection, a 30 amp 120 volt outlet. We had called ahead and asked if we could use one of their few 50 amp 240 volt sites for a couple hours and then rent a cabin to stay over night. With the charging problems at our previous stops that day, we arrived later than expected and the 50 amp sites were all taken. (I could have put down a deposit but I would have had to pay the full over night rate for an RV.) We rented a cabin and I did what I had hoped not to do, I plugged into the TT-30 outlet and charged the car at 30 amps, 120 volts overnight. That is fast enough to reach 100% by morning, but the Clipper Creek equipment (shown above) is not set up for 120 volts at 30 amp, so I had to use a direct connection. I have since figured out how to adapt the large Clipper Creek box to 120 volt input, by using an international 240 to 120 volt travel transformer to keep the brains happy but wiring the relay for 120 volt operation. Too late now, I don't have the car to test it anymore! But that night I charged without the safety equipment, shame on me. I have heard of someone charging through the small yellow Clipper Creek box (shown below) at 30 amps, which is literally risking a fire especially in warmer weather.

Instead, I wired the heavy orange cable from the large Clipper Creek box directly to a TT-30 plug and connected to the Mini E without the safety box that keeps the car plug de-energized when it is disconnected. Fortunately no children were up and about by the time we plugged in. It turned out fine, but I won't do that again.

By the way, a county park just west of Washington DC had the newest electrical connections we saw. In the photo above, the NEMA 14-50 is on the left and the TT-30 is on the right. We had very good luck charging here. The fee was more than the usual $10 but less an over night RV stay. At this point we were happy to pay, since we were on the return trip and our previous stop had such bad wiring that we gave up with less than 50% charge after paying $35 for a so called 50 amp outlet that would not even deliver 30 amps without tripping the breaker.

While talking to many campground owners, several of them clearly were thinking this might be the Next Big Thing, and talked about adding charging spots specifically for electric cars. Others, as I have noted above, were completely clueless. I hope someone creates an internet site for rating campgrounds in terms of being friendly to electric cars, having good power that can sustain 50 amps without interruptions, etc.

We miss the Mini E, and none of the soon-to-be-available electric car options get close to that built-in 50 amp charging ability which makes cross country travel possible, if leisurely. It is fun to see that Li-ion Motors, near us here in North Carolina, won part of the X prize. They offer a converted Mini on their web site. I have no idea what the charge time is, they have not answered my email yet. But my daily commute is down from 120 + miles to about 20, so I can bicycle a couple times a week. Maybe I will survive without an electric car for now. Sniff.

This is a little off topic, but in Southern New Jersey the power company PSE & G has been putting up solar power panels on telephone poles. There are hundreds of them it seems. Above you can see one of them right in front of Ken's house, where we charged up many times. These panels use a micro inverter. We have looked into adding solar panels on our house, but we have lots of trees around and traditional solar panels do not like any shade on any panel in an array. A small amount of shade can cause a huge drop in power output because of the way the cells are wired in series. Now that micro inverters are competitive, the partial shade problem is significantly reduced. The only remaining problem is that micro inverters are not yet compatible with battery backup systems. And I for one do not like the idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a solar power array that stops producing if the grid goes down. Which is what they do without battery backup. It is a safety requirement, technically called Island Protection mode.

Higher efficiency means more variation in range

It became very clear over the course of over 27 thousand miles in the Mini E that the range is very elastic. If I knew I had to go farther than usual, I was confident I could always do it just by driving slower and more gently than usual. As long as the whole trip was less than 150 miles.

The big point here is that the more efficient a drive train is, the more variation in range there will be between driving aggressively and driving gently.

Here is an easy way to think about it without much math:

Let's say you have a very inefficient drive train that wastes 90% of your fuel no matter how you drive. The greatest effect you could have on your range by driving either very aggressively or very gently might be about 10%.

Now let's say you have a very efficient drive train that only wastes 10% of your fuel, worst case. Then you might expect that you could change your range by 90% depending on how you drive.

The average gas car is not as bad as the first example, but not far off.

The Mini E is not quite as good as the second example, but not far off.

Which is why an electric car can have a large variation in range depending on how smart or dumb the driver is about driving on any given day.

And this is also another reason why smart people with a little experience never ever have range anxiety in an electric car. We always start off in the morning with 100% charge, we know what our cars can do and how to get them to do it. And we plan accordingly.

And if we know we have the range, the Mini E has the performance to make dumb driving (that is, fast driving) a really fun time. But only when we know we can afford it. And then there are drivers who just cannot slow down, no matter what. Well, they are another story.

Maybe I'll cook up a first order mathematical treatment of this assertion about range variation if I can get one or two of my engineering buddies to check my work, and I'll post it in the near future.

By the way, show me a car that always has a full tank in the morning, where the driver never has to go out of the way to get fuel, and the driver never has to waste any time while the car is fueling, and I will show you an electric car.

Why is it that carcinogenic car drivers don't get this?

Even though the Mini E was returned a month ago, I plan a few more posts. One will be the experiences of a friend who drove my Mini E for the last few weeks after I moved out of New Jersey. (He liked it, even though he mostly charged it at 12 amps.) Another will be about the amazing "Variac" and why it became my best friend while charging the car at work. Perhaps the last post will be about the problems some people have reported when trying to charge from a generator and how to work around these problems.

500 miles from home

Our first really long trip taken by charging the electric car at "RV parks" was not always fun. But it can be done. We drove from New Jersey to North Carolina. We did not quite make it in two days as planned, but almost.

The short story is that many campgrounds or Recreational Vehicle (RV) Parks that have 50 amp receptacles do not maintain them well. The screws on the connectors, circuit breakers, and buss bars should be tightened periodically. Breakers that have tripped many times tend to get weak, and trip at lower than rated current. These circuit breakers should be replaced.

Without this maintenance, the circuits can run hot and will not sustain the 100% current rating for 3 hours, which the specifications require. (For more than 3 hours, load must be reduced to 80% of rating. Fortunately, the Mini E draws 48 amps for about 2.5 hours and then current draw decreases for the last 30 minutes of charging.)

We had varying trouble with circuit breakers tripping at almost half of the campgrounds we visited. At one campground, we tried over 6 camp sites before finding a power outlet that would charge the car for more than 10 minutes or so. On the return trip, we gave up completely at one campground and left with only 50% charge because no circuits would stay on for long.

For this and other reasons, our travels took a bit longer than planned. Of course the best course of action when a 50 amp circuit will not support 50 amps is to reduce charging current to 32 amps, and get where you are going later than planned.

Disclaimer: The US National Electrical Code does not approve of operating Electric Vehicle Service Equipment rated over 1500 watts (which is the size of the Mini E slow charger) unless it is permanently connected to a circuit that is rated at 20% higher amperage than what the car draws. The fact that RVs are allowed to connected through a NEMA 14-50 connector at 240 volts 50 amps, while an electric car is not allowed to do so, might be thought of as a Grandfather clause. The NEMA 14-50 connector is old and not particularly safe for the general public to use on a daily basis. It is not so problematic when hidden behind your kitchen stove for 10 years at a time.

Anyone employing such unapproved uses should be well trained and carefully monitor the connections while charging a car. Really, it should not be done at all. Hopefully we will have purpose designed charging infrastructure more widely installed soon.

I have heard that Tesla supports charging through a NEMA 14-50 plug. If that is true, I am curious how they do that with the electrical code as it stands today. And Tesla has quite a few more options for setting the charging current. It would be nice to be able to reduce current to 40 amps in the Mini E for instance.

The bottom line on our trip is that traveling long distances by electric car is possible now. It takes a lot of planning, and the first trip might be troublesome but once you learn which campgrounds to avoid, it can be very pleasant albeit slower than piston powered travel. We enjoyed driving a couple hours and then stopping for a couple hours to hike, eat, nap, or whatever before heading out again. That is, when we were at well maintained camp grounds.

Oh, and bring bottled water. Don't trust the well water at campgrounds.

Yeah, and as other bloggers have mentioned, the only 240 volt receptacles at campgrounds in the US are those that are nominally rated 50 amps. The 30 amp receptacles are 120 volt "NEMA TT-30" and cannot be used with the Clipper Creek safety box. 20 amp receptacles are always the standard home style (NEMA 5-20) plugs. We did use 20 amp outlets at motels with the slow charger. More and more motels seem to know where their outdoor outlets are and are OK with them being used.

Three quarters through

 After eight months and almost 20,000 miles, I am three quarters of the way through the one year lease of the electric Mini. And I am happier than I expected. The driving experience makes even "luxury" cars seem primitive by comparison, not to mention stinky. There have been issues with the Mini E but most are in the past and issues are to be expected with a prototype.   Due to the issues I have experienced, Mini has waived several of the lease payments so I cannot complain at all about the expense.

I continue to easily get 120 mile range with just a little caution even in the cold weather.  Although, to get this range in the cold I should not have to use an auxiliary space heater to warm up the battery while it is parked and charging.  But the car is a prototype and this is a small concession that will not be needed in production models.  And being from Minnesota, plugging in a heater in the car is only natural when the weather is such I am putting on wool underwear anyway.

They are still working on the built in cabin heater. I use it on short trips when I don't need 100+ mile range. The built in heater was very strong at first but quickly went weak. They replaced a control module and some wiring a month ago and it was wicked hot for 6 days. Not very long.  Then it got really hot only half of the time, so it went back in for service. They sent it to northern New Jersey for a complete tear down of the heater. This time they replaced the heater core and some more wiring.  They claimed it measured between 130 and 150 degrees F at the vents when they were done, but when I picked it up it was lukewarm again.  I have tried it a few times since and every time it has been quite hot, but they understand there is work to be done to get the heater right.  I think they said they now have my old heater core in one of the engineering mules and are evaluating what is wrong.

But the big problem for a small number of us with high voltage from the power company is fixed. Charging problems are a thing of the past.

Compared to the other options out there, I don't see anything close to the Mini E. The Leaf has a shorter range and does not have complete thermal management for the battery, so I might as well stay with the Mini E which I know how to manage manually. The Volt has absurdly short electric range, especially after I have been spoiled by the Mini E.  Plus the Volt still  carries around a big can of cancer causing poison called gasoline.  That's is what I'm trying to get away from!  And the upcoming BMW electric does not present the air of humility that I look for in a car, if you can forgive me for getting subjective.  So if they offer to let me extend the lease on the Mini E, I will try to hang on to it for as long as possible.

No more charging problems, heater still an issue

The electricians came by today and  installed a buck transformer which lowers my charging voltage to 240 volts from the unusually  high 252 volts that I normally have.  This should be end of my charging problems.

The transformer (really an autoformer in this configuration) is branded Acme.  If you can believe it.  It hums quietly.  My wife hates things that hum.  But I can turn off the breaker when I'm not charging the car.

 Acme?  Not Sola?  Not Square D?  I wonder if Grainger carries Acme?  Or Graybar?  Well.  Interesting.  Anyway.  I'm trying not to look at the country of origin sticker.

I had the car in for 18,000 mile service last week.  They fixed the heater.  It was wicked hot for about 6 days.  Now it has gone lukewarm again.  I guess those folks at Behr have a ways to go up the learning curve on high voltage electric heaters. 

They also put in my fourth PEU.  This one does not hum.  The old one hummed loudly.

All in all I am happy.  Big snow here in Jersey.  Lots of fun.  And the E is moving again.  Yea!

UPDATE:  OK, my electrician assures me that Acme is well known and respected brand in transformers, and it is labeled as made in NAFTA, if you catch my meaning if you get my drift.  But I couldn't resist the chance to invoke Wile E. Coyote again.  He became my alter ego for a while there.

All the cabin heat you could want and no range decrease

There is a report that a new Electric Vehicle planned by Volvo incorporates a liquid fuel cabin heater:

Volvo EV uses E85 for Cabin Heat

What I find interesting here is the comments after the article which make it clear this is far from a new idea.  I was aware of the old air cooled VW Beetles in the 1960s that had accessory cabin heaters which burned gasoline.  (I heard descriptions of these heaters failing which gave new meaning to the phrase Flame Out.  As in flames coming out of the dash vents.)  But several 1990 vintage EVs also used some variety of liquid fuel cabin heaters as do many (most?) contemporary EVs in Norway, where there are a lot of EVs.  Hmm, does that oil producing country know something we don't?

I'll stick with the long underwear and wool socks, thank you very much.  But great idea.  Even the Corvair used a liquid fuel cabin heater.  (I didn't know the Corvair had an air cooled engine.)

Does anyone know if E85 burning at atmospheric pressure in a simple furnace type of heat exchanger burns more cleanly than under the crazy cycles of a piston engine?  I assume so.  Now where does the heater exhaust go in an automotive package?  I presume a tail pipe, not a chimney or (God forbid) the cabin?

Still, liquid fuels are efficient at providing heat and electricity is efficient and smooth at providing motive force.  Use the best tool for the job.

The elctricians are coming!

Got the call from Franklin Electric today, the buck transformers arrived.  They will be by next week to knock my line voltage down to 240 volts from the 252 volts that PSE&G supplies.  This will be the end of my cold weather charging problems.

I have heard that voltage tolerance is actually a regulatory function, meaning a political decision in the local area.  A friend up in upstate NY who works for the power company says they can deliver plus or minus 10% of nominal, which surprises me.  (Nominal being 120 or 240.)  If I recall correctly, the good folks at quick220.com were telling me that the Arizona utility they talked to aims at plus or minus 5% for class A service, meaning not at peak load in the summer.  Class B service is plus 5% minus 10% tolerance.  This makes sense.  I have seen minus 10% at work in the summer, which works out to 108 volts.