Any GTAM'ers own an electric vehicle?

[PrivatePilot]

Pulled over safely I hope lol

I get your excitement, but do try to avoid turning into one of those eco nuts driving around with one egg under the accelerator and another atop your shoulders.

Congrats on the auto; of the eco options I dislike the volt the least. Seems quality.

LOL, yeah...I know how to hypermile and although I do institute some tactics in the Volt (like simply not racing towards a red light or not jackrabbit accelerating away from every green one) I'm not one who's going to be blocking or impeding traffic simply to get an extra KM or so on the battery/better MPG.

I've been behind those sorts, often in Prius', I know what you speak of.

65km normally doesn't sound that impressive to me. But when I start thinking about it, that's an entire car with people running around essentially free.

You're right, 50-60K doesn't really sound that impressive until one starts to think about it from the perspective of how often that sort of mileage constitutes an entire day's worth of driving for many people.

One of the first things people routinely ask is "how far does it go on a charge" and, yes, some aren't totally impressed with the number..until I ask them how many K they drive on an average day, they think about it, and realize that they fit in the category it's aimed at.

That's one of the soft benefits of this type of car.
You can get up and perhaps go do different things or drop by x or y places as it will cost you less than the cost of 1 TTC fare in 1 direction for 1 person.

And with the Level 2 charger installed at home now I can go out and do 50+KM of driving, come home and plug it in, and 3-4 hours later, do it all over again. I got back this morning at around 9:45AM (See the time in the last photos), plugged it in, and at 1:50PM it was full again and ready to go. I could do this three times a day and theoretically drive 180KM on electricity alone, for about $3.00 in electricity, so long as I have some downtime in between drives to charge.

Of course, if I had only went across town to pickup something at Home Depot or something for example, came home having used on 25K or so, I'd be fully recharged again inside an hour.

For those interested, here's a screenshot from my whole home wattage monitoring system. You can see the bumps where the Volt is plugged into the Level 2, last night at 7PM it started charging automatically based on it's programming, and then again this morning at 9:50-ish - being a holiday it's off peak electricity rates all day so I overrode the usual "wait until 7PM" setup and told it to charge immediately. The spike at around 8:30AM was the stove, me cooking breakfast.

 

[GreyGhost]

What are channel 1 and channel 2?

 

[PrivatePilot]

The meter measures the 2 phases coming into the house separately, so it's basically each 120v leg coming into the house.

You total the two to get gross wattage consumption. The 240v EVSE (charger) for the car I have installed here typically (although curiously, not always) draws an even number of amps from both 120V legs so it's "signature" is easy to pick out.

The up and down cycles that you see much of the day/night are the refrigerator cycling on and off. Large short lived spikes are usually the stove/oven. Longer term but smaller peaks are typically things like furnace, dishwasher or washing machine. Smaller short term spikes may be things like hair dryers, etc.

 

[mimico_polak]

@PP what do you use to get the electrical consumption for your house? That looks like a good tool to have.

 

[PrivatePilot]

@PP what do you use to get the electrical consumption for your house? That looks like a good tool to have.

It's an ENVI by Current Cost. I bought it probably eight or 10 years ago, the company has since gone under although apparently some Chinese manufacturer bought the rights and continues to produce them, as well as maintain the website – I wouldn't buy one now however, although the hardware is solid the software/interface options to get the information it generates online is incredibly poor now, almost nonexistent. If all you want is an LCD display that shows your live consumption (updated every second or so) it's still a decent option however and I suspect they can be found for a reasonable cost now. .

I have my eye on the "Sense" system now to replace it, they still don't officially sell them in Canada, and from what I have read their sensing technology is still maturing, so I'm going to wait a year or so. I have family and friends in the US that could buy and ship to me So I will probably end up getting one eventually through them.

Being able to see exactly how much wattage your house is consuming 22nd by second basis is indeed eye-opening – what surprises most people is there "idle" consumption - how much their house is still actually consuming even when they think everything is turned off. At the lowest our house still hovers around 350 watts. When I first got the meter that was closer to 750w.

 

[GreyGhost]

The meter measures the 2 phases coming into the house separately, so it's basically each 120v leg coming into the house.

Interesting. That's what I expected, but it was strange that there were almost no parasitic loads on Channel 2.

I guess there is no real advantage to balancing phase loads and now you could run all of your critical loads off a 120V generator without too much trouble.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Interesting. That's what I expected, but it was strange that there were almost no parasitic loads on Channel 2.

I guess there is no real advantage to balancing phase loads and now you could run all of your critical loads off a 120V generator without too much trouble.

Yes indeed most of the 120 V circuits in the house are wired solely to phase 1. There are a few random spots throughout the house that draw from the second phase, one of the kitchen receptacles, the furnace if I recall correctly, but not much else. It does seem kind of weird to me because effectively all of the 120 V circuits as a result are limited to only 100 amps of a 200 amp service, but in reality that's still a crap ton of amps that wouldn't be exceeded under pretty much any conceivable circumstance I can think of.

The only time I see any major bumps on the second phase are for the 240 V loads – oven/stove, pool pump, and now the EVSE.

 

[empty]

Ok so let's call it 8L/100km loaded car (4 adults and luggage).
Seems to be on par running on gas alone.
.

Just went for a 3 day road trip last weekend down to Sandusky, Ohio. 2017 Chrysler Pacifica, 5 people + luggage, highway cruising speed 130~140km/h. Avg. for whole weekend (including time in Sandusky) was 8.3 L/100.
And why is US gas still about 1/2 of what we're paying?

 

[PrivatePilot]

Here was the weekend summary - we did burn a little gas on Saturday, daughter and I went to the stable in the AM (about 40K from home) but then had to go straight to the Oshawa GO station afterwards - not enough battery for that trip so the range extender fired up about 10K after we left the farm.

Still no complaints - I'm happy with 1.5L/100KM.

 

[fastar1]

I think you may have made a mistake getting the Volt before Mrs. PrivatePilot's office installed the level II. Now they'll see her come and go with no problem and shove the installation down the priority list.

 

[PrivatePilot]

I think you may have made a mistake getting the Volt before Mrs. PrivatePilot's office installed the level II. Now they'll see her come and go with no problem and shove the installation down the priority list.

Meh, not too worried about it, although there are some bureaucratic hoops to jump through like any big organization. I think they're stand-up on things after the initial strong support for the initiative. It's just working it's way through the cogs at this point. Anticipating news Tuesday.

Even in the highly unlikely scenario things don't work out on the level 2 she can surely still get access to a regular old 120V plug somewhere which will work for Level 1 - yeah, it'll take a full 8 hours to get a full charge (so on a day she goes out for lunch or something she won't be able to get quite full), but it'll still be a net benefit.

And absolutely worst case scenario, no plug access at all....we're still down to using only about 1/4 as much gas every day vs her old Chrysler 300 was for the same commute.

 

[slowbird]

Slowbird, when do you pickup your Volt BTW?

Yeah I got it on Thursday. It didn't start off very well unfortunately. The dealer I got it from didn't even change the oil (even though the life monitor said it needed it and I told them to change it before I bought it) The salesman assured me it was changed when I picked it up...they just forgot to reset the monitor, but when I got home I looked under the car and the oil filter is definitely old and hasn't been changed in months so I gotta take it back for them to remedy this.
They also didn't replace the old ECO tires with new Eco tires like we agreed on. They just put on regular tires.
****ing stealerships.

So yeah. Thursday was getting used to the car. Friday the GF and I went for a long drive. Got about 60km out of the battery before the ICE kicked in. Later that day in the early evening we went to a conservation area to go for a hike and they had EV parking and a Level 2 charge station. Pretty cool.


Here's the details from the drive that day: (I dunnoh why I took a picture of the trip and not the Energy info screen.)


Saturday I drove to Ingersol for a friends family dinner. I used mostly gas of course since it's like a 300kms round trip. The car is smooth, quiet and pulls easily on the highway. Nav was nice to have too.

I didn't take a picture of what the damage was for that trip but it was in the 4L/100kms range IIRC.

I drove about 800kms in it already and I had to get gas this morning before work. I squeezed in about 31L. Much better than the 500-600kms I'd get with 70L with my G37. I did "waste" a bit of gas by charging the battery in "Mountain Mode" briefly because I was running low on battery power on the first day (dealer gave me the car with half a charge ...and they have a level 2 charging station ) and wanted some when I picked up a friend so they could see what it was like running in EV mode.

I'm enjoying it so far and I haven't been hypermiling it at all. It's in SPORT mode most of the time. I've been in the fast lane of the highways going with the flow and passing slower vehicles. When I know I will be on the highway for a bit and wanna save some battery power for the city I will put it in HOLD mode.

I have to say the one annoyance I guess I'd call it is the charging. Not charging in general but how it charges. If you only have access to a Level 1 charger like me and you can't get a Level 2 charger then charging can be a bit of a pain. It's slow. However it's a small sacrifice for the savings.
However, the charger itself is finicky. I haven't read the manual for it yet (I will today) but it was occasionally not charging. The car alarm would sound (cause it thinks someone is unplugging it....and yes you can disable this alarm in the settings) so I would go investigate the car in the garage and go...huh. That's odd. It stopped charging.
I think the charger needs to be completely unwound and in an area where it won't get hot. I'm not 100% sure though.

Also the Onstar won't connect and the Onstar people don't know why. They are looking into it.

 

[mxs]

It's an ENVI by Current Cost. I bought it probably eight or 10 years ago, the company has since gone under although apparently some Chinese manufacturer bought the rights and continues to produce them, as well as maintain the website – I wouldn't buy one now however, although the hardware is solid the software/interface options to get the information it generates online is incredibly poor now, almost nonexistent. If all you want is an LCD display that shows your live consumption (updated every second or so) it's still a decent option however and I suspect they can be found for a reasonable cost now. .

I have my eye on the "Sense" system now to replace it, they still don't officially sell them in Canada, and from what I have read their sensing technology is still maturing, so I'm going to wait a year or so. I have family and friends in the US that could buy and ship to me So I will probably end up getting one eventually through them.

Being able to see exactly how much wattage your house is consuming 22nd by second basis is indeed eye-opening – what surprises most people is there "idle" consumption - how much their house is still actually consuming even when they think everything is turned off. At the lowest our house still hovers around 350 watts. When I first got the meter that was closer to 750w.

Interesting about "Sense" ... I was looking into it on their side, and certainly, it's looking like a slick device, but I thought it's riding too much on the accuracy of their "sensing" technology and algorithm.

What about this? They use the old fashioned donut, but are sold in Canada .... http://eyedro.com/home-solutions/

 

[GreyGhost]

God, tax dollars at work. How much would it cost to install that charger in a location where it probably only gets used a few days a year? At least you used it so it wasn't a complete waste of money.

 

[PrivatePilot]

Sounds good slowbird.

I can offer info on your charging issues, as well as your Onstar issues for I am experiencing the exact same thing. VERY long story which I'm ready to post about having finally narrowed down the issue. The charging issue is probably something minor though.

Anyhow, I'll respond on both topics this evening - it's long and detailed and not something I want to type on my iPhone.

But yes chase the dealer on the tires for sure - the non-eco tires are known to cut off 10+km of battery range vs the proper low rolling resistance tires - the dealer just cheaper out, or perhaps like I experienced, are just woefully under informed about EV's and/or didn't care. And the oil change is just ignorant.

What dealer did you buy it from out of curiosity - one that's OMVIC registered I hope? That gives you some recourse if they don't make things right - I might be going that way with Ontario Motor Sales for the OnStar issues for reasons you'll understand when I post all the details. I'm not really pleased with the whole thing, let's just say.

 

[slowbird]

God, tax dollars at work. How much would it cost to install that charger in a location where it probably only gets used a few days a year? At least you used it so it wasn't a complete waste of money.

lol! It is supplied by Sun Country:
http://suncountryhighway.com/en/Content/aboutus
They have a sponsor a charger program so it could have been put there with anyone's $$ though it's very likely it's paid by taxes through the Credit Valley Conservation dept that ran this particular park.

Sounds good slowbird.

I can offer info on your charging issues, as well as your Onstar issues for I am experiencing the exact same thing. VERY long story which I'm ready to post about having finally narrowed down the issue. The charging issue is probably something minor though.

Anyhow, I'll respond on both topics this evening - it's long and detailed and not something I want to type on my iPhone.

hahaha thanks PP. I appreciate it.

But yes chase the dealer on the tires for sure - the non-eco tires are known to cut off 10+km of battery range vs the proper low rolling resistance tires - the dealer just cheaper out, or perhaps like I experienced, are just woefully under informed about EV's and/or didn't care. And the oil change is just ignorant.

What dealer did you buy it from out of curiosity - one that's OMVIC registered I hope? That gives you some recourse if they don't make things right - I might be going that way with Ontario Motor Sales for the OnStar issues for reasons you'll understand when I post all the details. I'm not really pleased with the whole thing, let's just say.

It's Streetsville Hyundai in Mississauga. Original owner traded it in for something. Yeah they are OMVIC registered so I can make a complaint through them if required. I'll be heading over there tomorrow to talk with the salesman to get them to remedy all the problems.

 

[-D-]

@slowbird
I didn't take a picture of what the damage was for that trip but it was in the 4L/100kms range IIRC.

Wow! 4/100 on gas...that's what I was trying to find out.
That was with 2 adults in the car also and your non eco tires.
That is impressive.

 

[slowbird]

@slowbird
I didn't take a picture of what the damage was for that trip but it was in the 4L/100kms range IIRC.

Wow! 4/100 on gas...that's what I was trying to find out.
That was with 2 adults in the car also and your non eco tires.
That is impressive.

Yeah somewhere in the 4L/100kms range. So anywhere from 4.1-4.9L/100kms. I remember it was in the 4's cause the previous owner was averaging 5L/100kms and I thought "Nice! Better than the po."

I dunnoh if you'd count it as two "adults" lol. I'm around 150 lbs and the GF is 5 feet tall and doesn't weight much.

No luggage in the car. Half tank of gas. I took the 401 and had some traffic so I'd switch it into normal battery mode when speeds would drop below 100kph.

I got a charge at my friends place in Ingersol and drove back.

EDIT: I see in your previous post you are curious what the GAS ONLY EV Range is. I'll see what I can find. I'd have to reset the trip when I run out of battery

 

[PrivatePilot]

Slowbird, I've mentioned it (and even told D specifically what post that data is in) several times but he keeps missing it for some reason.

In short we have seen between 5.5-6.2L/100K ICE only, but only based on short duration ICE usage so far - we have not taken any extensive trips where I could calculate across an entire tank of gas.

On a car like the Volt where ICE usage is almost always mixed with EV miles it can be hard to calculate - A short duration drive doesn't necessarily give an accurate number either as the engine tends to use significantly more fuel inside the first 10 minutes I've noticed (rapid warm up cycle) vs what it will "normally" consume over a more lengthy drive.

In other words it's my opinion that you need at least several hundred kilometres on ICE only driving in order to get a reliable "average" ICE only calculation. For some volt owners that may never actually happen.

 

[slowbird]

I think even with the battery range down to 0 and running on gas the display shows sometimes you're using some battery. Maybe from the bits that you gain from regen? I'm not sure.