My Toyota Prius has served me well for more than 230 000 miles during the last 10 years. The Prius, the first popular hybrid car that uses both gas and electricity, made me feel like a pioneer when I bought it in 2005. In retrospect, it required hardly any adjustments from driving and fueling a typical gas car. On accumulating that kind of mileage, I started to consider my next vehicle purchase. I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint and the Nissan LEAF, a zero-emissions electric car, intrigued me ever since it was introduced in 2011. Four months ago, I bought one. The following account chronicles some of my experiences.
The LEAF runs on a battery with a driving range of about a fifth of the range by typical and hybrid cars. At first, the published range of 75 miles seemed too precarious to me for my 68-mile round-trip commute to work in Maryland, since our personal driving experiences rarely matched the published estimates. The American Center for Physics, where I work, does not provide a place to charge an electric vehicle, and the thought of charging the vehicle exclusively at home discouraged any serious consideration. For me, more places to charge was the only way to mitigate the range anxiety.
Earlier this year, I watched a TV program highlighting the public charging stations across Maryland and this persuaded me to find the charging stations on an online map. The LEAF was back on my radar. The plan was to purchase the LEAF primarily to commute to the office, and to keep the Prius for its familiarity and cargo space (I sometimes pretend it is a pickup truck).
The Nissan LEAF's 24-kWh battery pack is made up of 48 modules, each of which contains four cells. CREDIT: Nissan USA
My research before purchasing the LEAF focused on the availability of charging stations along my daily routes, the pricing of the vehicle, and an assessment of my ability to adapt to a potentially new lifestyle.
Much of my charging station research was satisfied through a website called Plugshare, which maps electric vehicle charge stations. Whereas we can find gas stations simply by driving around for a few minutes, I have found that maps for charging stations—which are less easily recognizable, and fewer in number—are indispensable. I spent hours mapping out my routes and found numerous places to charge electric vehicles near my workplace and on my way home. I even found backup locations in case my primary chargers were occupied or not functioning properly.
The high prices of electric cars ruled out all options for me, including a new LEAF. I resorted to shopping for a more affordable used LEAF. While browsing through the used car listings, I realized that used LEAFs tended to have low mileage and were in great shape. The greater concern was battery capacity loss—the older the battery, the less charge it held.
I found a couple of three-year-old LEAFs, priced around $16 000, nearby, meaning that I could drive it home with one full battery charge. A new LEAF required nearly $30 000 upfront and then a $7500 federal tax credit after filing the next tax return. This nets to around $22 000, or less if your state also gives a tax break. Used LEAFs do not qualify for tax breaks. (To compare: I bought my Prius new for $24 000 in 2005.)
After test-driving both LEAFs, I requested that the dealers fully charge the batteries. The dashboards indicated that both had full capacity. Both car reports showed good maintenance records with no accidents. In the end, I chose the car that handled more smoothly. I saved around $5000 compared to the purchase of a new LEAF, and avoided the hassle of claiming the tax credits.
During my research, I assessed my ability to adapt to an electric car in two ways: I read the comments posted on the Internet by LEAF drivers and I visualized my daily driving routine. I prepared myself for the expectation that I might need to spend an hour or two at a charging station on my way home if I was unable to charge the car during work hours and was short on power. Overall, my planning prepared me to handle the daily driving routines reasonably well. However, some unforeseen challenges popped up after I bought my LEAF.
Unforeseen challenges
My daily routine involved unplugging the charger from my home wall socket, driving to the public charging station near my office, plugging into that charger, and walking a half mile to my office. After three hours, I walk back to unplug, drive the car to and park in my office lot. At the end of the workday, I drive home, and plug the charger in for ten hours, to be ready for the next day.
To clarify the disparity between the three hours at the charger near my office and the ten hours charging at home, I’ll explain the types of charging stations. Charging at home or through a 120 V outlet is called level one. My home wall socket takes about 10 hours to recharge my 34 miles from work. Most public charging stations use the faster 220 V, or level two, so the one near my office takes only three hours to replenish the 34 miles from home. The fastest charger is the 440 V quick (or fast) charger at level three, which takes a half hour to charge 80% of the battery. If there were a level three charger near my office, it would take only a minute per mile, or 34 minutes, to replenish my ride home.
Two measurement methods gave me a sense of the cost of charging per mile. The charging stations almost invariably have displays showing the number of kWh per charging session. The one near my office regularly showed my session charge of 10 kWh, the amount I used to go from home to work since I left home with a full charge. If I assume that my overnight charge at home is also 10 kWh, I can estimate that I used 440 kWh per month for my daily commute.
The less precise method was to compare the difference between the kWh in this year’s electric bill to the kWh of last year’s electric bill by month. Of the three months owning the LEAF, I’ll use the largest difference (197 kWh in June) as a conservative measure for the monthly electricity required to drive to work. Although the charger near my office was free to use, I can assume a round-trip rate by doubling that difference to 394 kWh. With the two measurements, I can say that the daily commute is within the 394 to 440 kWh, which translated to $54-$60 at my residential electricity rate. To be conservative, I’ll say $60.
In addition to the home and work charging, I used the LEAF for other trips that used other public charging stations and those charges appeared on my credit card bills each month. My average public charger cost per month during the three months of owning my LEAF was $28.
Ten charging stations are available at FedEx Field, the stadium of Washington's National Football League team. CREDIT: Pluginsites.org
Therefore, my monthly electricity cost for my LEAF reached $88. With an average of 2200 miles driven per month, the cost for my LEAF was about $0.04 per mile. For comparison, my Prius was getting about $0.08 per mile. If we consider that some of the charging stations are free to use and that the LEAF requires no engine-related maintenance, such as oil changes or spark plugs, the cost of fueling and maintaining a LEAF is certainly cheaper for me than fueling and maintaining gas or hybrid vehicles.
After getting comfortable with my daily routes, I started to drive the LEAF to places unrelated to work activities, like dinner at a restaurant. If there was a charging station near the restaurant and I needed a charge to go home, the routine of charging while I ate was similar to my charging while I work. If my event was more than a couple of miles from a charger, though, things got tricky. If I was in an area with only a level-two charger, I needed to account for the time to walk to and from the charger (unless I could bum a ride from a friend). If there were a quick or fast charger within a 15-minute drive from the restaurant, I could opt to leave earlier to stop at the charging station, recharge about a half hour, and then go on to my event. This inconvenience should be resolved when more charging stations become available.
We arguably already have charging options in place with all the 120 V sockets we currently use. Still, the situation is not elegant. If I wanted to charge the car while visiting friends who lived in apartment buildings or townhouses without designated places to charge, I would need a very long extension cord traversing sidewalks or stairways, or hanging out third-floor windows just to reach their 120 V sockets. Similarly, electric sockets at most public places are not conveniently located for charging plug-in vehicles.
Greater challenges surfaced when I experienced charging locations occupied by gas cars, other plug-in vehicles, or both. In the first example, an internal combustion engine (ICE) gas car parks in a spot in front of a charging station, so that the charging cord cannot reach the electric vehicle. In some places these spots are clearly marked with signage and paint designating it solely for plug-in vehicles, but in others they are not clearly designated. These spaces are very often close to the building, because the farther out one places the charger, the higher the cost to dig an electric line to connect the charger. The proximity to the building, especially to shopping mall entrances, makes these spots desirable, and gas vehicle drivers may take them, even when they are clearly marked. There is not much recourse to fight this issue, since it is not illegal in most jurisdictions for gas cars to park in electric vehicle spots, and most facilities do not enforce this directive. Some locations place traffic cones in the spot, and I think that this helps to discourage gas cars from blocking.
Charging etiquette
Electric vehicles like the LEAF and Tesla are not the only cars using charging stations. Plug-in vehicles, including the Chevy Volt and plug-in Prius, occupy charging stations more often than offending gas cars. The charging station near my workplace has two chargers. Once when I arrived there, a LEAF was in one spot and a Chevy Volt that has a battery and gas engine was in the other. I exercised the option of using an unoccupied charging location less than a mile away. If I did not have any options within the remaining range in my car, the etiquette according to Internet posts suggested that it is acceptable to unplug any car that has finished charging. The etiquette also suggested that if I urgently needed to charge, it is acceptable to unplug to charge my car and plug it back to the original car when finished. That brings up the additional challenge that the next-in-line wait time could last up to three or four hours for level two chargers. And there exists debate—both humorous and serious—among drivers about whether to discriminate between plug-in hybrids and all electric vehicles in prioritizing who uses the charger first.
The biggest challenge has been my travel between Maryland and New York. It would be ideal if the trips only used fast charging stations, but they were located in the wrong places and the trips required mixes of level two and level three chargers. That means that all routes required at least one 3-4 hour recharging stop, making a four- to five- hour trip with a gas car into a nine-hour trip with my LEAF. I also learned the hard way that if I am unable to use one fast (30 minute) charger, the only option is to spend three hours or longer to get the equivalent charge on a level two charger. During both trips to New York, I was unable to use a fast charging station. Furthermore, there are at least seven different charging station networks, each requiring its own key fobs, RFID cards, or mobile phone apps to activate the chargers. In one situation, the mobile app network was down and the company was unable to remotely allow me to use the charger.
Inexplicably, LEAF owners can expect to be unpopular. One day, when I began to pull out of an intersection, I was smothered by a cloud of exhaust fumes spewed by the truck to my left. I was fortunate that my windows were up, or my cabin would have been filled with black smoke. A friend later told me that this was an intentional act called “rolling coal.” Some drivers target their exhaust clouds toward fuel-efficient vehicles like the LEAF and Prius as a backlash against environmentalists.
Except for this discouraging incident, the challenges I have faced should be resolved when there are more convenient chargers available. More chargers could even address the greatest challenge that I have encountered, which comes from my would-be passengers. On two occasions, friends have refused to ride in my LEAF for fear of being stranded or inconvenienced, even though the rides were well within range. They offered to drive instead or pleaded with me to use the Prius. I chose to use my LEAF.
Raymond Chu is a research associate at the Statistical Research Center of the American Institute of Physics.
