Sunday, October 21, 2012

Visit to BMW Performance Driving Center in SC

Last week we left our ActiveE home in California and flew out to South Carolina for two days at the BMW Performance Driving Center. We drove a variety of new cars on the private track, including several built in the large BMW North America factory across the street from the performance driving center. Most of our time was spent in 1-series and 3-series cars, but we also spent time in M3s, M5s, 6-series, and an X5. In all cases we averaged well under 9 miles per gallon, which was quite a change from our normal all-electric driving in the ActiveE 1-series.

I spoke with a couple of the instructors about the ActiveE and it was a pretty foreign concept to them but they were legitimately interested. One of the instructors had a more than 60-mile commute into the BMW center and so was anxious about range, and all of the instructors were annoyed at the current price of fuel.

Despite the EV skepticism we observed, Greenville, SC actually has a growing EV charging infrastructure footprint. Apparently Enterprise offers some Nissan Leafs for rent in downtown so we may try to spend more time finding an EV to rent next time we visit the area, instead of just picking up one of the normal lackluster economy cars from the airport rental agencies.

The course itself was incredibly fun. 90% of the time was spent in the cars driving on our own and in radio contact with the instructors, but there were a few concise classroom lectures at the start of each day and after lunch to go over the upcoming exercises. We spent time sliding around on the skid pad, on slalom warmups, autocross courses, high speed braking and avoidance maneuvers, and an off-road X5 course. The video below includes a few highlights from our course.

We're definitely going back for the M-school next year. Let me know if you want to join us!

Saturday, October 6, 2012

7 Months of Mostly Free EV Charging

It has been 7 months already and we've put over 5,850 miles on our electric car. During that time we've charged 196 times at 11 different charging stations, and never once paid for gas or waited for the tank to fill. One of the great things about electric vehicle charging stations, particularly those from ChargePoint is how they are networked and provide an online dashboard where you can view personal charging history and energy consumption. Our home charging station has a built in cellular uplink and is connected to an online account so all charges from home are automatically visible on the website. At public charging stations I scan an RFID card on my keyring to associate the charge with my account.

Using this website, I see that of those 5,850 miles, I used over 2,114 kWh of electricity. 27% of that electricity was consumed overnight by our home charging station in our garage, and the other 73% was provided free by the charging stations at my employer or the free charging stations at San Francisco city parking garages.

In our first month of owning the car, we didn't even have a home charger, and so we were charging exclusively for free, but not really putting that many miles on the car each day. Now that my wife is commuting further to work each day, we put over 50 miles a day and charge it up at home each night and at a parking garage in San Francisco each day while she is at work.

If we assume an electricity price of $0.12 per kWh, then it cost 2,114 * 27% * $0.12 = $68.49 in electricity to drive those 5,850 miles. Gas is approximately $5/gallon in Silicon Valley right now, so $68.49 would buy less than 14 gallons of gas (1 tank!). I'd have to get 418 miles per gallon to come out ahead with a gas car given how much of my driving is subsidized by free electric vehicle charging stations.