Grant Thomas, EV driver

Grant Thomas, EV driver writes at his blog at GrantThomas.com:

1 year and 14.4k miles in a Nissan LEAF. The family car that changed it all.

"I'd love to know what you'd think after driving the car for a year" came the question from the audience as I presented my decision to choose an Electric Car at the 2012 IBM North Harbour Sustainability day. And it's a fair question for many seeking reassurance of this "brave new transportation world". A year is a long time to reconsider a passionate or hurried purchase. A years wear and tear can expose a flaw or a substandard product. Can the marketing hype be born out in reality? Has the sheen worn off the 100% Electric Nissan LEAF after living with it through four seasons? Is Range Anxiety a reality? Would I do it again?

That year is now up.

Day 1 with the Nissan LEAF - out for a drive!

If you have never read any of my former blogs; a bit about myself, family and transport needs. I've been with IBM 18 Years and for the last 9 of those years I have been able to choose a company car from a free choice of makes and models. My previous 2 cars were on 4 year leases; a VW Golf MK5 TDi Sport followed by a Seat Altea XL (both with same 2L Diesel Sport engine). Our family requirements; we're a family of 5 with 3 kids ages ranging from 6-17 plus an English Springer Spaniel (so a full load!) I work full time from home but my partner commutes daily on a 35 mile round trip along the M27.  

After a year, how do you find driving the LEAF every day?

We have blown the estimates for our annual mileage and have covered 14,432 miles in the LEAF in a year.  I've had over 25 cars over the years and nothing quite prepares you for the smile when you drive an EV (Electric Vehicle) for the first time. That grin is still there 1 year on.

A 'normal' car is hopelessly inefficient at generating power. It wheezes and puffs and bangs to produce power and it's still not enough so a gearbox tries to scale it up and after all that showmanship only 20% of the fuel you put in makes the car move. The rest is wasted. An electric car simply has a battery, an inverter and a motor and 80% of that power goes instantly to the wheels as torque (or power). And there is nothing quite as satisfying as pulling up silently at a traffic lights next to some boy racer. Then leaving them standing as they struggle with gear changes, and their ego, the LEAF silently launches in a relentless surge off the line. With all it's eco credentials, it's something that was such a huge surprise.  I'm not recommending that as a driving strategy but to every Top Gear spotty nosed teenager viewer who thinks you need many horses of power, don't forget its the torque that counts.

The LEAF is an utter joy to drive. It's smooth, quiet, refined and such an immensely relaxing drive. I use the steering wheel mounted digital cruise control the majority of the time and find the fact you can choose exactly lets's say 32mph is such a nice touch, especially through speed controlled roadworks. Out of our 2 cars I choose to drive the LEAF. I wait for it to get home before running errands. And Jo has commented (out of my earshot!) what a great car and how simple it is to drive. It's when you get back in an old ICE (internal Combustion Engine) car that you realise how unrefined and dirty and noisy it is.

What's the longest trip you have done in the LEAF?

Last November I was invited to be part of World Record Electric Vehicle convoy at Silverstone Race circuit. This required me to get from Emsworth to Northampton with the need to stop and charge on the way. It's a 140 mile trip, in November. Now the LEAF can recharge at a dedicated Rapid Charging station in under 30 mins. That's from flat to 80% charged. This would be my first trip where I was relying on what was then an emerging Rapid charging network. Thankfully things have changed a bit since then but last November there were very few places to Rapid Charge so I had backup charging plans and contingencies all over the place. I still have the spreadsheet on my desktop with the miles between stops and backup locations if anything was not working.

Now before any readers start with the 'oh thats far too much hassle' I don't mind being an early adopter of many things. I hope that the bumps and challenges I encounter, and then feedback, helps smooth things out for those who follow along after. And there many more Rapid Charging locations live now 10 months on but let's head back to last November.

I had planned my route with 2 Rapid Charge stops. "But can't the LEAF do 100 miles on a single charge?" I hear you cry. Well that car you drive now, remember when you first got it and the manufacturer claimed it would do 58 mpg or so,  but you only get about 45 mpg on your daily drive?. Well that's because manufacturers use unrealistic measurements to achieve that MPG. The same is true of Electric Car range. They too can be affected my how you drive it, how heavy your right foot is and the speed at which they are driven. They also can be impacted by things like heating and lights in the winter months.

So whilst I did meet one driver who had driven up from Portsmouth to Silverstone only stopping once, I decided that I would like to go a reasonable speed and treat myself to some heat !! I Rapid Charged at West Way Southampton then at Waitrose Abingdon and made it to the hotel in Northampton with 30% battery remaining. Total cost of journey ٞ. And the hotel had ordinary 3 pin sockets in their grounds for when they had outdoor events and the LEAF happily plugged in and trickle charged overnight. People forget it can just trickle charge from a 3 pin plug.

Are you forever hunting charging locations pent up with Range Anxiety?

I'll admit that I am now evangelical about Electric Cars; but the rest of the family are less so. Jo is bored of me talking about them, but thinks the LEAF is a great car. Our 17 year old, who watches at least 3 episodes of Top Gear a day on Dave, thinks unless the car is drifting sideways round a disused airfield making lots of noise it's not a car. And our 14 year old is mortally embarrassed that we have something different from her other friends and are tooooo eco. However whilst our 6 year old boy doesn't understand the environmental benefits or technical reasoning for an Electric Car, he knows how to plug it in, and happily talks about other LEAFs he saw on a recent trip to London. His generation will be the one that really make the switch.

The point is Jo drives the company car LEAF more than I do commuting 4 days a week in all weathers, so she knows what it can and can't do. She'll glance at the battery gauge and just drive. Yesterday case and point. She drove from home to Southampton General Hospital and back, plugged in for 45 mins then to Chichester and back in the evening (so lights on etc) and made it home with 2 bars / 20 miles remaining. Now I would have given myself more top up time, or parked and charged in Chichester but when you drive this car for a year through all the seasons you know what it can do, and you drive to that range. The car was plugged in at 10pm and at 2.15am this morning I got the normal email saying the car was 100% charged and ready to go again. So if you have a short journey then you can drive a little faster knowing that overnight it will be fully charged at home. If there's snow on the ground, and you're doing a longer journey then you drive more steadily using heat, lights etc. Again knowing that overnight at home it will fully charge and be ready to go.

So Range Anxiety can easily be overcome. We charge our car 99% of the time from home using a dedicated charging station. If you are in England and reading this before April 2015 you too can get a Free Electric Car charging station, even if you don't own an electric car yet.

A free to use Rapid Charger charges the car in under 30 minutes

I only Rapid Charge if on a longer journey or if on a return trip and I know I need to do another trip later in the day. And there is now a Rapid Charger 5 miles from home at WKB Nissan Waterlooville. So if I have 30 mins spare I'll nip up there and charge for free. In the last year the number of Rapid Chargers has 'Rapidly' grown. In the past month Fleet Services, both North and Southbound M3, have free to use (with free card) chargers which allows me to recharge on the way in or out of London, IKEA have just announced loads of planned installs with free to use provide Ecotricity.

What lessons have you learnt over the year?

The biggest lesson learnt is how tied people are to NOT making the switch to Electric Cars. I have colleagues, friends and family, who I have lots of respect for, still baulk at the idea of stepping away from their petrol/diesel car. I find it quite frankly, bizarre.

I've presented and spoken about Electric Cars with a lot of people over the last year and I still thrive on the response I get. I've seen in an auditorium full of people "the lightbulb moment" or when the penny drops. "It's 90% cheaper to run, really?", "You mean you charge the whole battery in 30 minutes?" "You can run it for free of Solar, but I spend 綀a month on diesel". BUT in 12 months the reasons people choose not to make the switch to EVs have not altered one bit; they start talking about Range and 100 miles yet over 95% of their journeys. There's an Aunt in Norfolk or the annual vacation in the Lake District. To me it seems madness to drive a car that you only might need for 1 or 2 journeys a year and then for the other 360 days a year you could drive a car that is 90% cheaper to run. Why not drive a car that meets the majority of your needs and use a different car for those 1 or 2 times a year.

I priced it up yesterday. I could hire a small car for £26 a day. So having saved £2,500 by switching from a diesel to an electric car just spend £26 to do that one long trip. OR just make allowance that you need to grab a coffee while the LEAF is on charge for 30 minutes at one of the many Rapid Chargers.

The LEAF has four speeds of charging:
- Rapid Charge - 80% of the battery in 30 min
- Fast 32 Amp charge - Optional extra on the UK 2013 Built LEAF - charges the car in 4 hours
- Fast 16 Amp charge - Charges the car in 6 hours (this is the how I charge at home)
- Trickle 3 pin plug charge - 8 hours ish

Do the savings really add up?

This decision to drive a LEAF was initially a financial considered purchase, the driving experience came as an enormous surprise! With ٞRoad Tax, ٞLondon Congestion Charge, ٞCompany Car Tax and cheaper servicing costs it came out cheaper to drive than many other cars I could have chosen.

Our actual Solar PV and Nissan LEAF kWh charge

It costs less than £2 a night to charge this car from flat to full. In reality it costs us £1 a night to charge it up as we rarely run it that low. Install some Solar Panels on your house and not only will you get a 20 year tax free income from the Government but you could use that generated electricity to power your car. That's what we do and for 10 months of the year we generate electricity more than the car uses to charge. Free driving? However, even without Solar PV panels on your house there are still 90% savings to be have by making the switch to an electric car.

I'm the kind of person who makes up spreadsheets to validate such decisions. It costs about  £1,900 a year to drive 10,000 miles in a frugal diesel car. It costs about £200 a year in electric to do the same if you 100% charge at home on a standard online Tariff. It's that simple, you can drive as you do today but wiping out the dependency on yo-yo fuel prices. And with no messy oil or fuels or sparkplugs, servicing is much less as well.

Now if 90% savings are not enough:
- Choose an Economy 7 tariff and you could save 30% on that electric cost by using cheap off peak electric
- Install renewable energy and potentially charge your EV for free
- You can FIX your electric cost. Imagine fixing the price of Diesel for 12 months....
- Use a Rapid Charger or charge at work for free
- There is no duty on domestic electric and only 5% VAT.

Financial Winner: ELECTRIC CAR

Electric Cars are only useful as a second car "run-around"

Apart from the Nissan LEAF we have a Volkswagen EOS 2.0 TDi Sport as a personal car. We got this 2 years ago and it's a really great car, especially in the summer with the roof down. HOWEVER, since taking delivery of the LEAF a year ago:
- The VW EOS has done 2,500 miles
- The LEAF has done 14,400 miles
- We only use the EOS when we both need to drive

I loathe putting £65 of diesel in the EOS so I positively choose to wait until the LEAF is home. As such the VW EOS only gets filled up every couple of months.

"Who are you trying to fool, it's not that green? Still needs power to drive the thing?"

Electric Cars are by far the most environmentally friendly switch that many of us could make. They remove cancer causing fumes from street level by emitting ZERO emissions whilst being driven. Electric Cars are normally charged overnight when the National Grid is emitting the lowest level of emissions. BUT even if you did plug an Electric Car to charge up from a dirty coal fired power station it would still only use 40g/km of CO2.

Now a car like the Volkswagen Golf Bluemotion has a CO2 figure of 119g/km of CO2 but that's just what it emits whilst it's driving. To make a fair comparison you have to use the "well to wheel" argument that is the amount of fuel it takes to :

• Drag the oil out the ground
• Store it
• Transport it
• Store it
• Ship it
• Store it
• The massive amounts on energy used to refine crude oil
• Store it
• Transport it
• Store it
• Transport it
• Store it
• And THEN put it in a car

It's actually about 450 - 500g/km of CO2 for a modern efficient family car vs 40h/km if you charged it from the dirtiest power station. And what's more you can choose a company like Green Energy or Ecotricty and charge your Electric Car from 100% Renewable Energy, or generate your own electricity. The poor old petrol car has no choice, it has to get it's fuel from a petrol station where the price is fixed by a cartel called OPEC and which the government then applies huge fuel duty and VAT tax levies.

"But when Jeremy Clarkson had a LEAF and a Tesla on Top Gear it ran out of battery. So Electric Cars are crap!"

Jeremy Clarkson is a baffoon. Top Gear is an entertainment show, not a consumer advice programme, unless you think driving a Smart Car off a cliff or firing cars at caravans in a disused quarry is meaningful journalistic research.

If you were to drive a Ferrari F40 Sports Car round the Top Gear track it will achieve only 1 mile per gallon. it would only have half the range of an Electric Car. But they don't mention that it. If you were to run out of petrol in the middle of the countryside you are probably 30 miles from your nearest petrol station where as an electric car could plug into the farmers cottage, they skip over that as well.

"Yeah but that silly Tesla Roadster ran out of battery and had to get pushed off the Top Gear track, ha ha snort ha". No it didn't. Tesla representatives where there and drove the car off the track with lots of battery remaining, After an official complaint Top Gear published a small apology saying that the piece demonstrated what WOULD happen if an electric car runs our of power. They just never show a petrol car running of petrol 30 miles from the nearest petrol station.

The BBC has been really poor on it's electric car coverage with plenty of factual errors and contradictions. HOWEVER, even the Surrey Baffoon himself conceded that the Electric Merc Super car on the last series was great "for when the oil ran out" and even Radio 4's Costing The Earth programme yesterday was positive speculating if this really is the time for EVs. The media tide MIGHT be beginning to turn.

It's a looks like an old dears car!

Yes this one surprised me when I heard it, beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. I love the LEAF and a year ago we were a select bunch of 1,500 cars in the UK (that's now doubled in number), so when you see one it's normally lots of waving and such.

But whilst all my experiences talk of the Nissan LEAF there's a lot of other electric cars out there or about to come to market including:

• The BMW i3 launching November with a 100 mile electric range but a 180 mile extended range option with a small petrol generator under the bonnet. Prices from £25k
• The Renault Zoe - Fiesta sized, again about 100 miles with prices starting at £14k + battery lease
• Vaxhall Ampera/ Chevrolet Volt - 40 mile electric then a petrol generator allowing up to 250 miles range. £30k price tag
• The Tesla Model S - pure electric up to 7 seats and 300 mile range launching in UK later this year prices £55k+
• VW Golf Blue-e-motion: Fully electric Golf with sophisticated regen breaking - launching Frankfurt motor show

But the Battery will not last and cost a fortune to replace

No they don't.  There's a LEAF in the USA that has 70k miles and all 12 capacity bars still intact. There are 2 cars in the UK that I know about with over 40k miles in 2 years and have no loss in capacity. Nissan has increased the warranty on it's battery pack that the car will retain 9 out of the 12 bars (approx 70%) for 5 years or 100,000 kilometres, whichever comes first. That is capacity not power. By the time anyone needs to think about reconditioning the battery pack this will be no more painful than a changing a clutch on a petrol car. And what happens to the battery packs after they are no longer used; well first up they can be reconditioned but they also make perfect renewable energy stores, so you can store all that free electric from Solar Panels during the day and power your house overnight. Joined up thinking.

If something sounds too good to be true...... 

OK here's the reality check. I was NEARLY stranded once due to a dealer telling me at 10am the Rapid Charger was working and when I arrived at noon it was not. And right now there are a number of charging providers requiring different cards to charge and there is no one single web page listing ALL charging points. But these are growing pains. I have not ONCE been stranded. And with so many new charging points coming online it so much more advanced in just 1 year.

"Would you choose an electric car ever again?"

I write this article in late August 2013; the Nissan LEAF has sold twice the number of cars already in the UK vs 2012; the incredible Tesla Model S with its 300 mile all electric range outselling Porsche and Range Rover in California and has JUST launched in Europe.

I recall as clear as yesterday trying to explain to my Nan and Mother in 1996 why I had developed my first web site Emsworth OnLine on this thing called the internet, just before it took off. Or as recent as 2 years ago trying to justify installing Solar PV to a room full of folks who really thought a new kitchen was a better application of funds; then the government slashed the Feed In Tariffs weeks after my install. I'm a Realistic Optimist. There is now considerably more interest in Electric Cars than a year ago, BMW stepping into the ring has made Mr Mainstream sit up and many more people have engaged in dialogue with me rather than just me banging on about how great Electric Cars are.

I spent a year in the Motor Trade before joining IBM 18 years ago, people are INCREDIBLY passionate about their cars. Getting people out of dirty petrol cars to electric cars will takes lots of time with many carrots and sticks.  The charging network we need for long journeys is still rolling out. The range of the cars on the market is increasing and new models are on their way. Yet if you make that switch now you will get the ٣k grant and free charging station from the government but you will NEVER have to pull into a petrol station again.

Every single one of us will be driving an electric car (of some sort) in the future. Anyone who differs from that conclusion does not understand the issues, has their head in the sand or is called Jeremy Clarkson. My VW EOS, a great car, is doing 2k miles a year and depreciating by ٠k a year, it's pointless holding onto it. So it's going. And in it's place a Japan built Mk1 Pearl White Nissan LEAF is on the shopping list. Exactly the same as the LEAF we drive today. We will have a matching pair.

To answer those questions in your head right now. Here's the strategy:

• Our company car Nissan LEAF has 2 years left to run on it's lease. This would be replaced in 2015 with an Extended Range Electric Car like the BMW i3, or similar. This would allow us to drive 180 mile on an electric motor, 100 miles using the battery and 8 0 miles using the small 4 cylinder petrol BMW motorbike engine as a generator. It rapid charges like the LEAF (on AC rather than DC) and with a petrol backup you have that flexibility.
• Yes there is a UK built new Nissan LEAF, I drove it last week and it does have a slightly better range and the drive is certainly better than the Mk1 Jap built car.  However, to get the same level of equipment as in the Mk1 LEAF you need to be looking at the middle or top level of trim and we are now fast approaching £25k level
• Right now there are over 150 nearly new LEAFs on Auto Trader. Most have less than 10,000 miles on the clock and prices start at £12k
• If we need to do a long journey before August 2015 we either use a Rapid Charger or hire a car for the day for £26

So today you can purchase a 2 year old electric car, with all the technology for a saving of 66% against it's original price. Purchase that from a Nissan Dealer and you'll get a 2 year warranty and 2 year free servicing (usually 12 months). And with ٞroad tax, ٞcongestion charge the only thing you have to pay is insurance, for me that's under £200 a year. Which is exactly what I plan to do........