Who are you? Who, who, who, who? 'Cause I really wanna know

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – my plan is for our household to always have an EV.  Of course, I have no idea which EV that will take up residence in our driveway when my ActiveE lease expires.  The reason being is that at the moment it doesn’t look like a single manufacturer will be building and selling the EV that I want by 2014.

Lamborghini 350 GTV

One thing’s clear about participating in this field trial, you quickly learn what you do and don’t want in a production EV (in fact, there’s even a Learnings for BMW i subforum in BMW’s ActiveE Forum so that Electronauts can publish their likes and dislikes for BMW to utilize for the i3 and future EVs).  Clearly this situation is that same for anyone who buys anything – you determine what you do and don’t like about your current product, and next time you’re in the market you look for one that best meets your needs.  In this case, for a product that is relatively new and for which manufacturer’s are still guessing what the consumer wants, it’s quite possible that nobody makes what you do want.  Since I’m not one of the Ferruccio Lamborghini's of the world, I don’t get to tell Carlos Ghosn how to build the Leaf, and then form my own EV company when he scoffs at me.  I pretty much have to settle for what’s out there if I want to continue driving electric. 

Me - when it comes to EVs

So when it comes to an EV, who am I?  Oddly enough, I’m a pretty simple creature.  Sure there are plenty of minor things I’d like to see improved upon from the ActiveE but would live without just to have an EV – ability to charge to a pre-specified battery percentage rather than just ‘filling up’, tweaks to the digital displays related to energy useage, adjustable regenerative braking, memory seats, etc.  Ultimately though, there are those things I want or need that I’m not [currently] willing to compromise on.  Some are technical aspects of the vehicle, while others are more about the ‘essence’ of the vehicle. 

Of the things I’m not willing to compromise on, all are currently included on at least one of the EVs that are already on the market, or planned to be marketed by 2014 - its just that none of them have everything I want.  Well, sort of.  From a technical aspect there are only three musts.  A 7.2 kW charger, minimum (to ensure minimal charging time), a large battery capacity (one that would be expected to deliver 140 miles of pure highway driving) and ability to charge from a DC Rapid Charger.  You might argue that the Chevy Volt and the upcoming BMW i3 have range extenders that would meet my range needs, and technically you would be correct.  In this case, however, my ‘must’ is battery capacity.  I have no interest in having to put gas in my EV.  Why?  Because infrequently used gas engines are a PITA.  How easy is it to get that snow blower running at the beginning of the winter, and how much maintenance does it need?  Thanks, but I’d rather have extra battery capacity in my EV than having to deal with that in my car.

From an ‘essence’ standpoint, I want a driver’s car that looks like a driver’s car – are you listening, Carlos?  I don’t want to be driving around in a bubble on wheels, even if it performs like a BMW.  Technically, the Telsa Model S meets all of these EV musts – but there’s one requirement that isn’t EV specific that it doesn’t meet – proven track record for the company.  I prefer not to buy the first model year of a vehicle, let alone the first of its kind vehicle from a company that to this point has hemorrhaged money. 

So where does that leave me?  I know who I am, but I’m pretty sure that today’s EV manufacturers don’t know me and are catering to a different audience.

Welcome to the Dead Zone

dead zone
Pronunciation: /ded zōn/
noun

1. Ecology. an area in a body of water, especially an ocean,  having oxygen levels that are not adequate to support life: e.g., shellfish threatened by an annual dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.

2. an area where a mobile phone does not receive a signal

With this being a blog about the 100% Electric BMW ActiveE, odds are you’re wondering why I’ve started this post with a definition of oceanic and mobile phone dead zones.  Perhaps he’s lost his mind or forgotten which blog he’s posting in, you might be thinking.  Contrary to what others might tell you, nope, I still have all my faculties.  Assuming that’s the case, then why a dead zone definition?  Because I’d like to add a third option to this definition.

3. A geographical area, typically a less densely populated area, having no or few publically available EVSE that are not adequate to support appreciable travel outside 50% of the EVs range from the owner’s home (if this ever ends up in Webster's, I expect at least a footnote giving me credit).

Much like definition #2 has over the past decade, this should slowly get better with time.  EVSE infrastructure is increasing as we speak, but unfortunately for me (fortunately for those that live in SoCal or NNJR/NYC), most of the public EVSE installs are occurring in these and other metropolitan areas.  Clearly this makes sense, install the infrastructure where the need is.  This gives the EV drivers that live in these metropolitan areas the ability to venture outside their normal ‘range’, i.e., distances further from home than half the vehicles range.  In fact, in some areas there’s enough charging infrastructure that a Nissan Leaf owner is currently attempting to drive from Mexico to Canada.

Two Chargepoint EVSEs within range of my house

Here in Eastern Connecticut, however, there’s a dead zone.  To put it in perspective, there isn’t a single public EVSE within range of my ActiveE (other than the one at Cardi’s in West Warwick, RI – two big thumbs up to the folks at Cardi's) that is useful for my driving habits.  Sure, Norwich Public Utilities just installed four of them, but alas, they are too close to me to be of any use.  Further from home we have the EVSE at New Country BMW in Hartford where I got my ActiveE, but that location is generally only useful for when I have it in for service. 

I'm not complaining, however, just stating the facts.  I understood the situation when I signed up for the ActiveE - these are the early days and EV adoption and infrastructure installation will be slow.  Plus I knew the situation before deciding to participate in Phase 2 of Project i.  As a result, the lack of Eastern CT infrastructure hasn’t really impacted me.  I fully expected that unlike many of my fellow Electronauts, I would have to rely solely on charging at home – and so far it has worked out fine.

As we move into the future, this will be less and less of an issue.  More EVs will be sold, so more EVSEs will be installed at businesses, rest stops, and friends houses to accommodate the increasing numbers.  When that happens my EVs range will increase exponentially, and more and more people will be willing to consider an EV.

Until then, "can you hear me now?"

A chicken in every pot, and [an electric] car in every garage

While Herbert Hoover personally never made that famous promise, it’s hard to imagine that in the prosperity preceding the Great Depression that the premise of such a promise would need to exist.  Especially considering the world was in the throws the roaring 20’s – how could there not be a car in every garage yet (or ‘in every backyard’ as the Republican National Committee actually posited)?  Fast forward to today and most garages have not one, but two or more cars in them.  Chalk the need for two cars up to commercialism and increasing dependency in the US on individual transportation.  The fact that most garages have at least two cars in them nowadays is an extremely important point though as we move to the ‘Future of Mobility’.

 Two cars in every garage – why would that be important?  While price is still the primary sticking point, the second biggest *perceived* issue as to why an EV won’t work for people is driving range.  Most folks just can’t wrap their mind around a daily range of 35-100 miles that they feel is restrictive (unless of course you can afford a Tesla).  Even if these ranges cover their daily commute, people worry about those atypical days when they will need increased range – you know for things like picking up the kids at lacrosse practice after work.  This is where the second vehicle is so important – what are the odds in most families that both primary drivers in the family will need to exceed the EVs range on the same day?  In our case it hasn’t happened once in the three months we’ve had the ActiveE.  As Ed Begley said, "the electric vehicle is not for everybody.  Given the limited range it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population."  While that's likely a bit of an overstatement, it does beg the question of what percent of typical American households (rather than people) can have its needs met by an EV? 

This idea does require a fundamental change in the way many Americans think though.  In most households each person has ‘their’ car.  We were like that before the ActiveE.  I had an Audi A4 Quattro, and a certain someone had an Audi A6 Avant.  It was extremely rare for one of us to take the other’s vehicle unless I needed the cargo capacity of the Avant for something.  Today that dynamic has changed.  While the ActiveE replaced my A4, it’s not really ‘my’ car.  Having an EV and the benefits associated with its low cost per mile to drive has changed our behaviors.  If we both need to go somewhere at the same time, the person that has to go further (but still within the EVs range) takes the ActiveE.  In our case nothing has really changed (still two cars in the driveway), other than our perception of ‘his’ and ‘her’ cars.

In these early days of EVs before a charging infrastructure is built that reduces or eliminates the fear and anxiety associated with battery range, two cars in every driveway is huge.  As long as you can embrace the premise of ‘household cars’ that are selectively driven by whoever needs them each day. 

Sidebar – EVs are fun to drive (other than that lack of a manual transmission issue).  As a result you can expect to have debates about who gets it on days when you both have similar distances to drive.  Fortunately, the ActiveE replaced my A4 so those debates tend to be short in this household.

In the end, two cars in the driveway allows people the flexibility to do something they may not have otherwise done out of range fear – actually consider an EV.  When we signed on to get an ActiveE I’m not sure we actually understood there wouldn’t be ‘his’ and ‘her’ cars any longer.  Turns out that’s ok, though, and it’s one of the best decisions we’ve ever made - and that's why there will always be at least one electric car in our garage. 

You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

After 2 ½ months and 2800 miles behind the wheel of the 100% Electric BMW ActiveE, one of the many questions that folks ask me related to the ActiveE isn’t even about the car itself.  It’s ‘how did I get one of the 700 ActiveEs’?  The short answer is ‘I got lucky’.  Prior to taking delivery, I’d been driving the same ’96 Audi A4 for 14 years.  It was still a dependable daily driver that rarely required fixing.  I had no car payment, few repair bills, minimal property taxes and cheap insurance as I didn’t have collision or comprehensive on the vehicle.  I also tend to think of myself as being ‘green’, and my Audi was the ‘ultimate’ green vehicle – it already existed, so I didn’t need to get a new car and put more demand on the earth’s resources.  My plan was to drive it until it needed to be towed to the scrap yard.

Not scrap heap worthy yet, so donated to the Yosemite Conservancy

With a 16 year old vehicle, even a dependable one, you never really know when the day is going to come when it needs to be scrapped.  As a result, I’d frequently contemplated what car I might get when that happened, but could never really put my finger on what would be next.  As previously documented, while the concept of a ‘green’ car excited me, none of the green vehicles I could afford did –I’m just not a Prius or Leaf type of guy.  So how did I get here – you know, being the guy that’s perfectly happy with his current daily driver that wasn’t yet ready for the scrap heap, to the guy with a shiny new EV and this blog?

It comes down to one thing – somehow I ended up on a BMW mailing list.  I’d never owned a BMW, but somehow my name and address ended up on a promotional mailer from BMW detailing the field trial, the ActiveE and asking me if I wanted to be one of the 700.  Prior to receiving that mailer, I was completely unaware of Project i, the Mini-E or the ActiveE, but my decision was made almost instantaneously – this was my next car, it was electric and had the looks and performance characteristics I desired.  Of course, it would only be my next car assuming I could clear all the hurdles BMW had lined up faster than all but 699 others.

So clearly I was able to clear those hurdles fast enough as I’ve got the car.  But why a blog?  I’d never even read a blog before, let alone written one.  In the end, starting this blog really came down to one thing – EVs are TOO IMPORTANT to the future of this country.  We can’t let them fail or be killed again – and as an early adopter and an Electronaut I’m effectively an ambassador for the EV movement.  It’s my responsibility to do everything I can to show people (friends, family, coworkers, strangers – at least the ones that approach me anyway) how well an EV can fit into their life.  If this blog helps convert one person from an ICE to an EV, then I’d like to think that I’ve lived up to my responsibility as a BMW Electronaut.

And that, my friends, is how only a mere six weeks after finding the BMW promo mailer in my mailbox I found myself blogging about my experiences behind the wheel of this [not so] large automobile.

It’s half past four and I’m shifting gear

Actually I’m not, and therein lies part of the problem.  As the proud owner of an ActiveE, there are many things that I love about this car, and other things that I wish reflected it being the ‘Ultimate Driving Machine’.  It’s great for everything that it was designed to be – it has a high enough charge rate so that you can charge from ‘empty’ in 4-5 hours with a 240V EVSE.  Its range is 100 miles (although some folks have approached 140 miles on a charge) which is high enough to meet typical driving needs for most people – and the number will only increase once EVSE infrastructure has increased.  And most importantly, it eliminates gas dependency (and in doing so costs a lot less per mile to drive, and significantly reduces emissions versus an ICE while using less electricity in the process).

Most of the ‘issues’ (as I see them anyway) have to do with the performance aspects of the vehicle.  And most of these are a result of it being an ICE platform that was retrofitted to be an EV.  Its handling is ok as a result of it weighing as much as an Abrams Tank.  Ok, not really, but it does weigh about as much as a Jeep Liberty.  The elevated curb weight is due to the need for structural reinforcement necessary when removing a combustion engine and adding batteries that need protection – and you can really feel the extra weight in corners and on bumpy roads.  As an EV, it’s got plenty of torque to get off the line quickly, but it would never be confused with the performance of an ICE sports coupe. 

None of these ‘issues’ give me any pause, however.  The next generation of Project i will have eliminated the performance issues as those cars will be ‘born’ electric.  Even if these performance issues weren’t addressed, after having the ActiveE for just 5 weeks I know that I will always have an EV in my driveway from this point forward.

  

There is one area of EVs that I will always struggle with though.  In the almost 30 years that I’ve been driving I’ve never had a daily driver that didn’t have a manual transmission.  While most Americans have been buying cars with automatic transmissions for decades, I’ve never been able to make the switch.  For me there’s something magical about connection between car and driver with manual transmissions that doesn’t exist with an automatic that adds to the sheer pleasure of driving a car.  While the ActiveE is fun to drive, I can’t help but miss shifting gears.

Confused Dog Head Tilt

Once you have an EV, people inevitably want to talk to you about it.  Your friends, your family, your neighbors and even people you’ve never met.  In general it seems that people are intrigued by EVs, but many also have a bias towards EVs.  It seems to be due to a variety of things – from perception of range, whether an EV would meet their needs, battery replacement costs to the Chevy Volt being the GOP’s whipping boy.  None seem easy to overcome (only real world EV experience or an app like BMW Evolve can likely achieve that), but I do wonder if even us EV proponents are doing EVs a disservice in regards to promoting them.  What???  How could EV proponents be part of the issue?

Most people I’ve talked to are primarily exposed to EVs via the mainstream media - when they’ve approached me, it’s their first time seeing an EV up close or speaking to an owner of an EV.  These conversations have led me to believe that the way we present information isn’t helping the EV cause.  After the routine questions about range, battery replacement cost and the now prevalent ‘will it catch fire following an accident’, cost to drive is usually where the conversation leads.  And this is where I think we have a problem.  Finding common ground to discuss cost isn’t always easy.  MPG comparisons are difficult because most folks don’t understand MPG for an EV that doesn’t use gas.  While it’s not an industry standard, cost per mile is another of the typical means for comparison.  It hasn’t taken me long to come to the conclusion that quoting costs in $/mile confuses the heck out of your average person.  It seems straightforward enough, but somehow it just doesn’t resonate with most folks.

I’ve found that the cost question typically boils down to “How much does it cost to run compared to a ‘regular’ car?”.  Initially my answer had been ‘it depends’.  The factors are the mpg of that ‘regular car’, gasoline costs as well as the cost your utility company charges you per kWh.  On average you can expect it to cost anywhere from $0.10-0.20 per mile at current gas prices, while EVs typically cost $0.03-0.08 per mile depending on your utility rate and the efficiency of the EV and its driver.  And the reaction I get?  You know that look the dog gives you when it doesn’t understand what you just said?  This Confused Dog Head Tilt (CDHT) is usually followed by the statement, “Gee, it doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of savings there.  I thought EVs were supposed to be cheaper to operate.”  It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t just handing people the DOE’s Comparing Energy Costs document – it could have turned into a scene from David Cronenberg’s Scanners.

I’ve seen the CDHT enough to know that I needed to change my approach to convey the point that EVs are cheaper to operate.  Today I’ve simplified my answer to something that at least seems like it’s resonating, and better conveys the operational cost savings.  My response is now, “My ActiveE has a typical range of 100 miles and it takes 28 kWh of energy to charge the batteries.  Since my utility company charges $0.14 per kW it generally costs <$4 to go 100 miles.  My previous vehicle got 20 mpg so it currently costs $4.23 x 5 or ~$21 to go the same 100 miles.”  A $17 savings per 100 miles seems to get people’s attention a whole lot better than 'you’ll save $0.02-0.17 per mile'.

With all the bias against EVs, it seems to me that we proponents need to be able to tout the benefits of the EV in ways that most people can identify with and that helps overcome their media induced perceptions of EVs – otherwise all we’re left with is the CDHT and a world full of ICE.

Lord please please please, Take away my anxiety

I'm not sure it's what the Black Eyed Peas had in mind, but I'd be happy if someone took away my ActiveE anxiety.  When you read the title to this blog post, I’m betting that you were thinking that this would be a post on Range Anxiety.  Guess again!  Rather, its a post about ‘fault anxiety'.  'Fault anxiety' you say?  What on earth is 'fault anxiety'?

First a bit of background.  We took delivery of our ActiveE on March 12^th.  Until last Thursday we had 2 ½ weeks of problem free driving in our EV.  We had a trip planned to Augusta National to attend Monday's Practice Round at the Masters and were flying out last Friday.  While we weren’t planning on driving the ActiveE to the airport as the roundtrip drive was outside of the car's 100 mile range and we had no way to charge at the airport, we had typically used it for every other trip we’ve made since we took delivery.  Then came last Thursday.

Amen Corner

A certain someone (you might remember her from my “Somebody don’t got no stinkin’ range anxiety” post) had driven the car to work, and got a warning indicating that the transmission could not be put into "park" mode and to use the parking brake and visit the nearest dealer immediately.  While this fault didn't prevent her from driving the car home (and ultimately cleared itself), it did have another affect.  As a result of the fault we opted not to drive the ActiveE to work on Friday out of fear, even though our flight out wasn’t until after 6 PM that day.  The last thing that we wanted to deal with on a day where we absolutely had to be somewhere at a certain time was a debilitating malfunction.  Welcome to the world of 'fault anxiety'. 

Since this is a field trial where BMW is working out the ‘bugs’ in preparation for the i3, these bugs are much more prevalent than would be the case for an actual production vehicle.  And now that it’s almost three months since the first ActiveE was delivered, a few bugs are becoming well known.  One of them is a drive train malfunction that could result in the vehicle being easily restarted, taking up to an hour to reset and be restarted, or worse, requiring a tow back to the dealer for resetting.

Clearly we didn’t want to deal with the stress of such a malfunction on a day that we were flying somewhere.  Fast-forward to this week, and the ‘fault anxiety' struck again.  I had meetings yesterday that I absolutely had to attend.  Guess what?  I drove the ICE, even though the meetings were well within the ActiveE's range.  While the i3 should have none of these issues when it is released, participating in a field trial where anything can happen will make you adjust your behaviors.  And for us that means dealing with ‘fault anxiety' until these bugs are exterminated by the good folks at BMW.

Such is the life of an Electronaut - until I'm confident that a fix has been implemented, sadly we won't be driving the ActiveE on 'critical' trips.