Mini E

13/10/2010

Been a little while since I last posted as Ive been away,.  The trial is past the 1 month stage and I’ve covered over 1500 miles in the Mini E, which im quite pleased with. We had a long weekend away,  which was a 180 mile drive from home well out of the Mini E’s league unfortunately, so we had to take the normal car. This highlights how far away EVs are from use as a sole car. There really isn’t a viable and convenient alternative to a conventional car for longer journeys.

Also been up to London a couple of times and have been tempted to take the Mini (its about 110 miles round trip), im sure I will one day, but as I have posted previously the lack of proper accessable public charging points  that are not subscription schemes really limits taking it into london and also further afield.

Apart from the puncture, its been fairly uneventful over the past week or so. I have undertaken some longer journeys in similar length to my commute but not had the luxury of charging at work, I revert back to econo driving to make sure I can achieve the trip and then usually put my foot down towards the end when im confident ive got enough juice to get home. I do notice though on B roads if you drive fast and then have to regen hard as a result it doesn’t seem to make too much difference to the battery consumption.

On longer journeys the car goes in to economy mode when you get below a certain % to ensure you get the max range. I think its when the car is below 10% battery it restricts hard acceleration. You don’t notice it much if you are  driving normally though. I think that a useful thing on the car would be to have different modes that are selectable, so if you know you are on a long journey you can set the car to restrict the acceleration, top speed etc so you don’t have to concentrate all the time to make sure you are not too enthusiastic, Economy mode, normal etc.

The temperature has also dropped a bit this week, going down to about 6/7 c over night and not above 12 during the day we had previously been in the teens. I have noticed a small change in the range but nothing significant, maybe 5% less in the battery on getting home from work. We are set for a cold night on Saturday so will take the car out and see how it charges over night.

Not too much to report over the past week. The Mini and I have settled into the commute ok and had a few trips out over the weekend. The Mini didnt travel as a trip switched tripped over night on either Saturday or Sunday night (didnt use the car on Sunday) and wasn’t charged for work today. I must remeber to check it again if I leave it for a day or more. Not sure of the reason why, possibly due to it getting a little colder over night though one of the engineers had already been out to calibrate the switch for the colder weather and 5 celsius isnt that cold!

This has highlighted a major problem with electric cars though,  the charge time.  Had I not had another car to take to work I would have been in a spot of bother as I had a couple of meetings at work this morning which I would have missed waiting for the car to charge on boost.

Im pretty sure I will forget to plug it in at some point too…

Still thinking of taking the car to London at somepoint, had the chance last week but needed to get back in a fairly short space of time so didnt risk it and used public transport which actually is probably a little easier anyway for London. Im sure I will take it in at some point though and try to get it on charge somewhere!

20/09/2010 One Week

So i’ve had the car about a week now and most of my initial range worries have gone, though this is appearing to the largest limitation of the car so far. I’ve covered around 500 miles since I got the car on the 13th September, the car had 4154 miles on it and ive just gone over 4650 today. With my 90 mile commute proving to be just with in the range of the car, im plugging it into the 13A mains socket on arriving at work anyway just to give me a few more miles and piece of mind should I go out at lunch or want to go out in the evening. That said I still think that there is enough charge in the car for me to cover the commute and some smaller trips on one overnight charge (which I have done) but why cut it fine when I can plug in at work and add 25/30% in a few hours should I need the extra distance.

Im quite keen to take the car into London, though this is just out of range, about 110 mile round trip on what would mainly be the motorway. So I would probably need to charge in London.

Mini signed us up to the Park and Power scheme so we can use the ‘public’ charging points dotted about. The scheme seems to be a fairly new one as the points that currently exist are either with Oxford Council, Hillingdon or with other trial partners. None of these are useful for me. I live in Oxford so have my home charger and Hillingdon isn’t somewhere I frequent. I looked into other charging places and as also pointed out by other trial users on the facebook page they are mainly subscription points, so you sign up for a year at a cost of upwards of £100 a year, not much point for the odd trip. Plus this doesn’t guarantee you a space on most of the schemes, which in my opinion renders the scheme pointless. If you cant guarantee a charging point, you will not generally go beyond the range of the car. If you dont go beyond the range of the car, you dont need a charging point…

One place in London that seems to have a lot of charging points is Westfield Shopping Centre, with over 30 points. I emailed the shopping centre to see if they were for EVs only and they haven’t responded but on the facebook page another Pioneer went at the weekend and said they were not just for EVs so again, rather pointless if you cant rely on it if you need to cover a larger distance.

Seems that if EVs are going to catch on outside of cities someone needs to make EV charging points only for EVs and more accessible.

Charging

While im on charging, i thought i would post some of the charging cable options open to us on the trial.Pictures below.

Main charging cable is the large orange one, this plugs into the 32A high speed charger. The blue cable next to it is so you can convert this down to a 13A plug and use the length to get to your or a friends mains socket should you need (I use this at work)

The yellow cables are for charging points so not really come into use yet - per the above, but the thicker one is for the park and power scheme and the thinner one for normal 13A ones, you can also use this on any 13A sockets. Though the cable is short so not much use unless you can park right next to a socket (I was told you can connect to an extension lead should you need to, but its not recommended as it might over heat and/or blow a fuse). So really for the power points only. They are apparently coiled as there is some sort of legislation for this.

All you do is plug one end into the car - the silver bit and the other into the charging point. You need to select on the car if its 12A or 32A and off you go. The charger unit at home also has a boost button if you need to charge during the day as its set to hit the cheap night tariff, other than that you just plug it in and leave it. Really easy!

There are other cables for various other schemes but as above, you need to subscribe to these.

So today was the first time I took the car into work. When I signed up for the trial which was the first phase I was doing about a 60 mile round trip on mainly A roads. This is well within the Mini E’s range and pretty comfortable. This was back 2009, since then I’ve changed jobs and my commute is a 90 mile round trip. I was a little sceptical about taking up the trial when I got a call a couple of months ago but decided this was too good an opportunity and knew that I could cover the 300 required miles a month outside of my normal commute should the 90 mile trip be an issue.

I was a little nervous setting off this morning but the car had charged over night and was showing 97 miles range, more than enough. The drive is mainly A roads, with a 15 mile stint on the M40 and a small section of dual carriage way. I decided to skip a junction on the M40 and replace it with A road to aid the regeneration. By the time I got out of Oxford my total range (im sure there is a term for this) was showing 92 miles range left and I  had travelled 7 miles, so up to 99 mile range - an increase! I was feeling confident at this point. I then hit the M40 after about 16 miles of my commute, its then 10 miles to the next junction, the range decreased just below 70 miles once getting to the junction, which wasnt too bad. I stuck to the speed limit and eased of when going up hill and also down hill to see if I could get some regen. I finally got to work with 55% left and 45 miles gone. I was showing 54 miles range left, so back up to the 99 I achieved when I left Oxford. All in all I was happy with this.

Work do have the option for me to charge if I need to off the mains but I decided to see if I could make the whole trip off one charge and seeing as I had a 54 mile range left and only needed 45 of them I decided to leave it.

Setting off coming home I immediately lost 10% in about 5 miles, which made the nerves and the range anxiety kick in.  I knew I would be hitting some decent A roads to get some regen and by the time I got to the M40 I was showing about 35 miles range with about 26 miles to go. I was still confident. The M40 sucked a lot of the charge and I was down to 20 miles range once I came off and hitting the outskirts of oxford the total range had sneaked down to 10% but the back roads into Oxford brought the charge back up and it never dipped below 17% from there back, which is reassuring. I got home with 15% charge left and a range of 17 miles still to go and 92 miles travelled today, so well up on the 99 range on the way out giving a potential range of 109 miles. I even then took the car out for a couple of errands in the evening which were local so I wasnt too worried if the charge disappeared as I could get home easily.

So travelled a total of 97 miles today, left 12% battery, with a further 15 miles available according to the computer.  So based on this, my commute is more than achievable and im sure some of range watching/anxiety will disappear over time.

Im am told that the weather will have an effect on the performance of the batteries so I will probably need to charge at work if we get into a cold period or take the other car… going on the experience so far, im not sure I will want to take a normal car! (Thanks Tom for this advice, well worth reading his blog - http://minie250.blogspot.com/)

I picked the Mini E up on Saturday at the handover even at the Mini Plant in Cowley. Was an enjoyable day and Mini put on a nice event. There were lots of static cars inside the hall, with the 1 millionth Mini on show as well as various other celebrity Minis and an old Morris Oxford which was nice. 

I’ve since taken the Mini on a few trips and initial thoughts are that the regenerative breaking is harder to get used to than I thought so that I can get a decent range out of it but im sure that will come with practice. Actual driving isn’t too tricky being on the left of the car and the pace and handling is as I remember it, if a little wallowy on some of the country roads but think that might be the battery weight. I’m used to my Cooper S so that is much stiffer.

I had a reality check moment when driving to the golf course on Sunday morning (the mini does fit a set of clubs in the passenger seat!). I was running late so put my foot down and noticed a significant reduction in the battery and estimated range of the mini. I think it dropped around 20% in 10 miles, and the total range was coming in around 68 miles, where as I think I should be getting nearer 20 miles on that amount of charge. On leaving, I thought I started the Mini as I previously had done but it wouldn’t move despite all the displays saying I was ready to go. Unlike a ‘normal’ car you don’t get the usual chug of an engine so there are not too many clues if you are doing something wrong. I got out of the car, locked it and tried again and that seemed to do the trick and a light foot back home and the range returned to about 91 miles all in. It seems the range meter calculates on your current driving style and seems to be a bit of a moving average, which means it goes up and down a lot. I seem to be checking this a lot! Even when I only had a short journey with 25% charge left I got a bit nervous – Typical symptom of new Mini E drivers – Range Anxiety. I’m sure that will change over time though as I get used to it.

I didn’t charge the Mini up on Saturday night, but it was on charge last night. I checked the boost worked when I plugged it in as a few comments from other Pioneers suggested their might be a problem. All I had to do was plug it in to the wall, the other end into the Mini and then turn it on and flick the trip switch (which was off) and it all worked ok. I did have an anxious look out of the Window before bed to see if it was charging but I don’t think the low rate electric had kicked in yet. This morning it was at 100% charge though. I will put some details up of the charging process later on.