A 73.5-mile Trip

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JoeS

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Back in February I made the tongue-in-cheek claim that I held the record for the maximum number of mostly highway miles driven on one charge here:

http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=960#p960

So far, no one has stepped up with a better claim, probably because (wisely) no one wants to push their iMiEV battery to its limit. If someone has the patience to drive at 30-40mph on level ground I'm sure the 73.3miles can easily be beaten without stressing the battery.

Anyway, I repeated this trip with my wife today (with a couple of slight detours), BUT on the way back we stopped in South San Francisco for a ChargePoint recharge and lunch for a little over an hour. Total mileage with stopover was 73.5 miles.

Thought you might be interested in the graph of this trip. Although not hypermiling, I was still driving conservatively and mostly keeping the speed down under 60mph. There are some significant climbs of about 700', and we had a very strong headwind going there which was partially negated by the tailwind coming back.

MitsiBris1May2012Graph.pdf


I did significantly worse mileage-wise on this trip compared to the previous one, as I arrived home with almost the same SOC despite having opportunity-charged and added 3.621kWh.

This reinforces my opinion that if someone is going to be using the iMiEV for a one-way highway commute greater than about 25 miles, then charging at work is indicated for a stress-free drive home. Don't forget, I'm conservative when it comes to pushing the car, and YMMV.

5/2/12 edited to add the following:

To complete the picture, inasmuch as I had fully charged just before this trip, I then fully charged upon returning in order to measure exactly what had been consumed. Including both the 3.621kWh ChargePoint and 13.818kWh TED home charging, this totals 17.439kWh input from the wall.

For this 73.5-mile (GPS) trip, this yields 0.237kWh/mi or 23.7Whr/100mi or 4.215mi/kWh :!:

This is a helluva lot better than the nominal EPA rating of 30Whr/100mi (27 City, 34 Highway). Note that this is wall-to-wheels, which must not be confused with, for example, the onboard display in the Leaf which only displays what the car itself is using without taking into account the charger inefficiency. I'll have a separate posting on this topic because we are consistently doing much better than the EPA ratings.
 
JoeS said:
...So far, no one has stepped up with a better claim, probably because (wisely) no one wants to push their iMiEV battery to its limit.

Thought you might be interested in the graph of this trip. Although not hypermiling, I was still driving conservatively and mostly keeping the speed down under 60mph.
...This reinforces my opinion that if someone is going to be using the iMiEV for a one-way highway commute greater than about 25 miles, then charging at work is indicated for a stress-free drive home.
44-22-february-2012-imiev-highway-trip-joes.png%20
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43-1-may-2012-imiev-73-5-mile-highway-trip-recharge-joes.png
Great data points. Love your graphs.
 
I have a 55 mile round trip with highway stop and go (55mph with stop signs) or i can get on the expressway which is a little longer but higher speeds. So far i have put 200 miles on the car. I get to work with more then enough charger to get home i don't really drive it slow because i just plug in at work with the 110v and it is full before work i would say i use 3-4kw each way so the car is full before lunch.

It is good to see what the car can do if you need it to but for me that is why i have other cars i just wanted something super cheap to drive to work in.
 
JrCRXHF, you'll note that I emphasize the limited highway driving range, with my definition of highway being high-speed Interstate. The iMiEV's range dramatically increases with decreasing speed, and our superb regeneration allows us to recapture a fair amount of energy in stop-and-go traffic. All the best to you with your new iMiEV.

I just edited my original posting above to include the measured wall-to-wheels energy consumption for this trip.
 
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