Realistic I-miev range for new owner

Ok folks just pulled the trigger on a second hand I-miev in Vancouver bc, I live 800+ miles away in Edmonton Alberta. Trying to get a handle on realistic range figures for a 2012 with 7000 km (less than 5000 miles). Level 2 charging stations exist in a number of places.

So the roads are up and down in the mountains with some flat areas Load will be a 170 lb male with 20 lbs of baggage. Not planning on a/c. Heater is ?? because I understand effects on range. Lot of experience in hybrid driving so I understand, what depletes energy, but parts of this trip is really lonely country. I have driven the routes many times in a variety of cars.

how much charge can you get from a level 2? How long does it take? Cell phone coverage is spotty so I figure I will print out all the addresses I can for level 2 chargers along the route put them on file cards and enter them in my hand held gps or google maps and try guesstimate distances between charging stations. What I need to know is how much is guess? and how much is luck?

The I-miev when it gets to the Edmonton area will be a commuter car and will easily meet our needs. The getting it home will be the adventure, or is it simply insane and I should put the car on a train and ship it home?

So is it drive for 1 hour at 60 miles per hour and then charge for 4 hours on a level 2? or is it drive for 50 minutes at 60 miles per hour and charge for 6 hours at a level 2?

This list is incredibly quiet so I really need some real world advice...

Thanks Rocky 49 (ready for a great adventure but not keen on riding on the back of a tow truck for hours!!)

From 2 bars on the bottom, it takes about 4 - 5 hours to recharge on L2. For 7 bars on L1 it takes about 9 hours. That is from real world experience. Can you take the back way and stay off the 100km roads? You'll be able to go farther the slower you go. I regularly travel on the QEW in Ontario at 80-90kmh which gives me more range and I've only had one road rage incident. When I need to go long distance, I take the back roads where I can go slower, coast more and use the regen more often. Enjoy the adventure! Sounds like fun.

BTW - Is this a Canadian model with the DC Fast Charge (CHaDeMo) and the cold weather package?

Are you asking about driving your new miev from Vancouver to Edmonton? Looking at Plugshare, I don't think the infrastructure is there yet to make the trip. Certainly not without lots of anxiety and uncertainty. You can get 100 km on a full charge if you're driving a flat route at a moderate speed and not using heat or AC, but steep grades really eat up the battery and you don't make it up completely by regen/hypermiling on the way down. So even though there's a new level-3 DCQC in Merritt, I don't think you would make it there from Hope, BC. Or from Lytton, if you went that way. Ideally the next spot for a new DCQC would be between Merritt and Hope. You'd hit the same problem between Revelstoke and Golden--at 147 km it's too far to do on a single charge, and too steep.

I'd recommend shipping the car home. Hopefully in a few years the charging infrastructure will make this kind of trip possible.

JB in Burnaby

Congrats Rocky. Before undertaking such an adventure, I'd recommend that you read Solo, written in the early 90's by a pioneer who drove his new EV conversion from the builder in California back home to New Hampshire!
http://www.amazon.com/Solo-Life-With-Electric-Car/dp/0393034070

This sort of trip is just what I'm building a pusher trailer for. Engine, fuel tank, and battery/tongue counterweight are now mounted on the trailer built from an aircooled VW drivetrain, now comes the easy part- get that salvaged engine running again!

Rocky49, you are in for quite an adventure. A bunch of random thoughts:

I would make note of every single RV campsite along the way. For myself, I have made a set of adapters to mate with every conceivable power source (e.g., campsite outlets, dryer outlets in laundromats, electric welder outlets in workshops, etc.). Hmm, I haven't checked to see if gas stations have their air compressors plugged in or hardwired. I would also have the Mitsu L1 EVSE modified to provide 12A (I think the 2013 Canadian EVSEs have that already) from https://evseupgrade.com/. Don't forget extension cords...

Remember, aerodynamic drag is your primary range-reducing contributor. I think I came up with a number of 22mph as giving us the best range (any lower speed, and the onboard power consumers start reducing your range) - hopefully you have wide road shoulders and it is not illegal to drive on them. Good topic for an analysis to see what's the best use of your time in terms of mileage covered. Be sure to take lots of reading matter with you.

My rule of thumb for recharge rates is roughly three bars/hour at 240vac, 4bars/5hours at 120vac8A and 6bars/5hours at 120vac12A. As you know, 16 bars is a full charge, with the last bar taking up a lot of time balancing the individual cells at reduced power (so don't wait for charging to stop but instead get back on the road maybe within 20 minutes after the 16th bar shows up).

Just realized you original question hasn't been answered. Here's one of the attempts to quantify range: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13847#p13847

At steady speeds of around 25mph on level ground (if you have the patience and self-control) I would expect to see well over 100 mile range.

JoeS said:

Just realized you original question hasn't been answered. Here's one of the attempts to quantify range: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13847#p13847

At steady speeds of around 25mph on level ground (if you have the patience and self-control) I would expect to see well over 100 mile range.

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135 to 140 miles with a full charge, flat terrain, in a new one.

Rocky49 said:

So is it drive for 1 hour at 60 miles per hour and then charge for 4 hours on a level 2? or is it drive for 50 minutes at 60 miles per hour and charge for 6 hours at a level 2?

This list is incredibly quiet so I really need some real world advice...

Thanks Rocky 49 (ready for a great adventure but not keen on riding on the back of a tow truck for hours!!)

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At 60 mph, it's probably drive for 50 minutes and then charge for at least 5 or 6 hours (L2 @ 240 volts) if you want to make it another 50 miles

As everyone has already said, anything you can do to lower the speed will get you significantly more range. At 40 mph (on level ground) you could count on about 75 to 80 miles

It will be a 'Great Adventure' but I think it's do-able. As Joe suggested, I would carry an L1/L2 EVSE and a bunch of adapter plugs with me if I were you. You can recharge literally anywhere if you have the proper plugs and EVSE. The unmodified OEM EVSE for Canada does 12 amps on 120 volts, which would take you 12 or 13 hours to fully recharge - Get a motel which will let you plug in overnight for those spots on your route where charge points are hard to find

Don

To answer others questions. It is a Canadian spec vehicle originally sold in Victoria BC and currently in New Westminster area. The range chart posted is wonderful bars vs, mph, really useful.

Question is the range chart speed dependent or ground speed dependent? In other words my interpretation is with a tail wind I would get increased range, and with a headwind I lose range.

My trip starts at sea level and rises to 1400 metres a couple of times and then descends to 3,000' and then finishes at 2200 feet.

So roughly 4.5 hours of level charging for every hour on the road at 60 mph. I like the idea of the slower paths but much as of the route is through mountains and there are only 2 routes after I get out of the lower mainland.. Not quite like the 401 with Hwy 2 paralleling it in Southern Ontario. There basically 3 choice points, Hope and up the fraser canyon to Kamloops, hope and up the Coquihalla to Kamloops where you choose transCanada via Calgary and then north to Edmonton, or Kamloops north to McBride and east on the Yellowhead to Edmonton (which is shorter).

Yes I have even thought about a portable walmart generator for replenishing the battery if necessary. Sounds like I need to make a metric range chart for my own benefit since the car and roads around here are metric unfortunately.

The idea of a bag of cord adapters is a good one. I expect I have the factory I-miev charging cable.

Yes I am hoping someone who has done this trip will chirp in.
Rocky 49

It sounds like borrowing a Honda 2000i for the trip would be an excellent idea - That will provide all the power the stock EVSE can handle and a 1 gallon tankful will run it 8 or 9 hours and get you about 3/4ths of a recharge

Also, keep in mind that even though Mitsu says 'Don't do it', towing the car with the Ready light on and the gear selector in 'B' recharges the battery pretty quickly - In an emergency, having a tow strap could get you some additional charge from a friendly mlotorist

If you charge L2 everywhere it's available, you could add a few hours worth of charge here and there with the genset to ensure you'll make it to the next charge point

Yes, the iMiEV has the Cd of a brick and it's the wind speed that hurts range, so a headwind would be worse and a tail wind would help. Mountainous terrain also costs you range - You only get back about 80% of the extra energy you used going up the hill when you go down the other side. Flat terrain gives the longest range

There's an article here somewhere about a simple modification needed to use the little Honda Genset with the stock EVSE - I'll see if I can find it

Don

Here you go: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=358&hilit=honda+ground+fault

Don said:

Also, keep in mind that even though Mitsu says 'Don't do it', towing the car with the Ready light on and the gear selector in 'B' recharges the battery pretty quickly - In an emergency, having a tow strap could get you some additional charge from a friendly motorist

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Thanks Don, has someone described actually doing this yet? I've been meaning to but haven't gotten around to it. While 'driving on the lift' during my spring replacement, I discovered that ASC brings on the rear brakes when they get 10 mph faster than the front wheels, so that would prevent forced regen while on a tow dolly. Regen on a tow dolly would've allowed one to do a singlehanded fast charge without CHAdeMO. Now it'd require fabrication of a tow bar.

Hey rocky49,

That will be a real adventure. I did a little maps.google.com and wound up with this:

Starting Vancouver 150 km – about 1 hour 42 min
To
Hope, BC
Then
120 km – about 1 hour 20 mins
To
Merritt, BC
Canada
Then
87.0 km – about 1 hour 2 mins
To
Kamloops, BC
Canada
Then
57.2 km – about 45 mins
To
Chase, BC
Canada
Then
52.2 km – about 43 mins
To
Salmon Arm, BC
Canada
Then
30.5 km – about 27 mins
To
Sicamous, BC
Canada
Then
73.0 km – about 56 mins
To
Revelstoke, BC
Canada
Then
148 km – about 1 hour 57 mins
To
Golden, BC
Canada
Then
139 km – about 1 hour 49 mins
To
Banff, AB
Canada
Then
128 km – about 1 hour 26 mins
To
Calgary, AB
Canada
Then
146 km – about 1 hour 40 mins
To
Red Deer, AB
Canada
Then
154 km – about 1 hour 48 mins
To
Edmonton, AB
Canada

All of these places have chargers according to plug share. The above is a rough itinerary.

It looks like Vancouver to Calgary has better coverage for charging. Then on to Edmonton. You need a generator for the legs that you can't make. In the above there are lots of legs longer then 100 km but with a generator at 3.3 kW you could pull over for 3 hours and make the next L2 charger on the longer 150 km legs.

I would get an L2 charger the stock L1 will just eat too much time for a trip like this.

As mentioned there are a couple of L3 chargers along the way. It would be great to get to those mid day and keep on trucking.

I would guess 250 km would be the max for a day.

If you use plugshare and do some careful planning you can do this but it will take time.

I would think this trip would take 5 days minimum.

Not to be a killjoy but please remember the car was not ment to do this. It's a great car to drive around home but on this trip you may start hating the car after a few days of this kind of travel. That would be a shame. You should prepare yourself for what you are about to get into. Perhaps trucking the car is a better idea. Then you can enjoy it and slowly expand your driving range.

That being said if you have the time and are patient, go for it, it will be a great adventure. Take pictures and post them in the forum.....

Keep us posted and welcome to the imiev club.

Don......

Jray3,

On tow charging can you not just turn the Asc off ?

Don.....

jray3 said:

Don said:

Also, keep in mind that even though Mitsu says 'Don't do it', towing the car with the Ready light on and the gear selector in 'B' recharges the battery pretty quickly - In an emergency, having a tow strap could get you some additional charge from a friendly motorist

Click to expand...

Thanks Don, has someone described actually doing this yet? I've been meaning to but haven't gotten around to it. While 'driving on the lift' during my spring replacement, I discovered that ASC brings on the rear brakes when they get 10 mph faster than the front wheels, so that would prevent forced regen while on a tow dolly. Regen on a tow dolly would've allowed one to do a singlehanded fast charge without CHAdeMO. Now it'd require fabrication of a tow bar.

Click to expand...

I have flat towed (with all four tires on the ground) an ES and a SE several times each. Sometimes one MiEV towing the other. It's good to get above 20 mph but above 35 mph is not needed. Around 35 mph in B the main gauge reads near 50 Amps of regen charge. With a little brake pedal regen the charging can go near 80 Amps.

The charging power is roughly VxA= 360V x 50 Amps= 18 kW. That implies a full charge in less than an hour of towing which would be 18 kWh, but regen tapers down with higher % SOC. Above 80% SOC the regen was around 9 kw.

The efficiency of flat tow charging one MiEV with another seems to be a little less than 50%. The front MiEV using 8 bars can gave the towed MiEV 4 bars. A 250 HP Diesel pickup truck seems to hardly notice the extra 24 HP (18 kW) load.

Don't forget to have the READY light on for cooling or the inverter will be destroyed.

The ASC switch on the dash board might stop the ASC from turning on the rear brakes.

Looks like quite an adventure. I have done the trip, but never in an EV!

Not much else to say. Almost all ideas were already covered. Towing "on all fours" should be fine, but as mentioned keep the car thinking she is being driven - down hill. This will avoid damage.

Don't forget mosquito AND BEAR sprays. :lol:

Take pictures and video clips and keep a jurnal. Don't forget to remember all the folks who will help you out. You will have writing time while charging. Then try to sell the adventure to a national newspaper.

Good luck and keep us posted.
Laszlo

OT but one more point on towing. The regen level is lowest in the "Drive" mode so that's were I would leave the selector. It would also be a possibility that the regen would stop once the battery pack was fully charged. Case in point is that there is limited or no regen when you first start out on a fully charged pack. If you were going to try this, a CAN-ION would be a must to monitor what is going on in real time. I would think the range on the wireless signal on the OBDlink should be strong enough to reach the tow vehicle. If marginal, you could buy an extension cable for the OBD port and set the actual OBDlink on the dash of the I-MiEV for a better signal. This all makes me want to rip the front bumper off the I-MiEV and weld a tow bracket on it.

jray3 said:

Don said:

Also, keep in mind that even though Mitsu says 'Don't do it', towing the car with the Ready light on and the gear selector in 'B' recharges the battery pretty quickly - In an emergency, having a tow strap could get you some additional charge from a friendly motorist

Click to expand...

Thanks Don, has someone described actually doing this yet? I've been meaning to but haven't gotten around to it.

Click to expand...

Yes, someone finally did it and wrote a brief post on it here, but for the life of me, I can't find it now

We always thought it *should* work - How does the car not know that it's not operating normally and recharging by regenning going downhill?

You don't need to tow it very fast (especially in 'B') something like 35 mph gets you LOTS of charge) nor very far to get a significant amount of recharge. I think this would be my #1 solution should I ever accidently 'run out of range', though it's never happened so far - Have the wife come get me with the ICE and tow it 3 or 4 miles to get enough charge to get it back home

Don

Rocky49 said:

Ok folks just pulled the trigger on a second hand I-miev in Vancouver bc, I live 800+ miles away in Edmonton Alberta.
The I-miev when it gets to the Edmonton area will be a commuter car and will easily meet our needs. The getting it home will be the adventure, or is it simply insane and I should put the car on a train and ship it home?

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OMG, I cannot believe anyone would attempt this when shipping the car is so cheap, like $500?!
Hell, it'd cost you at least that much in hotel rooms, unless you're sleeping in the car.
This is a small commuter car, forget the "trip" idea, that's flat out crazy in my opinion, these short range EV's are not designed for 1000KM trips. Sure people have done these trips, but in the end, they are doing it to talk about the trip later to their friends, who by the way will (rightly) think they are nut jobs.

Here's one of the first hits on google:
http://forums.780tuners.com/showthread.php?46150-shipping-a-car-from-vancouver-to-edmonton

Now, if you are already on the road, have fun and send post cards. Else, stop now and ship it!
And yes, most of my emphatic language and exclamation points are for effect, but I really think it's a bad idea to drive...

Ever hear about the guy who went from LA to Detroit, Michigan in an EV1? That guy was serious. He nearly got to keep the car, too.

I can take my i-MiEV from Pittsburgh to Washington, DC with 4 charging stops, but since they are level 2 and not DCQC, it'd almost be faster to bicycle on the Allegheny Passage. I'd road trip it, though.

I had to rely on a public charger for a week while my cord was getting upgraded. That wasn't a big deal to sit in the car for 2 hours each day while I charged up. I got in a lot of Mario Kart 64 on my laptop. :lol:

If you're adventurous and patient, drive it home. If not, ship it. I drove mine 46 miles home on a cold night on a road I've never traveled before with a stretch of highway in the middle of it. Made it with 5 miles left, but would've been more if I didn't blast the heat 5 miles from home. It was fun...cold, but fun.

Don said:

... Yes, someone finally did it and wrote a brief post on it here, but for the life of me, I can't find it now ... Don

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DonDakin was the first to post a photo of his new charging cable:

DonDakin said:

Has anyone tried to charge the imiev with this cable ?

I think it also requires an F-150.....

Don
http://imgur.com/FHAhxlc

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From: http://myimiev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&p=15745#p15745

FiddlerJohn said:

... 7. Poor man's CHAdeMO: This past weekend, I got stuck at a ChargePoint station that after four hours hadn't given me any charge. I had an "Session Limit Reached" problem. My wife was hungry. It was nearing midnight, and we were forty miles from home with 11 miles RR. My brother says "No problem." He hooks a tow line to the front of my MiEV and the back of his old YuGo. After towing maybe 15 miles with READY on, I had enough charge. Just for fun we towed until I had 78 mile RR. The max regen charging current seems to half to around 25A around 80% SOC ...

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Also from above:

FiddlerJohn said:

... I have flat towed (with all four tires on the ground) an ES and a SE several times each. Sometimes one MiEV towing the other. It's good to get above 20 mph but above 35 mph is not needed. Around 35 mph in B the main gauge reads near 50 Amps of regen charge. With a little brake pedal regen the charging can go near 80 Amps.

The charging power is roughly VxA= 360V x 50 Amps= 18 kW. That implies a full charge in less than an hour of towing which would be 18 kWh, but regen tapers down with higher % SOC. Above 80% SOC the regen was around 9 kw.

The efficiency of flat tow charging one MiEV with another seems to be a little less than 50%. The front MiEV using 8 bars can gave the towed MiEV 4 bars. A 250 HP Diesel pickup truck seems to hardly notice the extra 24 HP (18 kW) load.

Don't forget to have the READY light on for cooling or the inverter will be destroyed ...

Click to expand...