Maximum Miles Driven In One Day

In a separate thread I painted the following hypothetical scenario:

That 150+mile day scenario I paint involves getting up early in the morning (car's fully charged) to take someone to the airport - 40 miles round trip, plug the car in. Take kids to school and come home, 10 miles, plug the car in. A few hours later, do a doctor's visit and some errands - another 20 miles, plug the car in. In the afternoon, pick up kids from school and do some errands, 10 miles, and plug the car in. In the early evening go visit some friends 40 miles one way and plug into their dryer outlet while spending the evening having dinner - three hours later the car is more than ready for the 40 mile trip home. That's a plausible 160-mile day. Recharge overnight and the 'tank' is full in the morning.

Breaking this down and using 12 miles/rechargehr yields:

6-7am Airport 40 miles
7-9am PlugIn 24 mile recharge
9-10am KidsSchool 10 miles
10am-12pm PlugIn 24 mile recharge
12-2pm Doc/errands 20 miles
2-3pm PlugIn 12 mile recharge
3-4pm KidsSchool 10 miles
4-6pm PlugIn 24 mile recharge

So, by the time evening rolls around the car has gone 80 miles and recharged 84 miles, so it's fully charged to go off on a 40-mile visit. Finishing this story:

6pm-7pm VisitTrip 40 miles
7pm-10pm DinnerVisit PlugIn 36 mile recharge
10pm-11pm ReturnHome 40 miles
11pm-6am PlugIn FULL recharge (84 miles possible)

The point of this hypothetical scenario is to show that we could do a 200-mile day if we wanted to. Now, I've done a few >100-mile days but completely failed to keep track of the times and mileage.

The purpose of this thread is to solicit real-life maximum daily-distance-driven examples from iMiEV owners and a brief description of the type of driving you did.

I've traveled from Seattle to Wenatchee and also to Portland and back, each in a day. That's 284 miles round trip over Stevens Pass (3050') and 364 miles (with highway detours from I-5). This is only possible with DC quick chargers but it makes for a completely different experience than the runabout-town car most people assume the i-MiEV to be.

The theoretical maximum of miles driven in a day would be: 50 minutes (@60 mph) + 30 minutes fast charging (@0 mph) / 1440 minutes in a day = 18 driving & charging sessions. This would allow you to cover 900 miles if you used all 24 hours but a sane driver who wasn't involved in an endurance rally might do 400 miles over 8 hours of driving & charging.

leec - thank you so much for doing the math and posting the Quick Charge (QC) L3 CHAdeMO scenario. Wow - it indeed opens up a new world of possibilities for our iMiEV!

I've been thinking about the approach leec presented (above), whereby you drive 50 miles in 50 minutes and then spend 30 minutes Quick Charging, yielding (24hrs*50miles*60min/hr)/(50+30) = 900miles as the theoretical maximum iMiEV daily mileage using Quick Charging (CHAdeMO).

Now, using this same approach, here's the analysis for Level 2 and Level 1 charging...

To start with, even though my own latest summary shows that my overall average wall-to wheels consumption is 4.2 miles/kWhr, because of the relatively high speed in this example I will use the very conservative EPA average rating of 3.333 miles/kWhr for this discussion.

My measured wimpy Mitsubishi EVSE charging power is 0.9kW at exactly 120vac and using my SPX EVSE gives a measured 3.06kW at exactly 240vac. This number is actually quite constant until the last hour where the BMS does its cell balancing routine and the power diminishes until cutoff. Ignoring the 10-minute timeout the BMS seems to randomly take (I suspect to recalibrate itself), and ignoring the last hour taper charge, for the sake of this discussion let's say that the Level 1 (120vac) charging is 0.9kW and Level 2 (240vac) charging is 3.0kW, from the "wall".

Level 2
A charging rate of 3.0kW * 3.333miles/kWhr results in 10miles/rechargehour. To recharge the car after having driven 50 miles we get 50/10= 5 hours. Thus, we can say that we get back to the charge level we started with in five hours and fifty minutes, or 5.833hr, after starting off on our 50-mile trip. Ok, so for 24 hours that gives us 24 * 50/5.8333 = 205.7miles theoretical daily maximum using 240vac (level 2) recharging.

Level 1 (8A)
A charging rate of 0.9kW * 3.333miles/kWhr results in 3.0miles/rechargehour. To recharge the car after having driven 50 miles we get 50/3= 16.67hours. Thus, we can say that we get back to the charge we started with in 16.67+(50/60)= 17.5hours after starting off on our 50-mile trip (ugh!). Ok, so for 24 hours that gives us 24 * 50/17.5 = 68.6miles theoretical daily maximum using the Mitsubishi 120vac (level 1) EVSE.

Level 1 (12A)
We've shown that the iMiEV accepts a 12A 120vac input from non-Mitsubishi EVSEs, which, (scaling .9kWmeas/.96kWlabel) would yield 1.35kW possible at 120vac. 1.35kw * 3.33miles/kWhr results in 4.5miles/rechargehour. To recharge the car after having driven 50 miles we get 50/4.5= 11.11hours. Thus, we can say that we get back to the charge we started with in 11.11+.83hours= 11.94hours after starting off on our 50-mile trip. Ok, so for 24 hours that gives us 24 * 50/11.94 = 100.5miles theoretical daily maximum using a 12A 120vac (level 1) EVSE.

SUMMARY
As our first shot using a speed of 60 miles/hour and assuming the conservative EPA figure of 3.33miles/kWhr applies to this speed, rounding off slightly we can say that in ONE DAY the iMiEV can theoretically travel a maximum of -
900 miles using CHAdeMO Quick Charging
200 miles using Level 2 (240vac) charging
100 miles using a more robust Level 1 (120vac 12A) EVSE
70 miles using Mitsubishi's Level 1 (120vac 8A) EVSE

Once I get more data showing what the exact power draw is at various speeds, we can make up a table which can more accurately reflect the real world, and especially see what impact reduced speeds would have on these daily range numbers.

How close to these theoretical maximums can you get?

New here. I don't own an iMiev, although I've test driven one and have done a little research on them.

Joined just to say that the iMiev guy at our dealership said that Mitsubishi recommends limiting the fast tier-3 chargers to 2-3 a day (I think it was 2-3--he definitely said it shouldn't regularly be used multiple times a day). So just an FYI. He said it could affect the life of the batteries.

TimeTrap, welcome to the forum. You are right, and none of us would dream of using Level 3 charging repeatedly - this was just a mathematical exercise to demonstrate what was theoretically possible. On the other hand, the Level 1 and Level 2 scenarios are readily achievable without any undue battery stress.

Tried out our longest trip scenario for the first time to visit friend and family, 2 passengers , seats folded down & loaded with carpentry tools
- Total trip 108 miles (175km)
Remaining range gauge indicated 83 miles (133 km) at departure, we live in a ski hills region 1,000 ft above sea level and our destination is down at 100 ft above sea level

Temperatures reached up to 31 C (88 F) by mid day - started with full charge

5:30 am -Drove 50 miles - (80 Km) mostly highway, No AC, - plugged in to 110 household outlet, -no level 2 available at destination

12 noon - Drove locally 9 miles (15Km) with the AC on Max - replugged in to 110 household outlet

7:30 pm - Drove home 50 miles - (80 Km) mostly highway, no AC, loaded down with tools & with headlights on
Remaining range gauge indicated 65 Miles (104 km) at departure
We had to climb up to 1000 ft above sea level.

A few anxious moments - We just made it home with less than 2 1/2 mile ( 4 km) remaining on the remaining range gauge

Climbing those hills cut back our range substantially,

Still on the learning curve.

sandange, congratulations, you can now claim the most miles driven in one day using Level1 recharging :!:
That 900-ft climb home I'm sure made your trip 'interesting'
If you repeat that trip, I would be inclined to slow down quite a bit on the highway part of it - I think you will be surprised at the improvement.
Thank you very much for your post.

Thanks JoeS

I will be traveling this route every 2 weeks or so in the future to visit family - in the winter time as well, so I need to determine range limitations and pre-plan where it is convenient to stop & charge at available level 2 locations.

I also did experiment with some hyper-miling on this trip, - coasting in neutral coming down from the mountains on light slopes, also using B mode to recharge and decelerate on the steeper pitches & corners.

I traveled at speed of 59 - 65 mph (95-105 kmph) on the highway anything slower and we could become a danger to the surrounding traffic that usually run at 65 - 75 mph (105- 120 kmph)

Put in a big day of driving totaling 220 km ( 136.7 mile) yesterday,
2 people, some light cargo ( Groceries & Granddaughter)

The trip included going from 1.050 ft Above Sea Level -
down, to 240 ft ASL,
back up to 1550' ASL,
back down to 1,050' ASL

Weather was perfect no ac or heat,
kept the speed down 60- 75 KPH ( 30- 45 MPH)
with odd short distance highway at 100 kph (60mph)

Recharged on several occasions totaling 3 hrs using level 2
10 km (6 Miles) left on the RR gauge

Al went well
On the Last leg - the drop in elevation helped a lot to regenerate in B mode

sandange, congratulations, and thank you very much for keeping track and posting your results. Your significant elevation changes added to the challenge. Only 3 hours of recharging (glad you were able to find Level 2) and ending up with RR=6miles means you were doing some careful energy conservation.

Thanks Joes
Glad to share our adventure & experience.
Curious to hear how others have made out, in real live situations.

Yesterday I did a 145.0-mile (GPS) 142.9-mile (odo) trip from Los Altos Hills over the hill to the coast, had breakfast with friends and full recharge in Capitola (trip39.9miles) using their dryer outlet and my SPX EVSE, then drove to an EV meeting in Castroville (trip62.3miles) and full recharge (Coulomb public EVSE), then drove to San Juan Bautista (trip80.0miles) for lunch with friends and a full recharge using the Blink public EVSE, then to Gilroy Outlets (trip95.5miles) and a full recharge using the SemaConnect public EVSE but I think it didn't need the card, and then could easily have made it home but stopped at the Mitsu dealer (trip122.7miles) in south San Jose to say hi to my salesguy and a brief partial recharge using their Eaton Level 2 EVSE and then got home (trip145.0miles) before 7pm with 4 bars and RR=13. Diligently recorded everything (time, tripmiles, RR, fuelgauge, altitude) but didn't realize the tape recorder stopped working after Gilroy :evil: so I can't do a full graph of the trip. In hindsight, we should have gone down to Carmel for all the events surrounding the Pebble Beach Concourse d'Elegance (passed lots of old wonderful cars going there). This was all inefficient highway driving and yet it was easily done - like I say, 200 miles/day is very doable in the iMiEV. Off to buy a digital recorder...
Edit: after checking my notes, I corrected the 'partial recharge' to 'full recharge'

That's good distance 145 miles = 233 km all highway too - was any of the charging quick charge?

sandange said:

That's good distance 145 miles = 233 km all highway too - was any of the charging quick charge?

Click to expand...

It was all Level 2 - I don't have a CHAdeMO connector on my iMiEV. Note that most of my stops - breakfast, meeting, lunch, shopping - were more than enough time to fully recharge the car, which means that if I were to have been trying for maximum miles/day I could have taken off earlier from each stop.

Hi There,

I don't have any real world mileage to post as I don't have my car yet. However the local dealer uses an Imiev as a shuttle. It's also a great way to cycle people thru the car and get the word out. He was telling me that the max his driver put was 184 KM on the car in one day. I assume that was a 7:00 to 5:00 PM day with some charging I don't have any details. Not bad considering that was city driving with people that are in a rush to get to and from work. Good little workhorse.

Don.....

Just made my weekly tour to visit family

134 miles (216 km)

Started with full charge
No air/ heat mostly secondary roads. 2 3/4 hours level 2 Charging

9 miles (15 km) left on RR

sandange said:

134 miles (216 km)
Started with full charge
No air/ heat mostly secondary roads. 2 3/4 hours level 2 Charging
9 miles (15 km) left on RR

Click to expand...

Sandage, it looks like you got over 6 miles per kwh or over 96 miles per charge. That's great! I'm curious as to average speed during this trip or total travel time.

Mostly stayed on Secondary & City roads 30-35 mph (50-58kmph) average

Only did 15 miles Highway 55-60 mph ( 85- 95 (kmph)

Mostly used Eco mode & coasted in neutral whenever possible

Travel time was spread over the day as I visited family at 4 different stops.

Started in the morning dropping wife off at train station 6:00 am and finally got home 9:30 pm after visiting granddaughter

sandange said:

Mostly stayed on Secondary & City roads 30-35 mph (50-58kmph) average
Only did 15 miles Highway 55-60 mph ( 85- 95 (kmph)

Click to expand...

I've never been able to achieve anything close to that kind of range because where I live even the side roads are between 40 to 55 mph. The best RR I've ever achieved is 83 on a full charge. But that's way better than the EPA estimate so I'm happy (but jealous!).