Friday, December 2, 2016

Nov 2016 Drive Report; Gasser Ignored

Another month is in the can and this month's statistics will involve 3 cars instead of the normal 2! If you are familiar with my previous blogs, you will realize that this is the first report for my new 2016 S30 which also means that my 2013 S24 will make its final appearance on the monthly drive reports so without further ado (personally not sure why that word works here. I prefer "to do" but whatever...)

For the month end November 30, 2016 the Corolla went 11.6 miles at a cost of...uhh, hmmm? ok, I guess that "3 car" report isn't working out...

The 2013 LEAF traveled 610.6 miles at an estimated cost of $12.87 or 2.11 cents per mile. For the last 10 days of its life (for me) its low water stats for GIDs, kwh available, ahr, Hx were 257, 19.9, 58.47, 88.69, On the high end;  260, 20.3, 60.30, 92.42%. I did turn it in with about 160 miles remaining of its 45,000 mile lease so plenty left for a test drive! Call Ray now!

The 2016 went 1318.2 miles (in 20 days... already blowing up my lease miles  *sigh*) at a cost of $28.02 or 2.14 cents per mile. Now that figure does include $3.05 in public charging fees but in reality, my costs would be much higher.  Without NCTC  I would be over 3 cents per mile.  Thus far, my new LEAF is struggling to average 3.6 miles/kwh.  This a huge drop in performance from my 2011 and 2013.

Now, part of that is more range for a lot of trips that are not further in distance, new tires and "unusual" weather.

On that unusual weather part, you might know that I advertise the Pacific Northwest Winters as being 6 solid months of humid misery. Fairbanks Alaska gets 10X more Sun at this time of year! And yes, I admit I do it to discourage people from relocating here. We already have enough people here and now working on ways to get rid of a few we already got so more people coming in is not going to work. After all, Olympia is the foggiest city in the US!! (and that part "is" true!)

But the truth is that Chicago, Detroit and New York gets more annual precipitation than Seattle does. But this year, our Winter has lived up to my (somewhat exaggerated) billing.  We set all time records for rain in October and since I got my 2016, the weather for the end of November has hardly been better. On the last day of November, we exceeded the average rainfall for the year.   So thinking I either had a very smooth rolling LEAF before or maybe need an adjustment on this one for alignment or something.

A quick check on the early days of both my 2011 and 2013 (received in Jan and Dec so similar weather) shows an average just over 4 miles per kwh (mpk).  This is normal since on wetter days, I get 3.5 to 3.7 mpk while drier days I am in the low to mid 4's.   I have only hit 4.4+ mpk mark 3 times.  And yes, that is just slightly less than the number of good days we have had lately.  This eliminates the new tire possibility.  Using the same old Ecopias.

Another test involves 2 down slopes I drive nearly every day. The one is Northbound I-5 into the Nisqually Flats.  I shift to neutral at a certain point (marked by a sign) and even during crappy Winter weather, I can normally get up to 62-63 mph (70 mph in Summer)  but not able to maintain 60 mph now and even tried hitting the sign a few mph faster...still didn't work.

The other one is much less gradual and South of the Cabela's roundabout. Here I shift to neutral as low as 30 mph and am able to hit 50 mph.  Now, barely hitting 40-42  mph.

In looking at other differences, it became obvious that cruise control maybe nice but its not efficient. So I have gone back to my old style of feathering the pedal and varying my speed a few miles per hour to take advantage of short down slopes or minimizing the penalties of short up hills. This seems to benefit my performance about .2 or .3 mpk.

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