Sunday, August 26, 2012

Going the Distance...and Beyond

The Active E's range is around 80 to 100 miles on a full charge.  The response I usually hear after saying that is "but I drive more than 100 miles per day."  Well so do I.  In fact, there are days when I will go well over 100 miles.  But with a range of 80 to 100, how do I do it?  By plugging-in during the day of course.

In a typical day, your car sits idle a majority of the time, unless your a traveling salesman or work from your car.  But for a majority of us, we drive to work, park the car, and then it sits for 8+ hours.  Or at least for a few hours until lunchtime.

While idle, an electric car can be charging.  And since the E can be recharged back to full in about 3 to 4 hours (depending on how depleted the battery is), the car is ready to go another 80 to 100 miles by lunchtime, or quitting time.

For example, I have two offices, one in Riverside and one in Temecula.  I can drive from my house to Temecula and log about 40 miles.  Luckily for me, Temecula has free (FREE!) public chargers a block away from my office, so I park and plug.  After a couple of meetings, my E is full (and pre-conditioned).  I then drive to my office in Riverside, another 40 miles.  On the same day I can drive to a meeting in Ontario (about 20 miles away) and then back home (another 20 miles).  So for the day, I can log 120 miles--well over the range of the E.  But because I charged during the day, that kind of range is no problem.  I don't even have to drive all that efficiently.

So the question is not whether you drive more than 100 miles per day, but do you drive more than 100 miles at a time.  If your commute is less than 100 miles, then you simply charge between driving and that doubles the E's range for a single day.

I know what you're saying "but I don't have a charger at my work."  Well that needs to change.  And soon will change.  And once it does, the range of an EV no longer factors into the state of denial so many people have towards adopting EVs.  

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