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Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day

Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day!

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Over one two three months ago, when the fall weather was still clear and dry, we decided we needed some outdoor time and out-of-the-city time.  The plan was to go to Alice Lake for a picnic lunch and a hike. We would also use the opportunity to zip up to Whistler for dinner, to get out of town, and participate in some electric vehicle (EV) tourism.

Read More »Day Trip: The New West EV Family goes to Whistler for the Day

Cost update – 63,500 km, Dec 2015

I’ve now covered over 64,000 km in our electric vehicle (EV), a 2014 Nissan Leaf.  The cover image for this blog post shows that I finally “turtled” the car (on purpose!) this month (December 2015) – another blog post in the near future will explain why I was doing this!  (Turtling the car means you go into reduced power mode and have less than 1 km to drive, the car continually limits your power to force you to pull off to the side of the road safely – this protects the battery from discharging too far.)Read More »Cost update – 63,500 km, Dec 2015

Winter driving in the Leaf up to Whitewater

Last year, I posted about one of our first trips up to the Whitewater Ski Resort, near Nelson, BC, with our electric vehicle (EV), a 2014 Nissan Leaf SL.  We went on to drive up to the hill many many more times over the course of the winter, and the weekend ‘pilgrimage’ has started again, as of early December 2015.

For those more into video, I filmed portions of the drive up and down on a recent sunny weekend.  I kept a running commentary on different topics (see below), interspersed with time-lapse portions with music.

Read More »Winter driving in the Leaf up to Whitewater

New West EV Family Goes to the Zoo – Part 2/2

Hello again from the New West EV Family!

This post is the third in a series and discusses the second half of our Seattle Zoo trip in our 2013 Nissan Leaf. My first guest post was an introduction and review of charging requirements for the trip. In part one of my trip report we discussed the drive plan and our trip south from New Westminster to the Seattle area and our stops for charging along the way.

On my last post we ended day one enjoying a nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory while charging to 100% on L2 at the Bellevue Square mall. We returned to our hotel in Everett with 73% remaining and 7 battery temperature bars while Leaf Spy showed the battery temperature to be nearly 40 degrees C. Now for most of you in California or Arizona this isn’t an uncommon temperature but we barely saw 6 bars this summer, 5 is normal, and we will probably see 4 bars all ‘winter’. Regardless, the battery cooled to about 24.5 C overnight on this trip. (note: the ambient temperatures I am guessing were ~12 C overnight; high battery temperatures are something to be minimized over the long term).Read More »New West EV Family Goes to the Zoo – Part 2/2

An intro to electric vehicles and the Nissan Leaf during my work commute (video)

Some time ago, I came across a YouTube Channel from an electric vehicle (EV) owner in Norway where he filmed his drives around scenic Norway, talking about various EV topics, though primarily related to the Tesla Model S (Bjorn Nyland).  I enjoyed a number of his videos, and many others seem to as well, so I thought I would try my own!Read More »An intro to electric vehicles and the Nissan Leaf during my work commute (video)

Day-trip: Nelson to Fletcher Falls and Ainsworth Hotsprings

I’ve decided that I should be adding more posts of regular trips that my family embarks on around the Kootenays themselves, since most of the EV “adventure” posts have so far been about longer journeys outside of our region.  I also will be adding a Page in the near future that will serve as a database of local trips that includes real data that I have collected so the growing collection of EV owners in our region have real data to work from!

Anyways – Marley’s mom is here visiting from Hamilton, Ontario this week, and with the beautiful fall weather, we thought a day-trip up the lake to see Fletcher Falls, with a soak in the Ainsworth Hot Springs on the way home, was just the ticket for her last day in BC.

Read More »Day-trip: Nelson to Fletcher Falls and Ainsworth Hotsprings

New West EV Family Goes to the Zoo – Part 1/2

Hello again from the New West EV Family!

In my last post we discussed planning our road trip south to the Seattle area with our 2013 Nissan Leaf and the preparations required to access the charging networks we would need to visit. In this post I will discuss the energy planning and the results of the first half of the trip south.

Read More »New West EV Family Goes to the Zoo – Part 1/2