Updated April 5, at the bottom…
Well I’ve gone and done it apparently. I’ve brainwashed converted my young children to see infernal combustion vehicles as the dinosaurs that they are and electric vehicles (EVs) as the future!
I had been suspecting this for some time, but it became quite evident a few days ago…
As the snow melts and the snowdrops start to bloom in Nelson, BC, my family starts to dream about all of our favourite summer activities. We live near the shores of beautiful Kootenay Lake, so one of those activities is hanging out at the beach.
Our electrified Xtracycle Edgerunner cargo bike (aka Edgy) saw a lot of use on the weekend soccer and market runs, but it also did a bunch of trips to various beaches in the area. The most remote was to Troop beach, which is more often accessed by boat, and is located on the south side of the west arm, on a prominent sandy point.
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
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
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.
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
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)