5 Years of Nissan Leaf Driving

In 2011, I received one of only 9,655 Nissan Leafs delivered to the U.S.  My car left Japan less than a day before the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami devastated the island nation.

When the car arrived, I was in love. It was peppy, smooth, and quiet. It had enough range for nearly all of my driving.

May 18th 2011 - The day I picked up my Nissan Leaf

        ♬

The five years we've had have been such good times.

I was lucky that Oregon was aggressively installing EV charging infrastructure. This let me take my car on adventures all around the state. A charging station in my garage filled it up every night and I could charge at work too. This made EV ownership a breeze. Most days, I only charged in my own garage, but knowing that all those stations were there if I needed them, made it comfortable to drive around and take detours as I like.

I was an active reader of the EV forums and news. There were people reporting various types of problems. Range degradation, 12V battery problems, paint issues... I was lucky that none of these problems were impacting me.

4100 Plug Ins

Here are the stats for these five years of Leaf driving: 44,000 miles, 4100 charging events, 44 quick charges. There are Leafs out there with over 100,000 miles on them. Mine is not one of them, it was/is primarily a commuter car.

5 Years of Battery/Range Degradation

After a couple years of ownership, people in Arizona and southern California started complaining of excessive battery degradation. The weather here in Oregon is much more battery-friendly (reason #6), but I was interested to see how the batteries performed as they aged.

        

How have the batteries of the Nissan Leaf held up after 5 years?

There are two simple ways and to gauge the battery health and one more difficult (but more accurate) method.

The first method is the Capacity Bars. There are 12 small marks just to the right of the "fuel gauge". These are the battery health indicators. The top bar (or 12th bar) turns off when the battery has lost 15% capacity. Bars 11 - 4 each represents 6.25% of capacity. This is an easy way to see the battery health, but it is a course measure. Currently, my car is at 80% capacity and it still has 11 bars.

The second method of determining range is to charge the car fully and to look at the range meter (referred to as the guess-o-meter (GOM) by many Leaf drivers). This is not a very accurate method since the value depends on how you have been driving the car recently. This means the results are not consistent or reproducible. Here are three snapshots of the range meter starting with the car when it was new, to one that I snapped just after the 5 year mark.

2011 Nissan Leaf Fuel Gauge, Fully Charged: New (left), 3 years old (center), and 5 years old (right) 

I should point out that even though you see 118 miles reported when the car was new, I was never have been able to achieve such a range. Even the 69 miles that the GOM reports today is optimistic; as you'll see with the final method below, the range is less than 60 miles.

The 3rd and most accurate method is to use Leaf Spy. I found this tool just after having the car for 2 years. Since then I have been logging readings and made the chart below of the battery pack's performance. 

Let's unpack this graph. The blue line is measured range. You can see how there are seasonal changes with the weather. The red line is just a normalized version of the blue line. Removing the seasonal noise gives you a clear view that the capacity degradation is slowing. In the first year, the range dropped by about 4 miles. In the last year (4 to 5), however, there was less than 2 miles of range lost.

The yellow line is the average of all the vehicles that have been self-reporting on MyNissanLeaf. My car is doing much better than this average. This is most likely due to the lowish miles and the mild climate.

It's nice to see the degradation slowing, but it is accumulating. This has meant that we are now using the fast chargers more than we were previously. I am concerned that this could accelerate the degradation. We'll see.

I should note that this is just one example. Additionally, Nissan improved the Leaf battery chemistry in 2015 (known as the Lizard Battery). This new battery could have a different degradation curve.

Looking To Year 6

The Nissan Leaf has a telematics system called NissanConnectEV (formerly known as CarWings). The app lets you check the state-of-charge and turn on the HVAC. The status updates for this telematics app are over-the-air. The list of charging stations in the car's nav system is also updated over-the-air. The car uses the AT&T 2G network for these data transfers. The 2G network is scheduled to be shutdown. The 2G shutdown date has been delayed multiple times. It is currently scheduled for the end of 2016 and AT&T seems serious about keeping to the date this time. When the shutdown occurs, my car (and all the 2011 through 2015 Leafs) will need to be updated to a 3G or 4G modem.

I'm not sure how much this 3G/4G upgrade will cost. I rarely use CarWings, so I am not willing to pay much for the upgrade. Nissan has said that cost information will be available in "late summer of 2016." This is something that I'll have to deal with in year six.

Leaf Repurposed

When I purchased my Nissan Leaf in 2011, it was intended to be my commuter vehicle. I have a 21 mile round trip commute. This is perfect for a short range EV. The 73 mile EPA rated range of the 2011 Leaf gave me plenty of room to spare for errands, HVAC use and the battery degradation that I knew would come as the car aged.

That was the plan and for four and a half years, things went according to the plan. We took the Leaf on a few road trips to check out the West Coast Electric Highway, but for the most part, the Leaf was the commuter and errand mobile. I wanted to take care of the batteries in the Leaf. I was not leasing the car, I bought it and I wanted to make it last 10 years if I could.

To this end, I used the Long Battery Life setting in the car. This only charged it up to 80%. Also, I set the charge timer so that is started charging at 3AM. This had the car fully charged by 7AM and the batteries would not stay charged up for too long before my morning commute discharged them. Lithium Ion batteries are the least stressed in the middle third of their charging range and this method had them there about 16 hours each day.

For long trips we took the usually took the Prius. The Prius, however, was ended when an Uber driver in a Highlander ran a stop sign as he raced to pick up a fair. The Prius was totaled.

So now, the Leaf has taken on the job of the Prius and it's a very different usage pattern. The old pattern was:
   3AM Charge up to 80%
   8AM Drive to work (10 miles)
   5PM Drive home (10 miles)
   (maybe an errand - 7 miles)
   Repeat

The new pattern is:
   3AM Charge to 100%
   8AM Drive to school and back (23 miles)
   9AM Charge to 100%
   Noon Mid-day errands (10 miles)
   1PM Charge to 100%
   3PM Drive to school and back (23 miles)
   4PM Charge to 100%
   6PM Evening errands (piano, soccer, dinner ...) (6 miles)
   7PM charge until 8PM or 100%
   Repeat

As you can see the new pattern is much more demanding. There are many more charging events and the drive to school and back has a 700 ft hill climb. That is 4 times per day over that hill (hence the 100% charges). Summer is almost here and the school trips will end. Next year we're transferring schools, so the trip will be much easier both for the driver (less traffic) and for the batteries (no big hill). When the Leaf was new, this drive would not be a problem with an 80% charge, but now with the batteries ageing, 100% is needed to make sure the needed range is there.

The Leaf has also had to fill in on longer drives where we would have taken the Prius. Trips to Woodburn and Gresham have meant that we are stopping at DC fast chargers. This too has a wear and tear impact on the batteries.

I have been measuring the battery capacity of the vehicle since I found Leaf Spy in 2013. Here is the table of my car's actual degradation:

2011 Nissan Leaf Range Degradation
Year	Range Loss	Range
0	0	73
1	4.0	69
2	3.4	65.6
3	3.0	62.6
4	2.7	59.9
5	2.2	57.7

I didn't have Leaf Spy for the first 2 years, so that data is assumed based on the battery model that the known starting point and the measured values give us.

You can see from the table that there is a notable range loss each year. As the car ages, the loss is reducing, but the effects are still adding up.

For my fixed commute, there is still plenty of range. And my workplace has EV charging as well, this would allow me to use it even when it was down to ~20 miles of range. For a more spontaneous needs, however, at less than 60 miles, the range is not enough.

This is one reason that the 200 mile range cars are needed. With a longer range comes a larger battery pack and more cells. This means that each cell is individually worked less. When the motor needs 80 kWs of power, there are many more cells to distribute the demand across.

Due to circumstances that we had no control over, we have recently asked the Leaf to do more than we intended it to do when we bought it. It has handled this challenge extremely well, especially given the age of the batteries.

Why People Love Tesla - The Power Of The Pure Play

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights." Desmond Tutu

Tesla is now taking preorders for the Model 3 and ~400,000 people have put down $1000 to raise their hand and get one. In their latest ad campaign, Nissan is hoping to take advantage of this outpouring EV-love and persuade a few people to buy a Nissan Leaf today, even if they are planning on getting a Model 3 in 2018.

This is not a bad plan. I plan on driving my Leaf until it is traded in on a Model 3. I hope more people start driving EVs soon and that our community grows, but Nissan's ad was still a jab at Tesla.

GM too has taken jabs at Tesla saying that they don't need $1000 pre-order funds to build a car.

It's true that the Leaf is for sale now and that the Chevy Bolt will be out before Model 3 and you don't need to put down $1000 (and wait 18+ months) to get a Chevy Bolt. So why aren't there ~400,000 people lining up at 6AM to get Leafs and Bolts?

Is it the rockstar CEO quality of Elon Musk? Maybe. He has been compared to Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, and even Iron Man's Tony Stark.

Is it the car's cool tech like the 17" touchscreen and cars that can drive themselves? Maybe.

Is it the vast free-for-life, solar-powered EV charging network available only to Tesla drivers? Maybe.

All of the above carry some weight and have been discussed many times over. I'd like to propose another idea. In the opening, there is a quote from Desmond Tutu. (sidebar: I am not trying to equate the first world problem of 'which car should I buy?' to the South African human rights struggle.) This quote speaks to a part of the human nature that wants to be treated fairly; it speaks to knowing that we matter. Let me be clear, Desmond Tutu was talking about something far more important. No one wants to be treated like a second class citizen.

        

If you are buying an EV from a traditional car company (Nissan, GM, Ford...), you are likely to be treated like a second class citizen at some point.


If you read EV forums, you'll find story after story of people that go to a dealership to buy an EV and the sales guy directs them towards a gas car. The salesman talks about all the "problems" with EVs. If you manage to fight through this and you do get an EV, then 3 months later you get a free oil change coupon in the mail.

Even with EVs on salesroom floors and better EV projects in the works, the traditional car companies and dealerships make the vast majority of their money from gas cars and gas cars will continue to be their primary focus for many many years.

The perfect example of this was in January '16 when GM CEO Mary Barra said, "We are not actively working on providing [recharging] infrastructure." For EVs to be successful, you need a coast to coast highspeed recharging infrastructure. But the traditional car companies are not all-in on EVs, so it does not matter to them if EVs are successful, or just a small volume market niche. Tesla, on the other-hand, has built a vast worldwide recharging network and they are continuing to grow it.

Why Tesla?

If being a pure play is all that it takes, then this devotion would flow to any EV start-up and maybe some aspects of it do, but Tesla earns its vast following and devoted fans because it has a complete package. Their products are not a compromise. They are not doing it because a government regulation requires it. Their cars are not something that is a modified version of a gas car with the minimum number of changes required to make it work. Tesla has purpose. It is a movement, not a product. And they have all the things listed above: the cool tech, the future vision, the vast, free-for-life, solar powered recharging infrastructure, and yes, the rocket man CEO.

Tesla Model 3 Will Have Half The Battery Cells Of Model S

Every vehicle that Tesla has made, to date, has used the 18650 Lithium ion battery cells. This was true for the Roadster, Model S, and Model X. Each car uses about seven thousand 18650s. Model 3 will be different.

For the Model 3, Tesla will be making the batteries themselves in the Gigafactory and they have already said that the battery will be different. The only details about the difference that has been mentioned is that cells will be bigger in each dimension and it will have better energy density than the battery cells that are being made today.

The 18650 is so named because it is 18 mm in diameter by 65 mm height and there is no Z-dimension because it is a cylinder, not a rectangular prism.

So how much difference would 20% size increase make? The answer is more than you might think. Volumetrically it resulted in far more than a 20% increase.

Let's compare the old battery cell and the potencial new one.

Volume of the 18650

Letting our friends at Wolfram Alpha do the math, the volume of 18650 is about 16.5 millimeters.

Volume of the New Tesla Battery Cell

A 20% increase in diameter is 21.6mm and a 20% increase in height is 78mm. Going back to Wolfram:

The new volume is about 28.6 milliliters. That is ~170% of the old battery cell volume. That is 70% more room for anodes, cathodes, and all the things that make a battery work.

How Many Battery Cells Will Be In The Model 3?

As Tesla's smallest vehicle, the Model 3 will be the most aerodynamic vehicle they make when it comes out. To have 215+ miles of range the car will need at least 50kWh of battery capacity. For a given range, Model 3 will only need about 2/3rds the capacity of its Model S big brother. This along with battery cells that hold 70% more capacity means that Model 3 will need far fewer battery cells per vehicle.

Starting with the 7,000 cells in Model S, then reducing it by 2/3rds for the smaller car and then reducing it by 40% for the higher capacity yields ~2750 battery cells for Model 3.

These are, of course, rough guesses based on a single comment from Elon Musk during a quarterly results conference call, but I think it is safe to say that Model 3 will have less than half the number of battery cells compared to the current 7,000 of Model S/X.

Changing Car Culture

There is no doubt that EVs are changing the way that we view and interact with cars. It makes them fun again. EVs are also technology leaders that are bringing connected cars and autonomous driving to market faster than their gas cousins ever would have.

I was recently contacted by Diane Martin, an ethnographer. After looking up the word, I can tell you that ethnography is the scientific study of people, customs, and culture. Diane is studying the cultural impact of EVs. Here is the email she sent me:

Hi Patrick, 

I'm interested in learning about consumers' perspectives and experiences of choosing to buy and own an EV. As a market researcher and ethnographer, I study the relationships between consumers and culture, how each effect the other and what that means for changes in consumption practices. With respect to EVs, I'm theorizing how the automotive culture is changing and the ways these changes impact consumers.   

I often talk to people in their homes and garages or in coffee shops and cafés; meeting at a Starbucks is usually a comfortable place for most people to meet. I'm planning on being in Portland the week of May 9-14, 2016. I'm happy to meet with Tesla and Leaf club members any day that week. Right now I have an open schedule to accommodate member needs. 

If you are interested in meeting with Diane, leave a comment below and I'll PM you her contact information. 

5 Suggestions for a Better EV Incentive

In 2015, more than 17 million vehicles were sold in the U.S.  Of these, 114 thousand of them were cars with cords. That means plug-in cars were less than 1% of new vehicle sales. Specifically, they made up just 0.655%.

As much as we hear about electric cars discussed in the media, they still have a long way to go before they are the main mode of personal transportation. Certainly, I'd like to see EVs go mainstream and the wave of affordable long-range EVs that are coming out in 2017 will help greatly in this endeavor, but even if these are a smash hit, it will take years to make a dent in the massive number of cars that are already on the road.

Crawl, Walk, Run. I get it. The growth trend is there, but it will take a while. If I were investing, I'd rather be on the side with a small and growing market than the one with a large but shrinking market.

So how do you accelerate the growth? Incentives. There would undoubtedly be significantly fewer EVs on U.S. roadways today without the $7,500 Federal tax incentive. Depending on how big of a battery pack a plug-in vehicle has, it can qualify for from $2,500 to the full $7,500 incentive.

The point of this incentive is to encourage sales of these vehicles and it has done a great job so far. However, now that the incentive has been in use for several years, we are able to better understand how it could be better and the impending failure that it has coming.

Incentives? Who Needs Incentives? 

One could argue that plug-in cars, or any product, should stand on its own and that incentives are a waste of government (taxpayer) funds. Since I am writing this on April 18th and recently wrote a big check to Uncle Sam, I can agree with the sentiment. However, I will make a brief case for the plug-in car incentive.

Our government has a responsibility to maintain clean air and they have a responsibility to make sure that we have the energy we need to maintain, if not grow, our economy. EVs help meet both of these goals. And they do it without the need to deploy troops to desert wastelands or send destroyers to guard the Strait of Hormuz.

How do EVs help with these goals? The Union of Concerned Scientist report clearly shows that, cradle to grave, even with the partially coal-powered grid that we have today, EVs produce fewer emissions than gas cars. As coal plants across the country continue to shut down and wind turbines continue to go up, plug-in cars will continue to get greener.

The energy needed to power these cars can be generated right here in the U.S.. Energy storage solutions are experiencing a technological boom whether it's advanced battery tech or simple pumped hydroelectric storage, there are ways to store the intermittent energy that renewable generation often creates. This gives us a home-grown energy supply.

Additionally, gas cars are heavily subsidized every time they fill up at the gas pump. The price per gallon is far from the true cost that is paid for that fuel. There are environmental, health, and security costs associated with every gallon supplied and burned. It has been estimated that gas cars receive more than $12,000 in fueling cost incentives over a typical vehicle lifespan.

So, the case for EV incentives is that they help meet environmental, health, and security goals while reducing the future costs for the same and all of this with an incentive that is smaller than the lifetime fuel subsidies that a gas car receives.

What's Wrong With The Current Incentive?

The current EV incentive has a few problems. I first touched on this topic in February, near the end of this article.

As mentioned in the opening of this article, plug-in cars are currently only a fraction of one percent of new vehicle sales. Despite this fact, Tesla Motors already has to start dealing with end-of-incentive logistics for their customers and GM is not too far behind. This is exactly the opposite of what's needed. The automakers that are successfully putting plug-in cars on the road are ones that will have their funds cut off first. That is because the current system starts to phase out incentives by automaker 3 to 6 months after their 200,000th plug-in vehicle has shipped.

The current system is a tax credit. This means that you won't see the money until you file your taxes. Most people finance their car purchases. This means that it would be much better for them if the incentive could be used to increase the down payment and reduce the monthly car payment.

The tax credit system is also a problem for retirees. Many of them do not have an income, but that does not preclude them from having saving and occasionally buying a new car. Today, many of them work around this by first leasing the car (allowing the lessor bank to take the tax credit) and then buying out the lease. This does not reduce the number of incentives that are paid out and it unnecessarily inserts a middleman.

A Better EV Incentive 

If the law were to be revamped, how could it be better? A couple of ideas that I've heard are:

1) Make it a point-of-sale incentive instead of a tax rebate
This would solve the "wait until you've done your taxes" problem. It would also help retired folks that are often not even filing taxes.

2) Make it $10k, instead of $7,500
This one is straight forward. A bigger incentive will accelerate things even faster. We certainly saw this in Georgia when they had a $5,000 incentive on top of the federal $7,500 incentive. This launched the unexpected state onto the list of top 5 states with plug-in sales.

Additionally, I think other changes are needed:

1) The limit should not be per manufacturer.
The current system penalizes the companies that are early to embrace and promote the technology. If the goal is to have more EVs on the road, then it should not matter which manufacturer makes them. Let the market/buyers decide which vehicles they want on a level playing field. Auto manufacturers that are currently sitting on their hands know that (with the current system) their 200,000 cars are waiting for them and that they can use it later to make cars that will be even more profitable after the innovators have broken down the barriers. This removes the needed sense of urgency. In fact, it may even encourage omphaloskepsis.

2) The limit should not be some arbitrary number of vehicles sold, rather it should be in place until 2% of all new vehicles are PEV.
Why 2%? Hybrids have been in the 2%-4% of the market for years now. This is enough of a sales volume to have an ongoing market. Let me be clear, I think PEVs will continue to grow far beyond this level, but there's no way that *any* incentives should be stopped before this level of sales volume is achieved.

3) The incentive should go down 15% per year after hitting the 2% mark.
The current system has a 50% reduction. That is a big drop. Under the current system, if you miss an end of quarter delivery date by a day, it could cost you $3,750. Smaller steps at an annual rate is a smooth transition (soft landing) to the incentive-free market.

Summary 

Here are five purposed improvements to the federal plug-in vehicle incentive. This incentive is important. It helps us, as a country, achieve many of our important goals. The current system has been in place since 2009 and it is in need of an update. The needed changes are relatively minor and can have a great impact. These changes would help people making car payments as well as retired car buyers.

Tesla Gave Me a Model 3

Tesla has given me money directly and I have made money by investing in them. Now I am giving all of this back to them in exchange for a Model 3.

$1000 Reservation Deposit

When Tesla launched the Powerwall in 2015, I watched the reveal like many others. At the end of the presentation a screen popped up and asked if I wanted to sign up for more information about the Powerwall. Yes, yes I did. After the name, email address, etc., there was a little checkbox that asked if I was interested in solar energy. If you've read this blog much, you'll know that solar is one of my interests, so, of course, I checked the box.

Soon I was contacted by Tesla and they asked if I was interested in talking to someone from SolarCity about solar and potentially a Powerwall. I agreed. Long story short, we had an 8.3 kW solar array installed (but no Powerwall). Soon after the installation was complete, a check from Tesla showed up. It was for $1000. Alright, I didn't even know that was part of the deal. It was a nice surprise.

Six months later, when Tesla announced the Model 3, I gave Tesla $1000 as a reservation deposit. This was the same amount Tesla had given me.

Buying A Tesla Model 3

In 2010, Tesla Motors IPOed. They started trading stock in their company on the public market. I had seen and even test driven the Roadster. It was an incredible machine. It was a reinvention of driving. I was amazed at how responsive it was. I would just think of accelerating and we were moving. I swear I had not even moved my foot yet. The same was true with the tight sports car steering.

So when they IPOed, I read the "Secret Master Plan" and several of their whitepapers on energy efficiency. I didn't know if they were going to be the next in a long sting of EV car companies that would go bankrupt, or if they were going to be the game changing company. But I did know, there would be no middle ground and I was going to buy at least a few shares. I bought a few shares on June 29th, 2010 for $17.84 per share and I started watching the stock. It was slowly going up. On July 6th I bought more. This time at $18 per share. The next day the price dropped some to $16.01. I decided this was a bargain price and I bought my final lot.

Then I sat back and promptly ignored the stock. That's right. I stopped watching it all together. I didn't buy much. Each of these purchases were very small. If the stock went to zero. I had a tax write-off. And I knew that was a real possibility. I bought only enough that I would not worry about it. Individual stock like this, can be very volatile. One news article or car fire and the stock makes huge moves. I didn't want to be on that emotional rollercoaster that causes the wrong move. This is one of the rare cases where ignorance can out performance diligent mindfulness.

Now I am looking at the stock again. And to be fair, I did peek at it now and then. As I write this, the stock is at $265 per share. That is up 1,400% from where I purchased it in 2010. It's nearly enough to pay for my Model 3. I wish I had bought more, I might get a Model X too :)

Blink can't spell FREE

I received an EZ Charge card as part of the Nissan Leaf 2011/12 battery class action lawsuit. I was excited to use it. The idea of a single card that works on multiple networks is much better than the jungle of charging cards I usually carry. And it was free to use for 90 days! I registered on my local networks and was ready to charge!

I drove out to Gresham yesterday. Stopped at a Blink DC Fast Charge (DCFC) station on the way home. There was a Leaf there already and they were just starting a charging session. The Blink DCFC stations have two cords, but only one is operational at a time. I was not in a hurry.

I pulled into the open spot. I grabbed the EZ Charge card and scanned it to start the session. There was a note that this would be a 30 minutes free charging session. I had never seen this 30 minute limitation before. I learned later that it is a restriction on the EZ Charge program, but not on normal Blink members. 30 minutes should be enough so I plugged in. It said, "The other side is in use. Your next." I retreated to my car and occupied myself on my phone while I waited.

About a half hour later, the other car finished and unplugged. I expected my side to start charging. It did not. I went out and looked at the station. I had been logged out. My "30 minutes" had expired! That's right, the session never started, but the time had expired. There are only two primary usecases, (immediate charging and delayed charging) and they didn't even bother to consider them both. If I would have left and then come back an hour later expecting to find a charged car, I would have been disappointed.

So I scanned the card again and it started charging. After 30 minutes the charge stopped. I had enough to make it home, but before I left, I wanted to try the Level 2 Blink station there too, just to see if the EZ Charge card worked. I scanned it, logged in and it said that I would be charged "normal membership rates of $0.39 per kWh." What? It should be free. Did I miss some fine-print. Is it only for the DCFCs on the Blink network? I let it charge for a minutes and the kWhs and pennies were ticking by. I was being charged a fee on my "free card". I stopped the session.

Because of the fee, I logged on to my Blink account and checked my account history. Both the DCFC session and the Level 2 session were there and neither were completely free.

The DCFC session had a $0.25 junk fee on it. Twenty-five cents is not much, but this is part of a lawsuit settlement. The agreement is "Free for 90 days".  I went to Blink's website and found the agreement. Here is the relevant section:

The programs is even called "No Charge to Charge", not "No Charge, but only on fast chargers and some junk fees might apply and you are limited to 30 minutes and must wait 60 minutes between charges-To Charge".

So there you have it. The Level 2 stations are not part of the program. In my region, the Level 2 Blink stations outnumber the DCFC stations by ~10 to 1. Eliminating the Level 2 stations, means most Blink stations are not in the program.

In my experience, reliability of Blink's network has been an ongoing problem, and again they have found another way to disappoint me.

I used this same card on the AeroVironment network and I was not charged junk fees.

Charging can be a fun, hassle-free experience. With Blink, for me, that is too often not the case. I wish they would replace them all with something more reliable and better managed.

The Jungle of Charge Cards

When I was a kid, my parents had store credit cards for nearly everyplace they shopped. They had a Sears card, a Meyer and Frank's card, a Fred Meyer's card, a Chevron card and many many others. They even had a special wallet just to hold all the cards.

Today, I have a collection of charge cards too. Mine, however, are not credit cards; they are EV charging network membership cards. This is a problem. Today, people don't carry a collection of store cards. Carrying a single credit card that can be used anywhere is much more convenient. Likewise, it would be nice to have a single card that could work at any EV charging station.

Why don't the charging stations just take Visa and/or Master Card? Charging transactions are generally small amounts. There are fees that the credit card companies charge with every transaction. These fess can consume most of the profit from a small transaction. This is why you might see signs like "$10 minimum for credit card purchases" at many small businesses.

This why most of the EV charging networks have membership cards. They charge a $10 or $20 amount to join and give you this amount of credit. When you have used this credit, they make another $10 or $20 credit card transaction. This way the small fees for charging up come out of your pre-paid account and the network only makes $10+ credit card transactions. This makes the transaction fees a much smaller percentage of the transaction cost.

If credit cards are not the way go, then what is?

1. Status Que - Carry a bunch of membership cards - No
2. One Card - Most of us have a debit/ATM card and they work at ATMs from nearly any bank (although fees may apply). These ATMs are on a common network such as Star or Plus. This allows them to record the transaction at your bank and give you cash from the ATM you are standing in front of, even if it is not from your bank. 
3. Smartphones - Apps such as PlugShare are offering payment services.

Let's look at each option. 

1) The Charge Brigade 

I have a large collection of charging membership cards. Below is a picture of them. 

There are 14 of them. Some are startups that installed one or two stations, some are for local networks, others are for my workplace, and a few were just to see if I could get them. As my employer tried different strategies for workplace charging (starting in 2008), they changed charging station providers several times. This started my collection membership cards. 

Handing someone a stack of cards like this if they were to rent an EV, is not a workable solution. Even 3 or 4 cards would complicate charging.

The good(?) news is that consolidation is occurring in this area. As with many industries, this may settle on a duopoly or triopoly. Then again, local electrical utilities are just starting to explore this space, so convergence on just a few providers may take some time.

2) One Card To Rule Them All

As part of a class-action lawsuit, Nissan recently sent out EZ Charge cards to many 2011 and 2012 Leaf owners in the US. These cards have 90 days of free use in any of four networks listed below. Additionally, in select cities, Nissan is giving EZ Charge cards to new Leaf buyers with 2 years of free charging. This is a smart move. 

I have activated my account and signed up with all of them (other than Blink, they are having technical difficulties). I am not particularly interested in the 90 free days since I don't charge outside of home or work often and the EVSE provider that my employer is currently using is not on the list. But the part that I am excited about, is that this is one step closer to having a single card that can operate on any of the networks. After the 90 day free period is over, I'll be able to use this card (paying member rates) at any of these networks. Blink and ChargePoint make up the bulk of the public infrastructure around here and now they are on one card.

3) Smartphone - NFC for you and me

The smartphone ecosystem thrives on in-app purchases. Rolling in-app purchases into regular monthly bills and other techniques have been used to solve the micro-payment problem. PlugShare, Greenlots, GE Wattstation, and others allow you to pay for charging sessions with your smartphone.
 

Apple Pay and Android Pay are growing with merchants. These seems like they will be the eventual winners in the smartphone payment arena. If they were to add a small pre-paid buffer, like the charging networks have, they could further reduce the credit card transaction fees. It would be ironic, however, if your phone had a dead phone battery and this prevented you from charging up your car's dead battery.

Summary

The jungle of charging network providers has been thick. Two forces, consolidation and ATM-style network sharing, are allowing you to carry fewer cards. Smartphone payments could eliminate the need for membership cards altogether. Local electric utilities are just starting to enter this space and could have a big impact, especially on billing if they can tie it into your monthly home electric bill. With all of these factors, that pile of membership cards that we EV drivers are carrying today will be something to display in a future museum of transportation because they will be history.

Chevy Bolt & Tesla Model 3, The 1-2 Punch That Kills Fuel Cell Vehicles

The Chevrolet Bolt and the Tesla Model 3 are oft squared off as rivals. You can find this head to head square-off in story after story (and even this blog). Both are 200+ mile range EVs and both are in the ~$30K price range. But there is another foe that these two have in common and that is fuel cell vehicles. If fuel cell vehicles are the future of transportation, then Tesla, GM, and others are wasting their efforts on battery powered vehicles.

Honda, Toyota, and others are betting heavily on fuel cell vehicles (FCV).

2017 Honda Clarity FCV rendering

To see how these technologies will square off we'll look at infrastructure, cost, and consumer acceptance.

Comparing Infrastructure

We have detailed the problems with FCVs here, but the simple truth is that FC passenger vehicles require a vast, expensive hydrogen refueling infrastructure that does not exist.

Plug-in vehicles require infrastructure too, but recharging can be done from any outlet, the very same ones that we use to recharge our phones and computers. Overnight charging in your own garage means that you can start out each day with a "full tank" and you don't have to detour to a filling station.

The one advantage that FCVs can tout over EVs is refilling time. That is, if you can find an hydrogen (H2) filling station. Fast refill time is a great component for long distance driving. However, the few H2 filling stations that we do have in the U.S. are primarily in California. This currently makes the FCVs a regional vehicle, despite their range and refueling speed. You can drive a FCV from L.A. to San Diego and back, but there is no refilling available to make a coast to coast trip.

        

You can drive a FCV from LA to San Diego and back, but forget about driving from LA to NYC.

Comparing Cost

The Toyota Mirai currently sells for $57,500. The Honda's FCV is expected to have a similar ~$60k price tag. The Chevy Bolt is expected to cost $37,500 before $7,500 federal incentive price and Tesla says the Model 3 will be $35,000 before the federal incentive.

H2 filling for the first two years of FCV ownership is currently free. After that, it is not clear how much it will cost. The current estimates available, when broken down as price per mile, are that H2 will cost approximately the equivalent to $6 per gallon gasoline.

Driving on electricity, depending on your local utility rates, it costs about the same as $1 per gallon gasoline.

        

Fuel cell vehicles are twice the cost to purchase and 6 times the cost to fuel.

Customer Acceptance 

Both battery electric vehicles and fuel cell vehicles offer smooth rides and great acceleration driven by electric motors, both can be 'fueled' from renewable resources. Despite these similarities, they have had very different acceptance in the alt fuel community.

Given the small region that actually has H2 filling stations, there are not many places that currently sell FCVs. This has significantly reduced the number of potential customers for FCVs. In contrast, EVs are currently sold around the world. And the Chevy/Opel Bolt and Tesla Model 3 will be sold worldwide.

Additionally, Toyota's marketing has specifically attacked battery electric vehicles. This, and other events, has divide the community into two camps. Many of the customers that are early adopters of alt fuel vehicles are now adamantly opposed to fuel cell vehicles. Without an enthusiastic group of early adopters, you can not move to the mass adoption stage.

        

Fuel cell vehicles don't have the enthusiastic following that is needed to move to beyond a niche market.

Summary

The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 will coming out and competing with the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity FCV.

The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 will be affordable long range electric vehicles. These two vehicles, and the fast followers like them, will bring new customers to the EV market. These will be customers that were not comfortable with the ~100 mile range EVs and those that could not afford the more expensive Tesla Model S.

The FCVs will be twice the price with a fraction of the locations to refuel. This will leave cars like the Toyota Mirai and Honda Clarity FCV with no significant number of prospective customers.

The affordable 200+ mile EV could be what is finally needed to bring an end to idea that passenger cars are the right segment to first deploy FCVs.

Vehicle Type	Vehicle Cost	Range (miles)	Fuel Cost eqv	Refueling Time
Battery Electric	~$30,000	200-250	~$1 per gallon	30 min to 80%
Fuel Cell	~$60,000	300-400	~$6 per gallon	5-10 minutes

Table 1 - Battery Electric and Fuel Cell Vehicle Comparison