1 mile per hour of charge on 120V? I get 3 with my VW ID4 and nearly 5 with my Nissan Leaf.

I've never really been a "car guy". I appreciate a classic antique (anything from a Model T Ford to a late 50s sedan like a Ford Crown Victoria or Chevy Bel Air) the same way I appreciate a grandfather's clock or an old tube radio, but I've always mostly seen cars as money sucking necessary evils to get from point A to point B.

I was sold on EVs by cost per mile and lower maintenance. 3¢ a mile and no oil changes? Sign me up. Zero emissions and smooth acceleration are just bonuses.

To be fair, how much wheat can your Model Y harvest? Case closed! 😁

Thanks! That proves I haven't watched a game in over two years! 😁 (In reality, probably more like nearly a decade...)

There are a number of reasons for this. Some energy is converted to heat, some is necessary to keep the battery at the right temperature during charging, and some is written off to what's known as "transmission loss."

The single biggest loss is probably just the car's overhead. Our three EVs each use 200-300 watts (0.2-0.3 kW) to power the computers and charging circuitry. That's almost 5% of a 240V/32A 7kW charge. (That's also why L1 charging is so inefficient - 0.3 kW uses over 20% of what a 1.4kW 120V/12A charge cord provides!)

Yep. My Salt Lake trip in the Leaf was to loan it to my kid when their Toyota died, and I was checking the various car sale websites every morning looking for a decent used Leaf or Bolt for them. One morning this 2017 Bolt popped up on a local Ford dealers inventory for $13K (before credits) while my kid happened to be here in Denver (by plane! 😁) I called and said we'd be there in 30 minutes to test drive it.

Turns out it had been taken in trade the day before, and had trash and dog hair all over the back seats. The salesperson apologized and said they hadn't had time to prep it yet and weren't supposed to allow test drives in it until then, but if we were ok with it, she'd let us. My kid took it a spin, made sure that the one pedal driving worked (their favorite EV feature!) and said "sold". We drove back to the dealership, and paid the $9100 (since they were a Ford EV dealer they were familiar with the point of sale credit so that all went smoothly). They said they'd have the car cleaned, prepped, charged and ready to pick up within 48 hours, and I drove my kid to the airport to fly back to SLC.

I picked up the car two days later, immediately drove it to a Chevy dealer to order the replacement battery, and used the car for the month it took to come in. After the battery was replaced, I drove the Bolt to Salt Lake and drove my Leaf back. That was the slowest road trip weekend of my life! 500 miles there in a Bolt and 500 back in a Leaf! 😁

The icing on the cake was a snow storm in the Vail pass which closed I-70 that Sunday night, forcing me to exit in Vail, where due to the storm, no hotel rooms were available. I found a free ChargePoint AC charger at a city office building, plugged in, cranked the heat and slept in the car until the highway reopened the next day!

We could debate the superiority of Bolt vs Leaf all day in all kinds of categories, but I assure you the Leaf seats are a more comfortable makeshift bed than the fabric covered hard plastic seats of the Bolt! 😁

I was mostly making a joke, since your last post implied the #1 reason the Leaf isn't a road tripper was it didn't have a spare. In your case, I'd say a lack of CHAdeMO chargers is a much bigger issue! 😁

The point of the 12V battery is mostly to close the contacts that connect the big battery pack to the car. For many reasons including safety, they don't want the 400V pack "live" in-circuit at all times. When the car is off, the battery is isolated so there's nothing to step down from. (Though the car can wake it for stuff like climate controls and battery heating/cooling as needed.)

Once the 400V is connected, it outputs 12-14V to charge the 12V and run the 12V accessories. If the 12V is really bad, it drags the 12V system voltage coming from the big battery so low the computer systems get confused and don't boot properly, resulting in a lit Christmas tree of errors on the dash (While the big battery could provide far more power than the car would ever need for the 12V circuits, the limiting factor is the on board DC step down converter, which for cost and size reasons only outputs about 1kW.)

Yeah, my standard joke has always been the Leaf is a mediocre EV trapped in a decent car, and the Bolt is a decent EV trapped in a mediocre car.

The only real advantages of the Bolt, IMO, are the slightly better efficiency (it gets about 10% better range than the Leaf Plus on similar sized batteries), and the CCS port vs the Leaf's depreciated CHAdeMO. Neither were important to me when I bought mine (back in 2021, when the Leaf qualified for the Fed tax credit and the Bolt didn't.)

As a local runabout, (I may be rationalizing a little here!) the lack of active cooling is actually a bit of an advantage, especially for those stuck with L1 home charging. In cold temps, the Bolt (and virtually all other EVs) spend a considerable amount of their L1 wall power "budget" (up to 2KW, more than the car pulls from the wall!) to warm the battery coolant during charging until the battery gets to 38°F or so, which significantly cuts down the amount of range you can recapture overnight with L1 during winter when it's below freezing. The Leaf just doesn't give AF. All the incoming power goes towards charging (at least until the battery itself gets down to -4°F or so, which has never happened to me here in Denver, even during cold snaps when the temp was below 0°F for days. Normal use of the car and occasional charging kept the battery well above 0°F)

They're both great entry level EVs; for me the deciding factor is mostly price vs features. When my oldest kid wanted an EV this winter after their 16 year old Toyota died, we chose the Bolt because we found a 2017 for $9K (after tax credit) that hadn't had the battery replacement done yet. Now they have a 7 year old car with a brand new battery with an 8 year/100K mile warranty. A similarly priced used Leaf would have half or more of the battery warranty used up already, and for the (very few) road trips they might take, CCS will be easier to find over the next few years, and there's a decent chance the Supercharger network will open up to Bolts and a near zero chance for Leafs! 😁

They live in Salt Lake, and have taken one SLC to Denver round trip to visit us. In their words to me: "I don't know how you do it in an EV! Next time I'm flying!" (To be fair, we usually do it in our VW ID4, not the Leaf!)

How is CCS2 "far superior" to the CCS1 in the states. It's essentially the same protocol with a similar connector.

The higher capacity Leafs can charge at up to 80kW and have a much better charge curve than the Bolt does. Yes, without active cooling, the charge rate of the Leaf is throttled when the battery gets hot, but I've road tripped in both cars and I'll take the Leaf any day for both physical comfort and "creature comforts" like adaptive cruise (optional on both cars, but included on many more Leafs than Bolts.) A 500 mile Denver to Salt Lake trip took me almost exactly the same time in both cars.

Even in 100° ambient temps, the Leaf charges faster than the Bolt for the first two fast charges of the day, basically ties it for the third, and is slower for subsequent charges.

In addition, the Bolt has about the weakest active cooling of any EV I've driven, and also gets its charge speed throttled after a couple of charges because the cooling system struggles to keep up. My VW ID4 quickly gets back to normal operating temps (90°F) after a quick charge on a road trip; the Bolt takes quite a while, and spends a lot of time between 100-110°F.

The truth of the matter is neither the Leaf or Bolt are good road trippers, and the anemic active cooling of the Bolt is barely adequate and is essentially just there to tick the "active cooling" box on the feature list. "Road trip capability" is just not a good reason to select either car over the other.

That's fair, but 1-2 hours of potential pain, annoyance and haggling isn't enough to deter me from the car I want to own for 5-10 years

If you want a Tesla, Rivian or a Lucid, not having to deal with a dealer is great. But that alone isn't enough motivation to choose those cars over others, IMO.

AFAIK, no Leaf has included run flats as standard equipment. They include an inflation kit (12V air pump and bottle of sealant "goo".)

I'd argue it's reason #3, behind "no active battery cooling" and "CHAdeMO port"... 😁

Having said that, I've taken two 1000+ mile road trips in my (62kWh) Leaf, and a sudden similar trips in my VW ID4 (which also has no spare) without an issue. I carry the inflation kit both cars came with plus a $5 Walmart plug kit. I haven't used a spare tire in over 20 years- if I pick up a screw or nail, I pull it out, plug the tire, and get on with my life. Short of a full blow out, a plug kit will get you to a tire store.

And you can always pay full price. And unlike Tesla you don't have to worry about dealer addons, shady financing, manditory options and market pricing. When the Mack E came out, nobody was getting that for MSRP.

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Unlike with Tesla, MSRP for legacy automakers is fairly static, so during the chip shortage/Carpocalypse, dealers did add some crazy markups. Tesla didn't, but instead just kept raising their MSRP like a restaurant that sells lobster at "market price". I'm not sure either scenario is inherently better than the other. When I bought my last EV, during that period, a VW ID4, I paid full MSRP for the first time in my life. My friends paid $60K "MSRP" for a Tesla Model Y that has sold for $50K just a few months before, and a few months after when the market started to return to normal.

So yeah, they didn't pay a "dealer markup", but they paid $10K more than others did for the same car before and after.

No, you're not locked in. The modern (2018+) Leaf uses a standard type 2 AC port like any EV. The DC rapid charging port is different (CHAdeMO instead of CCS2.)

I wonder if Tesla opening their network will force prices to become a little more realistic

🤞

I agree about the congestion. The worst thing about the free charging, IMO though, isn't the congestion, but the "training" it gave to many new EV owners that EVs are fueled just like gas cars, except painfully more slowly, by driving to a special fueling station. This encouraged folks without access to home charging to jump into EV ownership with both feet, with no exit strategy for when their free charging plan ended and it would suddenly cost them more to fuel an EV than a gas car.

I'm as much of a cheapskate as anyone, and I've hogged my share of free charging; I opportunity charge at any, well, opportunity- there are EA stations at my nearest Walmart and a nearby grocery store, so anytime I'm shopping at either store (2-3 times a week), I'll plug my ID4 in if a charger is available. But with L2 at home (our other car is a Nissan Leaf) I won't make a special trip to score a free charge and sit in my car greedily counting the $3.30 I'm saving by grabbing 30kWh at Walmart instead of in my driveway.

Having said that, I don't think the price increases had anything to do with free charging. EA has been funded by VW as part of the Dieselgate settlement, and that funding runs out at the end of 2026. When very few people were using EA stations, the charging revenue was a small fraction of their total revenue, the rest coming from VW, so it didn't really matter what EA charged. This was EA "hooking" users on their first fix. When stations starting getting busy (utilization in 2023 was 10x what it was in 2021) this was an opportunity for EA to experiment with pricing in anticipation of standing on their own two feet when their parents at VW cut off their allowance. As expensive as EA is, they're charging the going rate; EVGo is just as high, and other networks I've used on road trips (Shell Recharge, EVConnect, etc.) were just as high or higher.

Good to know! After reading this thread and thinking about it, I jumped on this unit for $99 as well, figuring "what the hell"? If it seems well built I'll replace my trusty Nissan OEM L2 EVSE with it and get app access, otherwise I'll just send it back.

To be fair, NACS is a nicer plug to use, because it's smaller and lighter.

But, it's smaller, in part, because it uses the same pins for both AC and DC. There's switching equipment in the car that switches the port wiring between the battery and the on board charger depending on whether the cord is splitting AC or DC, so this adds cost and complexity to every car that uses NACS.

In addition (like the CCS1/type 1 AC it's replacing), there's still no support for three-phase power (which, to be fair, is not common in North America), and complicates bi-directional charging, which requires both AC and DC connections, so similar switching/isolation equipment needs to be added to bi-directional chargers, increasing their complexity and cost.

Now for the part that will get me downvoted: there was no reason, other than massaging Elon Musk's ego, that car makers needed to pledge to switch to NACS to get access to Superchargers; the plan already requires the use of CCS to NACS adapters to accommodate the 1,500,000 existing CCS cars in the USA, so CCS could've remained the standard rather than upend the industry for a short term "fix" for charger availability. The non-Tesla networks in the USA are starting to expand more rapidly with the increase in EV adoption, and will likely overtake the number of Tesla Superchargers soon (in aggregate), but I think Musk wanted the validation that he was "right" and that his was the charging standard.

So I guess we can now add "weird charging plug" to the list of North American "standards" that differ from the rest of the world! 😁

Gimme five... On the side... Way down low...

TOO SLOWWWW!

You're not the first to say this I'm not sure if it's "bait and switch" as much as bad employee education at dealerships. From 2021 to 2023 VW included 3 years free charging and that just ended with the 2024. Any salesperson that doesn't stay on top of new training might not be aware of the changes.

That's not to excuse them; I'd have raised a fuss and tried to get a fair discount for the "misunderstanding". VW used to value the 3 years of free charging at about $3000 (when some screw up prevented a buyer from getting it, that was usually their offer. The 500kW and 3 years of membership has a retail value of about $500, so I'd have asked for $2500 in lieu of the free charging the salesperson promised you.

Without anything in writing, you're unlikely to get anywhere, but they might offer you something if you complain. At the very least, they'll be unlikely to mislead anyone else.

As to other networks, I personally haven't had huge problems with EA, other than crowding at some stations from other folks using their free charging. I use EVGo and ChargePoint on road trips when EA isn't available (using the Bluedot app from http://theBluedot.co for discounted rates), but home is the best place to charge if you can possibly do it.

Between the two hots (left and right slots,) yes. But the upper middle is the neutral. You should get 120V between it and either of the hots. If you get 0 between the neutral and either hot, it's not connected. (NEMA 14-50 outlets are designed to provide both 240 and 120 for appliances/applications that require both, like RVs and electric stoves.)

Again, that shouldn't matter to a 240V EVSE (charging cord) but some do a wiring test on boot up to check if the outlet is wired correctly, and that test includes checking the neutral wire. I'm not sure if the Webasto (the VW OEM cord is a relabeled Webasto) does such a check.

Good thing you had those delicious pizzas to cover up the smell...

Vigorous hair washing ups your step count! 😁