Revisiting the scene of the crime

Chelsea Sexton organized a great meeting of Volt drivers yesterday at the GM training facility where Plug In America held its 28 day vigil back in 2005. Chelsea and others were loaned Volts as part of GM's "Customer Advisory Board", to give feedback on the car while it was being rolled out. Many others who have already purchased and taken possession of their Volts also showed up. In addition, Chelsea invited all EV drivers to participate, so around 100 folks showed up in 44 EVs.

Scenes from the film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" of dozens of EV1s loaded on 13 transport trucks headed for the crusher in the AZ desert elicited strong emotions from viewers of the film.
Linda Nicholes, Plug In America's first president, is seen here holding back tears and saluting the cars as they leave for their fate in the desert.

It was hard for us to see back then how things would pan out exactly, although we knew the end game would be plug-in cars. We won some battles and lost some battles, but the war has been decided decisively in our favor.

The event drew 44 EVs consisting of some of the old RAVs, a Chevy S-10, a conversion and lots of Volts, LEAFs and a coil of Tesla Roadsters. After an hour spent relishing the moment, we mimicked the exit of the transport trucks with our own EVs turning right instead of left onto Riverside Drive with the destination Irwindale, CA where Southern California Edison has their Smart Energy Center. There, we were treated to a long row of Coulomb Technology charge stations situated under a sizable solar PV array. When I arrived, all the charge stations were occupied, so a friendly Volt driver, who didn't need to charge because he had the range extension, made room for my LEAF. Once hooked up and sipping sunshine at 3.3 kW, I knew I'd have plenty of juice to make the trip home.

SCE's, Ed Kjaer, arranged for his efficiency troops to give all of us a great tour of their smart grid display. If you live in the SoCal region, this is a must see. SoCal Edison is probably the most progressive utility when it comes to integrating plug-in cars into an advanced and efficient grid. It's not just the cars, but all your appliances that will be tied into the devices that will tell you how much your energy costs at a given moment, and how much money you will spend for each electrical device. I can't wait till everyone is hooked up to these devices and we can start reducing the horrible waste of which so many Americans are guilty.

Chelsea Tells it like it is, and starts a great comment war

For those of you unfamiliar with the writing of Chelsea Sexton, her blog on GM's creation of a Volt Customer Advisory Board is a must read.

First of all, no one not named Dan Neil is as articulate as Chelsea on the subject of plug-in cars. Her command of language is something many professional writers would envy. And those who have heard her speak on the subject of plug-in cars would say that was her forte. I won't argue that, she's very good at both.

I wanted to send this out to my readers because of the remarkable turn around GM has taken in their EV program. As Chelsea states, "The Volt team is intensely earnest, and I’ve seen several of the executives go giddy over it. But those things will not be enough; the last generation of EV’s didn’t suffer for lack of good cars or sincerity."

Chelsea makes the case for a truly new and improved GM, at least as far as the electric vehicle is concerned.
From crushed EV1s to the remarkable Volt! Solid proof that GMs current management "gets it".

Be sure to read the comments. About half way through, there is some pretty funny repartee from readers assuming various personna.

Zan and Paul test the Mitsubishi iMiEV

Last Friday, Chelsea Sexton dropped off the cute little Mitsubishi iMiEV (pronounced I-meev) test car. She and her husband, Bob, had been driving it for a week, and now it was our turn.

This version is a right-hand drive built for the Japanese market. Driving from the right side of a car isn't that hard to get used to, but remembering the turn signal vs. windshield wiper switch took concentration.

According to Mitsubishi, this Smart-sized EV will be aimed at the commuter market which, given the sub-80 mile range, is a perfect fit. The 16 kWh LiIon pack, located under the passenger compartment, keeps the center of gravity low. One of the benefits of having a smaller battery pack is that the overall weight of the car is just a bit north of 2300 lbs.

The driving experience was very good. Acceleration was comparable to our RAV, which is to say, it's not going to beat a Tesla Roadster, but it had no problem accelerating up to speed on the freeway. I particularly liked its cornering ability, and the small size makes it very easy to park just about anywhere. Their engineers must have been listening to us since they incorporated a creep mode into the software. This mimics how a gas car will roll forward when you take your foot off the brake. It's helpful when you're on a hill so you don't roll backward, and it's something you expect, so the experience is very close to what you're used to. The iMiEV is also very quiet, much like the RAV.

There are two modes of regenerative braking, accomplished by shifting into "eco mode". There is no "freewheeling" which will disappoint RAV drivers who like to use this coasting method for hypermiling. When you are in full power mode and lift your foot off the accelerator, the regen is always there at about the same level as that found in a Prius. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I prefer the option to freewheel since I can get better efficiency when driving in heavy traffic.

The instrumentation in this near-production prototype was spare. I want to see a digital readout of my state of charge (SOC), not some approximation from an analog bar. One of the great things about electric vehicles is their ability to travel a predictable distance per kWh. Zan and I don't hesitate to drive the RAV all the way down to the bottom if we need to, because we know precisely how far we can go given we have RAV Info, an after market Palm Pilot program that taps into the RAV's main CPU where all the car's info is. We can see to a tenth of a percent how much SOC we have. All of the EV companies need to adopt something similar, but make it part of the standard instrumentation, not an after market thing.

Charging the iMiEV was simple, we just plugged it into one of our standard 120V outlets in the garage. It's a slow way to charge, but we had the whole night, so that's plenty of time. The Level 2 charging cord set wasn't available, so that's all we could use. Once the car is ready to sell to the general public, we'll see 240V Level 2 charging which is plenty fast for a commuter car.

The iMiEV is a lot roomier on the inside than you would expect from looking at it. Seeing it parked here behind our gas-guzzling Honda Insight, you can see that it's a bit larger than that tiny two-seater. Sitting inside the car, I got the feeling it was even roomier than our RAV.

Pricing is unknown, but rumor has it that they'll be well under $30K. I think it'll sell fast if they can price it about $4K-$5K under the Nissan Leaf. There are millions of people who commute to and from work in huge, inefficient vehicles that are grossly over sized for the task at hand. I think Mitsubishi will get a good share of these people to switch once they get this to market some time in the fall of 2011.
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One very sad note, as I was completing this blog, word comes over the net that a small plane piloted by one of Tesla's chief engineers, and carrying two others, crashed just after takeoff from a Palo Alto airport. From what I hear, all the engineers were working on the Model S program. They were on their way to meet with Elon Musk here in LA. The EV community mourns this terrible loss.