An EV Owner's Testimonial
Well, It's now been 4 months since I started driving the electric Civic, and
4000 miles as of this morning.
The car continues to get about 190 Watt-hours/mile on my 44 mile trip to work
and about 210 44 miles from work to home (home is 400 ft. higher than work,
and I have the windows down going home).
I've got 120 cycles on the US8VGC's: 60cycles to 40% discharge, 25 to 75%,
25 to 60%, 2 to 85% and the rest very shallow (10-20%). My typical commute is
60% discharge into work, 75% going home. Hopefully the batteries can take this
abuse for another 400-600 cycles.
I plan on getting "NO SMOGGIN'" printed across my rear bumper along with the
red circle-slash across a muffler. This should help the various dirty looks
I get when I zip by in the HOV lane passing dozens of single passenger SUV's.
I continue to increase both my efficiency and commute time as I learn to drive
"EV style". My best efficiency was 182 W-h/mile on my way into work taking 1:02
hours. Not bad considering Denver traffic.
I started becoming interested in EV's purely from the technical aspects, but
as I drive and see how easy EVing is, I have begun to wonder why commercial
EV's are not available (insert any of the several OT topics from the last few
months here).
EV's make a great commuting car. If I want to go on a road trip, I'll load
the family into the big van, If I need to get to work, I'll drive the EV.
I have signed up for Windsource, Colorado's Wind Energy program, to supply
electricity for the Civic, making it as close to ZEV as possible. Although this
ups the price of electricity from $0.063 to $0.085, operation of the EV still
is less than driving the big van back and forth to work (If I can get 500 cycles
on the batteries....).
So, driving the EV has:
1) Been a lot of fun
2) Saved money
3) Made me more cynical about Auto/oil collusion
4) Increased my awareness of environmental concerns.
I was expecting 1 and maybe 2, but 3 and 4 have surprised me.
Lynn
92 Electric Civic
http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/379.html
