Charge Anxiety is back

I'm sure you have all heard of 'Range Anxiety' - that's when you think you will run out of range before you get to your destination. Then what is 'Charge Anxiety'?? That is when you you are not getting enough charge back into the battery so you can take another trip in your EV.

When I had the MiniE it was a constant issue...I was on the 110 (120v) for 4 months and the MiniE had issues with the current in my town so the breaker would often pop, effectively stopping the recharging process...my town is notorious for surges or fluctuation in the current. This often happened in the middle of the night and I found myself waking up during the night just to be sure the MiniE was still charging so I had enough to get to work and back.

I've been on the 110 with the ActiveE for almost 3 weeks and never had an issue...until last night. Sometime around 4am, best guess, the breaker tripped and shut down the ActiveE charging as well as part of my house. It was a simple resetting of the breaker but I lost a nights charge. With the amount of driving I need to do today and tomorrow I do not have enough time in the day to charge enough now...so I need to use my diesel SUV for the trip. There are no public charging stations near enough to me.

Well bummer! I'll be off the 110 soon but this bites. Oh well, having an EV is indeed a lifestyle and takes some adjusting, an adjustment I find worth it.

110ing it...meh!

I've been on the 110 (120v) for 2 weeks now. I've covered over 700 miles in great EV comfort but I know if I had the 240 I'd be covering a lot more and driving a lot harder.

Why am I still on the 110? Where is the free wall EVSE (240 Charger) I am to get from Coulomb? Well my friends I'm still waiting but I'll touch on that in a later post as this one is about sipping from the 110.

Probably one of your first thoughts is can one survive on a 110? I'd say not if you want to be part of society....the 110 just does NOT charge the ActiveE fast enough, any EV for that matter. Sure you could swing it with the VOLT because it has a gas backup and smaller battery or 'like' plugin but if you are all electric you are playing Russian roulette. You see on the ActiveE it takes about 12hrs to get a 50% charge...think about that...12 hrs...half of your day and only 50% or 50 miles if weather is nice. If you plan on doing any kind of distance often there will be a point where you won't catch up and you may need to cut one or two trips short.

The other challenge is there is no such thing as a quick charge on the 110. In my MiniE days I would stop at my house for 30 min or less for an EV pick me up....it got me some welcomed miles added, I would be doing the same with the ActiveE. I'd go check the mail, grab a coffee and voila...I just got another 10 to 15 miles. On the 110 I'm lucky if I get 4 miles added in 1 hr...not convenient.

What else? Well ActiveE pre-conditioning does not work on the 110...nope...nada. Oh sure you can tell the ActiveE to pre-condition and it accepts it but nothing happens. You need a decent amount of juice coming from the 110...it just is not there. Added, sipping from the 110 can add some 'charge anxiety' to your life, this is wondering of you will get enough charge in a time. A lot can affect the rate of charge too such as temp of outside, temp of batteries and how much the outlet you are plugged into shares with other devices...the ActiveE has a nice feature that tells you how how long to a full charge...mostly it is conservative but sometimes when it says 16 hrs it is being optimistic....ouch

One other item for those in cold states like me...the 110 is not able to heat up the battery so it is very cold in the mornings...one day while charging the battery it never got above 35 degrees and that is a total range eater.

Oh...I've checked the public charging stations and there are none in my area which is a serious bummer. Until my EVSE saga is resolved I'll be 110ing it a bit longer.