My Summer Leaf!

Yeah! My all-electric Nissan Leaf finally arrived!Eleven months after I made my reservation, I finally have my 100% electric car! I've been driving it for 2 days and here's what I've learned so far:

The gadgets are insanely cool, according to my children. 90 day free trial of XM satellite. GPS. Bluetooth. Rear-view backup camera.

Guys love it. My sons' swim coach wanted to sit in it, the parking attendant at the Mariners game was excited to see his first one, and my dad wanted to check under the hood.

It is virtually silent. I freaked someone out when I backed out next to someone in a parking lot and she didn't know it was on.

It seriously encourages good driving habits. Driving over 60 seems to be bad for battery life. There is this little "build a tree" video game-like console that shows you how efficiently you are driving. Very motivating since you know you only have 100 miles maximum that you can drive until you have to charge.

It's very fun to drive! After driving an SUV all these years, I'm happy to be back in something closer in size to my first Volkswagen.

I'm excited to be one of the early adopters of this technology and thrilled to have avoided the gas station all week (although I'll still go occasionally since I need a bigger car for longer trips and anything that involves more than 3 children).

Everyone keeps asking about the car so here are the basics. I can drive up to 100 miles on a single charge, but so far it seems more like 80. It depends on conditions including the outside temperature, elevation, air-conditioning, speed, etc. I have a charging station in my garage which will do a full charge in 8 hours. The Leaf can also be charged in a regular 110 outlet for 16 hours, and one day soon there will be Level III chargers on the I-5 and Highway 2 corridors that will allow for 26 minute complete charges.

I was initially excited to hear that Stevens Pass had a charging station, but now that I have driven the car, I don't think the car can actually make it that far (~70 miles) with that much elevation (~4000 feet). We'll hold out for some interim charging stations before we venture over the mountains.

Stemming the Tide at the Gas Pump

Have you started driving less yet? They say the pain point for Americans at the pump seems to be in the $3.50 - $4.00 range. I don't know about your state, but it's been a while since I've seen prices even close to $3.50. For me, this was definitely pain:
And, given that I'm only getting 18mpg (on a really good day), that $66 tab will only carry me 300 miles. You can't help but think about using less gas with prices like these. Here are some of what I am doing or contemplating to conserve gas:

• Carpool (I think I've mastered this one. There was actually a point last year when I was in 3 carpools in one day - one for my kids' school, one for my kids' sports, and one for my own school. Crazy!)


• Take a bus or train (For some reason, I only seem to do this in foreign cities. Definitely something to work on...)


• Ride my bike or walk (another area ripe for improvement opportunities!)


• Change cars! (My electric Nissan Leaf is scheduled for delivery in 2 weeks!! Here's a picture of my newly installed charging station.)

What about you? What are you doing? Do you think you'll revert back to old habits when the cost of gas goes down again? Feel free to share in the Comments section!

What is Your Auto Weight per Person?

I heard something on the radio last week that made me think about my next vehicle purchase. The person was talking about how much car it takes to haul a relatively small human being around. Specifically, they were commenting on the fact that our cars weigh thousands of pounds each, even though they are frequently used for single passenger use.

Image via Wikipedia

I wish there was some fancy name for this statistic, but I couldn't find one so I'm calling it Auto Weight per Person. If I figure my Honda Pilot weighs 4400 pounds and usually carries 3 people, that means that it's almost 1500 pounds of car to drive each of us around. When you look at it that way, it is shockingly high.

My SUV does frequently have two kids, a dog, swim gear, baseball gear, snacks, etc. but I can't escape the fact that it is BIG. Since it has now passed into six-figure mileage numbers, I know I need to start thinking about future options.

So... what to do? I really don't want to give up the 4WD capabilities of my SUV, but truthfully don't need them on 95% of my driving, so I'm looking more and more closely at the Nissan Leaf for my next (i.e. additional) car. Yes, I'm writing a green blog and contemplating a 3rd car (well, only two for me, but my husband has his own too). I guess I'm trying to convince myself that it's not a bad thing to keep the SUV for when I have either lots of kids or lots of stuff, or drive to the mountains, if I use the Leaf for all the other trips.

My new Auto Weight per Person would be closer to 1000 pounds - still very high, but apparently the Leaf has a 600+ pound battery to carry around. More details to come on the blog on why I'm looking at the Leaf vs. the Volt - the other car frequently mentioned these days.

What's your Auto Weight per Person? Feel free to put it in the comments (after using Bing or Google to look up "curb weight" for your car). Also, what are you contemplating for your next vehicle? Have the electrics or hybrids intrigued you yet?