0$ spent on gas last month

Just did a budget to actuals comparison for last month and it turned out that we've spent nothing on fuel last time. Her TDI was still good with the last month's fill-up. And i-miev was so comfortable, that we used for all the grocery getting, visits to outings, cinemas etc.
It's been a month, i have yet to see the turtle.
I always have the Waze on the iPhone (it's a good GPS navigation). So i know the distances. A little bit of math, and i'm confident that i'll make it home.
Also a change in habits is looking up a charging station near destination. If it's within 10 minutes walking, i'm parking at the station. It works as a reserved parking spot + i get my walking, which is great for my heart : ).

Charging in the rain & securing the L1 charger

A couple of points. So near the factory where i work some kind individual broke into a civic to steal an antique GPS.
That individual would have been better off with my L1 charger. Judging from ebay and dealer prices, that's quite an expensive apparatus.

The rainy season has started in Seattle. For the reasons above i decided to try keeping the charger inside the trunk. I really wish there was an inside-the-trunk charging plug, but there is none. So i tried the 15A extender cord and the L1 charger. I did not lock the rear door initially. But one day it did lock itself in. Not completely, of course, but just enough to be locked and not be opened without the remote.

Disclaimer: don't do it. I do understand that i'm violating Mitsubishi's rule of not using cord extenders and also risking damaging both cables, or risking overheating. Familiarize yourself with physics and rules of conductor resistance & how it affects heating. Also inspect the cables if you chose to use this method of securing the charger. Be gentle with the door.

Why eco mode is limiting the peaks

Yesterday i was doing a bit of research regarding ways to prolong battery life.
There is a great NASA whitepaper about li-ion batteries that lists all the factors.

Also, after reading this, it became clear why "eco" mode limits the current draw and makes the car feel a bit unresponsive. The less current draw pikes you have - the longer the battery will serve you.

It's an older battery technology, but you get the idea.
Assuming the first bar (Green eco) is up to 50A, second - 100A and third - 150A we're getting discharge rates of 1C, 2C and 3C for each bar respectively.
Sudden acceleration introduce current pikes and result in capacity loss with the same principle as illustrated on this graph:

Driving the car in D sure is very responsive, but it goes into pikes very easily. ECO takes some getting used to and some planning, but is extremely smooth.
My wife (a very demanding passenger) appreciates the smoothness of acceleration and breaking in this mode.

I'm glad i can plug in at work. It was 47F this morning and i had to resort to heating the car. Did not have time to pre-heat. Normal 5 bars to get to work turned into 7. an 8 hour work day will give me 6.4 bars. Rather close to full : )

Also, today the car has passed a 1200 miles odometer mark. Comparing to the Smart car i had, it is ~30 gallons of fuel that i did not burn and pay for: ).

Chademo Seattle Fred Myers

Tried it today. Really cool experience. I observed the charge indicator go up, sometimes as fast as 1 bar per minute. Subsequent bars were slower.
47 to 80 % took 14 minutes. The only drawback was that the blink charger would not charge two cars at the same time. Had to wait untill a Leaf leaves, then I had to re-initiate the charging. Apparently blink charger has a bug in it, since it did not let me select the desired charge level untill Nissan left.

The power came in handy since it looks like rain and hvac on the highway reduce range quite a bit.

Missing chargers near cinemas!

SCIB in US 2012 i-miev?

Not really. Not yet.

We still have older-style Yuasa batteries. Here is what i found on a Japanese web-site:

Most noteable characteristic of SCiB is lifespan. The number of cycles for a SCiB, according to Toshiba is 4000 as opposed to a thousand for Yuasa LEV50.
Here is a comparison of GS Yuasa vs Toshiba:

85% capacity is retained at charge cycles at 25 degrees centigrade (~70F). SCIB data was taken from a 4.2AH cell from EV-neo Honda bike. Capacity retention is 90% after 6000 cycles with the same temperature.
For a 1000 cycles, Lev capacity is 85%, whereas SCIB is 98%.

I'll do some math to project the retained capacity over time...
Source

Today i tried the delayed charge start from the remote control.
I had a 50% discharged battery and a L2 charger, that typically does 3 bars per hour.
I needed 7, just to leave it a bit undercharged. So i did set the on to 10 hours from start and off to 12.5. In the morning i had full "tank" and the last bar disappeared in less than a mile. The downhill regen was better, but still not full. Justified.
The observation is that at the full "tank" the regen is still a bit impaired.

so L2 charger = 3 bars per hour
    L1 charger = 0.67 bars per hour or 1 bar in 1.5 hours

With my driving a bar is 5 miles. That is trying to follow the speed limit +- 3 mph

So far so good

So far the operation has been smooth and reliable. I got the battery to zero bars once, and started charging immediately. 

Tried to use the remote timer function and it worked great, charging the car early in the morning, just before going to work.

The morning routine of walking the dog and switching the heating on works great.

Noticing an increasing number of EVs near the free charging stations near my home.

Wondering how long the free cheese will last : ). It's great to know that that electricity is from extra solar panels our housing complex has for these purposes.

As for driving experience - still getting used to the quietness. Music is so much better. I like the twitters in the front. The speed - following the speed limit in general. Driving on Eco. Got accustomed to situations where you need to merge into fast traffic - just press harder.

Noticing the reduced regen on the fully charged car. The car protects the battery : ). Maybe i should leave the last bar uncharged, since the first few miles are downhill anyway...

i-miev LATCH system

This weekend we tried some newborn car seats in i-Miev. "Merry go round" store in Bellevue kindly allowed to try on the Greco seat. The news are not encouraging: in rear facing position there is no space for the front passenger to ride in comfort. The passenger was 5'4". So if you want to use the seat in i-miev, wait until the kid is old enough to be forward-facing in the car. Usually it is 2+ years.
We also tried Chicco keysystem 30 newborn seat. That, being about an inch shorter, still did not provide the front passenger the level of comfort and recline. Chicco was very easy to install and attach to LATCH.

So the only workaround that works for 1 baby is for the passenger to use the back seat and ride with the baby.