1 year later

1 year later the i-Miev is still going strong. A recent mishap made it our only car for a couple of weeks. So all the trips to Seattle and back are done in i-Miev. My wife has more range anxiety, than I do. Much more.

Unfortunately for her, some of the Blink quick chargers just don't work in Seattle. Thus i'm not able to top off, and finished my trip with just 3 bars. Fine by me, but that requires quite different style of driving than I have in our diesel car. Smoothness is a must.

Now we have to go to Oregon for a couple of days, from Seattle area.

So the segments determined by L3 chargers will be:

Issaquah > Tacoma Fife     37 mi
Fife > Olympia             36 mi
Olympia > Castle Rock      54 mi
Castle rock > Ridgefield   36 mi
Ridge field > Portland     57 mi
Portland > Hillsboro       21 mi

Because of issues with reliability of Blink chargers, which don't work now, I had to plan around using these as much as possible. Still I have two stretches > 50 miles. I-miev can only be quick-charged to 80%, so 57 miles is quite a stretch, which would mean ~5miles per bar. 5 miles per bar means quite a gentle driving, sub 60 mi/hr.

And it requires 5 stops. If blink = 25$. And 20 minutes x5. So it elongates the ~3 hours trip to 4.5, if ... everything works in between.

Now the challenge is the temperature and comfort. 5 miles per bar in summer, with no AC is easy. Fall with crispy air and some rain would mean Heater and AC. On highway speeds it usually means a predicted range ~40 miles.

So we're renting a gasoline car for this long trip, while our diesel is being repaired...