Drive the Leaf across the country?

most likely Nissan dealers will have at least 1 Level 2 (240V) charger.

However, you could take your home charger, mount it to a piece of plywood, amd rig up a bunch of adapters for it, so you could plug it into a standard 30A dryer outlet, or even a 50A EV Park outlet, then you can plan your trip from EV park to EV park, or the occasional friend and use their dryer outlet, or even stop by a Nissan dealer if one is located on the way.. you will have to be creative to do it, but it is possible to do, just not super fast

 

I find it unlikely that one could find sufficiently closely spaced Nissan dealerships to cross Nevada north of Vegas, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, or Colorado.

I am much less familiar with the southern tier of states, but New Mexico doesn't look promising either.

 

+1

There is even a stretch of Utah I believe on I-15 or I-70 where there are no services at all for 110miles. There are two gas stations on either end, and absolutely nothing inbetween. I've almost run out of gas driving through Wyoming as well, 350mi on a tank in a minivan and every station was closed along the interstate.

 

Also keep in mind that if you are doing all highway driving, you are not getting 100 miles of range, it may be more like 60 or 65 miles @ a constant 60mph....

You will have to use RV parks, dryer outlets, Nissan dealers (when availble), motel/hotels @ 120V (slow). You will have to be very creative, and it will take somewhere around 30-60 days to do...

 

Charging at a motel may be quicker than charging at home from 110v

From the Tesla Site

240v/90A 4 hours
240v/80A 4.2 hours
240v/70A 4.7 hours
240v/60A 5 hours
240v/50A 6 hours (new Dryer outlet)
240v/40A 7.5 hours
240v/30A 10 hours (older Dryer outlet)
240v/20A 14.5 hours
240v/15A 19 hours (Motel A/C outlet)
120v/15A 30+ hours (typical household outlet)

Tesla Motors - Charging Solutions

(The Tesla has 244 mile range, the Leaf 100 miles range so in theory (and all we have is theory at this point) the Leaf numbers should be 2.44 times quicker.)

I walked from Mexico to Canada in 155 days, so driving a Leaf should take 14 days

 

Keep in mind, the Leaf is heavier so it isn't a 1:1 relation on charge between the vehicles. Maybe closer to 1.5 times.

Also, I have never seen a motel where the A/C outlet is exposed. Maybe I dont stay in the right places, but the AC is generally built into the wall under the window where I stay. And I need my AC!

I think the perfect solution is just as EV owners do now, tow a generator. Nissan could have a rental program or something. So for those once a year trips cross country, you can rent a generator for $50/day and tow it behind you so you dont have to stop at all. If all Nissan dealerships did this, then I think it would be extremely easy to fill the void between commuter car and vacation car with a 20minute trip to the dealer at the beginning and end of your trip.

 

The time is not far off when there will be sufficient chargers, and sufficient range in the cars, and fast enough charging. But for now, it would be nothing but a stunt, and would take so long that it would generate more negative publicity than positive.

And if you towed a genset, you'd be polluting more than if you drove an SUV, and you'd probably use more gasoline also.

 

Yeah but 2 days of driving on generator power to drive 4000 miles coupled with 360+ days of driving with 0 gas burned is much better than driving even the Prius every day. It is good to have the option there.

Most people can use an EV evey day, but that once in a blue moon drive they do makes the limited range of the EV a big problem. And then they do not buy it. But if you could get a car that did everything you needed locally immediately when you needed, and anything further with a little trip to rent a generator, I think more people would be inclined to buy.

Either way, I would still rather have a plug in hybrid like the Prius or Volt (but not the Volt) so I can have the option whenever I want. But I pay in energy use that way.

 

It is unlikely that Nissan dealers would let you charge for free unless it was a PR stunt that they approved.

By the way, i do think that is a great idea to get some charging stations out there. Have every Nissan dealer install one or two Leaf charging spots! Do it free or charge $1 or $2. Maybe Nissan will think as out of the box on charging as they did on the car.

 

I shot for 70 to 80 mile legs, many towns would have 220v, so a 4 hour layover may be all you need. With the exception of the * towns you might get 3 recharges a day.

Mexican border (day 1)
San Cemente
Burbank
Lebec
Delano (day 2)
Fresno
Turlock
Elk Grove (day 3)
Williams* (day 4)
Red Bluff
Dunsmuir
Hornbrook* (day 5)
Grants Pass
Roseburg
Coburg* (day 6)
Woodburn
Longview
Lacey (day 7)
Shoreline
Alger* (day 8)
Canadian Border

*These towns may only exist on maps. I have no faith I could get 220v there, I assumed I have to charge overnight

 

That would add greatly to the value of the car if that was an option. The advantages of the Volt without carting around the generator the 90% of the time it is not needed.

I don't think they would do it for a # of reasons. First is that it could be considered a safety, liability issue of towing a Nissan made trailer. Secondly the car is probably not be designed for charging while moving. It would also need a rear charge connector as the front placement one would not be ok to run a cable around the car to the back.

 

While I don't think a genset will be an option for reasons I post above, a properly designed genset would not use that much gas especially on the highway. Using a 1 or so liter engine running at a single optimized speed in a very aerodynamic trailer 40mpg plus should be possible.

 

Apparently no-one takes pictures of their rooms air conditioner when they are happy. You can see the cord at the bottom of these wretched units.
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/06/8c/cf/room-102-10-7-07-a-c.jpg
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/28/3f/11/very-loud-air-conditioner.jpg
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/18/fd/b0/air-conditioner-too-small.jpg
http://cache2.asset-cache.net/xc/20...BE91544B1208DF9E84EA0811EFA1B00123AA3B5A18ED0
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3181/2575207161_6e50e0f05b.jpg

If to do without A/C is unthinkable, rent two rooms. (at least in these pictures, they look cheap)

Owners will regret Nissan putting the charging point dead center in the front. a rear charging point would have made towing a genset easier.

http://www.evnut.com/rav_longranger.htm

 

I won't recommend Alger, though there is a good gunshop a couple miles south of there.

But there are plenty of other choices along this I-5 corridor. In fact one could easily keep strictly to Nissan dealers through here -- Longview, Olympia, Tacoma, Seattle, Burlington, Bellingham.

 

Most families have two cars, and can use the gas car for cross-country trips. A trailer is a pain in the butt for so many reasons!

 

also I think the OP was talking about an East-West trip (California to NYC for example), not a North-South trip, East-West is much longer, with many more challenges (Rocky Mountains anyone?)

 

The Tesla took a month with 200 mile range, the Leaf with 100 mile range will like take up to two month to do this.

 

Short answer: No I don't think it could be done just from Dealerships. Yes, it absolutely can be done in an EV. And has been done. Several times. An EV1 has done it with lead-acid batteries. The Tesla did it.

As far as towing a trailer - that can make some sense. And Toyota was working on just such a thing when they stopped their EV program. More info here: Rav Long Ranger

I agree that it would be nothing more than a stunt, but I don't agree about negative publicity. Every time it has been done in the past, the general response was very positive. There will always be the grumps.

Not true. At least not if done correctly. The Rav pulling the trailer was getting about 30 mpg at freeway speeds. That is BETTER than the gas mileage of the gasoline version of the same vehicle without pulling the trailer. Go figure. The reason of course is that the ICE of the genset is only big enough to sustain charge - not big enough to do all the things that a normal ICE has to do. The Rav becomes a plug-in hybrid.

Thought this flies in the face of how EV dealers handled it over the past 15 years. Honda, Toyota, GM, Ford - they all made EVs, and they all had chargers available for use. For free. The cost to charge a car is so small, that it costs more to figure out how to charge for the power used, than the power would cost. The dealers have to have a charger on site anyway for car maintenance, so the only additional cost to charge customer's cars is for the power... which again is so small as to be easily ignored, or traken from the same fund as the cost of coffee and donuts in the waiting room.

Well... this is exactly what Nissan is doing in the target areas. They are rolling out chargers in advance of the vehicles. In fact, the target sales areas were chosen mostly by how willing the local governments were to help with the installs.