I set up the charge schedule last night. It lets you tell it when you are leaving and will determine how to charge based on that. I like that it has a 7 day week schedule too so on weekends I have it ready by 10am while M-F it has to be by 6:30.
You'll want to check into pre-conditioning in the winter; a wonderful feature. Electrical heater use can use a lot of energy especially if the driver habitually "cranks the temp up" in the morning like my wife does. Pre-heating the cabin with wall power and using electric seats during the drive are much more efficient and more comfortable too but you'll need 240v to supply enough power to keep the battery full otherwise the car will draw on the battery to make up for using slower 120v.
That sounds cool. We will put a 240v in soon, probably when my wife gets her bonus in September. Should be plenty of time in GA before it gets cold enough to pre-heat. We have the comfort package heated seats which supposedly work with the climate control to back off as things warm up, so that should help too.
The heated seats do work pretty nice in the Gen 1 Volt if you had that option in it. A heated steering wheel would've helped immensely too, so that'll come in very handy when it gets colder. On some days where it wasn't bitterly cold, I'd just crack the driver window and rear passenger window to create a little airflow to prevent the windshield from fogging up if I was going to attempt to drive without heat. Then I concluded that burning some gas in winter and using the heat is a much better option than freezing.
Thumbs up on a 50 amp service line into an external, NEMA 14-50 plug. Just I went with a JuiceBox Pro 40, box on the right, which comes with a WiFi link, the small antenna, that reaches back to their service through my home WiFi: The picture reminds me I need to dress the cable. I needed a new utility service line so we upgraded from 100A to 200A service and added a transfer switch for a natural gas fired generator. Their server allows web and smart phone access to historical records. On July 21-22, 4.76 kWh was used which in Huntsville costing $0.476. After the initial charge, around 5 AM, pre-conditioning cooled down the cabin. The BMW i3-REx has a liquid cooled battery and actively maintains the battery temperature for optimum performance. This "overhead" is part of the price of an EV and separate from the miles per kilowatt hour or MPGe: Here is another web interface report: Again showing the normal recharging at the end of the day and on the right, pre-conditioning. One other aspect is called the I**R losses: Again from the web interface: 30.1 amps 7.224 kW rate of charge 41 C (104 F) - North Alabama 240 VAC - 50 A wiring minimizes the voltage drop There will always be electrical losses that an undersized wiring will increase. Traditional circuit breakers use a heating element to trip. The thickness of the wire also defines the running resistance. We pay for these losses, small as they may be, but a cost never the less. Bob Wilson
Our first fill up today because we drove to Greenville for a concert and their gas is about 20c per gallon cheaper. We didn't need it but even with only 3.5 gallons needed, that's a candy bar in savings!
Got our first report from the car/onstar today. 588 electric miles using 233kw/hr. In Georgia that is about $21 bucks to run for a month. We used about 6 gallons of gas going up to Greenville SC, but haven't used a drop since and my wife will not use any for her daily commutes and various evening activities. Our Prius used to average about 44mpg with the traffic and stop and go here so by that account at $2.09 a gallon it would be $25. Switching to the electric car plan for our power company would drop that price to just over $3 a month. I have to investigate whether it is worth the increase in cost of peak time.
This month we went 658 miles on 223 kwh. About $21 in electricity would be around $31 in gas for our previous Prius or $68 in my BMW. 0 gas usage this entire month and the only weekend we took my X1 was to the shooting range because the volt cannot carry my arsenal.
