"If only the real world were as simple as a game of hopscotch. Quite some time ago, hopscotch would have been on my daily schoolyard agenda, along with climbing jungle gyms and picking tanbark splinters out of my young hands. Today, I’m still playing hopscotch, but of an entirely different sort. My current game involves our long-term Nissan Leaf.
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I recently had to pay a weekend visit to Los Angeles International Airport, which is close to a 100-mile roundtrip (not as the crow flies) from my domicile in Orange County. In my garage sat the Leaf, charging away. Separating my physical self from LAX was mile upon mile of Southern California freeway, filled with fast-moving traffic that contrasts greatly with the typical L.A. workweek gridlock.
I was facing one of those classic “range anxiety” conundrums EV detractors keep harping about. In an ideal situation, I’d be driving those 100 miles to LAX at an undisturbed 35 mph, helped by lots of coasting and regenerative braking. I would request some downhill slopes and a tailwind, too. But I live in the real world. Unless I wanted to plot the most convoluted route from the OC to LAX and back ever devised, and earmark three hours for my trip, I wouldn’t be going 35 mph. I’d be keeping to the freeways.
But I had to get there and back in the Leaf somehow, so I got to planning. I thought of the days when I’d take some chalk and draw out a hopscotch course. I didn’t want to completely drain the Leaf’s battery at the end of the drive, so I’d need to jump from EV charging station to station to foot the travel bill. This was going to be an adult game of hopscotch, only with more severe potential consequences.
Here’s where Coulomb Technologies’ ChargePoint Network found itself a new friend/stalker. The ChargePoint stations would be my hopscotch squares, although there aren’t as many easily accessible public charging stations in the Los Angeles/Orange County area as there should be.
My first stop was South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Exactly 8.9 miles from my home, it took 19 minutes to drive there. Parked in the EV-dedicated parking spot, my expected recharge time to full on Level 2 240V was exactly one hour. Recharging would have been even more daunting on the home trickle charger — 3 hours of my time would have been dedicated to topping off the battery. For less than 9 miles of driving.
But at least I was at South Coast. After wandering Borders for an hour I went back to the parking garage. ChargePoint told me it added 2.975 kilowatt-hours in 1 hour, 1 minute, and 44 seconds. Sounds about right.
From Costa Mesa, I’d be driving straight up the 405 towards LAX. There were two more recharge points (one at Toyota’s corporate campus and one at MT HQ) along the route, but after exhausting the motoring periodical options and reading the latest copies of Conde Nast Traveler, Reader’s Digest, and Skeptic, I really didn’t want to stop again. After 39.3 miles of being overtaken by big rigs but still moving at a somewhat reasonable speed, I arrived at the airport.
It was a good thing I had recharged at South Coast. The Leaf was showing 61 miles remaining, but I’ve long since learned to not trust the predicted range figures, especially when there’s freeway driving involved. I hooked the little blue Nissan up to the dedicated EV recharging row in Parking Structure 1 and walked over to the terminals. Parked nearby were two Chevy Volts and an elderly Toyota RAV4 EV. An amusing vehicular bunch this is, I thought…
I don’t know anyone who enjoys waiting at airports longer than needed, and I hightailed it out of there in exactly 48 minutes and 45 seconds, after retrieving my familial relation. In that time, the Leaf was designated 3.005 kW-hours of electrical energy, bringing the anticipated range to 74 miles. Again, I definitely did not want to stop on the return leg. I took a slightly modified route back to Orange County, putting another 44.5 miles on the clock. The remaining indicated range was 19 miles when I pulled back into my cozy garage.
And that’s how you play hopscotch with the Leaf. I originally planned an additional stop in there but decided against it at the last moment. But you know that feeling you get when you just want to get home after a not-so-short drive? It doesn’t go away in an EV. Especially in one that otherwise drives as normally as the Leaf does.
These types of trips are obviously not the Leaf’s strong suit. Although I have to say ChargePoint really makes the EV lifestyle easier with their substantially shorter recharge times, and force you to get out of the house. Back in my garage, the Leaf told me it’d take 6 hours to recharge on 220V/240V. But on the trickle charger, the mark jumps to 20 hours till full capacity. That’s either a whole lot of reading, or a whole lot of hopscotch. And I’m sort of getting over hopscotch."
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