dw81
Member
We are coming up on the end of our two year Nissan Leaf SV lease. Overall we've been extremely happy EV drivers.
Since most of our driving is within the city limits and inner ring suburbs of Chicago the Leaf has been a great fit for about 85% of what we do limited only by a lack of a good quick charge network in the area. For the other 15% or when the EV is otherwise unavailable we do have an ICE vehicle (a VW EOS convertible) that handles that. On average the EOS is driven once every two weeks while the Leaf is used almost daily.
I have family in the far north suburbs (50 miles away) and I took the Leaf on that trip once, learned that 80mph most of the way isn't a good idea and spent a couple of hours waiting for it to charge enough via L2 at the Nissan dealership in Gurnee . . . On a cold night, after closing. Thankfully they didn't turn the WiFi off. I have been meaning to try the trip when the weather is perfect for the Leaf .... Unfortunately the desire to drive the convertible when the weather is like that outweighs my desire to test the Leaf with a more conservative driving style. I may yet get my opportunity assuming Chicago gets out of the deep freeze before our lease is up.
My spouse has family in Green Bay, WI which is about 180 miles away. That trip appears impossible at this time using an EV without spending an additional several hours during the trip at L2 chargers.
I made sure that our Leaf was equipped with the optional CHAdeMO fast charge capability when we leased it and ... I've been very disappointed. I've not had ANY occasion to use CHAdeMO at all in our two years of ownership. I've only seen them at a couple of Whole Foods stores but when I attempted to sign up for an account to take advantage the owners of the stations had appeared to be out of business. I had visions of being able to take that car up to Green Bay and back which a couple of quick charges on the way and ... That just hasn't materialized.
Worth noting we could with a Tesla vehicle. There are several Tesla superchargers between Chicago and Green Bay.
That said I just checked Plugshare for the first time in a while and found that another company now has some working CHAdeMO chargers around the Chicago area. Excellent! Yes, it needs to fan out a bit to the outer North suburbs but it's progress.
No, wait, not excellent if we decide to go with an i3 for our next EV. BMW (along with GM, VW and other manufacturers) is using a different standard, CCS. It also doesn't appear that it's a matter of an adapter for CHAdeMO to connect to CCS. Adding to this there are NO CCS quick chargers available in or around Chicago.
So, finally, here are my questions on this.
1 - Are there CHAdeMO to CCS adapters available? Is that even technically feasible?
2 - I see that a network of CCS quick chargers have been set up along the West and East coast .... Has anyone heard of any plans to set this up along the ... left middle coast? Along the bottom and right middle coast would be nice too since we do take trips to Michigan as well. If anyone has heard of this would they also have heard of a timeline of any kind?
3 - There's a third standard for quick charge, Tesla's own supercharger. With Tesla opening up their patents are we going to see CHAdeMO and CCS go away in the next few years? How likely would it be if BMW were to adopt this that a conversion kit may become available for older i3s?
I do want to add that we're only looking at 100% EVs and are not interested in the range extender gas engine option on this next purchase.
Since most of our driving is within the city limits and inner ring suburbs of Chicago the Leaf has been a great fit for about 85% of what we do limited only by a lack of a good quick charge network in the area. For the other 15% or when the EV is otherwise unavailable we do have an ICE vehicle (a VW EOS convertible) that handles that. On average the EOS is driven once every two weeks while the Leaf is used almost daily.
I have family in the far north suburbs (50 miles away) and I took the Leaf on that trip once, learned that 80mph most of the way isn't a good idea and spent a couple of hours waiting for it to charge enough via L2 at the Nissan dealership in Gurnee . . . On a cold night, after closing. Thankfully they didn't turn the WiFi off. I have been meaning to try the trip when the weather is perfect for the Leaf .... Unfortunately the desire to drive the convertible when the weather is like that outweighs my desire to test the Leaf with a more conservative driving style. I may yet get my opportunity assuming Chicago gets out of the deep freeze before our lease is up.
My spouse has family in Green Bay, WI which is about 180 miles away. That trip appears impossible at this time using an EV without spending an additional several hours during the trip at L2 chargers.
I made sure that our Leaf was equipped with the optional CHAdeMO fast charge capability when we leased it and ... I've been very disappointed. I've not had ANY occasion to use CHAdeMO at all in our two years of ownership. I've only seen them at a couple of Whole Foods stores but when I attempted to sign up for an account to take advantage the owners of the stations had appeared to be out of business. I had visions of being able to take that car up to Green Bay and back which a couple of quick charges on the way and ... That just hasn't materialized.
Worth noting we could with a Tesla vehicle. There are several Tesla superchargers between Chicago and Green Bay.
That said I just checked Plugshare for the first time in a while and found that another company now has some working CHAdeMO chargers around the Chicago area. Excellent! Yes, it needs to fan out a bit to the outer North suburbs but it's progress.
No, wait, not excellent if we decide to go with an i3 for our next EV. BMW (along with GM, VW and other manufacturers) is using a different standard, CCS. It also doesn't appear that it's a matter of an adapter for CHAdeMO to connect to CCS. Adding to this there are NO CCS quick chargers available in or around Chicago.
So, finally, here are my questions on this.
1 - Are there CHAdeMO to CCS adapters available? Is that even technically feasible?
2 - I see that a network of CCS quick chargers have been set up along the West and East coast .... Has anyone heard of any plans to set this up along the ... left middle coast? Along the bottom and right middle coast would be nice too since we do take trips to Michigan as well. If anyone has heard of this would they also have heard of a timeline of any kind?
3 - There's a third standard for quick charge, Tesla's own supercharger. With Tesla opening up their patents are we going to see CHAdeMO and CCS go away in the next few years? How likely would it be if BMW were to adopt this that a conversion kit may become available for older i3s?
I do want to add that we're only looking at 100% EVs and are not interested in the range extender gas engine option on this next purchase.