Toronto-Hamilton

Another in our series of regional hops. I recently had to make a last minute trip to Hamilton for work. Round-trip, its about 160 km from Toronto, the 2018 Nissan Leaf made it there and back with about 10% to spare. The Leaf only consumed $3.50 worth of electricity on this trip, hence I decided to bum a late out of my boss as the expense reporting process at my work is really convoluted.

Most of us dream of faraway adventures, thus we tend to think heavily of long distance road-trips when purchasing a car be it an EV or otherwise. Avid readers of this blog will note that a used 2018 Nissan Leaf is perfectly capable of long distance road-trips, albeit with some planning. However, these wonderful long distance adventures make up a fairly small portion of our driving. Statistically speaking anyways, the short hops are far more prevalent, so I figured Id share some of my experiences with short and intermediate hops around the city, as this is where the EV really offers unbeatable economics, oh and we help save the planet too.

I did this trip during Ski-season, I was too lazy to take the roof racks of the car, had I done so, I could have driven a little faster (see this post on how your speed impacts range in a big way). I kept to the speed-limit most of the way to Hamilton which is 100 km/hr, but I did slow down to 90 km/hr on the way back just to ensure I got home with ample range to spare.

Once I got to Canada Computers in Hamilton I was greeted at the door with a sign advertising the global graphics card shortage. I felt lucky I was able to get a reasonably powerful NVidia card. Canada Computers has a limit on how many can be purchased by a single customer, and I had to phone a few stores to find one in Hamilton that had them in Stock. I only hope that the wheels of industrialization will spin up again as a good graphics card is essential to my advanced AI project at work, and I may need a second in the near future.

In total I consumed about 29 kWh of electricity, which I charged back into the car the next night at a rate of 12 c/kWh (the rate from Toronto Hydro is 8 c/kWh but you need to add a transmission charge of 2 c/kWh and HST, lets round it up to 12 c/kWh) . So, total expenditures were $3.50, which is hard to beat, especially with gas prices at record highs in March of 2022. Assuming 160 km distance driven, gas mileage of 8l/100 km, and apparently $1.6 per l of gas (source), that would be a $20.50. While my employer was more than happy to cover my expenses, the expense reporting process is convoluted to say the least, hence I think Ill go bum a late out of my boss as compensation, a lot easier to do and tastier too.