Growing the leaf?

With teenagers in the house, Ive started to wonder if its time to get something a little roomier than my 2018 Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf is surprisingly spacious for what is billed as a small city hatchback. I have sat in the back seat on numerous occasions and at 6 ft 3 inches, I do fit, again somewhat surprising. A recent airport run to pick up family traveling from overseas had us empty a fully loaded luggage cart into the Leaf’s spacious boot with room to spare. Could a newer EV do any better? Reviewing the offerings, from my used EV survey, even at an inflated 50k budget, reveals only similarly sized EVs, albeit ones that have bigger batteries, and charge faster, both which would shave a few hours of my bi-annual Tremblant run.

Lets begin with some of the issues we have with my 2018 Nissan Leaf. To be honest, they are minor, but two stand out: Space in the back for my growing crew, and road trips of more than 500 km. Space here, refers to both leg-room for the kids and also in the trunk as we need four sets of adult sized gear when say skiing or golfing. Speed is an issue, really, only on my bi-annual Tremblant run. It would be nice to get closer to the admittedly lead footed google maps estimate of 7 hrs.

From our survey post, it seems I am already sitting in one of the more roomier options out there in the affordable used market. We add “rear-leg-room” and “trunk space”, statistics from edmonds.com to our used EV survey, which yields the table below:

The Soul EV might have a few more inches for the rear passengers, but as we shall see later, the Soul EV takes longer to reach Trembalnt owning to its smaller battery. So, we lift the price cap from 35 k to 50k. Our list now includes the Huyndai Kona EV, Tesla Model 3, and the Chevy Bolt. None of the EV’s on my adjusted list offer more space by my two edmonds.com metrics (rear leg-room and trunk space).

Well how about speed? The 575 km Tremblant ski-run shall serve as our base. We can use our performance model to see how long the journey would take using various models. Further this post outlines what happens in our 2018 Nissan Leaf, where we get door-to-door travel times of 10 hrs and 30 minutes. This allows us to adjust for roofbox installation, lest the back seat crew get too “squished”.

Lets see what the Chevy Bolt EV, Kia Soul EV (2018 model year), the Huyndai Kona EV, my Nissan Leaf, Nissan Leaf Plus and Tesla Model 3 compare, mathematically anyways. Based on prior experience, we add 10 % to the EPA rated efficiency to account for the roof-box. Also we make the assumption that the driving route and time are the same. We assume that we can run the battery down to 25% of the rated capacity, this accounts for differences in usable and rated capacities, and also, lest the drive become too white knuckled.

Indeed, seems relief is possible here, I could shave perhaps two hours of my Tremblant run. Albeit at a price. Lets look at the travel time and price of the various EVs in more detail.

I got my prices from autotrader.com, generally picking a price that gave me at least three options for a given EV. Wikipedia furnished both battery capacities, and EPA rated range numbers, which together provided efficiency. Charging speed is mostly limited by the 50 kW Ivy station in Carleton Place, a key station used by just about all non-Tesla EVs. I discounted the rate for the Chevy Bolt EV, mostly based on analysis from State of Charge youtube channel (source).

It is interesting, that the much higher charge rate of the Tesla Model 3 makes such a marked difference in trip times. In fact, if I give my Nissan Leaf a 200 kW charging rate, I too could make the Tremblant run in 9 hours. Sadly, public fast charging stations along the way are mostly 50 kW L3 stations, save for superchargers which are a Tesla only thing. While this is changing, that key Ivy station in Carleton place, remains at 50 kW.

Im not sure if I will fork over the 10-20k needed to improve my Tremblant run trip times, in particular as both the Tesla Model 3 and in particular the Chevy Bolt, have a smaller cargo area than my current Leaf. 10-20k does buy a fair amount of Porter Airlines plane tickets, which offers perhaps the fastest way from Toronto to Tremblant.

There are cheaper ways to speed up my Tremblant run. Improving efficiency would also help my Tremblant trip times. Dumping the roof-box (or perhaps getting a more aerodynamic one) would help. Changing the transmission fluid might improve efficiency by perhaps 10 % (source). If both of these net a 20% improvement in efficiency, Im breezing into Tremblant in less than 10 hours. Both of these are far cheaper than the 10-20k for an EV upgrade.