Tremblant run with “active cooling”

A while back in a prior post, we discussed using a simple battery powered fan to slow the heat build up which accompanies fast charging on the 2018 Nissan Leaf. Our results at the time suggested that the simple fan did make a small difference. For that particular trip, it was 360 km North Bay run in the summer time. We now put the fan to the test on the much longer Tremblant run, measuring about 560 km. We find a slight speed advantage with the fan, saving us perhaps 30 minutes on an 11 hour drive, although other factors such as route and winds have a similar, if not bigger effect.

Lets start by looking at how the trip with the fan compares to my previous trips. Over the years, we have mostly stuck with the Toronto->Belleville->Carleton Place -> Tremblant route, although we have tried Toronto->Kingston->Carleton Place->Tremblant, which is slightly longer but avoids the charging desert between Belleville and Carleton Place. See image below for the route options.

As we can see from the table below, head or tail wind seems to be more important than weather we use the fan or not. I suppose we could have been a little more efficient, we charged up to 95% in Bellville on the way home, which might have gotten us to Toronto, but the kids got hungry and we had to do a burger stop in Bowmanville. Had we skipped that, we might have saved 10 minutes of our trip time, coming close to the 10:33 record we got with more favourable tail-wind on the Kingston route.

So, I do feel the fan helps a bit, we stayed out of the “hot-zone”, thus confirming our earlier result shown below that with the fan we do keep the pack a little bit cooler.

That slight “head-advantage”, might help with the trip time, but other factors such as your charging/driving strategy, route and headwinds seem to make a bigger difference. Perhaps next time, Ill try the Kingston route with the fan.