Author Archives: lukefrugalev

Reducing my carbon footprint played a strong role in my decision to go electric, perhaps it is motivating you as well? Indeed, by removing the tail-pipe, EVs have far lower life-time emissions than equivalent gas cars even when accounting for the emissions related to their manufacture. So, lets find out if I spent my moneyContinue reading “Emissions Audit”

A Frequent concern of EV shoppers, particularly in the used segment, is battery capacity. All rechargeable batteries loose capacity over time. This impacts range in EVs. We will discuss how to evaluate the battery capacity using four different techniques one of which can be done in the dealer’s lot on any EV. If you happenContinue reading “Evaluating battery capacity”

Want to see amazing 260 Indigenous pictographs? Paddle along a beautiful lake with a towering cliff? Ever wanted to see the site of the Bon Echo Inn, a former hotel from the Gilded age? Then lets go to Bon Echo provincial park, and try out my new Roof rack. We did find that the roofContinue reading “Bon Echo – Roof box on an EV?”

How much money is it exactly to go green these days? And what do I get for my money? Lets hit autotrader and see whats out there in the used EV market. We find ample selection in the “family-car” category. A gently used Nissan Leaf, Hyundai Ioniq, or the Kia Soul, can certainly become yoursContinue reading “Used car survey”

Is there enough infrastructure to support the EV revolution? Should I really buy an electric car when there fewer charging stations than gas stations? Lets do a fact check on these two questions and see what the infrastructure situation is really like. As always, the state of infrastructure depends on where you live. For meContinue reading “Do we have an EV infrastructure problem?”

Soon after the second generation Nissan Leaf came out back in 2018, there was the expectation that the new Leaf could take long road-trips “just-like-any-other-car”. Not so fast it turns out. users started to report slower than expected fast charging speeds on long road trips, and #rapidgate was born. Lets dive in and take aContinue reading “Living with #rapidgate”

Modern EV’s require all sorts of metals that must be dug out of the ground. What better way to explore this than a roadtrip into Northern Ontario. So lets hit the road on a 2000 km adventure and see where the minerals within my Nissan Leaf might have came from. We took this trip inContinue reading “EV trip to Timmins”

Mnt. Tremblant is a big step up from the “Ontario ski-hills”, with almost thrice the vertical of the biggest public ski hill in Ontario. We took the leaf skiing over a holiday weekend. Mnt. Tremblant is about 570 km from Toronto, just under the 650 km/day limit for our new (to us) 2018 Nissan LeafContinue reading “Tremblant ski trip”

My 2015 Nissan Leaf S did not come equipped with fast charging. Thus on road-trips, anything over 300 km per day become quite painful as we had to spend half of our 10 hr duty time charging. Lets use our performance model developed from a previous post to see what upgrades make a difference inContinue reading “Upgrading a 2015 Nissan Leaf S?”

At some point your EV will run out of electrons and you will need to charge your car. Survey after survey shows that convenient charging is a big deal for EV owners. Thus Id be amiss if I did not share some of my experience as an EV owner. As always, I do happen toContinue reading “Charging 101”