A day of lessons

Although the hotel was fine, we didn’t sleep that well.  Must have been the anticipation of getting on the road.

At 8am the roof of the van had a gentle covering of ice on it, but the windows were ok.  We went to a local car park and got a full charge.  It appeared to be free, but we shall see when we get home.  It was great for our first charge!

Travelling around town and turning on the front window demister saw the GOM (Guess O Meter) drop from 116km down to 84km, as the heater ate up the range.

Lesson 1.   Don’t use the heating system unless you really, really need it.

Then back to Bunnings to get a step to use to work on the roof and put things in the roof bag.  Finally off to Warehouse Stationery.  I phoned the WS central office and they told me that the order had been delivered yesterday.  In fact only one of the three items ordered arrived yesterday.  The local staff took the others from stock.

Getting out of Dunedin you have to climb some nasty hills and in a short time the battery charge dropped to 50%, but we made some up with regenerative braking on the downhill..

Lesson 2.   Electric Vans don’t like hills.  They can climb them but the battery charge drops with a rush.

We were in the economy setting all day.  It’s quite okay but limits the power to about half maximum.  No complaints on the performance down here with the light traffic.

At Waikouaiti we found that we were 39km from Hamden, (by GPS), and the GOM showed that we had power for 41km.  It just wasn't going to work.  We found a local campsite.  The office was unmanned, so Jim phoned the after hours number.  The lady who answered was in Dunedin, but she told him to charge up and leave the money ($2 per hour) under the mat.  In about 90 minutes the battery charge had risen by over 30%, thanks to the charging cable with a caravan plug on that Auto Court had provided, and we had a nominal 68km on the GOM.  We needed most of it.

While at Waikouaiti, Jim started to prepare the roof rack for fitting to the van.  He discovered that one hole in the Australian made kit, had no thread, so will now have to find a 6mm tap and tap wrench, otherwise, it will ride in the back all the way home.

Going into Hamden, the battery percentage display disappeared when the GOM registered 22km in the tank.  We arrived with just 20km left, so we would never have made it without the caravan park charge.  There we charged and had lunch at a local cafe.  Lunch cost far more than the power.  

After that we topped up wherever we came across a fast charger.  Some like Oamaru are handy to a charity shop, so that whiles away the time.

Lesson 3.   Never go past a fast charger without topping up.

At Waimate, the charger would not read the RFID tag that is linked to our credit card.  Jim rang the ChargeNet service desk and they remotely kicked off the charging process and set things up so that every time we charge, he gets a text with all the details.

The temperature ranged around 2 or 3C most of the morning.  It may have briefly risen to 10C in the afternoon, but it was a rare event.  It had dropped down to 3C again by the time we arrived at Grumpy's Holiday Park in Geraldine and he reckon it would bottom out at -2C overnight.

Jim parked near a double power pole.  He ran one cable to charge the battery and the other to power a small fan heater.  

It took him quite a while to empty the back of the van, stack bits and pieces under the van or in the front cabin, blow up the air bed and get everything ready for bed with blankets and pillows.  

Lynette, meantime, prepared the evening meal.  The camp kitchen facilities are great.  You just need to bring your own food and everything else is there, along with a good heater.  That's where this blog was created.

The van's speedo is about 5kph too fast from 50kph onwards.  Initially we travelled at an actual 90-95kph, but then dropped down to 85-90kph and seldom need to pull over to let faster cars by.

The fuel bill for 245km was about $36 which about 60% of what we would have to pay for the Suzuki.  Not great, you may say, but in that charge, we are paying a connection fee, which is about half the charge, so at home, on our own power, we should be paying less than 30% of the Suzuki costs.

The other noticeable thing was the brakes, or the lack of use of them.  The only time we actually used brakes was when we came to a stopped vehicle or traffic lights.  Using the B (for enhanced regenerative braking) mode, when you lift your foot off the accelerator, the regenerative braking kicks in and slows you down.  It's like driving with only one foot.

With today's long haul travel, the van's computer has finally figured out our driving habits, and one per cent of battery charge is almost one kilometre of travel, but 70km per charge is a good number.  Lesson 3 above applies!

The final lesson was to Be Flexible.  Because of Lesson 2, we now don't believe we could make it from Mangaweka to Waiouru until the Taihape charger is working in a couple of months time, and going from Waiouru to Turangi could also be a bit of a challenge.  That means we will need to plan to go via Napier, as the Napier to Taupo road has a one fast charger and a number of camp grounds along the way that offer slower charging.  So it's back to the drawing board.

Here's a few photos from the day.

Our first charge (above and below.)

The van being charged.   The left socket is the fast charge DC connector.

Lynette found the above memorial at Waikouaiti 

Below the e-Van in the caravan park

Murals at Waimate

Day 1, the Pickup

A beautiful day in both Auckland and Dunedin.

A few moments before we left home, Lynette spotted a mouse that one of the cats had brought in as a going away present.  That was caught and quickly dropped outside.  Who knows what extra food they will have accumulated by the time we return.

A pleasant ferry, train and bus trip to the airport.  Air NZ left about half an hour late. (Some things just stay the same......)  At Dunedin it was 10C, fine and sunny with long shadows.  We had booked a shuttle into Auto Court and were the first to be dropped off.

Bob had the van ready for us so we loaded up.  He told us that the hills north of Dunedin would use a fair amount of battery capacity, but going down to the sea on the other side would definitely regenerate a significant amount.  

We started to pick up the bits we had ordered as Click and Collect.  Supercheap Auto had our goodies ready, but Warehouse Stationery and Bunnings had not received the orders from their central warehouses.  We cancelled the Bunnings order and went shopping and will try that with Warehouse Stationery tomorrow.  We went to the wrong Warehouse, but when we went to the right place, everything was there.  The hotel also had the roof rack in a large carton, waiting for us.

The back of the van now looks like the inside of a gypsy caravan, so situation normal.  It will take a couple of days of tweaking and unpacking to get things under control.

   Lyn's e-Van, Jim and Bob Woodford of Auto Court Dunedin

More Background Information on Electric Vehicles

This blog has raised a few questions with people, and here are a couple that have surfaced.

Gearbox?

This Nissan motor has a single speed transmission that contains a differential to drive both front wheels, so that you simply push your foot on the gas pedal and it goes from Whoa to a maximum of about 120 kph.

Reverse is achieved via electronics rather than a mechanical mechanism.

There is an advert on the NZ TV where a couple of retired gentlemen beat up the streets in an electric vehicle.  It is a late 1950's Chevrolet that has had an engine transplant and now uses an electric motor.  In this case, it still has the full automatic gearbox attached to the engine.

Heating and Cooling

Unlike Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) vehicles, a vehicle with an electric engine does not generate a lot of waste heat, so the vehicle cab will be cooler than an ICE car.

To overcome this issue, electric vehicles are usually fitted with a heat pump and small radiator to heat or cool the passengers.  The amount of battery power this function uses impacts the mileage that can be covered.  From what can be viewed on YouTube, the main problem seems to be fogging of the windows, so hopefully airflow will reduce that.

The e-NV200, being a van, has a much larger volume of air to heat or cool than a car, so Nissan have fitted a transparent plastic sheet behind the driver and passenger, to reduce the heating requirement to just the front of the vehicle.  They also decided that it was more efficient to heat the vehicle passengers rather that the air, and have fitted both front seats with individual seat heaters that have high and low settings.  The driver gets a bonus with a heated steering wheel.

About APRS

APRS (Amateur radio Position Reporting System) is a simple tool that lets people track the position of any amateur radio operator (ham) who has the hardware to make his position known.

In his vehicle, the ham has a transmitter, a GPS receiver and a small computer that sorts out the time and position and generates a coded signal to feed into the transmitter, which then sends it off to a receiving site.  The transmissions can occur at regular time intervals such as once every 20 to 30 minutes or when the position changes or the direction of travel changes by so many degrees.  A stationary unit won't be transmitting much, but a mobile one can send a brief signal every few minutes or so.

Our unit is a simple box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, with connectors for a transmit antenna, the GPS receiver and power.  Both the antenna and the GPS receiver magnetically mount on the roof of the vehicle.

Up and down the country, other hams have set up receiving stations on the APRS frequency.  These are unattended receivers on a fixed channel.  When a signal is heard, a small computer decodes it and sends the information over the internet to a database in Finland.  I guess it's there in Finland because the guy who started this off probably came from that country.

Anyone who wants to track the ham concerned simply goes to the web address https://aprs.fi   That web site will pop up a Google Maps view and a box on the right side for entering data.

If you enter zl1lc-9 in the top Search box and click on Search, it will report our last known position.  If you then go below and set the Show last box to 24 hours, and the Track tail length to 24 hours, you will see our path over the last 24 hours.  The database holds information for several years.

Below is a screen shot of a ham using his id of zl1nl-8.  Each one of those dots in his trail has information as to which site picked his signal up, the time and the speed of his vessel.

So enter zl1lc-9 into the box and sit back and see where we have been.

Sometimes the reporting is spasmodic because our transmitter power is only 10 watts and in many places of NZ, there are not hams about with receivers set up for APRS or there are lots of hills in the way between our vehicle and their receiving site.  But persist and you should be able to track us up the two islands.

In the Beginning

Introduction

This is the story about our Nissan e-NV200 electric battery powered van.  It’s called “Lynette’s eVan” because, despite being jointly owned by us, from a NZ Government perspective, it can only be registered to one person.  This is unlike previous years where both of us could be on the ownership papers.

Why an electric vehicle?

We live on Waiheke Island and drive just short distances.  Our annual mileage is between 4,000 and 5,000 kilometers.  We rarely take our island car to town.  If we need to travel longer distances, we also have a diesel Kia Sorrento SUV to do those distances in comfort.

The price of fuel on Waiheke is already 25 cents a litre more than you have to pay in Auckland.  This is because, for health and safety reasons, the fuel company has to hire a whole ferry to bring the tanker to the island.  With the recently introduce Auckland fuel tax of 10 cents plus GST and our new “no new tax” government’s proposed tax increase of a similar amount that will boost the charge by another 25 cents a litre.  With rising fuel prices and other worldwide influences, a Waiheke fuel price of $3 per litre by 2019, is not unreal.

Being on fixed incomes, with no chance of us getting an increased income to cater for the fuel rises and especially the flow on escalation in the cost of living, caused by increased transport costs, we decided to take some of our limited savings and purchase a suitable electric vehicle to manage our weekly outgoings. 

It should be noted that we aren’t Greenies, but have invested technology over the years, to provide us with a long term financial advantage.  We have had solar water heating since 1979.  The initial “Jim Built” water heater paid for itself in three years.  This was later upgraded and that has well and truly paid for itself.  We installed solar panels to generate electricity in 2013 and that installation cost will be fully recovered next year.  To date we have generated over 18MWH of electricity.

The fact that we generate power from the sun and excess gets sold off the the power company for a miserly 8 cents per kWH really helped our decision.  The power company sells our excess to the neighbors for more than 28c per kWH and does very nicely, indeed.  So we figured if we charged our EV during the day, using out own power, we would get maximum benefit out of our solar panels and our EV. 

If anything, we could be called eVan-galists.

What EV to choose? 

With our limited budget, there weren’t too many choices.  We couldn’t afford a new vehicle and some like the Tesla were a real overkill for our island environment.  There are a number of second hand Japanese vehicles imported into NZ, and the Nissan Leaf and e-NV200 van looked the best bet.  Both use the same motor and 24kW battery.  The latest models have a 40kW battery, and by the time we need a new battery, a higher capacity one will be available as a replacement.

In March 2018, we went to Christchurch for a day as a stopover on the way to Dunedin.  There we hired a Nissan Leaf for the day.  It’s an amazing vehicle but we are used to sitting in a Suzuki Nomade (Vitara with a Mazda 2.0 litre V6 motor) and felt we were a bit too low.  The rental car company had transported us in an e-NV200 from the airport to their offices and this looked like a vehicle that would suit us better.

In Dunedin, we went to Auto Court and checked out their three e-NV200s.  Bob Woodford was very helpful but we weren’t in the market yet.  We had to learn more about electric vehicles and clarify our requirements.

Having decided on a Nissan e-NV200, there were a number of models on TradeMe to consider.  We wanted a van with windows and a seat for three at the back.  That would make things the same as our Suzuki.  As Waiheke is relatively warm, we wanted rear windows that open.  That meant just five vehicles on TradeMe fitted the bill.  Only one of those had a full car-like interior where the rear was paneled in moulded plastic linings.  The rest were more basic, with more exposed metal in the back and a bench seat.

We bought a manual which would aid us in translating the Japanese dash into English.  There are also dash conversions around, but with the e-NV200 you have to take the dash out and send it away for conversion.  With the Leaf, a dealer can buy a program and do the conversion in the car.

Next, Jim started asking about Leaf Spy reports for the batteries of the vehicles.  Leaf Spy reports show the state of the individual battery cells, general battery health and the number of fast and slow charges.  One dealer never got back to him.  The Timaru dealer sent him a Nissan report, which was star rated, but with no metrics and Auto Court sent standard Leaf Spy reports.  All the reports were good and were equivalent to a Leaf which had a full 12 bars.  The State of Health figures were between 85 and 87%.  Looking at the charging figures and the distance the vehicles had covered, the average distance was around 30km between charges.  One battery had quite a lot of imbalance between cells, so we asked for it to be charged and Bob said he would give it a run and then charge it.  The second report on that vehicle was very good.

Jim also studied YouTube videos.  There are a couple of guys who have driven e-NV200’s extensively.  Ian Sampson has a family of four children, and a dog, and he bought his wife a new seven seater van in the UK.  It is similar to the blue model in Dunedin.  He drives on the motorway at motorway speeds and gets 60+ miles from a charge for his 24kW van.

Bjorn Nyland is in Norway, in the winter, with all the heaters going and often at full motorway speeds, neither of which are beneficial to the range.  Try to find his shorter (less than one hour ) videos as some can be a bit long.

There are a number of others on YouTube and also look at the NV200 campers.  Even our NZ Jucy Rental vans have a video or two there of a couple of French girls travelling around NZ in an e-NV200.

We also gave consideration as how to get a vehicle home.  Initially we thought of driving it home and Jim had worked out that we could do the trip in five days but that would be a challenge.  Then we asked the dealer for a quote to ship it to Wellington so that we could fly there and drive it back.  Jim had worked out the routes and charging locations for mostly fast charges up the country. 

Fast charges aren’t the best for the battery and can lead to a drop of 1% in battery charge life per year, but as we will be mainly slow charging after we get home, Jim figured that would be fine.  We also calculated a distance of 80km between charges would allow us to go at reasonable speeds over all terrains.  It appears that 90kph is a sweet spot for speed and economy and that suits our style of driving. 

After all this, and looking at the camper conversions, we thought that we could throw an air bed in the back of the van and stay at camping grounds on the way home.  Lynette also discovered that the school holidays started in the first week of July, and if Jim took a day off work, (on unpaid leave,) we could both drive from Dunedin to Waiheke and take a few more days and make it a mid winter holiday.  Our "overseas adventure" for 2018.

We went down to Dunedin for the Country Music Awards in Gore over Queen’s Birthday weekend in 2018 and called into Auto Court on the Friday.  There we had a good look at two vehicles, a blue 2014 model with the full car like interior and a white 2015 model that was more of a commercial van in the rear.  By now we had our funding sorted.

When we looked at the vehicles in Auto Court, for the second time, we quickly came to the conclusion that the more basic model was best for us.  The main reason was the nicer rear seat on the fancier blue vehicle, when folded, took up too much room. The simpler bench seat, when folded, allowed greater floor space and would give Jim more room to stretch out on a mattress. 

So after some discussion on price and a few other matters, we made the purchase and paid more than 90%.  The remainder to be paid when we come back and collected it in early July.  We didn’t need the translation handbook as the dash had already been converted to English but it still will be helpful as the supplied manual is in Japanese.

So now the rush was on to sort out the trip and buy a few key essentials that we need for the van.  These include:

         A.  A set of monsoon weather shields, so that we can have the windows down a little without getting damp.  They are great for driving, and will help reduce condensation when we sleep in the back.  Unfortunately they are a bit long to fit in our bags for the Dunedin trip so will be fitted when we get home.

         B.  A type 1 to Type 2 charging cable.  A number of retailers, such as The Warehouse, are putting in type 2 charging stations.  These are AC chargers and charge at 3.3kW per hour on the e-NV200, which is still slow, but they are usually free.

         C.  A set of floor mats for the front of the vehicle.  It has carpet, but these will protect that.  (The back of our van has a factory fitted rubber mat on top of the carpet.)

         D.  A Chargenet account and RFID tag for charging at the fast chargers around the country.

         E.  A charging cable for a caravan park.

A roof rack and roof top cargo bag were added to the list once we got further into the planning.  The cargo bag can hold some of our kit when we are sleeping, and for safety will sit inside when we travel, although it could easily sit on the roof then too.  The roof rack is required to secure the cargo bag, as it usually clips onto guttering or door frames.  With no guttering and sliding doors, this would not work without a roof rack.

Jim found a video which showed a simple awning on the side of a van.  We figured that an awning would allow us to get in and out of the van, on one side, in the dry, if it was raining.  You can buy fancy ones, but they could not be fitted until we were home, so we placed an order with Bunnings and Supercheap Auto for the parts to be picked up from their Dunedin stores.  The same Click and Collect service was applied to the Warehouse order for the bed etc.  Even the roof rack was delivered to the Dunedin hotel.

Charging

Here’s a brief outline on charging the e-NV200.

There are two charging options that are standard with the e-NV200, AC and DC.

Onboard the e-NV200 there is an AC to DC charger that can pump in a maximum 3.3kW in an hour.  At best, a flat battery can be fully charged in less than eight hours.  The “but” is that it can only happen if you charge from a Type 2 charging point.  Type 2 chargers are often found outside retail shops such as The Warehouse.

At home, our standard three pin plugs are rated at 10 amps, which means they can deliver a maximum of 2.3kW per hour.  But it gets worse than that.  For safety and overload purposes, the charger cable has a built in controller that always reduces the current to 80% of the rated 10A value, so that the fuses doesn’t blow, which means that we only get 1.84kW per hour when charging from home.  Therefore charging a fully flat battery to 100% will take over 13 hours.

The charging access is on the front of the vehicle.  You'll notice that there is no grille as air doesn't have to flow over a radiator.  There are two charging sockets under the access flap.  The socket on the NZ driver’s side is for a high speed DC input and is used for fast charging.  That cable is part of the charger system provided by companies like ChargeNet.  Wherever possible try to limit the charge to 80%.  This will take less than 20 minutes.  Above 80%, the rate of charge slows down, so expect the final 20% to take around 20 minutes to complete.  Payment for this service is triggered by an RFID tag and billed monthly to your credit card.

The charging socket on the passenger's side is for an AC input.  That's where the standard three pin plug cable or the Type 2 cable connects.

  

On with the show.

After the posting on APRS, used for tracking us as we move up the country, we start of our trip from Dunedin to Waiheke Island, stopping off to see friends and relations and generally taking things at a leisurely pace.  It happens in the middle of the NZ winter so it will not be all plain sailing.

We worked out a travel plan that kept the travel distance to less than 250km per day and approximately 80km between charging stations.  This trip is also a holiday, so there is no sense in rushing from A to B without enjoying ourselves.