Oh No, I used Gas Today! Wait, Never Mind, I Didn't After All...

Since it came in on Wednesday evening, and I first plugged it in, I haven't used a drop of gas.

Today, I thought my luck might have run out, though. My wife and I ate at the Maggiano's at "The Domain," a very popular outdoor mall/apartment/office complex in North Austin (TX). By the time we got there, I estimated that I'd probably run out of battery about a half-mile before getting home.

So, I was going to post something saying, "oh no! I had to use some gas today -- about a tenth of soda can's worth."

Then my wife said we should go over to North Side of The Domain, so we started at the Whole Foods, which has a half-dozen or so L2 chargers available. So we parked there, and charged it up to 28 miles range! That, using the "free" -chargepoin+ card that came with the P.Prime.

I've also applied for Austin's $50/year "Charge EVerywhere" program, which will be all-but-free.

So, no gas so far, except to get it home from the dealership!

 

Oh wait, I stand corrected: Thursday evening, the engine turned on right as we got home from some errands. It was on for about 30 seconds. Other than that though, no gas since we got it home from the dealership!

 

In my case, it was because it was constantly moving between stations in delivery prep, including going a mile or so away to the tint contractor. They didn't really have time.


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Similarly, good chance we'll take a road trip to show it off to my family in Houston in the not-too-distant future.


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I'd backed into the garage already, so, yes, I shut it down before it finished warming up.


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I like the much-shortened warm-up period compare to my Gen-2. That, I gather, largely due to heat-exchanging the cooling water with the catalytic converter.


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Oh well, it couldn't last forever! Drove down to Barton Creek Mall down south; no chargers nearby. So, I put it into hybrid mode for the >55MPH portion of the drive down, and will most likely take the rest of the trip in EV mode.

In hindsight, I probably should have burned down the battery on the way down instead of the way back. That, to reduce the amount of time they're at high charge level. Live and learn...

Actually, I was pretty pleased with how much of the time in hybrid it had the engine off. Eyeball guess, maybe 1/3 of the time. Big improvement over our Gen-2, which of course must kick in the engine above ~42MPH or so.

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I just realized that what I could have done, and probably should have done, would have been to drop my wife off at that mall, go into the office and do some work there. Recharge the car's batteries, but not "recharge" my own batteries, in the vacation-from-work sense.


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Yeah, that was good. But I haven't quiiiiite finished the project that was due Friday.


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