Leased a Spark EV with the SAE Combo charging port on 6 Jan

[NomadMac]

Ugh. I was ready to go to Colma today and lease the Spark with CCS they have in stock. I know there's a plan to put CCS in Pt. Reyes Station but that Charge Point has no plans to support CCS...

If I don't get CCS, am I going to kick myself in 18 months? What a conundrum.

There are a whole bunch of companies that don't support Frankenplug. If I were buying a Spark EV, and lived in a major metro area of California (San Diego, LA, SF, and Sacramento), and never planned to use the car outside those areas (3.3kW J1772 charging is brutal for traveling), and you can wait 3-4 years for NRG / EVgo to install their obligation of 200 Frankenplug chargers, I would buy it.

If I was only leasing for 24-36 months, eh, maybe not.

It's hard to say what will prevail in 5-10 years... Tesla Superchargers, maybe?

I ordered mine today from Novato Chevrolet without CCS on a three-year lease. It would be nice to go to maybe San Jose or even Donner Lake if it had fast charge but I guess that's not gonna happen this time around.

Mine is going to be a white one with fern "flames" on the front fenders. Wave if you see me.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Ugh. I was ready to go to Colma today and lease the Spark with CCS...

Mine is going to be a white one with fern "flames" on the front fenders. Wave if you see me.

Wow, we need a picture of that!

 

[gra]

Ugh. I was ready to go to Colma today and lease the Spark with CCS they have in stock. I know there's a plan to put CCS in Pt. Reyes Station but that Charge Point has no plans to support CCS...

If I don't get CCS, am I going to kick myself in 18 months? What a conundrum.

There are a whole bunch of companies that don't support Frankenplug. If I were buying a Spark EV, and lived in a major metro area of California (San Diego, LA, SF, and Sacramento), and never planned to use the car outside those areas (3.3kW J1772 charging is brutal for traveling), and you can wait 3-4 years for NRG / EVgo to install their obligation of 200 Frankenplug chargers, I would buy it.

If I was only leasing for 24-36 months, eh, maybe not.

It's hard to say what will prevail in 5-10 years... Tesla Superchargers, maybe?

I ordered mine today from Novato Chevrolet without CCS on a three-year lease. It would be nice to go to maybe San Jose or even Donner Lake if it had fast charge but I guess that's not gonna happen this time around.

Mine is going to be a white one with fern "flames" on the front fenders. Wave if you see me.

I suspect you'll regret not ordering it with CCS, because one of the few regions you can be sure there _will_ be CCS available in the not too distant future is the Bay Area. As it is, we now have more CCS chargers (1) in the Bay Area than we did CHAdeMOs when the LEAF was introduced, or for maybe 6 months or a year afterwards. To be sure, it seems to be non-functional at the moment, but it appears that may not be due to the CCS side of things per se. But we'll soon have some others per NRG.

Edit: See http://www.plugincars.com/evgo-has-13-public-charging-stations-california-and-counting-129314.html

As to the thousands of CHAdeMOs to go along with the 100,000 LEAFs that Tony is always rattling on about, the vast majority of them aren't in the US (despite this being the LEAF's biggest market); the actual U.S. total appears to be somewhere between 300 and 400 currently, and Nissan has done very little until recently to support them. Outside of a few major metro areas there aren't any, and the ones IN major metro areas tend to be too close in to be useful to go very far on a day trip; that's certainly the case in the Bay Area currently, with the exception of heading NE on I-80 to Sacramento/Napa, or to Santa Rosa (and the just opened one in Pt. Reyes Station for West Marin to complement the erratic Blinks in Fairfax). Of the CHAdeMOs that are actually here a very high percentage of them are Blinks, and a very high % of those aren't working.

As Tony is well aware, Tesla has put every other manufacturer or group of manufacturers in the shade when it comes to supporting a particular quick charging standard. They are the only ones to devote a significant amount of cash to the problem, and to show any sense of urgency. But then they also have the sole BEV that can really benefit from an extensive QC infrastructure; the rest of the QC-capable BEVs are essentially regional-use only owing to their limited range, regardless of what charging standard they use.

So, depending on what you're planning to use it for, get or don't get CCS on your Spark, but know that if anywhere will have CCS chargers available in reasonable numbers during the term of your lease, it will be here.

 

[Oberon]

I went though this questioning process too and decided to get a Spark without DC charge rather than wait. Basically, if the car works for you without DC charge, then it works for you and it does not really matter if you have it or not. I mean, you can always second guess later, for example, I now think maybe I would like a different color better. If I had to do it over, the DC charge would be worth it if and only if they were scattered every 70 miles on I 80 or I 50 and I 5 so that I could take the car to Tahoe or LA. Since that does not seem to be happening before my lease is up the DC charge is irrelevant. I love my Spark EV anyway.

Just did 83.5 miles, Oakland to San Jose round trip with 6 miles left with no charging at all. This is almost the worst case trip I would use this car for and I could have economized a bit more, but did not need to.

 

[kenn]

Have no qualms with whatever happens or who ever comes out on top in the charger games. Do not like a more advanced group attempting to squash a younger group and it really has no place on this board. Lets move the EV group forward! kenn

 

[Time2go]

I didn't wait to get the combo charger because I know I would never need it. In 7 months I've had the car not once did I need it. We'll just have to see had it all plays out. I just don't like being called unwashed masses which we've been called on the nissan leaf forum.

 

[NomadMac]

We do have a long distance car at our disposal.
We bought back my wife's 2005 VW TDi Golf from the insurance company after she got rear ended in October. It can go to Tahoe and back on a tankful. And it runs on biodiesel.

I intend to park my Nissan Frontier and the Spark will be my primary vehicle for my Macintosh + Technology consulting business.

 

[kenn]

Thanks NomadMac and Time2go.

 

[TonyWilliams]

Do not like a more advanced group attempting to squash a younger group and it really has no place on this board. Lets move the EV group forward! kenn

I really don't know what the first sentence actually refers to. Who or what is "advanced"? What's getting squashed? If you mean Frankenplug, it doesn't need squashing. It barely exists. As to the second:

My opinion is that adding more charging standards does not move forward the EV movement, and further, my opinion is that GM's primary interest (since they are not interested in building all-electric cars beyond the bare minimum compliance level) in promoting their niche standard is to:


1) Confuse government regulators - they tend to be the biggest financiers of DC charging until Nissan and Tesla got going. GM initially did a pretty good job with confusion, and did manage to get their Franken-standard written into the NRG / eVgo deal (it didn't originally have it). But, beyond the 200 charge stations in California only over 4 years in 4 metro areas only, each with a CHAdeMO station too, things don't look too bright elsewhere. Since the Spark EV is also sold in CARB state Oregon, there isn't much of a plan there (actually, I'm not aware of ANY plan). For the rest of the US, well, I think a bunch of BMW dealers will install some. Good luck charging your Spark EV there.

The federal government got burned so badly with Blink / Ecotality (over $100 million) that I don't see them spending any money.

2) Slow down the competition - heck, Tesla is on fire now, but when GM was doing their back door deals to try and make Franken-charge "it", they only believed Tesla would fail. It really wasn't even on their radar, and that left Mitsubishi and Nissan, the only other real players. Mitsubishi is so tiny in the US, and they showed up with such a difficult car to sell (extremely short range, not too pretty) that ultimately it didn't sell in the US. They did sell over 30,000 elsewhere (Japan and Europe).

So, that really only left Nissan in the US to "beat". I'm reasonably confident that they thought LEAF would fail, too. It was very close, when the cars were not selling summer 2012, and then the batteries started failing in hot environments. They fired the LEAF manager Mark Perry, and now at over 100,000 sold and supply constrained, things are cautiously looking good. HAD NISSAN FAILED, FRANKENPLUG WOULD HAVE WON.

3) Arrogance - certainly my perception, but when I talk to GM / SAE folks involved with this program, they seem to have a 1960's attitude of "we're it" and they don't really care what others are doing. Oh sure, they looked at CHAdeMO and Supercharger stuff, and then spent years finalizing their own version without concern for competition. Just like they did with the Japanese invasion, small cars, etc.

 

[gatedad]

Interesting on line interview with the head of Car Charging Group. Surprisingly, he seems to feel that SAE will win out in the end. A point that he made, which I can understand, is that having the same plug work on Level II as well as QC is nice(my words). That makes some sense to me but I just don't understand his argument that SAE will emerge victorious in this standards war. Not even sure(in fact I am sure that it's _not_ a war)that this is a war, per se. Sounds to me more like GM tossing some warning shots across Nissan's bow. Why, though, would Nissan fold in this? Even though there are not many QC units in the East Coast, they are now appearing at some Nissan dealersahips here in the Philly area. We can't even lease/buy a Spark EV out here, so how is it that GM's format will succeed? BMW's I3 is simply out of reach for a large % of people who might get into an EV. Nissan seems to have taken the bull by the horns and is doing what it can to make QC available to the mases, so to speak. This morning I had occasion to stop in for a few hours charge at a Nissan dealer very close to my employer. I needed the charge to add sufficient range to get home safely, as earlier in the day I'd traveled an extra 20+ miles that I normally do not. Pulled up to the J1772 and plugged in, but had to angle my Mitsubish I a bit to not block the QC unti that was next to it, up and operatational. I also passed a BMW dealershiop this mornig n as well as 2 Chevy dealers. None of those had _any_ types of charging stations. Just doesn't make any sense to me to introduce a standard and then not have any reason to use it. Believe me, I have no preference for one format over the other, like most of us, I just want to be able to quickly add miles to my range when needed. Of course, today is a perfect example of the value of being able to QC. The I has ashorter range than the LEAF, to begin with. At 9 degrees F this morning, the battery quickly ran down below a safe level for me.

 

[gatedad]

Contimuing on the topic, not having QC is a definite negative, and today is proof of that. Had I been able to QC at this same dealership, I would have saved 90 minutes and been safe and secure, all at zero cost(since Nissan is making use of the QC units free, too). There are a few souls out there that really have little to no need for QC, but I admit that I see now that it is a valuable option and pretty much for most of us a near necessity.

Lou

 

[TonyWilliams]

So, depending on what you're planning to use it for, get or don't get CCS on your Spark, but know that if anywhere will have CCS chargers available in reasonable numbers during the term of your lease, it will be here (San Fran).

There will actually be more in SoCal (130 of 200 total), but as I state regularly, there absolutely will be California Frankenplugs in four metro areas in four years. That's the deal with NRG. They won't be where you think you need them; they will be where the agreement says they must be.

You're not going to sell us on hydrogen now, are you?

:mrgreen:

 

[Time2go]

When it comes to QC it really depends on what you're using the car for. For me I use it for my 48 mile commute and I charge at work so for me the slow charger on the Spark doesn't effect me. If I need to drive farther I'll just take one of my other cars. I think the Spark EV market is for someone needing a 2nd or 3rd car. But if I was buying instead of leasing I would get the QC since its only 750 dollars and we know in the future they will be CCS chargers in California.

 

[fengshui]

This morning I had occasion to stop in for a few hours charge at a Nissan dealer very close to my employer. I needed the charge to add sufficient range to get home safely, as earlier in the day I'd traveled an extra 20+ miles that I normally do not. Pulled up to the J1772 and plugged in, but had to angle my Mitsubishi a bit to not block the QC unti that was next to it, up and operational. I also passed a BMW dealership this morning as well as 2 Chevy dealers. None of those had _any_ types of charging stations.

For me, this is the big downside of ChaDeMo chargers right now: They're nearly all located at Nissan dealerships. I don't particularly want to have to visit a Nissan dealer to charge my car, especially if it's not a Nissan. Dealers aren't open 24/7, many aren't located near restaurants or other businesses I want to visit while I wait. Some dealerships are even hostile to the public using their chargers, by either prioritizing the dealerships cars, prioritizing the dealer's make of car over other cars, or just being diffident and annoyed by the process of setting up the charging system for what they consider to be a non-customer.

Until DC quick chargers are conveniently located at commercial centers or public parking lots like many J1772 EVSEs, I don't see them being a big winner for most car owners. This is one of many things that Tesla has gotten right, placing their Superchargers at malls, restaurant complexes and other areas with businesses targeting the traveler.

 

[gra]

So, depending on what you're planning to use it for, get or don't get CCS on your Spark, but know that if anywhere will have CCS chargers available in reasonable numbers during the term of your lease, it will be here (San Fran).

There will actually be more in SoCal (130 of 200 total), but as I state regularly, there absolutely will be California Frankenplugs in four metro areas in four years. That's the deal with NRG. They won't be where you think you need them; they will be where the agreement says they must be.

You're not going to sell us on hydrogen now, are you?

:mrgreen:

Sure there'll be more in Socal, but that's a much larger geographic area so the density will be better here. But we agree that they will be available in the three largest metro areas plus the state capitol and some in the San Joaquin valley. As to putting them where they must be as opposed to where they'll be useful, they can hardly do worse than the CHAdeMO deployment in the Bay Area. Out of the ones here, perhaps two or three would truly be useful to me. The rest are too close, not on routes I use, unavailable during the hours I would need them, or all three. And AFAIA, every single one is a single, so can't be counted on. Dumb and dumber.

At an extra cost per month of $20.83, or say $25 once you add in extra taxes, license and finance charges, unless you are certain that you're never going to use the car for anything other than commuting and local errands and you don't live in one of those four metro areas, to me it seems penny-wise and pound-foolish to skip the QC option. Now, some people who opted for CHAdeMO 3 years ago without any guarantee that there would ever be any in their area, and who still don't have any to use, may have a legitimate reason to pass on CCS. But not where we _know_ that they will be installed.

As to H2, let's not port that discussion over here; one forum is enough.

 

[cwerdna]

There are a few souls out there that really have little to no need for QC, but I admit that I see now that it is a valuable option and pretty much for most of us a near necessity.

Disagree completely w/the bolded parts. Time2go is right w/his first sentence.

When it comes to QC it really depends on what you're using the car for. For me I use it for my 48 mile commute and I charge at work so for me the slow charger on the Spark doesn't effect me. If I need to drive farther I'll just take one of my other cars. I think the Spark EV market is for someone needing a 2nd or 3rd car.

I've had been leasing my '13 Leaf SV (w/premium & QC + LED packages) and after 6 months and over 5630 miles, I've used its CHAdeMO port a whopping 1 time. I even posted a link to my not-so-good experience using it at http://www.mychevysparkev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5329#p5329. The closest one to me (at the dealer I used) has been down for weeks.

And, I wouldn't want to depend on even the CHAdeMO DC FC infrastructure for driving to SF and back (~60 miles each way, almost all highway) due to possibly downtime, big lines, wasting time looking for a working, available and reasonably priced DC FC, etc.

If someone had GOOD DC FC infrastructure and was taking long enough trips where I'd help, then sure, it's useful. I can see that of many folks in WA state judging by the Seattle area Leaf Facebook group posts, including that of someone I've personally met and know from Priuschat.

 

[gatedad]

CWERDNA: I understand your point, but I suspect that as more and more people get EV's wth smaller batteries(LEAF and Spark EV and Mitsubishi I), they will become frustrated with the slow charging speed and will want/need that option to QC. Just my opinion, and I could be wrong, but for many people this is their "go to" car. Even considering the less than pleasant situation in the car's cabin due to very cold winters(my wife takes a blanket with her when she is a passenger, I wear long Johns and 2 heavy hoodies along with gloves)we still prefer the EV to our ICE van. A caveat: If I had access to workplace charging, QC or no QC would be less of an issue. But I don't(and most out here don't)so if I want to drive the car more than 40 miles in winter, it would involve 2-3 hours at a Level II station at some point or access to a QC station. I'd rather spend 30 minutes charging than I would 180 minutes charging. I can picture, though, someone like my late father in law, who drove his Hyundai Elantra less than 5,000 miles per year, not having any need or interest in QC. it's an individual situation. Interestingly enough, once batteries become cheap enouth to be larger and still affordable, this might become less of an issue...used primarily for long distance trips as opposed to "regular" trips. Finally, I would love to see this car out here in PA.

Lou

 

[Time2go]

That's the thing about the Spark EV it's perfect for commuting and running errands but I wouldn't want to take it on a long trip. That's why for some of us not having QC isn't a problem. When it comes to QC to me the issue is not how many there are but where they are. When my lease is up ill have to see how that's going and then I'll decide if I need it.

 

[gatedad]

T2G:

Thanks for the comment. In CA, your Level II charging infrastructure is much more robust. Having visited San Diego several times in the last two years(and this past summer we drove from San Fran to San Diego, too) I can see why you would be better able to handle the charging of the Spark EV using just Level II or even Level I. The Spark EV also gets 20+ more miles per charge than my Mitsubishi I, and that is significant. Out here in PA, you don't see Level II charging stations all over the place. Obviously they exist, but can be far apart, to the point that you do not have the option of travelling 30 miles and then getting another 30 miles charge in 90 minutes. The more charging options one has, the greater the opportunity to actually drive this car. 30 miles on a QC unit would be like 15-20 minutes I believe. That's a totally acceptable length of time to spend charging a car. I'd have to park my car for 3 hrs to get that range(on Level II), and 8 hours on Level I.

Lou

 

[Time2go]

You're right I have it pretty easy here. I get free charging at work during the week and on the weekend its less then a 10 min walk to free public chargers which aren't used much on the weekend. The Spark is a small car so it doesn't take much to heat it up. If you preheat the car when its plugged in you should have no problem getting into the 70 mile range.