Reply-To: William Korthof
Message-ID: <199903211738.JAA05711@hawk.prod.itd.earthlink.net>

On Thursday, our Honda EVplus rolled over to 38,000 miles. We've had it since August '97, so our average has remained at 2,000 miles per month. It's still as great as ever, of course. The EVplus is wonderfully quiet, very easy to drive, and plenty large. We can almost always get 100 miles per charge (+/- change in elevation).

Ours' is probably the highest mileage EVplus, so at around 28,000 miles, Honda replaced our battery pack to examine how it has aged and performed. Presumably, it was about half-way through its life at that point. Needless to say, some of the early OEM EV's were produced mostly as rolling test beds for testing advanced battery packs, and in order to meet test-market targets. I am happy to report that with our advanced battery packs--NiMH--have performed almost flawlessly. Easily an order of magnitude more reliable than the Delphi in our EV1... perhaps two. At least twice as much deliverable energy under normal conditions, compared to Delpi lead acid. Good thermal characteristics... Unfortunately they are still pricy. However, the cost for car-sized Nickel metal hydride packs has dropped by more than half during the last 12-18 months, even wih a meager volume of under 1,000 vehicles. Meanwhile, Ovonic has developed NiMH batteries with nearly twice again as much energy capacity as our older-generation Panasonic pack. It remains to be seen when NiMH will drop below $10,000 per full-size pack (where the amortization numbers begin to be reasonable for new, OEM vehicles).

Since we got our EVplus, we've seen a huge increase in the number of public charging stations. Initially, there were just a handful at power plants and electric company office buildings. Now, there at all kinds of desireable locations in the LA basin. Just yesterday, I went to a meeting in Westwood and there's a parking garage with no less than 10 charging connections (5 avcon, 5 inductive). Latter in the day, I met up with some friends who had gone to the Getty Center, which now has preferred/reserved parking/chargering for EVs. On my way to Redondo Beach for dinner (which doesn't yet have chargers), I passed LAX, which has over 2 dozen chargers at four public locations. After dinner, we headed to Hollywood, which also happens to have chargers. We pondered going to the Universal citywalk as well, and it too has preferred parking. On the way home, I drove past least four more pulic charging locations. Altough I only used the public charging once (didn't even need it then), a good supply of public chargers is an important safety net for electric vehicle users...and we're just barely starting to get there.

I often get asked how we rack up so many miles... of course I've taken our car on numerous road trips (Oregon, Tahoe, San Francisco, Las Vegas). Also, it has replaced most of the local long-distance trips we used to take in an ICE car (to San Diego, our cabin in the San Bernadino mountains). Whenever there are out of town guests, we take them around in the EVplus. And then for commuting and local trips, we trade off; if my dad has a 80 mile commute for a couple weeks, he takes the Honda. If I have a lot of driving to do, I'll take the EVplus for the week. And my mom has a very regular pattern. Fortunately, we're able to take full advantage of the unlimited mileage policy that our lease offers!

/wk