Friday, June 12, 2009

More thoughts....

It's been a few days of driving... the 120V charging really stinks... can't get a full charge overnight. Today I actually had a close call.. today was 418's 2nd trip into NYC. I started the day at only 40% having returned late last night from an event in Montclair. It's only 30 miles roundtrip... so I knew I was cutting it close. Motoring on the highway, the miles left were quickly dropping, but once I hit traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel, my range started growing! I was very please and felt much more confident (so i turned on the AC). Coming home, however, I got down to 1% and --- miles left on the highway, but once again, once I got onto local roads the percentage grew. I ended up pulling into my driveway with 3%. I won't do that again!

My wife took it to work (to show off a little) on Wednesday, she had some interesting comments. One very important one... since we don't use "brakes" very often, drivers behind us don't see brake lights! That's pretty scary. Maybe the brake lights should come on at a certain level of regenerative braking. Or maybe flash, or something. I guess we just need to be conscious of drivers behind us...

Put 418 on the charger (120v) at 1:30p today, hopefully, we'll have some more playtime tomorrow.


3 comments:

  1. Sandy,
    At least on the car I test drove, the brake lights do come on when you take the foot off the gas and it has slowed to a certain speed. They anticipated that issue I believe. You show have someone check it out while you go up and down the driveway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As Jeff says the brake lights are coming on. I asked about this at the meet and greet before the cars were delivered and have confirmed it with folks behind me.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Interesting comment about the brake lights. Hopefully you have a conduit to MINI so you can tell them about all the problems and or suggestions during your lease.

    ReplyDelete