FFE's - Colorado Question

[lemurtech]

I'm looking in to leasing an FFE but...
The round trip would be ~60 miles per day, no charger at my wife's work. The elevation loss on the way to work is 1000' but that doesn't include a 200' hill on the freeway. On the way back, its 1000' back up. 75% of the distance is freeway, of which about 1/2 is usually backed up and at or less than 60mph, but the open area moves at 75mph or greater, while the other 25% is stop and go city traffic at or under 45mph (mostly under 30). Even with a 76 mile range, would the FFE really be able to make that? Would a Denver Ford dealer allow us to borrow a car to test this out? What about using the heater? I find it pretty silly that people are turning off the heat to make it somewhere, and I know for a fact my wife wouldn't be okay with that. In our current cars we keep the heat in the winter at 64ish. The car would be kept in a garage and we could set it up to preheat, I guess that helps some. Thoughts comments?

It would be great if this would work, I estimate it would pay for itself on a lease at about 25% more than we are spending in gas right now at 3.50 a gallon in her old gas hog v-6 Camry. And we have other vehicles for longer trips so it really would be just a commuter car, grocery getter but I'm maybe a bit paranoid we live just a bit too far for it to work.

 

[Ram]

I borrowed a car from my Ford dealer to drive home and show my wife before buying We had it for about 3 hours. My neighbor bought a Volt after the dealer let him use it over the weekend. I would definately do the drive before buying. Tell the dealer why you want to borrow it.

If I were you I would try to get my employer to put in a charger. Plug-in America, ChargePoint, and Blink have letters they will give you to give to your company to give them reasons to put in a charger. There are many programs, depending on your utility company, that may allow them to install one for free. ChargePoint and Blink will install one but then will charge you between $1-$2 per hour for a Level 2 charge. The FFE will charge from empty in 3.5 hrs on a level 2. A lot of times 110v is easy for an employee to install but from empty, it takes a long time to charge.

 

[lemurtech]

Thanks Ram for the reply.

The problem is that its my wife's work not mine, and they lease part of the building, and the building doesn't have parking except in the alley in the back and they constantly have to move cars around for cars to get in/out. The building owner doesn't even maintain the building properly (I think he's waiting to have the property bought out so it can be razed and a high rise put up on the block), there is 0% chance they'd install anything. In fact, I almost guarantee they'd just laugh on the phone and hang up. So we can't depend on something like that. The car has to make the round-trip with no charging at the work site, if it can't, the car won't work.

Also, if you pay $5 to use a charger, then whats the point of an ev? That basically negates the cost advantage of not using gas since I can charge at home for just over a $1 per day. Though I thought Hickenlooper signed a bill last year that allowed electrical resale for use in EV chargepoints, so you'd pay for the KWs you use, not based on time. Maybe I'm wrong.

I guess I'll try contacting the two dealers who have vehicles and see if we can borrow a car for an extended test drive.

Anybody from Colorado on here? If so, what dealer(s) did you talk with and go to?

Thanks!

 

[Fluke]

Having lived through my first winter in KC with the FFE, I would recommend you look at another car with either longer electric range (Tesla, BMW i3) or a backup engine (Volt, CMax Energi, Prius Plug-in).

The FFE cannot reliably deliver 60 miles per charge during the worst of winter weather driving. I believe that Denver is similar to KC as far as winter temperature is concerned and it will have significant range loss when the temperatures are in the -10F to 20F range. I have not had a situation where I got less than 50 miles, but it has been close. I also do not use heating except for defrosting the front window intermittently. Also, I typically did not use the highway during the winter if I was near the range limit.

 

[mountaineer]

My wife and I have been very satisfied with our 2013 FFE bought at the end of 2012. We live at 7100' in the Roaring Fork Valley near Aspen, and drive both up- and downhill within that valley. The ups and downs pretty much cancel out, e.g. climbing 16 mi and 900' up to Aspen and back takes a total of ~32-34 miles because the regen downhill nearly offsets the climb. We seldom use the cabin heater, do use one seat heater, normally preheat the car while plugged in, and are energy-conserving drivers. Our initial indicated range varies from about 68 to 83 miles. The only mission that's required recharge along the way was on a very snowy day, when 3-6" of snow on the road so increased rolling resistance that returning from Glenwood Springs, 26 miles away, left us ~10-15 miles' range short, requiring a ~90-mnute stop to recharge at a friend's house with Level II. On dry or snowpacked roads, that same 52-mile winter mission is no problem. Our low temperature so far has been –24F, leaving the FFE plugged in (Level II) in an open carport.