Video: Was Quick-Charging Worth the Wait?

We haven't been able to use it 'cause we haven't had these. There were some delays because of certification et cetera. This is now one of three in the city of Chicago. We're gonna give it a try. We finally got a card this is for a network different from the one we usually use for level two charging. This is our first try. So we'll see how it goes, it says to tap your reader here, there we go, processing my card. All right, it says start, press Start. And presumably, presumably you get better at that with some practice. All right, it seems to be charging. In theory, this will charge the dead battery to 80% in 30 minutes which is good because we have one battery level indicator out of 12 total and an estimated 13 miles of range. Let's see how it does. I've been sitting in the car watching how quickly it's charging and it's seems to be adding two to three miles of range for every minute of charging. So here we are 16 minutes in and we have 56 miles of range. And according to the car, we're halfway full. Now we are told that it might actually get slower as the battery gets fuller, we'll see what happens. Well, here's how it ended up. Definitely near the very end, it started adding about one mile of range for every minute of charging 77, 78 at 30 minutes with 79 miles of range total and eight bars on the battery level out of 12 our session ended. Now, if you do the math eight segments out of 12 isn't 80%, it's about 67%. So basically our session ended after 30 minutes before we were done. Fortunately, we had something else we could try, a 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV which is a battery electric car and the only other one on the market in the US that has a quick charge port. Now this time around the battery was half full when we started. It hit about 75% after less than 10 minutes. So the implications of this are what? We spent $7 once didn't get a full charge and then we spent seven again, one 10 minutes and the other 20 minutes of that session lost. Obviously the pricing scheme is not great. And unfortunately, state law prohibits operators from reselling electricity by the kilowatt hour. So you pay by session or by minute, minute would obviously be better. Now let's talk about the cost of all this. A best case scenario is you do get an 80% charge in your Leaf for $7, 80% of that battery is roughly 58 miles of range. So $7 for 58 miles. Now even at $4 a gallon, something like a Toyota Prius with 50 miles per gallon, city highway combined can go almost twice as far for the same amount of money. So obviously quick charging is a convenience but it's certainly not economical when you can pay less than $3 to charge at home to get a full charge on something like a leaf. I would like to see the operators and especially the city of Chicago, take a look at how they bill and maybe make some changes. <v Presenter>For more car related news, go to cars.com. For our blog kickingtires.net.