Month 9 Update! It's Going To Be Crazy Close!

Electricity for the BMW i3's produced just 15 feet above the cars.

We’re nine months along on our 12 month “Driving To Net Zero” challenge.
To recap: 

“Can we harvest endless sunshine from a small portion of a roof to provide 100% of the energy needed to power a home and two BMW i3's driven 20,000 miles, with zero utility cost, and zero gasoline cost for 12 months.”

Yes we can! We popped the first bottle of champagne last month as we documented a whole year with no cost of energy and no cost of gasoline to power a home and to drive two EV's a collective 20,000 (actual 24,350) miles a year. 

Our annual electricity cost for our home and cars, $-36.68
Our credit for unused electricity, $-434.57
Our annual gasoline cost for two cars, 24,350 miles, $0.00
Our natural gas cost, $279.89
Our total cost of energy for the year $-191.36

  The year end True-Up bill, $-36.68 with an unused credit of $-434.57

February of this year we used 333 kWh less than last February
(in the above chart.) This is due to the much more efficient BMW i3's that we
did not have for the first four months of last year.

The second part of the challenge is far harder and speaking frankly, a little crazy to try.   We’re already below zero cost thanks to TOU pricing, any effort to go below zero cost is extremely expensive with zero financial return.  

The three best months for solar PV are ahead of us & our 
French exchange student is no longer here.

Can we make more energy than we use?   We’re going to be close.   We have a 1080 kWh gap to close in the next three months, a time when the sun shines the brightest and our energy use is the lowest.  We project next month to be slightly below zero and then the following two months, we should generate 200-300 more kWhs per month than we use.    

This puts us a little short but there are a few things working in our favor.  Our French exchange student is no longer with us (that will save us a lot of kWh’s,) the BMW i3’s are far more efficient than the electric cars they replaced, and we have a few weeks vacation planned where we will be away from our cars and our home thus less energy use.  It will be very close, within a few 100 kWh's so stay tuned! 

A Focus On Our BMW i3's Charging Station. 

ChargePoint CT 4000 dual head charger can charge both cars at the same time

When you drive a gas car, you have a mandatory relationship with a gas pump. On the face of the pump, you see the exact cost of the fill-up immediately. (that's usually not an occasion for happiness)

When you drive an electric car you have a relationship with your home, where you plug in every night.  If you chose too, you can have solar panels as part of the home and drive from the energy that you make.

In the above electric scenario, it's hard to calculate the cost of the energy used by the car as there is no readout "at the pump" and the electricity bill is shared with the house and only comes once a month.  Residential charging stations are "dumb" and a driver is left to figure out complicated calculations on their own such as usage and what part of the bill belongs to the car how much is lost in the charging process, and what part of the bill belongs to the house?   Let's not even talk about tired rates and is the car or the house responsible for what tier as rates rise? It just gets crazier!

There's a lot to be said about the simplicity of the gas pump with the price right in front of my eyes. To be blunt, we need to move to this in the electric car world and I'm amazed that we have not yet done so.

Thanks to ChargePoint, we are doing exactly that each and every time we charge. ChargePoint has provided us with a demonstration commercial CT4000 charging station with power-share for the duration of our Driving to Net Zero Challenge. It's a beautiful charging station with great cord management.

With this charging station we can charge both cars on separate ports at the same time and track each car separately by ports or combined by the station.   This is how we figure out exactly what each car uses in a month displayed next to the milage of the car for that month.  When you can track it, you can measure it, when you can measure it, you can adjust it.

This commercial charging station is expensive for residential use and way overbuilt in terms of what it can do, but there is good news on the horizon for a smart home charging station solution.  

ChargePoint is soon releasing a residential charger called "ChargePoint Home" that is the smartest smallest and most advanced home electric vehicle charging station.  It's wifi connected and combined with their application and web software, EV drivers will be able to instantly tell, how much electricity they are pulling from the wall, how much electricity they have used,  and then assign a price per kWh to determine the cost of that charge up. It will also let you know how many miles you are putting back into the car and remind you if you have not plugged in for the night.

Coming soon, ChargePoint Home, a smart wifi connected charging station.

Below are some screen grabs of the information we pull off our ChargePoint CT4000 charging station.  Thank you again ChargePoint for the use of this charging station for our energy challenge.  Whether it's a bank account, a credit card, a utility bill or a car charging station, accurate and immediate data is important!

We can see our exact usage for the month for both cars. This is then
used in the Norby Home & Two BMW i3's energy graph. In this month,
Julie's car used 236 kWh and my car used 199 kWh.

Our energy use during the whole energy challenge to date.

Our number of charging sessions per week during the challenge

Our greenhouse gas reductions as calculated by ChargePoint

As always, thanks for reading and for your comments.
Sunshine is a transportation fuel.

Cheers
Peder


(Past "Driving To Net Zero" articles)

• Energy Challenge Introductory Article

• Update Month 1

• Update Month 2

• Update Month 3
• Update Month 4
• Update Month 5
• Update Month 6
• Update Month 7
• Update Month 8

BMW i8 real world range testing (We''ll get back to the i3's soon)

As a BMW i3 owner thinking about buying the BMW i8, I had a lot of questions regarding range in this super plug-in hybrid EPA rated at 15 miles electric range.

Now, as an i8 owner, I want you to know that I sacrificed my morning on 2/25/15 just for you, driving next to the Pacific Ocean, to answer some of these range questions. I know, it's a tough gig, sort of like work, but that's what pioneers do :)

It's no problem to hit the 15 miles of EPA electric range providing you keep it out of sport mode!

Here's the test results, pics below as back up documentation:

City driving: Hwy 101 at 65 degrees, average speeds were 30mph to 50mph. Speeds shown are due to lots of stop signs and streetlights. Eco pro mode fan on.


@21 miles electric range, 4.1 miles per kWh, 25.2 mph. (gas engine starts)

Highway driving, Hwy 5 to San Clemente and back, cruise control set to 70mph, 65 degrees, traffic very light, eco pro mode, fan on. You will see the speed increase as the first four miles are city roads to Hwy 5.

@22 miles electric range, 4.2 miles per kWh, 57.5 mph. (gas engine starts)
@30 miles, 98.8mpg, 57.5 mph (first dip below 100mpg)
@40 miles, 71.7mpg, 59.8 mph
@50 miles, 61.2mpg, 61.6 mph

If you drive it like a beast in sport mode, no EV range and 25 mpg. (I know this from experience and it will put more miles back on your EV range)

Summary:

I'll start off every day with a full charge, and my personal driving habits are:

55% of my trips are below 20 miles RT and will be done on all electric.
15% of my trips are below 30 miles RT and will be at 100 mpg.
10% of my trips are below 40 miles RT and will be at 70mpg.
10% of my trips are below 50 miles RT and will be at 60mpg.
10% of my trips are longer and may be as low as 28mpg.

(minus 10% of the above because I like to flick it over to sport mode every now and then :) )

Incredible efficiency and incredible performance in this beautiful work of art and engineering.

Cheers!

city driving, gas engine starts at 21 miles

Hwy driving, gas engine starts at 22 miles

30 miles, dips below 100 mpg.

at 40 miles 

at 50 miles.

i3 - i8 - i thoughts.....

"Top of the Mind" quick thoughts about these two great cars.

1. The i8 is the car of the century. Carbon fiber, Heron wing doors (could not resist as our home is Herons' House.) Through the road all wheel drive, a v8, v10, v12 supercar performance, with a straight 3 and the electric motor from the i3. The excellence of the entire package.

A quiet front wheel drive winged angel in electric mode and a screaming full throated all wheel drive nasty beast in sport mode. 

60 - 80 mpg in a typical (25miles) days drive beginning with a full charge. A stunning work of art that does 0-60 in 3.6 seconds according to car and driver and me. Stealth mode while driving in the city up to your favorite restaurant or hotel (the coolest of the bunch)

2. The i8 makes me appreciate our i3 even more. In typical brand hierarchy, the top tier car will be the most well appointed, the next level, somewhat less so, the next level somewhat less so, and so forth. We have both the Tera World i3 and the Tera World i8. The i3 interior is just as nice as the i8. In fact, with the wood dash and floating screens, the i3 interior is even better in my opinion, than the i8. The i8 does have custom stitching similar to the ActiveE.

3. The white color in the i3 is one of two standard colors. The white color in the i8 is the only premium color with a $1200 upcharge. Strange? As far as I can tell with the naked eye, I can see no difference in the i3 and the i8 regarding the white paint.

4. I'm better looking in the i8.

5. You can tell they're siblings if not twins, not identical twins, but twins.

6. The i3 features more advanced hi tech such as the self parking and the adaptive cruise control. The i8 does not offer either. Both have collision avoidance and pedestrian avoidance. The i8 has this really cool from the top looking down back up screen. How the heck did they do that?

7. The i3 professional nav is much larger than the i8 nav screen.

8. The i8 has the same HK stereo with the same watts as the i3 if you have the HK stereo option. Both sound the same and amazing. I would pay extra to upgrade to a Bang & Olufsen system, but then again, I am Danish!

9. I'm sexier in the i8.

10. The i8 draws from me and those that see the car, a lustful emotional response. Different than a Lambo, Ferrari or other. It's more approachable and beautiful in some unexplainable sort of a way. The i3 draws interest, curiosity and inquisitiveness, but not lust. So do you want practical or sensual, dare I say sexual ... I suggest both.

10. The blue seat-belts are the bomb! Please offer in the i3.

11. I loved the adjustable interior light show of the Mini-E. This went away in the ActiveE and also is not present in the i3, except for the really cool blue interior light when you unlock before you open the door. In the i8, it's an amazing display of interior thin light strands that can change from white to orange to blue with various levels of intensity. It's simply stunning. Please bring this to the i3!

12. I'm 6ft 4in, and 300 pounds. I drop right into the i8 and can get out just as easily thanks to the long doors. I prefer the one leg in and then drop in technique, reversing that on the way out. You don't open the door and "get in and get out" of the i8. You swing the door up and you fall in and extract yourself out. But it is so so worth it.

13. The seating position in the i8 is very similar to the ActiveE. It is not as low as the Mini-E where you were basically sitting on the floor board, legs unbent straight forward, and not as high as i3. Julie loves the higher seat position of the i3 , but is very happy that the i8 is more like the ActiveE than the Mini-E which she did not like.

14. Good to very good visibility in the i8, considering its form factor this is a remarkable achievement. Great visibility in the i3.

15. The i8 is as simple to drive as the i3. Less regen in the i8 however when you use the brakes, there is regen on the brake pedal as well. This is a similar arrangement, although better implemented by BMW, as the Honda Fit EV.

16. In the i8, the little shift knob, when positioned to the right is good Peder. When flicked to the left it is bad Peder. I can be good or bad depending on the shades of....(never-mind)

17. I did 24 miles of EV drive today in the i8 before the gas engine kicked in for the last mile of our 25 mile drive to the county building this morning. Our mpg was somewhere north of 99.9mpg.

18. The i8 puts into focus what a great bargain the i3 is. Truly, the i3 at it's price point is an amazing car. It's helpful to have the i8 and to see how similar and how much of the same technology is in the i3.

19. Our i8 will join our i3 as an electronaut version very soon.

20. Bravo BMW.

Cheers!

"Breaking the Inertia of the Status Quo"

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

― Buckminster Fuller

In 2007 I began to drive a Gem e4 Neighborhood electric vehicle (NEV) powered by roof top solar, It was a personal experiment connecting affordable solar PV "sunshine"  to transportation.

In 2009 I began to drive the BMW Mini-E,  a full electric car capable of around 90 miles of driving between charges.

At that time, in 2009, there were just the Mini-E and the Tesla Roadster drivers with no charging infrastructure,  aiming at the goal of a better future for transportation.

That hopeful vision of the future was far from assured.

We had been down this road before, about a decade earlier with the GM EV1 and the Toyota Rav4EV and a few other smaller production run cars.   That episode in the development of EV's ended in disaster, and potentially our era would follow, arriving at the the same destiny.

The inertia of the status quo is a powerful foe of change. Its strength and certainty comes from the common knowledge of today and yesteryear.

By 2011 Chevy, Nissan, Tesla, BMW and others were in the EV game for good.  No longer an R&D exercise, billions of dollars of plant development were green lighted for full production of the electric car. The future of the EV was almost certainly going to go forward with no chance of the stalled effort of the GM EV1 and Toyota Rav4EV.

Today, in 2015,  we are looking at dozens of manufacturers and an ever growing number of plug in cars.   From those first days of 2009 and less than 1000 cars on the road, to now, just five years later and 300,000 cars with plugs on the road. Amazing exponential growth.

2017 looks to be the tipping point  where the average electric car will improve to 150-200 miles per charge with both battery density and cycle duration increasing, with many manufacturers offering high volume electric cars.  There  ends the main obstacle of electric cars, range anxiety.

It's possible, I would say predictable, that we will see a perfect storm in favor of EV's in this 2017-2020 time frame. Extremely high gas prices and several models of 150-200 mile EV's powered mostly by renewable energy. 

It would not be surprising to see 30% of all cars sold being a hybrid or better with roughy 10% being pure electric by 2017.  Exponential growth will continue. By 2020,  a true revolution takes hold in transportation, the replacement of the gasoline vehicle feet will be underway en-masse. 

Below is my view on why the electric vehicle will replace the gasoline powered car, and why it will do so very soon:

Top Ten reasons why the electric car will make the existing gasoline car obsolete.

1. They’re quicker.

2. They’re quieter.

3. They’re more fun to drive.

4. They’re connected to your home, instead of connected to oil.

5. They're part of the solution, not part of the problem.

6. They’re up to 5 times more efficient and1/5th the cost to operate over the lifetime of the car. (energy conservation is wealth creation)

7. You can make your own fuel on the roof of your home.

8. They clean our air. Every EV that replaces a gasoline car makes every breath we take, cleaner and healthier.

9. They’re technologically superior, yet far simpler machines.

10. They will usher in a new transportation future including multiple mobility choices for our cities.

Bet on it :)

Cheers!
Peder

Zero Cost of Energy and Gasoline for a Year.

How we use our BMW i3 Frunk. Champagne and Shrimp on ice!

We're popping the first bottle of champagne as we have now documented a whole year with no cost of energy and no cost of gasoline to power a home and drive two EV's a collective 20,000 (actual 24,350) miles a year.

We're not done yet as we still have four months to go on our effort to get to Net Zero energy, as well as zero cost. More on that at the end of this post.

Today, we affirmatively answer this question: Can we harvest endless sunshine from a small portion of a roof to provide 100% of the energy needed to power a home and two cars with zero utility cost, and zero gasoline cost for 12 months.

YES!

It's possible that this feat has been accomplished before. We are not aware of any documented effort by any household in the world, where from a small portion of a roof, sunshine is harvested to provide 100% of the energy needed to power a home and two cars with zero utility cost and zero gasoline.

We believe, we are unmistakably on a transitional path to renewably energy and electric transportation, a path as predictable and reliable as the sun rising from the east, racing though the heavens, and setting in the west.

We are living at a time of one of the biggest changes in the history of humans on earth and we are all active participants in this evolutionary change towards renewables for energy and transportation. A change that brings with it; healthier air, cleaner water, richer families and communities, energy equity and a premium quality of life.  Driving is faster, quicker, quieter, less jerky, more enjoyable, and yes, it puts a big fat grin on your face every time you do a 0-60, 6.5 second sprint in the BMW i3.

Think about it for a second, the "future is today" whereby we can provide the energy for our cars  and our homes by harvesting sunshine on our roof.

It is indeed a new day, and to borrow the words from BMWi: Hello Future...

Harvesting coastal breezes to cool our home, partnering with nature. 

The three foundational pillars in our Drive to Net Zero are: 

1. Building a very efficient home. Harvesting passive solar for heat, wind for cooling, rain for growing both drink and food.

2. Our two BMW i3's, the most energy efficient car sold in the USA at 124 mpge.

3. Harvesting the sunshine falling on our rooftop  to power our home and cars. 

On January 19th 2015, we received our "Annual True-Up" bill from our utility, SDG&E.  

We had a $434.57 credit at the end of the year

This bill will be common in many states in just a few short years.

Highlights from our annual bill.

Our annual electricity cost for our home and cars, $-36.68
Our credit for unused electricity, $-434.57
Our annual gasoline cost for two cars, 24,350 miles, $0.00
Our natural gas cost, $279.89

Our total cost of energy for the year $-191.36

Interesting Tidbits:

We had anticipated getting to zero cost in May of 2015. However the efficiency of the BMW i3’s reduced our energy use far more than we thought, so we accomplished the goal five months early. For the first five months of the year, we were driving a BMW ActiveE EV and a Honda Fit EV. The i3's were delivered in late May.

Our two BMW i3's use 6000 kWh of electricity annually, an average of 3000 kWh for 12,000 miles each, 24,350 mile total. We have had no gasoline cars during the year.

Our home uses 7500 kWh per year. Our home consist of a main house of 3300 sq. ft. occupied by three, and a guest house of 1200 sq. ft. occupied by two. It's essentially two homes with two families on one utility meter.

Our solar 8.5kw PV system, installed in 2007, was paid off in April of 2012 with the utility and gasoline avoidance savings.

Our annual savings on utility cost and gasoline cost is $8,500

We have reduced our CO2 emissions by 30 tons annually.

Future goals.

To have zero carbon footprint.

We have reduced our household carbon footprint to 2 tons per year according the EPA carbon calculator; the remaining carbon is due mostly to our small natural gas use. The national average is 40 tons per household.

To offset our generation of carbon, we have donated a brand new 9kw solar PV system to our local lagoon foundation. This solar PV system offsets approximately 13 tons of carbon a year. We are net carbon neutral.

The next four months:

Four months to go, can we get to negative kWh?

We began this "Drive to Net Zero"  in May of 2015 with two goals. The first and largest one was to zero cost.  The second and perhaps harder to attain, to be net zero energy. We have four more months to go, are we going to make it?

It looks to be close.  Next month we will add a couple of hundred more kWh to the total and then the following three months we will reduce the total.

What makes this challenge interesting, is that it is real world with a real family, not some theoretical exercise, on some "super house" on a university campus with a non existent family, substituted with a computer tabulation of static energy use over a year, including one compliance car which you can no longer buy or lease.

Life is not static, it's dynamic, wonderful and ever changing.  

In our case we have had a few unplanned for events over the past eight months that have added a few thousand kWh to our "normal living" usage.

1. We're hosting a 17 year old French Rotary exchange student for the year.  You should see her hair!  Anyone care to calculate how many kWh per year 20 minutes of blowdrying 7 days a week uses? Not to mention lights, computers TV and more. We love her and she is having a great experience in the USA.

2. It's my year as Chairman of the San Diego County Planning Commission. What was  typically 3-4 long drives a month is this year 12-15 long drives a month as chair.

3. Family illness and the loss of a loved one.  We said goodbye to a family member and another had a major surgery a month before.    This created many many long trips to the hospital and to my siblings over the course of a few months.    The family is strong and it was a blessing.  Getting back to cars, the BMW i3 did great handling all the unexpected and longer trips and we made use of the DC fast chargers at Fashion Valley and downtown San Diego during this time.

We are putting on about 5000 miles extra on our i3's over what we planned for and what is typical for us.

I think were going to be plus or minus around 500 kWh for the year.

About that BMW i8...

Owning a "First Vintage" of both the BMW i3 and the BMW i8, is a scrapbook of a personal journey of our several year relationship with BMW from the "Mini-E and a dream for the future," to today with both cars, a BMW i3 and BMW i8, a reality.

Our plan is to keep the BMW i8 as a very low miles collectable car and we will keep both of the BMW i3's as our daily drivers.   It's sort of our own version of a flexible mobility program.

With two BMW i3's  we would borrow or rent a long haul gasoline car once or twice a year for a trip to Napa, now we'll take the i8.  It's also going to be a great out to dinner car driving electric only to our local restaurants.

We plan to remain a two EV family, with our own flexible mobility plan. Yes, I'll lose my EV purity card :)

it takes six to eight solar panels to power a car 12,000 miles a year for 30 years

Thanks for reading, and if you can remember one thing and one thing only, remember this:

Sunshine is a transportation fuel.

Cheers
Peder

(Past "Driving To Net Zero" articles)

• Energy Challenge Introductory Article

• Update Month 1

• Update Month 2

• Update Month 3
• Update Month 4
• Update Month 5
• Update Month 6
• Update Month 7

Editor’s Note, Peder is the Chairman of the San Diego County Planning Commission. His wife Julie is Director of Curriculum and Instruction at the Solana Beach School District. They have been Field Trial drivers for BMW for five years. Together since 2009, they have driven more than 100,000 EV miles powered from roof top solar.

I’m Buying a BMW i8. Why?

Before I attempt to rationalize the decision, let me say there is no rational reason. It’s purely emotional, sentimental, and a dream.

As a young car loving boy, I sword fought with sections of Hot Wheels track, my Matchbox cars had gull wing doors, I built cars out of Lego bricks that had gull wing doors and big rear wings, slot cars were great…especially if they had gull wing doors.

The BMW i8 is expensive absolutely, but what price is worth living a priceless dream?

There is an interesting story here, one that I think is worthy of telling, of why there is such a strong attachment and compulsion for myself and for others who drive EV’s and PHEV's. Why our love for these cars is so strong.

We’re called Electronauts, Fan Boys, Leafers,  Voltheads,  Teslamaniacs and worse.  We are fiercely loyal to our cars, brands and electric mobility.  We EVangelize (obsessively) and appreciate all supporters of electric mobility, their various reasons and brands.  Why so much passion and devotion?  

I won’t do this justice but let me try…

One of the greatest needs that we have as humans is diverse meaningful human relationships.  It’s why our penal system is based around various and increasing degrees of removal from our relationships, from warnings, to citations, to incarceration, all the way down to solitary confinement and in some countries, death, the ultimate removal of any relationships.  Money pales in comparison to the value of meaningful relationships.

The opposite of that penal system is freedom.

No greater tool has existed for us to connect and have relations to each other and to explore that freedom, than the automobile.   Pictures, texting, social networking are great, but seeing a distant dear friend in person or sharing a trip to the Grand Canyon with family are experiences, that can never be replicated by a photo, text or phone call.  It’s such a strong connection, and so important to us, that in many cities we are willing to turn over 50% of our land mass to a mechanical device that allows us to connect face to face. 

But there is a huge downside; pollution, congestion, climate change, world conflict over the scarce resource needed to fuel the car, and so forth.  Car companies heretofore have been suppliers of both freedom and increasingly, suppliers of problems. 

I profoundly believe that today, car companies like BMW, driven by citizens and regulators as well as by innovation, are now transitioning and becoming suppliers of freedom and suppliers of answers that will lead us to a cleaner, healthier, more just and more equitable world.   

A world where the car has zero emission,  the fuel for the car is zero carbon and made on the rooftop, where family and civic budgets are strengthened with lower cost of fuel and utilities.  Where the air and water are clean. Where resources are plentiful and equitable.  Where multiple modes of transit are possible and where more land is set aside for people and human relationships, not devices.

This is what I desire and what I work for.  This is why I have such passion and value alignment for BMW and their efforts.

Of course BMW needs to manage this transition from a few million gasoline cars annually to electric cars, and that does not happen with a flip of the switch, but the transition is unmistakably happening and BMW is seriously investing and planning for the electric future. The go-pedal is firmly planted on the CFRP firewall of electric mobility.

I love the two diverse approaches from the first BMW i 2014 vintage.

1. The BMW i3.

Make the most efficient car on the planet, then double down the bet and make it a  slot car for adults imbuing the car with the DNA, performance, technology and amenities of a BMW. 

BMW has forever broken the nexus of efficiency and lethargy. The BMW i3 is the car of the future.

2. The BMW i8

Make a plug in hybrid supercar and use the electric drive to augment torque lags, provide all wheel drive, all at the efficiency of a Toyota Prius.   Take a 3 piston car and make it perform like a  8, 10 or 12 piston car, then double down and give it a stealth mode with electric only driving as well.   

Yes, it uses gasoline and I’ll lose my "EV purity card,"  but a dream is soon to be realized. The BMW i8 is the car of my dreams and the dreams of future generations.

I remember my first test drive of the crazy fun but rudimentary BMW Mini-E in early 2009.   From that moment on, it’s been a very thrilling and personal "journey to the future" riding shotgun with BMW, a road-trip that I would encourage all to undertake.

Having a "First Vintage" of both the BMW i3 and the BMW i8,  is a scrapbook of that personal journey for Julie and I, and just might be a solid investment.

That's rational thinking. Right?

Cheers!