Charging from November 1st through November 28th at 13 cents per kwh has cost $17.94 cents. Plugging in every night has not been needed and I have not needed a public fast charger. All charging has been done on a 120 volt outlet.
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With the rise of electric vehicles, many people are concerned of the battery range and the accuracy. The company statistics are not matching with now many owners are documenting their real-life scenarios in the Mini Cooper SE. After researching my original project plan and taking ownership of my Mini SE since late August, I have made several conclusions:
1) In the EV market you don’t find much information on non-Tesla EV’s and need more people sharing their experience. Finding several bloggers that were able to get battery range that was greater than the manufacture estimated numbers was inspiring as this was not the case on other cars. In the last 2 months this was not something that I was able to replicate myself and I seemed to stay at or below the estimated range even with conservative suburban driving. However, on a personal note, I have found that I don’t like recording myself so my thoughts of vlogging will not happen, occasionally sharing news and important events that could help others I am good at and more than willing to be transparent with. 2) Making an app on my own is hard and time consuming. Seeking help is ok. With my existing computer knowledge, I will need to work a lot more to be able to achieve this on my own by taking a coding class. Linked in offers some classes to introduce you to the language involved for coding and even names some advanced series that step you through apps if you are already familiar with programing. I still would like to work with someone to get an app made. 3) The existing Mini app provides no useful features. Without seeing how the app works with a nonelectric Mini Cooper, my assumptions are that the only difference is that I can see my current state of charge, if my car is plugged in, and how much/often/where I have charged each month. I can only use this data to spread awareness and gain more traction to seek better features from Mini USA to improve the app as the car doesn’t give much more data than that and leaves much to be desired when someone is in the market for an EV. 4) The youngest generation is the most willing to learn and understand. They follow the understanding on how the braking system helps so it is more efficient at lower speeds and less efficient at higher speeds unlike an internal combustion engine. Engaging children in things they are interested in makes it easy to get them to work on ones they are not, like bringing math into cars to have them find out if you can make a road trip or how long it will take you to charge. Even without my final goal of programing or building an app to pass that knowledge onto children, using EV’s in the new world of driving and teaching is inspiring. Overall, even with the Mini Cooper’s limited range compared to other EV’s and currently not being able to replicate results of other drivers, this car has satisfied all my daily driving needs. |