Field Trip!!!! The LEAF to Manhattan!

I am fortunate to be off from work today to celebrate Martin Luther King. To help recognize the day we took a field trip to the New York Historical Society In addition to their MLK exhibit, we spent quite some time in the Rogers Groups exhibit [Our family owns about 20 Rogers Groups - a story for another day].

Originally I was going to park in a parking garage with a Chargepoint or Beam charging station.  The Customer Service person at Beam was really helpful in finding a parking garage near where we were going, but we didn't need to.  We made the 40 mile round trip with plenty of charge to spare when we got home so we parked in the closes garage to our destination.

We left the house with a 73 mile range, drove into Manhattan mostly via highway using ECO Mode averaging 50 MPH, except for the last 7 city blocks off the Westside Highway.  We used heated seats and the heated steering wheel because we had preheated the cabin using shore power and we really didn't need to use the heater.  We arrived at the parking garage beneath the American Museum of Natural History with 57 miles of range remaining (we only used 17 miles of our original range to drive 20 miles!!!!).

The garage scene was a blast.  The attendants asked me to leave the key in the ignition... Here's where it got fun.  It took showing them how to start and turning off the LEAF before they realize this was no ordinary car.  Once they found out the LEAF was 100% battery electric, all the attendants agreed it was the coolest car they have seen in awhile.

On the ride home we got on the highway and immediately blew past a Volt in the slow lane.  I beeped my horn in respect as we passed by.  Confident there was ample charge, I averaged 60+ mph and we had the heat on the entire trip.  We arrived home with 24 miles of range left and we averaged 3.5 miles/kwhr.

I will definitely do this trip again.

JS