Cheezzeee home charge station

Done (as usual) the not so fancy way...

I've actually gotten questions about this and while it was just Maximum Expediency(tm) on my part I guess some details are in order:

It's just the EVSE (Charger cord) that came with the car, as modified by EVSE Upgrade (see earlier post HERE) and a white plastic desk-side trash basket
...tweaked a bit with some shears, a coat-hook and an old plastic flowerpot.

The rim and part of the side were cut off the trash basket and the bottom removed from the flowerpot (to create the 'holster') If you click on the picture you'll get more detail...
I needed a couple screws into the upper corners and it was hard to get those in, thus the holes you can see in the front. Those two screws plus the ones on the coat-hook are all that holds it to the wall.
The flower pot has the bottom cut off and a couple zip-ties hold it in place.
Hard to see, but there's a little block glued to the concrete in the lower right corner that keeps the garage door from coming down all the way. Even if your door doesn't normally close all that hard, it's sure to smash down harder on occasion. Smashing high current cords...can't be good...
One thing to think about: You don't want that cord exposed to strong sun for a long period every day. Couple years of that and you'll be looking at cracks. I'm guessing cracks and water are a bad combination...

Pricing: New, Used and the vicious depriciation curve

First a short update on where new prices seem to be going: (subject to change, obviously)
Update to the update: O'Brian Mitsubishi (the 'home' dealer Mitsu-USA in Normal IL) seems to have the most new 2016 stock. I do not have any information on anyone's purchasing experiences with them. They quote a price of $12.9K which is not 'real' (It's after the federal credit)
As of last check they still had a dozen or so 2016's at around $20K. Even if you can't get exactly this deal, it does provide a useful 'line in the sand' for other negotiations. With around $1200 in delivery costs you're looking at a total around $21.2K, less the Federal Tax Credit of $7500 your final cost should be around $13,800-ish. Not bad, however, do keep an eye on what's happening on the used market. New LEAF's are also reduced somewhat and are now at these same levels for 2013 and 2014 models with low (under 10K miles) on them.

As mentioned in a previous post linked here, the depreciation curve for mass market electric vehicles doesn't look so hot. Tesla may (so far) be the exception. Everyone else is suffering a combination of things that drag the used valuations down; including but not limited to:
Battery life fears - The manufacturers seem to have roughly standardized on the 8yr/100K mi. battery warranty. This appears to have made the depreciation curve considerably steeper than 'normal.'
Off-Lease glut - When the manufacturers had some periods of slow unit sales a couple years ago they responded by offering amazingly low lease deals. This also helped with the customer's battery life fears issue(s). The result was a larger than normal percentage of these cars being leased rather than bought outright.  Now all those leased vehicles are reaching the end of their 2 or 3 year lease periods and showing up on the used market. This is probably pushing used prices down $3-5K.
Obvious price adjustments - Pretty much everyone knows about the $7500 Federal Tax Credit, so you have to start the depreciation assumptions from (at the very least) that amount below the average new selling cost. There were also lots of relatively large dealer incentive/rebates flying around at various times, some as high as 30% off. This appears to have also affected prices by several thousand.

So what happens when you add all that up? The volume of iMiEV's is low enough that randomness and local influences have had significant impact on used pricing. Still; You probably shouldn't pay much more than $7-8K for even a great condition, under 10K mi. used 2014 iMiev.
The LEAF market is much bigger and the pricing there pretty much matches expectations: Lets say your 2013 LEAF was $33K minus some rebates and with the tax  credit we're around $23K. Applying a steeper than average depreciation curve to the three years that's been out and a couple thousand for the other factors and we're probably looking at $11K-$15K as the current price for that car.
"That's Terrible!!" well, only if you're the seller. If you're the buyer it's GREAT.

Reality check: Good friend of mine just took delivery of a 2013 LEAF with under 5000 miles on it and near showroom condition. Not the bottom model either. Thanks to carlypso.com (now defunct) he paid $12.5K plus around $600 for delivery (they're based in CA). This car is in REALLY nice condition too. Delivery and transactions went pretty much without a hitch (it was a couple days late getting here.)
Looking at their website, that's a little below the average for the many LEAF's on there.
Not bad at all.

Oh Batteries my Batteries...

So it's been like almost two years since the last blast about batteries on here. Have we learned anything new?
Maybe not much new, but there's been enough learning (and failures) out there to get a little more nuanced impression regarding what's working and what is not. The greatest depth and variety of information comes (pretty obviously) from the Nissan LEAF universe, since in the U.S. there about a hundred LEAF's running around for every one iMiEV.  People will argue that since the battery configuration and chemistry and battery management systems aren't the same we can't make 100% exact comparisons with 'our' car. True, but it's close enough (90-95%?) that we can sure learn stuff from there.

Some people have done 'everything right' and still had their battery packs fail. Hey, there's a lot of cells in each pack. Even with REALLY good quality control you're going to have the occasional outright failure. That doesn't mean you shouldn't treat your pack at least somewhat nicely, just that it won't guarantee zero failures.
No surprise.
Other people appear to abuse their battery pack consistently with no consequences (yet). How can that be? Well, that's probably due to the design engineers not being completely stupid. Their job was to make the pack last through the 8 year 100,000 mile warranty. They know that letting you charge absolutely completely full and then discharge to absolutely completely empty will result in a pack that only lasts a couple hundred cycles at best.  So to achieve their goal they have made it so you can't really charge up all the way (even though it says 'full') or discharge all the way. Basically you're allowed to run your pack from about 95% full down to about 10% full. Actually it's about 15-20% when the Turtle kicks in and you only get 80% full if you're on fast charge, but you get the idea.
"So how come it's called a 16 KWh (kilo watt hour) pack if I only get to use 13-14 KWh out of it?" 16 KWh is the minimum that qualifies you for the full federal tax credit. Yes it's really that simple.

Even if the engineering whiz kids have designed the whole system so that making it to 100K miles or 8 years is highly probable, we gotta ask ourselves "How do I get to 12 years or 200K Miles?"
Let's back up for a minute:

If the cells that make up our battery pack are 'rated' for say 1000 cycles (I don't know what the actual number is, 1000? 2000? this is just an example) even that is probably under some sort of 'ideal' conditions that have no connection with reality. This doesn't matter much. Why not? Because we already know the battery is good for hundreds of thousands of  'cycles.' It just depends on how you define cycle. While driving, every time you let off the 'go' pedal or step lightly on the brake the regenerative braking system is charging the battery. Then you start accelerating again, you're discharging. This happens a LOT of times per day for most of us. It's a real world example of something battery engineers have known for a long time: The deeper the discharge, the fewer cycles you'll get. Fortunately much of the 'life reduction' occurs near the limits of fully charged or fully discharged. ...and the engineers already won't let us play too close to those limits, though it turns out we can be nicer than that.

Another thing we can look at is how much current (power) we can pull out of the batteries all at once. We look at this in relation to the total battery pack capacity, around 50 Amp/Hours in our case. This is referred to as one 'C'. For this type of cell it's generally agreed that you can go up to a discharge rate of 3C (three times the 'one hour rate') without causing any damage to the cells. You may have noticed the charge-discharge 'power' meter on the dash. It has three divisions on the power (discharge, right-most) side of the meter roughly corresponding to 50, 100 and 150 Amps. So the system is built so you can't go much beyond 150 Amps (3C) regardless. That's also why the acceleration ramps up somewhat slowly when you tromp on the 'go' pedal. This keeps the peak current draw down to a non-damaging level and also keeps the tires from disappearing in a cloud of smoke ...and you stay on the road. You'll also find the system automatically reduces the current when you reach 'Turtle' mode (near-empty), and that's a good thing. We can, however, be a Nicer Turtle and avoid going above the 100Amp line when we're down below four bars on the battery gauge.

Charging: The amount of charge, how fast, temperature and how long it sits fully charged are all important variables in this equation.  Generally speaking a relatively slow rate of charge (8-15 Amps) at a relatively mild temperature (40-85 Deg.F) is kindest to the battery. Since the built in charger is limited to 3300 Watts (about 13A at 240V in.) anything it can do is fine. All we really need to do is control temperature and amount of charge.
Over the last couple years it's become pretty obvious that high charge (or discharge) rates at very high (over 100)  or very low (below 20 Deg.F) temps is not so good for the battery. What is perhaps more surprising is that it's also quite bad to leave the car fully charged when it's going to sit at relatively high temperatures for any extended length of time (over a couple hours or on a regular basis) People have managed to knock 20% or more off their battery life (also referred to as 'degradation') in a year or so of leaving their LEAF out fully charged or just completing full charge in areas of Arizona that have high daily temps. (110F or above.) "So what should I do in that situation?" Don't charge above 80% (14 bars) if it's real hot out or you're going to let it heat-soak in a very hot parking lot for a long period. "But I need all of that full charge to get home with the AC on!" 
Sounds like you bought the wrong car.
Granted the iMiEV has a certain amount of thermal management (basically running the AC during charge to keep the battery cooler) on models equipped with Fast Charging [CHAdeMO, some 2012's and all 2014 and 2016's.] How effective is it? We don't really know, and it doesn't fix the hot-soak after charging problem regardless. This is something it's at least possible to track, see the CaniOn post.
Another thing that's not completely obvious is that the folks who only drive a short distance and then plug it right in every day and let it charge fully are probably not doing their battery a favor... as you might have guessed from the above. Even in cooler climates having it basically sit all the time at full charge probably won't help the battery life much and may actually shorten the life somewhat. If they were charging to only 80% (14 bars) all the time then there wouldn't be a problem. [The 2012 and 2013 LEAF's actually have a setting that allows that to be the default behavior. This got dropped in 2014 due to some stupidity at the EPA.] No problem though, iMiEV's come with a remote control.

"So to sum up, how do you plan to keep your iMiEV running to 200K miles?"
I don't think I will reach 200K. At 9-10K per year that would be well over 20 years. I strongly suspect it will be done in by simple chemical aging, partially due to unavoidable thermal cycling, before then.
Having it sit in an air-conditioned/heated garage kinda defeats the whole purpose, no?
That said, I'll try to get it to last as long as possible:
Mostly I'm a 'Nicer Turtle.'
I don't run it hard when the battery is low.
I only rarely let it get below 4-5 bars on the battery gauge.
I rarely let it charge over 14 bars (out of 16)
About once a month (or two) I run it down to 2 bars and then give it a full charge. "But you said... uh, why?"
Running it down to Two, where the display starts flashing, causes the battery gauge to reset it's 'expectations' when it gets a full charge immediately after. Granted the factory folks only want you to do that once a year or so, but it seems to happen, just in real life every month or two. ...and you DO want to give it a full charge occasionally (I let it go to 'full' every week or two) since that's when the cell-to-cell equalization system kicks in. See the old battery post for details on equalization.

Newbies:
In fact if I had a new iMiEV that had been sitting on the dealer's lot for awhile, I'd tend to make the first ten or so charges 'all-the-way-to-full' one's (just however much you happen to use it every day then let it charge full) and then have ONE run-it-down-to-two and then full charge during the first couple weeks of ownership just to make sure the battery cells were equalized and the system was properly reset.
Then shift over to staying in the 4-14 bar range as much as possible.
"How do I keep the charge from going over 14 bars?"  That's what the little remote control is for. With my particular car and my charger I know I need a bit over 6 hours to go from 4-5 bars to 14. I just set the start and end times to get that result. You'll learn all this over the first couple weeks.
And BTW: Don't freak out, unless you're running it deep into turtle mode every day for weeks, you're unlikely to do serious lasting damage. They did a pretty good job on the design.

Advice: Used? Uh, maybe not.

Note that as of May 1st there were still 5 2016 iMiEV's for below $20K at the northern MN dealer linked below.
Including transportation from there and fees you're looking at about $21.3K or $13,800 after tax considerations. That ain't bad at all, and the dealer has proven very willing to deal with out of state buyers and arranging transportation (which works out to $1200-1300ish if you're not in too big a hurry)
 Edit: EXPIRED:  Some of the US 2014 iMiEV inventory was  sporting $8000 off pricing.
This results in a new 2014 going for $15,995.
Assuming you qualify for the federal tax credit of $7500 that puts the price down to $8500ish.
Granted that's for units in northern Minnesota and it could cost a grand (easily) to get it here and there's issues with sales tax & etc. but wow, $8.5K.
Too bad they're all gone.  They do have a couple 2016's listed at $19,995 which if nothing else makes a good number to beat local dealers over the head with. Due to transportation costs and unit volume these things are a little more expensive in the Pacific NW, so maybe $21K is more likely. That's about $13.5K after tax credit (assuming you qualify for all of it). ...Which isn't all that bad, basically the same I paid for mine 2+ years ago, but it ain't no $8.5K. Oh well.
This really highlights the tradeoffs between iMiEV and LEAF. Is it better to find a used LEAF for $11-13K (see 'Reality Check below and the 'Edit' at the bottom of the post) or try and find a 2016 iMiEV for $13-14K?   That would be a tough call for me, especially against the 2013 LEAF.
Note: Buddy of mine just got a low miles used 2013 LEAF SV off CARlypso.com for $12.5K plus delivery. Deals are out there...


Yes, long time no post. Still humming along. Not much to report.
There will be an update on battery instrumentation (Canion) coming out soon.

I've talked to a couple folks within the last month who were/are interested in getting an iMiEV. "Sure, they're great" is pretty much what I said. Then we do a little searching and... there aren't any more new 2014's left in the state, and very few anywhere. There -might- be 2016's trickling in eventually, but that could be quite a wait.
"So what about a used one?"
"Well, maybe at the right price."
"What would a good price be?"
Hmmm lets do a little digging. A new 2012 bought in mid 2013 with all the dealer incentives and tax credits would have a net cost of around $13.8-$14K, assuming the buyer was paying attention, [and we don't want to be paying for other people's inattention here.] Battery pack replacements (at the dealer, maybe less elsewhere) are running about $14K. Translation: The 'used' value of the car at the end of the 8 year 100K mile warranty should be pretty darn low. If we overlay  a pretty normal looking depreciation curve for general autos on top of these figures I would come up with an eyeball estimate of around $7K-$9K that I would be more or less comfortable paying now. I think the NADA book has them around $6K as a trade in value.
Lets look at the actual used market: Within 400-500 miles there are somewhere over a dozen of these for sale, priced from $11K through $16K with mostly 10-20 thousand miles on them. Huh, that's a bunch more $$ than I'd be happy with. Looking further out (U.S.wide) there's a dozen or so between $7K-8K and another dozen in the $8K-9K ranges, so it looks like the overall market has figured this out. None of them were over 20K miles either.

Reality check:
2012 Nissan Leafs that were about $25K after all the credits are fetching $12K-$13K with 20-30K miles on them. That would actually argue for the $8K number on the iMiEV being a bit high. I would argue that the MUCH larger number of Leaf sales have resulted in a more mature (read: realistic) market. Sounds about right to me.

So would I get a used iMiEV for $10-11K? Maybe if it's a 2014. Certainly not for a 2012.
I might try to find a nice 2012 with 10K mi. on it and offer $6K-7K. -OR-
I'd be even more likely to try and find a Leaf with similar miles for $11-13K.
Traitor!!?    I think not.
Nobody I know will argue that the Leaf isn't a better car for most uses. Better dealer/repair network too. It's just that they were $2X too much. Now that isn't true, I'd consider one. Especially if it hasn't lived in a hot climate and has been treated to a reasonable charge regimen. And hey, if it was me I'd hold out for a 2013 LEAF SV, nationwide there's dozens of them under $14K

[Edit: New info: It was just pointed out to me that one of the main reasons 2012 Nissan LEAF prices have dropped so much recently is the large volume coming off lease. Since the same thing is likely to happen to the 2013's here in a couple months it might be worth the wait, The improved charger and heating systems on the SV model are worth something... FYI I'm not a fan of the 2014 since they removed the automatic 80% charge option, which was a real help to the battery life for those of you who weren't in need of full charge range regularly. See the CaniOn post about using LeafSpy to evaluate battery packs.]

CaniOn Rocks!

OK this is just flat out cool.
There's a free application for your Android Smartphone/Tablet that allows you to look at most all the information that the car's computer system(s) know about in real time. You need an appropriate Android based tablet or phone with Bluetooth and a Bluetooth ODBII connector that plugs into your car.  Data includes individual cell voltages and temps, yes 88 of them at once, so you can see how your battery pack is doing. Current usage and watt/hr/mile and charge history and more other data then you'll ever have use for.
This might seem like overkill, but being able to peek into your battery pack while the car is running can give you way more information about pack health than even the dealer can get. Since most of the dealers don't have good battery testing facilities and are not doing anything significant in terms of yearly maintenance anyway (not to mention that the idiots keep sending coupons for oil changes - etc.), this becomes doubly important.
One other important thing is it can show you the actual battery capacity% so you can gauge how much (if any) your pack had degraded. The LEAF actually has a (somewhat crude) dash display for that but even there it's worth looking at the details. This is especially important if looking at a used one. LeafSpy is the equivalent app for the LEAF. See below.

CaniOn on Google Play store. Free (but you should donate!) and HERE is the ScanTool MX Bluetooth ODBII connector that worked (there are apparently others but they were all more expensive than the $70 here.) The cheap ELM327 based connector I had didn't work.
Issues: There is no 'Miles' mode. KM only (you can do the math.)  We couldn't get it to work with tablets that have the more square-ish (4:3) displays. The ones with a 16:9 worked: 848x480 and 1280x720 worked but 1024x768 didn't. The rare tablet with a RockChip processor didn't work either, though that may be version dependent. YMMV as usual.
The ScanTool MX adapter has the additional advantage that it has a 'sleep' mode so it won't drain your battery. If you're using one of the ELM327 ones you should unplug it after use.
Plug in, Turn on and Sync up! No, it won't damage your car's computer, well, unless you deliver a big static charge zap when you plug it in. Watch out for that on cold dry days...

Leaf Spy Info at MyNissanLeaf.com which is a site you should certainly be looking at if you're a Leaf owner. The interesting thing about this is that it was built from the ground up to use the ELM327 el-cheapo Bluetooth ODBII adapters you can get from Amazon and various Chinese vendors for $20 and under. The exact same ones that won't work with CaniOn. This makes the Leaf battery app 'Lite' a somewhat cheaper alternative than the iMiEV focused stuff.

If you're going to buy a used EV, I highly recommend having one of these this apps and adapter so you can check out the battery pack under all conditions like: Low battery level (mostly discharged, near 'Turtle' mode) under load. Monitor during charge. Look at temperatures during charge equalization as you approach 100%. Battery variance throughout the process, and capacity remaining once charged. Yes this will take -hours- but buying a car with bad cell(s) would be an even bigger bummer. You can also look at the charge history using the app. Like almost anything cool, functional and low cost, it's not available for iPhone. You'll be in the odd situation of knowing more about the used car you're looking at than any buyer of a 'regular' car would know...