Soul EV - This Generation's Electric Vehicle

This is not our first EV, we've had a Nissan Leaf since 2011 and we have been very happy with the Leaf. At the time we purchased the Leaf there weren't many options if you wanted to get a production EV.

2011 Nissan Leaf, our first EV

The Chevy Volt and the Tesla Roadster, if I remember correctly, were the only other choices. The Model S was not out yet, and the Tesla Roadster was not practical. The Volt suffered a similar problem, seating for four; we're five. Toyota had a very limited run RAV4 EV for lease until 2003, so this was not an option for us.

Three years after driving the Nissan Leaf for a little over 26K miles we decided to look into getting a new EV. I looked at the 2015 Leaf, but it just didn't excite me enough. It looks the same. A quirky, even goofy looking car; the Nissan isn't ugly it's just not very appealing.

1969 Datsun Fairlady Z (S30) Known in the US as a 240Z

I remember in the 60 & 70s when Nissan was still Datsun, I always thought they made the ugliest Japanese cars. Except for the S30. That was a nice sports car.

Last week I decided to look into the new 2015 EVs and stumbled across the KIA Soul EV. Timing IS everything. They had just started getting them to their dealers here in NoCal. I searched for any dealer that would have them available and found that Capitol KIA in San Jose had two of them available for test drive. I think they may be getting more of the Soul EVs than other dealers in the area.

2015 KIA Soul EV

Mind you, there was nothing wrong with our Nissan Leaf. We just figured if we could get the new KIA for at/or below what we were still paying for our Leaf - it would be a "No Brainer." New EV with zero miles, new larger battery... no brainer.

I hooked up with Eric Lam - the Internet Sales Manager (they are all Managers nowadays) Click his name to email him. Eric is cool. I can't say enough good things about him. I realize that many people would never describe a car salesman as cool, but this guy knows the KIA Soul EV like the back of his hand. The buying experience was very pleasant, considering it was a car purchase.

Full disclosure: I was a car salesman back in the 80s, and the saying goes that salespeople are the easiest people to close on a sale. I don't consider myself easy to close, but I'm not flustered by salespeople trying to close a sale. I understand where they are coming from. It's like Ying and Yang, two opposing forces. You want the car for as little as possible, he wants to sell it for as much as possible. Maybe it's more like Sun Tzu's the Art of War...

We ended up getting the KIA Soul EV Saturday Oct. 18th. We have not had any buyers remorse as of today. I'll let you know how it goes as we drive without any GASOLINE for another 3 years. I love the feeling. Keep your crude oil, I'm not buying any more gasoline!

Drive a Little, Drive a Lot: 100 miles on a KIA Soul EV

Yesterday I had to deliver a Hard Drive to a client just east of Livermore, CA. I decided this would be a good opportunity to do an actual "miles driven" test for my KIA Soul EV.

OK, to all you Engineers and Scientists out there that would tell me that my odometer isn't accurate and that I need to measure other variables to make this a repeatable and scientifically accurate average, I say - poppycock - this endeavor is just a way for me to get rid of my range anxiety once and for all. Trust me, I won't be driving to Livermore every day.

My wife and I drive our children back and forth to school and to all their daily activities in our EV. I do the occasional errand and do the shopping, but normally all within the city. We hardly ever leave San Francisco. I've often said, "...in a city seven miles by seven miles having an EV is a no-brainer."

I drive less than your average 55+ male. The national average for my age group is 15K miles a year. I'm guessing they are including vacation driving in that figure. We drove our Nissan Leaf EV for three years and only reached 26k miles. Do the math. That is lower than 15K a year and a little lower than the national average of 36.5 miles a day for US urban based cars, according to the US Department of Transportation's 2009 National Household Travel Survey.

http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/stt.pdf

Before taking off I calculated distance and I searched for the nearest charging station to Livermore. I used ChargePoint, Volta and PlugShare, which was recommended to me by my friend Jason Jungreis who is a member of www.ggeva.org

I thought I might find a charger near a grocery store, on the way back, so I could complete my food shopping for the week - kill two birds.

Alameda was a perfect mid-point for this, and they have a Trader Joe's and Safeway together with two FREE Volta charging stations - just in case I needed a boost to make it home.

Driving toward Livermore I used the cruise-control and set the speed at 63 mph with the occasional passing or slowing for traffic conditions. There were some slow spots due to commuters and one or two fender benders. Once I made it to Livermore I had enough range left to make it home, according to the KIA guess-o-meter.

I got to Alameda and visited with a good friend then headed for the South Shore Center to do my shopping. Both charging stations were busy, no problem, the KIA indicated plenty of miles left to make it to SF.

When I got back to SF I still had close to 18 miles left on the GOM so I drove around until I got tired of aimless driving and made it home with enough to drive back to Alameda, theoretically of course.

The warning message came up incessantly after hitting 20mi range - a bit annoying 

Guess-o-meter reads 15mi left with 100.3mi driven

Next week we are going to visit our daughter in Santa Cruz, CA. We'll see if I can get it closer to 115mi.

When I tell people I own an electric vehicle they normally ask - "What do you do if you want to drive to Los Angeles?" I always retort "...when was the last time YOU drove to L.A.?" Most people drive less than 50 miles a day during the week. The truth is that electric vehicles are feasible for most Americans. Now with the KIA EV you can rest assured you can drive at least 100 miles every day.

You want to drive to Los Angeles - rent a car, or like me, own a second vehicle for driving long distances.

Drive Farther for FREE

My daughter is a Slug, which means she attends UC Santa Cruz. Our family lives almost 80 miles north of Santa Cruz, in San Francisco. In the last two months we have dropped her off and taken the round trip ride in our 100% electric KIA Soul EV, two times. 

On our way to UCSC

My wife and I took turns driving her down. I may have planned it a little more carefully, but both instances were quite enjoyable and uneventful. I took our daughter on the first trip and once again I used PlugShare to plan the trip. We arrived in Santa Cruz and had close to twenty miles left on the guessometer. This gave me plenty of range to find another free charging station in the vicinity, in case the one I was planning on using were to be busy or not working.

Luckily the charger I found on PlugShare was available and we were able to charge while my daughter and I watched a movie. Afterwards we had dinner and did some shopping downtown.


OK, this is big: FREE charging! Problem is, the particular parking garage I used, Soquel & Front Garage, will not offer free parking & charging for much longer. Come January 2015 they will start charging for parking. I believe the charging will still be free. 

Today almost every city in California has EV charging stations, many of them FREE. If you plan your trip carefully you can drive to places that once seemed too far for an EV. It will just take a little longer because you have to account for charging time. Not a big deal when you consider the cost for charging half of the trip? FREE.

My daughter and I had a nice time in Santa Cruz and she had the chance to get some inexpensive pants at the Heavenly Couture store. Hey, $16 or less!

On my Wife's trip they had dinner and went Christmas shopping. They did have to spend extra time driving around looking for an available charger. ( what did you expect would happen during the busiest shopping season? ) All in all, they had a good time and were able to charge The KIA for FREE.

OK, so it's not the same as driving there and back on an internal combustion gasoline vehicle. Yes, you can get there and back much faster in a conventional gas engine, but what's the hurry? Plan to stay for a couple of hours - slow down, live a little. Besides, FREE is FREE!

FREE local Volta charging station in Stonestown Galleria Mall in SF

Public charging stations in the Bay Area and beyond, thanks to PlugShare.com