9,999.9 Anxious

2nd June 2012
We’re at 9,999.9 miles, but only for a moment as the counter rolls round to 10,000 miles, making it time for the ActiveE to go for its second service.
I have to admit to learning something recently and I’m not sure I want to put that into words but, I feel that I need too. Firstly, let me say how much I still miss the MINI E and would be more that happy to have it back again, after all it’s just so much fun to drive. Yes the ActiveE is fun to drive too but it does’t have that quirky fun that the MINI E had. Well here goes… I believe the MINI E is where range anxiety came from.
The MINI E would often say it had 120 miles of range but would quickly lose those miles, especially on the motorway and when using the heater. The MINI E also seemed to pick up miles when stopped and turned off (I’d often return to the MINI E and find myself with a few extra miles) but they weren’t “sticky” miles and disappeared very quickly. We’ve found that the ActiveE reports a more accurate mileage and also seems more conservative with its miles. I know the ActiveE is more aerodynamic than the MINI E was and has temperature controlled batteries so it should do a better job of managing its batteries, but it seems an awfully lot better. Read below for our adventure with the ActiveE and see just how good its range is… well for a 100 mile range car that is.
The scenario – We were going away for a night to celebrate our wedding anniversary in Greenwich Connecticut and a quick check on Google maps, says that it’s a 68 mile “ish” trip – but we were undecided as to which car to take? Hmm decisions, decisions! The Tesla – certainly no worries on the range with this choice. Or the ActiveE – we’ve recently seen range as low as 78 and as high as 95, so could be close. The journey should be within the range of the ActiveE, as long as there are no major detours. Well life is for living, so decision made, we’ll take the ActiveE and see how it goes. We had rung ahead to check with the hotel to see if they had anywhere to charge, they said they had plenty of sockets that we could use, so there would be no issues with charging. We figured if we used around 70 miles we would need about 20 hours charging time charging on 110v; Perfect! Oh hang on, we’ve never used the 110 charger, does it work? We’ve only ever used it as a prop at Green Fairs. We tried it out a couple of days before the trip and thankfully it works.


The hotel was lovely and our room had a view of the harbour. Breakfast on the balcony overlooking the harbour… bliss.

We have more trips in the planning stage now that we know the range and reliability of the ActiveE.

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