Charging toward independence (of gas)

The 240-volt charger for my old Mini-E.

Happy Fourth of July!

Given the day off, I've decided to tackle the issue of charging my Ford Focus Electric at home. And thankfully, it's not that much of a chore!

You see, as a BMW Mini-E Cooper electric pioneer back in 2009 I've had a 240-volt charger already! As part of the program, BMW had an electrician come in, inspect my home's main electric panel (to see if it could handle the load of 240-volts at 40 amps!), and arrange for all the paperwork with the city of New York.

And although I have a (detached) garage, BMW had the certified electrician to come, run the (maximum of) 30-feet of wire from my panel to the outside side of my house next to the driveway and install the Clipper Creek CS-40 electric vehicle charging station (EVCS)—for free! That's a savings of over $1,750, folks! (Although many will contest that "free" meant paying an exorbitantly high monthly lease price for BMW's experimental car!)

First Impressions of the Ford Focus Electric

(Image: Courtesy of Ford's press site)

I had a chance to take my Ford Focus Electric on a short trip to work—a "trial run" of my daily commute. The test run was done for a number of reason, including the fact that there's a 240-volt charger which I've still got to "fix" at my house. (More on that later.) But the short, one-way drive (30 miles) on a Saturday—and some even shorter drives around the office—gave (and cemented) some initial impressions of my new Ford.

They are:

And away we go...

On Friday 22 June 2012, I did something I have never done before in my entire 44+ years of life.

I bought a Ford Focus—an all-electric, battery-powered Ford Focus.

One of the amazing thing about this car—which I leased for three years rather than bought to own outright—is indeed the fact that it does NOT use a single drop of gasoline. But I was previously one of 500 "pioneers" for BMW/Mini and drove an all-electric Mini Cooper for a year. So, as a pioneering techie, an all-electric is nothing terribly exciting to me. (Exciting, yes. But not completely earth-shattering!)