#pastev

Service Stats

In Service Date: 2/6/2022 In Service Mileage: 195,455 Out of Service Date: 6/19/2022 Out of Service Mileage: 201,200 Service Life: 5 months,  5,745 miles

The History & Story

This car was owned by my friend Tyler in Chattanooga. He replaced it with a 2017 Chevy Bolt EV, and offered it to me for the incredibly low price of $1500. My intention was to fix the car up so it’d pass NC inspection (it had a MIL) and sell it to a friend of mine. Getting this thing fixed up was going to break me of ever touching anything with an internal combustion engine again.

Tyler was up front about the MIL, the non functional parking sensors, the body damage, cracked/leaking tail light, and the crack in the windshield. This car had been pretty much abused its whole life -- Tyler was the 4th or 5th owner, and he said the guy he bought it off of (something like 4 or 5 years ago) had never once plugged it in to charge. Despite that, if driven conservatively without climate control, you could pull 32 miles out of the originally rated 36 mile battery. Even to this day the car is able to make the drive from its new home in Durham to my home in Raleigh on just battery power.

So what all was triggering the MIL? Well, we had the P0CE0 code - which meant one of the coolant pumps was acting up, We also had a P0420 - catalyst below threshold (possible bad catalytic converter), codes for misfires, and a few other things. I called a local shop that specializes in hybrids and they agreed to look at it. Ultimately they said they weren’t comfortable working on the Chevy hybrid system and that if I could resolve the battery-related code (P0CE0) that they could work on the traditional engine-related stuff. Ok, off the Sir Walter Chevrolet we go...

I dropped the car off and had Brad drive me home on his lunch break (he worked for Team PowerSports down the street at the time). They told me it needed a catalytic converter, a battery cooling pump, they recommended spark plugs and a transmission fluid change. I approved replacing the coolant pump and nothing else, because they had a near $3000 repair order and I had a feeling that the catalytic converter wasn’t gone on this car. Sir Walter replaced the pump -- or so we thought -- for over $1000 cost and I then took it back to Torque to have the spark plugs replaced, transmission fluid changed, and to check the exhaust system and tell me if the car really needed a new catalytic converter.

Wouldn’t you know that my hunch paid off? The secondary air injection pump was leaking, if this pump malfunctions the system can’t properly check the catalytic converter’s exhaust to ensure it is meeting the targets. The SAI pump is integrated into the valve cover of the car and wasn’t an expensive part. They had to remove the valve cover anyway to do the spark plugs, so that saved a little labor costs. $900 later, the car is back with a warning. They drove it 30 miles but they can’t get the readiness to set -- the MIL is off, but it won’t pass inspection until the readiness registers are all set.

What are readiness registers, you ask? Your vehicle has 7 checks that must have a passed value in order to pass an OBD inspection. It turns out that the Volt requires a number of different driving cycles in order to set the registers. Driving it for 30 miles on the highway simple won’t set them, unlike most other internal combustion vehicles. I read a post about someone who had over 60,000 miles on their Volt and moved to a new state that required an emission inspection and he had to drive the car with a depleted battery for two days to set the registers. Apparently it needs to see low speed cold driving, highway driving at least 60mph, and a slew of other scenarios -- thankfully this was all well laid out by a forum post.

So over the next few days I drove the car in all the conditions and got the registers to set, except the MIL came back on for P0CE0 -- the HV Battery Cooling Pump. What the hell. So I call Sir Walter and I get the service manager and try to explain the situation, he cuts me off and says that they refuse to service this or any other vehicles that I own and I’m free to take it elsewhere. Apparently being called out for missing a leaking air pump during the 150-point inspection was triggering. I told him if he refused to correct this repair, which carries a year or 12,000 miles of warranty, I would be forced to dispute the charge with my credit card company. He said you’re welcome to do that and hung up on me. Needless to say, I will never patronize nor recommend anyone patronize Sir Walter Chevrolet of Raleigh.

I opened a dispute with Chase and they said they needed a second opinion on the repair. I was advised to take it to another dealership and have them evaluate if the pump in question was replaced. Off to Capital Chevrolet in Wake Forest. These folks were super, super nice and their shop is much cleaner and nicer than Sir Walter’s. I told the service advisor everything that was going on and what I needed, she said no problem we will get the Volt tech to check it out and call you. The next day, or perhaps the day after, I got a call with some fascinating news.

Sir Walter did replace a coolant pump - but they replaced the wrong one. The pump they replaced has two hose connections, the one they should have replaced has three. The best part? The part numbers for these two pumps are one sequential digit apart. Someone likely mistypes 8 instead of 9 and volia...the wrong part is ordered. They confirmed that the pump that circulates the coolant into the cabin heater was the pump replaced, and that the code stored in the ECU was for the battery circulation pump. They quoted me $800 to replace it -- turns out the part is $32 online and it’s mounted right on the passenger side firewall, immediately visible when you open the hood.

I declined the repairs, paid for the diagnostic and requested that they state in the RO that the wrong pump was replaced. They did as I asked, and they had charged the car for me before I picked it up. Super good experience, I will be back if I ever buy a Chevy again. So, now I have the evidence needed to win my dispute with Chase. It took a few weeks, but I did win the dispute and the $1000+ repair charge was refunded. But, we still have a bad pump to contend with...

The other issues this car had were minor. The passenger tail lamp and the reverse lamp needed to be replaced. I managed to score both parts on ebay for cheap, and paid my neighbor to install them for me at his body shop. So long as we could get the MIL to turn off, we could get the car inspected with a new owner (side note: out of state vehicles registered in NC have one year to become inspection compliant upon initial registration). Talking with Tyler, he said that the MIL would go off in the summer but always came back in the winter. He never cared since TN didn’t require an emission inspection.

I tried everything to reprogram the pump, and was about to pull the trigger on a new one when the MIL went out on its own one day. I decided that it was best to sell the car in June/July so that the P0CE0 would self-clear because apparently the pump doesn’t throw the code when it’s warm out (which is weird, but, whatever). So the plan was now to wait and see if the MIL would go out on its own, and if so to get it inspected with the next owner.

Meanwhile, as all this is going on, my tenant’s vehicle died on him. He’d quit his job and was doing DoorDash/Uber Eats/gig work and was in a panic. We lent him the car and he actually drove it past 200,000 miles - he put roughly 3,000 miles on it in less than two months. I didn’t want to hang on to this car forever, so I knew I needed to come up with a plan to enable me to sell it.

I sold the car to my pottery friend Brandon. Brandon already had a MATE ebike, and was fully sold on the idea of an electric car. He had an old, beat up 2006 Kia Sedona minivan that we managed to sell for $800. He agreed to pay the full amount we had in the car (about $2800), and he even had an exterior 120v outlet at his rental house to charge the car with. He got the vehicle titled in his name with a 10-day temporary tag and we took it over to the Volvo dealership by our house for an inspection. There was a moment of panic as the MIL lit up momentarily once it was pulled into the bay, but it went out after a few ignition cycles. Fortunately, it passed inspection and was given a permeant tag.

Brandon is very happy with the car. I think the fuel that was in the car when I sold it to him lasted him almost 4 months before he had to refill the car. He uses it in EV mode almost 100% of the time. The MIL is back on, and if it doesn’t go off when it’s time to renew his plate then we may end up replacing that pump -- I found a radiator shop that seemed open to installing the part after they did some quick research on the car.

Service Stats

In Service Date: 4/6/2016 In Service Mileage: 250 Out of Service Date: 9/23/2017 Out of Service Mileage: 5005 Service Life: 17 months,  4,755 miles

The History & Story

I was not always a motorcyclist. In fact when I met my husband I was very much against them, because I’d already flipped one and felt they were too dangerous. I had no idea that cleaning up the garage one day would change my opinion on motorcycles. While cleaning out the garage at his old townhouse, I came across a sealed turn signal lens cover that was too small for a car. I asked what this went to, and my husband stopped and dropped the box he was holding. He stared at the package I was holding between my fingers and took it from me never breaking eye contact with it. He then tells me this was the turn signal lens for Craig’s motorcycle. Ok, so, who is Craig?

Turns out Craig was one of his best friends in college. Craig died in a motorcycle accident. The day before Craig died, he and my husband skipped classes and hung out all day. The next day he was in the hospital after being struck by a vehicle. I’ll be honest I don’t know all the details, I do know that Craig was buried in Austin, TX and that my husband has a story about his funeral and the rental Mazda Miata he got from Enterprise to attend it.

So, great, I unearthed this rather sad memory. After I’m told this story my husband says that Craig had always said he’d teach him how to ride a motorcycle. I told him how I felt about that, but I could tell this wasn’t the last I’d hear about Craig and motorcycles. Not quite a year later, John shows me the website for Zero motorcycles and says he wants one of them to commute with. I was very, very much against it. However, over time, I caved in... happy spouse, happy life or some such saying. But we didn’t go straight for the Zero...

My husband started with a Sachs MadASS - think if Vespa and Ducati had a lovechild. It was a moped, but it looked like a motorcycle. I picked it up in Nashville, TN bringing back my dad’s old F150 and his 1986 VW Golf diesel to sell off for him. I forgot how long he rode that thing, but the next bike was a BMW 650CS, the short-lived City Sport commuter bike. I know he had this bike for a couple of years, and he was annoyed with it because he never took it on the highway (he had no reason to) and it didn’t like being used as a slow speed commuter. Often it would stall out going through intersections unless a friend of ours ran it on the highway once a month for us.

Fast forward to acquiring Gopher and saying goodbye to VW diesels. John had made friends with the sales guy at the local powersports dealer that sells Zeros, and that guy let him know they had a demo unit coming up for sale at a discount. Since I’d gone electric, it was only fitting that he did too. So we sold the BMW to someone from Maine who flew down and rode it back home and we hopped in the electric car to go buy an electric motorcycle.

I wish I could say that this bike was the end all be all, but it was really a headache from the start. We had numerous issues with the on board charger, the DC-DC converter, and I believe the main bike board failed on it at one point in time. There was a solid 4 months where we were riding the demo DSR instead of our SR because it was waiting on Zero to fix it. But more on that later.

During our time with it, both the powersports sales manager and my husband egged me on to ride it. I finally caved in because I felt it was like having a manual: you should be able to at least move it around your property. So I slowly started to learn to ride a two wheel vehicle again.

Fast forward to the EV Challenge the following year (2017). This event happened on the same day as “Tour de Brew,” a bicycle-based brewery tour that my husband was dying to attend. Because we had three vehicles to show (the BMW, the Smart, and the Zero motorcycle), we dropped the BMW off the night before with my husband’s bicycle stored in the back of it. The next morning I drove the Smart and he rode the Zero to the show grounds. In his haste to get to the starting line of the tour, he picked up the wrong Plug-in NC tote bag that had all the car keys in it instead of his bag with his wallet and gloves. I didn’t realize this until the end of the day, when it was time to pack up and leave.

I called him and he says he’s not far from campus -- over at a place off Lake Wheeler Rd, and that he thinks he left the key to the bike in its ignition. Sure enough, it was there. He said to just hop on it and ride over to pick up the car keys. I said no, I’m in toe shoes and shorts and I don’t know that your helmet will fit. He said well you can ride over here or you can wait two more hours for this to be over. I decided to see if his helmet would fit.

I hopped on the bike and said a small prayer, turned the key and twisted the throttle. Away I went -- I only needed to go 2 miles to get the keys. No big deal. I got there, got the keys, and then took a 10-mile detour to get back to the cars. Turns out, I really liked how the Zero rode. 

I loved it so much, I rode it home and promptly laid it down in my driveway, gently. There wasn’t much damage...

After this we started trading off on Tuesdays. I’d take the bike to work, he’d take my car to work and then his run club event afterwards. We did this for a short time before he decided that commuting with a motorcycle was stupid, and he wanted a convertible smart car instead. I started riding the bike on Tuesdays, and Sundays, and before long I was ready to try and do a long ride with it.

In 2017, Lidl opened their first store in Sanford, North Caroilina. I decided that I wanted to ride the Zero there -- it was 40 miles -- then ride it to my friend’s house in Durham. I remember I used my Pebble smart watch to assist with the turn by turn directions, and I was terrified on the few stretches of 55mph roads I had to be on. However I managed to make it to the Lidl, pick up some mixers, and head to my friend’s home in Durham unscathed. 

But sadly, the battery management on these early units was really problematic. A few weeks after this successful long ride, I had attended a meeting in Burlington with the Triad Auto Association on the Zero. On my way back home I was going to again stop at my friend’s home in Durham (this was my weekend thing for many years), and as I was 2 miles from his house the battery went from 7% to 0% and stranded me in Durham.

Service Stats

In Service Date: 8/16/2018 In Service Mileage: 175 Out of Service Date: 3/15/2020 Out of Service Mileage: 13,200 Service Life: 21 months,  13,025 miles

The History & Story

The Sunday that the Zero overheated on a sub-120 mile day, I went to Team PowerSports the following Tuesday and test rode the Eva. I took her home on Thursday and proceeded to add over 200 miles to the odometer by Sunday. Everything about this bike was better than the Zero: range, charging time, top speed, power, handling, and above all it felt like it fit someone of my size. 

I did a lot of trips with this machine. IKEA, Myrtle Beach, first bike I rode to Virginia, and did lots and lots of charging testing trips. 

This is also the bike that a ChargePoint CPE250 popped the HV DC charging fuse, which nearly left me stranded at the grand opening event for the location.

Service Stats

In Service Date: 9/8/2017 In Service Mileage: 393 Out of Service Date: 8/16/2018 Out of Service Mileage: 6,518 Service Life: 11 months,  6,125 miles

The History & Story

We kicked off National Drive Electric Week 2017 with buying a new Zero motorcycle. Like the last one, it was the dealer demo unit and we got it as a discount. We also managed to cash in on the federal rebate for two/three wheel EVs. This is the bike that I’d make my second Myrtle Beach by EV road trip.

I had no major problems with this bike, aside from hitting the limitations of its design: on days above 80F the battery pack would heat up to above 120F and would refuse to charge. 

This refusal to charge situation occurred for several reasons. One factor was that I was maxing out the payload for the motor, so it was always under a heavy load. Another factor was the lucite-sealed battery cells wrapped in a heat absorbing black metal case that is complete exposed to the sun. The two combined meant that you couldn’t do 200+ miles days from May to October.

The straw the broke the camel’s back was on August 12, 2018. It was a Sunday, overcast, 83F. I’d done my usual ride around Falls lake and ended at our Brunch spot. The bike Level 1 charged for less than 2 hours while we had lunch. Then I rode it -- on I-540, which is unusual for me but I was feeling fast ‘n furious today -- to my friend’s home in Durham for a pool party. I stopped at a Level 2 near his house for all of 10 minutes to go bump up my SOC so that I wouldn’t need to charge very long at his house. I get to his house and plug in, and the bike stopped charging within 2 hours of being plugged in. The bike was at 20% SOC - enough for me to get it home taking the slow backroads - and it was sitting at 120F after less than 120 miles ridden. 

Service Stats

In Service Date: 7/27/2020 In Service Mileage: 2,730 Out of Service Date: 3/10/2021 Out of Service Mileage: 3,194 Service Life: 7 months,  464 miles

The History & Story

I wrote up this story in a separate blog post. But I never did talk about the demise of this machine. So the DC-DC converter on it was faulty, as a result none of the 12v stuff worked on it -- no lights, horn, signals, ABS, etc. I managed to rig up a 12v battery to power these low voltage components and make it road worthy. I taught at least 5 people how to ride on it before I managed to fry the Main Bike Board while trying to repair the existing DC-DC converter on it.

After killing it to the point that it wouldn’t turned back on, I popped out the two batteries and sold them plus the off-board rapid charger to another Zero owner in March of 2021. Eric met me in Asheville, he lives in Oak Ridge TN, to pick up the batteries and the charger. His 2014 model bike’s batteries had finally worn down to the point that it was hard to make his 15 mile a day commute with the bike. He said the new to him batteries were giving him more than 50 miles of range, and that he was so happy he could keep his bike going a few more years.  

At the same time I found someone who wanted the motor for a conversion project on Reddit. I gave him the bike for free so long as he paid to have it hauled from North Carolina to Washington State. Believe it or not, he found someone to do it for a cheap price and they came with a big Dodge RAM and loaded the frame into the bed of the truck and took it to him. I never got an update on the conversion project, but I hope the motor is being put to good use.

Service Stats

In Service Date: 5/18/2019 In Service Mileage: 99 Out of Service Date: 9/15/2020 Out of Service Mileage: 37,455 Service Life: 1 year 6 months, 37,356 miles Avg. Miles/yr: ~28,000

The History & Story

I wrote up the reason behind buying this car in another blog post. The short of it is that I wanted to be able to test more of the Electrify America chargers that were coming online faster than I could do it with my Energica Eva motorcycle. This is the second third brand new car I’d ever bought in my life, and before taxes I financed less than $30,000 out the door and after tax credit the car cost me less than $22,000. The era of affordable electrics is upon us!

Fast forward to September 2020. I needed a vehicle more capable of towing (even after adding a hitch to this car). The Hyundai was sold a few days after I traded it in and was living in the Concord area until November, when the new owner rear ended somebody in traffic and totaled the car. I got a text message from the Hyundai connected services, which hadn’t been turned off yet because the title transfer hadn’t happened, that the vehicle had been in a collision. I ran a carfax report on the car in 2022 and found that after selling at auction for $23,000 it was exported to Lithuania. This car was enrolled in the Recurrent Battery Study and last reported a battery reading March of 2021. 

Service Stats

In Service Date: 7/30/2016 In Service Mileage: 13,134 Out of Service Date: 9/15/2020 Out of Service Mileage: 67,031 Service Life: 4 years, 53,892 miles Avg. Miles/yr: ~13,473

The History & Story

My husband, who works for a BMW dealer, brought home a dealer demo 2014 i3 Tera to drive while volunteering with a BMW Car Club of America Teen Driving School. I liked the car, but it reminded me of a pug and that made me take pause. It felt weird, and it was made with weird materials. But as my husband said, BMW’s attitude was “this is the future, deal with it.” Ah, so very German. What I remember of our weekend with the i3 was that using a long extension cord (which in hindsight we know wasn’t up to snuff to safely charge the car) will reduce the added range significantly. 

So why then, did I buy one? Well, the gas engine did mean I could road trip with it and keep transporting rescue animals on weekends. It also was going to do it cheaper than the Mazda5 we had at the time. So after putting together a plan, I settled on a vehicle in Atlanta, Georgia. The dealer beat my out the door offer, much to the complete shock of the salesman, and I got 1.0% financing plus $2500 off for being a recent college graduate -- and to date this discount is the only thing I believe my diploma has gotten me. I digress, the deal worked out on this vehicle was really good -- less than what I was paying on the van.

I sold the Van to my dad, who used it to shuttle around my grandfather who had recently moved in with him and my mother. Dad got the van for payoff plus trade of his 2001 Passat with well over 150,000 miles on it. The Passat’s air conditioner gave out before I’d even crossed into Alabama from Mississippi, and there was no way I was driving another car without air conditioning through the heart of the south in July again. Whatever the dealer agreed to, I was taking that i3 home. When they handed me the keys the guy said it had 53 miles of estimated range, how did I plan to take it home to North Carolina? And I said, “I plan to drive it. You can refill the gas tank like any other car.” The look on his face was priceless.

The drive home was an adventure as I left the dealership and didn’t even know how to use the cruise control on the car. I hurried to IKEA where we bought the first part of our new sofa, and then hurried back home. After stopping for fuel in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the car threw a drive train error but said continued driving is possible. I made it the rest of the way home without any issue, other than the warning message popping up. 

This was a really good little car to me. When it had big issues -- like when the cooling fan failed and the Range Extender wouldn’t turn on, or it had a flat tire! -- was close to home and in the best possible conditions. Even with the fuel filter door release broke and I had to use the emergency pull, it was on the way home from a rescue run. The little car was so base it didn’t even have DC fast charging, but at the time the DC fast network didn’t really exist -- Electrify America wouldn’t be a thing for nearly three years when I bought this car. I knew at that time that getting a DC charging car was a moot point, as we’d be looking to replace it in 3-5 years time anyway.

I loved the traditions with this car, like the waltz to open the back door and bringing home our Christmas trees. I rented this car to my best friend on Turo so he would have a million dollar insurance policy to drive it down to Florida and back -- the longest trip this vehicle has ever been on, over 100 miles longer than the Canada trip!

Service Stats

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In Service Date: 4/4/2016

In Service Mileage: 8,980

Out of Service Date: 5/11/2019

Out of Service Mileage: 43,108

Service Life: 34,212 miles, 3 years in service

Avg. Miles/yr: 11,056

The Story & History

In Service Date: 10/9/2020

In Service Mileage: 55,085

Current Mileage (Jan 2023): 65,000

Out of Service Date: --

Out of Service Mileage: --

Service Life: ongoing

Avg. Miles/yr: ~4,000

Towards the end of my TDI saga, my best friend bought a used Nissan LEAF. I loved the car and when I knew I was going to be giving back the VW, I began looking at used LEAFs for the replacement. My husband, well boyfriend at the time, was not on board with “something so hideous” parked in the driveway all the time. As he became evermore featful that I was about to bring one home, he found two Smart Convertible Electric Drives on AutoTrader. One had more miles, less features, and the car that I bought for just under $10,000. I called the dealer up and asked a single question: “Does it have two keys?” When they said yes I put a deposit down with my credit card and the next day we faxed and emailed some things back and forth to finalize the sale with my local credit union. I named Gopher after a character in a Victoria Laurie novel series that I was reading at the time.

My friend, Brad, took me in his LEAF to pick up Gopher on a Monday. I was so excited when I saw the truck enter the parking lot. The driver was concerned that this was a car for me, given my gargantuan size, but the handoff was quick and painless. I immediately opened the roof and took out the roof rails for the full open air affect. After running to Apex for lunch with Brad, I drove my new car home and plugged it into a 120v outlet to charge for the first time.

My blog started with Gopher back on Blogger, eventually migrating to Tumblr after a few years. Most of the stories pre-2018 are all about Gopher and adding Level 2 chargers to PlugShare across the region. But in 2019, a changing of the guards occurred. A friend of mine needed a cheap to run car and I wanted to get a DC Fast charging car. I sold Gopher and bought a Hyundai Ioniq (named Alanis). During Gopher’s time with my friend, he added an average of nearly 1,700 miles per month. Then one day on his way home from work, my friend spun out on a 70mph highway and crashed gopher into a retaining wall.

Miraculously, no air bags deployed and all he needed was a near wheel, tail lamp, and rear body kit to be functional and pass inspection. After buying Gopher back from my friend’s insurance company, I then bought a bricked 2014 Smart Electric off another friend and scavenged the parts needed to repair my beloved Gopher.