Recent content by SparkevBlogspot

Temperature in my area (San Diego, 40 miles from the beach) hit 118F a week ago on a week day. If SparkEV was sitting under hot sun, fully charged but not plugged in (ie, nagging by coworkers who complain of fully charged EV still plugged in), the battery will degrade quicker. As such...

I've Bolted! They're sold out of $29.8K Bolts, but they still have few $30.8K Bolts ($23.3K after fed tax credit and CA rebate) and sale lasts to Jul 2. I suspect they'll be sold out before then. But be careful of overpriced stuff stealership sneak in; I fell for it and paid several hundred...

As my 2015 SparkEV lease is ending soon, I went car shopping as I wasn't sure if I'll keep the Spark. Work is now 80 miles, making it hard on now 17 kWh SparkEV. I was looking to buy rather than lease since I wanted to have trailer hitch for bike racks and it seems all EV require some plastic...

I don't buy 100kW for SoulEV. I've waited for one, they tapered before 80% even using 50 kW DCFC. As for Ioniq, SparkEV is 2.6C, quicker than Ioniq. SparkEV would add 130 miles quicker than Bolt due to Bolt taper starting at 50%. Even if Bolt is only charged below 50% and average power is the...

Quick is in terms of time. When discussing battery charging, C rating should be used. In that, SparkEV battery charges at 2.4C to 2.6C. 48 kW / 18.4kWh = 2.6, even higher for some degraded batteries. No Tesla can charge to 80% in 20 minutes. In fact, some (S85 I saw plugged in at Chademo) can...

Common DCFC is supposedly capable of 500V at 125A = 62.5 kW, hence the rating of 60kW. SparkEV peak battery voltage is bit under 400V at 80%, 125A = 50kW. I've seen it show 49 kW while charging, but mostly 48kW. Current tapers down after 80% while voltage remains the same hence the power...

I'm not so sure if it'll get better. If anything, things got lot worse with Bolt's release. Even just few dozen free charging Bolts clog up chargers in the whole city, and there will be tons more free charging new Leaf and i3, not to mention eGolf, FocusEV, iPace, Ioniq, Kona, etc. etc. The...

Was he driving a Leaf? I've seen some Leaf slow down to 6 kW even at 85%. Since they tend to have 6.6kW L2, switching to L2 would be no different. As others have mentioned, SparkEV charges far higher power as well as only having 3.3kW L2. Even at 99%, SparkEV at DCFC was close to 9kW, far more...

Using your financial goal, SparkEV won't be there for many more years, by which time the battery would've degraded so much as to not meet your needs in cold. Have you run the numbers assuming a beat up old car that gets 30-40 MPG? I think you can find them around $2K, though you'll need to...

That's because 2014 is 3 to 4 years older and has correspondingly higher battery degradation. New 2014 would have much higher capacity than new 2016, but you need a time machine to compare them since the batteries degrade just by sitting there.

2015 and 2016 SparkEV have lower gear (higher ratio) so that rear wheel torque is the same as 2014, despite "only" having 327 ft-lb vs 400 ft-lb in 2014. But 2015+ weighs less than 2014, so the acceleration is quicker with 2015+. But for bragging rights, SparkEV motor produces more torque than...

Apologies to everyone for being an idiot. While my comments are true, it's no place to highlight the positive attribute of the car which may increase the used car price. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to delete the posts, especially ones quoted by others, or move to a different...

Using the same charger, SparkEV would be quicker simply because SparkEV is much more efficient (more miles per kWh of energy). But if Tesla is on Supercharger and SparkEV on ABB, Tesla can be quicker depending on state of charge of Tesla. Tesla begins the taper at 10% (or 20% for bigger...

Again, you are confusing miles with charging, and making up your own metric for quick. I could claim Celsius is silly and that temperature should be measured in any subjective way I feel, but that's silly as seen by everyone else. Whether you find it silly or not, C is how it's measured. If...

Regardless of what YOU think is important, the industry and science consider C rate over anything else when it comes to charging and discharging rate. You can pretend other stuff's important, but the fact remains that C rate should be considered when discussing charging and discharging. In that...