Yesterday, I posted on my little project of analyzing my driving needs. I hope to be able to draw some conclusions as to what it takes to start driving an electric car after I finish this.
For more info on how I’ll do this, please have a look at the post I did yesterday. Let’s move on to week 1 and see what driving I did!
Reporting on week 1 (August 3 – August 9)
Last Saturday I changed my own car for my brother’s Ford Fiesta. My brother will be heading to my house in Italy with his family and I offered him to use my car. The Fiesta is quite small and he wouldn’t be able to fit in his kids, all the toys and loads of other stuff that he wanted to take. So I’m driving a Ford Fiesta the coming two weeks.
Monday August 3: I worked from home today. I had an appointment with Jaap van’t Kruis and Stephanie Vermeulen (of Jimmy the Man Tours fame) at Central Station in Utrecht, which I did by bike.
Tuesday August 4: I had a meeting in Rotterdam today at the Kop van Zuid. I drove there by car, had my meeting, followed by lunch with Arjen Poutsma (of SpringSource fame). Next, I drove to Amsterdam to JTeam’s office. In the evening I drove home. This totals to about 200 kilometers. In retrospect, I could (and probably should) have taken the train to do these trips.
Wednesday August 5: This was a terrible day in some respects, a good one in others. I drove all the way from Utrecht to Eelde (close to Groningen in the morning) where I tested the Th!nk. Next, I traveled to Amsterdam for a meeting, followed by a meeting in Haarlem. After this I went home to Utrecht. this totals to about 450 kilometers in one day. No way I could have done these trips by train by the way.
Thursday August 6: In the morning I took the train to Schiphol Airport. There’s no way my getting from my home to Schiphol is faster by car than by train. Leaving my home about about 7.45am, I arrived at Schiphol at about 8.30am, followed by a plane ride to Milano Malpensa taking off at about 9.30am. In Italy, I took a rental (a Citroën C3, which is a really nice car by the way) and drove to Perloz, where my house is (this is about 150km).
Friday and Saturday August 7 and 8: I didn’t use the Citroën. Instead me, my brother and his family took my own car out for rides in the valley. We went various places to hike, have lunch, dinner, et cetera. Probably we drove about 150km these two days
Sunday August 9: I took a plane back to Amsterdam, which arrived with lots of delays at Schiphol at about 10.30pm. I took the train back to Utrecht, which takes about 30 minutes.
Conclusions so far
First, the stats:
| Monday | 0 km | No car needed |
| Tuesday | 200 km |
 Could have done with EV, with a bit of charging at JTeam’s office |
| Wednesday | 450 km |
 No way this day an EV given the criteria would have sufficed  |
| Thursday | 50 km |
For the trips to Schiphol, yes, an EV would have sufficed. Let’s not start talking about EV rentals yet… |
| Friday | 0 km | See previous remark. No EV rentals. |
| Saturday | 0 km | See previous remark. No EV rentals. |
| Sunday | 50 km | The trip back from Schiphol could have been done with an EV But then again, I wouldn’t do that even if I had one, because of the insane costs for parking at Schiphol airport |
So far by the way I’m really liking the Ford Fiesta. The fuel economy is great compared to my X-Trail (with about 15 km per liter at least, compared to 10 km per liter in my X-Trail).
The week from August 10 to August 16…
is going to be filled with appointments too, so I guess this will be a pretty kilometer-heavy week too. I’ll report back on this week in a few days
Bzzzzzt! Cheating!. You said there are charging points at your house and at your offices. So that would make the rides in Italy unqualified. I think they don’t count especially because you are testing if you can use an electric car as personal transportation. As in: YOUR car. The rental in Italy is not your car, and therefore not relevant.
The ride to schiphol (no charging there) and back to Utrecht on Sunday can be done with an EV. It’s 100km back and forth without charging, so those count.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=utrecht,+the+Netherlands&daddr=Luchthaven+Schiphol,+Haarlemmermeer,+Noord-Holland,+Nederland+to:utrecht,+the+Netherlands&hl=nl&geocode=%3BFU0kHgMdG4JIAA%3B&mra=ls&sll=52.21092,4.94146&sspn=0.37194,0.571976&ie=UTF8&z=11
Alrighty then. That’s how I like them, the referees
.
What do you suggest I do, change it to a know, or simply omit these days from the analysis?
Personally I’m inclined to say that in the end, these days wouldn’t impact my decision to start driving an electric car. With or without an electric car, I would have taken these flights anyway and would have rented a car anyway.
I’ll mention this in the post, let me know if you agree
, Wouldn’t want this experiment to be ruined now, would I?
I’ve changed things a bit to mention the rentals… Keep ‘em coming these remarks!
I think the rentals are not relevant. So they should be excluded from the count in this week. As you said, it would not affect our descission, neither negatively, nor positively.
I would think it is interesting to just use your car as you do normally, and only measure the trips you really take in your own car. That is the only correct comparison. If you go by train, you would have done that wether or not you had an EV right? So those should also be excluded from the measurement I think.
It makes it a lot simpler and transparent, although you will have probably less datapoints. You can always add a week or two.
For the record, in my book, the score is:
Monday: N/A
Tuesday: Yes
Wednesday: No
Thursday: Yes
Friday: N/A
Saturday: N/A
Sunday: Yes
Rolf,
that sounds good… I’ll adjust the intro post in a minute as well to include this…
Holidays in Italy could be very expensive but tourists on a budget can still have a great time if they look around for the cheaper accommodation and eating places.
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