Hello again everyone and welcome to another edition of the Meet your Dealership series, my seventh installment. "
Seventh?" you ask, when so far there is but
one other? Okay, you caught me. My apologies go to the other 5 dealerships who's photos are waiting for a story but now I'd like to present a more current tale.
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It was Friday, 18 November. I started out making good mileage in my
Nissan LEAF on my way to work. I'd used 4 bars and my LEAF was reporting over 50 miles (80 km) remaining range on my car, more than enough to see me home again. However, to get to work I have to cross the
Potomac River and on that 34°F (1°C) day as I reached the far side of the bridge my car's range dropped by half to 26 mi (42 km) and only 3 bars — not enough to get home! I can only guess that despite my
hypermiling with no heater, no heated seats and no heated steering wheel, the car must have activated the heater beyond my control in order to heat the
traction batteries.
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Even though it's well know that the estimated range of the LEAF is quite inaccurate, the 3 bars remaining pretty much proved I needed a boost to get home. Since my job site has no policy against charging an electric car on site, yet chooses to enforce a no charging policy, I had to make other arrangements to get home. Knowing my car could probably make it to
Tyson's Corner, I decided to give Priority Nissan/Mazda a call to see if I could us their
Aerovironment EVSE. So I phoned up and left a message with the service department and the Service Manager, Gary, called me back and told me it was a-okay! Thank you so much Gary!
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So I left work around 15:30 and made it to Priority around 16:15, about 15 minutes earlier than expected. There I met Gary and showed him my LEAF. We chatted a bit about how fun it was to drive and then he showed me to their one public AeroVironment EVSE, which they have behind the dealership. They have a second EVSE for the Service department which I didn't see. We immediately plugged in and after a moment of confusion I pressed the charge now button and we got the electrons flowing!
I thanked Gary for his help and proceeded to the dealer showroom to get some reading done for my
Loudoun County Writers meetup on Saturday. The folks at Priority were kind enough to let me borrow one of their desks and do my reading though I was very happy whenever one of them came up and asked me how I enjoyed my LEAF. Unfortunately, by this time Gary had left for the day which is why his image is missing.
The showroom is long and thin and on the left as you face the wall you have a selection of Mazdas and on the right and a variety of Nissans on the right.
After I finished my reading I went to find my old friend Mohamed Wadood. I first spoke to Mohamed over the summer when I was trying to compile a
dealer reservation list to help customers find dealerships opened LEAF quotas. Mohamed agreed then that Priority Nissan would
not sell the LEAF for above MSRP and would
not include any surprise options when buying the car.
Mohamed has worked hard to keep Priority Nissan/Mazda clean, spotless and honest. He stands by Rosanthal's Fair Price guarantee. Mohamed is well-versed in the nuances of leasing and promises a 62% residual.
He's achieved the Platinum Elite Award and a near perfect rating. And Priority is quite honest and upfront about their $389.00 processing fee: it's printed right on the wall.
Priority may not have been the first Washington area dealership to become LEAF certified, but with folks like Mohamed they know the LEAF and are ready to bring the automotive industry into the 21
st Century.
Priority Nissan/Mazda has been in business since 1988 when it was one of Washington's main
Datsun dealerships. The current building was constructed in 1989 and has been a Tyson's Corner landmark.
Need a test drive? I didn't learn until the end of the
March Drive Electric event that Priority had a Blue LEAF for test drives on Wednesday, 16 March. None the less, I was very happy for Mohamed (telephone:
703-867-7087, email:
mohamedwadood@me.com) to show me the Grey LEAF Priority has available for anyone to take a test drive. Give Priority a call and schedule yours!
Priority Nissan/Mazda is located at:
8525 Leesburg Pike
Vienna, VA 22182
703-442-8700
Priority Nissan/Mazda, your source for the Nissan LEAF in the heart of Tyson's Corner. Welcome.
Rosenthal Nissan is *the worst* Nissan dealership in Virginia. See for yourself :
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dealerrater.com/directory/Virginia/Nissan/dealers.aspx?state=Virginia&manufacturer=Nissan
I've heard their other dealerships are terrible as well.
Well, I'm not here to pass judgement but when a guy is 10 miles from his home and only has juice enough for 5, anyone offering to let him charge his car at I can't say how high a price is likely to look at his benefactor with a kinder heart. But I'm looking forward to visiting Koons Falls Church and hearing about the first 2012 Nissan LEAF delivery.
ReplyDeleteWhen are you getting your car and from what dealership? Someone who calls himself "Maki" on plugshare looks to have gotten a 2012 LEAF.
ReplyDeleteShould be about a week and I'll finally get mine! Of course, it will be super cold and drop my range. :( Guess I'll do 100% charge until Spring rolls around.
Hello again Alex! I hope you can make it to the Nissan LEAF owners meetup on Saturday 10 December just after noon at Nissan of Chantilly where I bought my LEAF on 2 November and you'll be able able to see #CO2Fre , which in this month I've racked up about 1600 miles. :)
ReplyDeletehttp://aecn.timehorse.com/2011/11/i-am-electric.html
Anyway, Maki is a friend of mine and got his a bit before me IIRC on 31 October or so. Don't know if he'll make it. You and my friend Scott should be getting LEAF's next week but I hope they'll be a week early like mine. Either way, you're more than invited to our meetup and join our Yahoo! group.
http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/capital-leafs
Also, you know I know Maki and Scott through the EVA/DC; you should check them out! They're a great bunch!
http://www.evadc.org/
Anyway, good luck with your LEAF purchase and may I ask where yours will be delivered?
How did I miss this?! I actually READ that post and for some reason thought it was someone else who got the car. You posted that BEFORE this entry: "Nissan needs a Way-Back machine". Threw me off.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, mine is supposed to arrive Dec 11th from Brown's Nissan in Fairfax. I'm aware of the EVADC group, I just haven't kept up. :( I'll join the Yahoo! Group shortly.
Welcome to the Yahoo! group and the Wayback machine was a joke how my "Get Ready Week of 8 November" which I was pointing out arrived the day *after* I got my LEAF. :)
ReplyDeleteAlso, as for my experience with cold weather driving, the good news is 80 mi isn't unusual with a 100% charge. But this assumes you take full advantage of the heated seats and especially the heated steering wheel, with occasional bursts of heater set to 18℃ / 65℉ to defrost the windshield. I'm still worried about A/C, especially here in D.C. but hopefully by summer we can get some movement on being able to charge at work, which is something I'm working on ( http://aecn.timehorse.com/2011/11/opened-letter-to-president-of-united.html ).
Anyway, I haven't heard from Sharon at Brown's Fairfax and remember someone said she wasn't the one they bought from, maybe it was you Alex, but either way I'd give Brown's a call; you never know, they could have your LEAF already and just be prepping it this week. With a week of of delivery it's quite possible you could have your car before Saturday! I hope so! Nissan's Facebook organizer is gonna promote our meetup and hopefully we'll see a lot of LEAFs and all the merrier if you and my friend Scott have them by then! :)
From my understanding, the AC is fairly efficient compared to heat, but that may only apply to 2011 since 2012 has the cold weather pack.
ReplyDeleteSharon is great, BTW. :) She really went out of her way to answer all my questions. I called the electric guy you used too. Getting power over the garage is going to be costly...I may have to hold out on 110V or come up with some other make shift solution!
Great! Yeah, Sharon is a great person to work with, I'm glad you're working with her. And what you've heard about A/C aligns with what I've heard. So with heated seats and steering wheel I think it's probably more equalize and so I give about 80 mi (129 km) in Winter and Summer and 120 mi (193 km) in Spring and Autumn, but I could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteAs for Joe, he's getting a lot of business and I'm happy to see but he's not the only electrician I could recommend. As for 120VAC charging, as that's what I'm doing now while I wait for my new PU Meter I can tell you when you use 95% of your pack daily, you can't afford to wait 20+ hours to go from 5% to 100% so I end up spending an inordinate amount of time at the Herndon Panera while I supplement my charging at MOM's Organic Market. As such, I really can't practically survive with my EVSE and that meter can't be installed too soon. Even though "Normal" charging is twice as fast as 120VAC trickle charging (both are at 12A, so only the voltage is doubled), for some reason it estimates 3 times as slow to trickle. But if you can keep your car between 20% and 80% you'll charge that region charges fastest and will keep your battery healthy longer. So it may be possible to trickle charge for 12 hours each night to 80% if you can keep your daily driving with 40-60 mi (64-97 km) per day.
Anyway, good luck and I hope you get your car this week! :)
My daily commute is 45 miles and I should be able to get a clean 10 hour charge a night. Hopefully this is enough. Wife's ICE will have to be the emergency backup.
ReplyDeleteAs for the 240 vs 120, I believe it is because the efficiency is higher (~85% vs ~%75).
120 miles in Summer would be really great - I do not expect to get that kind of mileage though. I'm thinking a full charge, driving comfortably, should net about 75 miles. We'll see!
As they say, YMMV. :)
ReplyDelete@ ALEX , Thanks for the dealer rater ROSENTHAL NISSAN HAD BEEN A GREAT DEALERSHIP. AND MOHAMED WADOOD # 1 VOLUME CONSULTANT WITH THE HIGHEST CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN MID ATLANTIC REGION FOR LAST 16 YEARS !
ReplyDelete