Three Pass Blast!

Ask somebody who owns a Harley what the Three Pass Blast is in the Cascades and you'll be entetertained by stories of motorcycle riding across the three primary mountain passes in Snohomish and King Counties: Stevens Pass, Blewett Pass, and Snoqualmie Pass.

At 4062', 4101', and  3022' respectively, having a blast on "The Blast" while driviving an EV presents a potential challenge not considered by the weekend warrior motorcycling crowd. The West Coast Green Highway has EV charging stations sprouting up from the Puget Sound area to connect both sides of the Cascades with Level 3 Quick Chargers.  With this electric car infrastructure in place, driving from, say, Everett to Leavenworth to Snoqualmie Pass and home again should be possible.

For this trip, I wanted only to charge to 80% at each station to be as time conscious as is realistic on this 265 mile excursion.  At Quick Charging stations, the LEAF default charges to 80% to promote battery longevity.  Sure, it is easy to get a full charge at a Level 3 station, but doing so would take an hour instead of the typical 25 minutes to charge to 80%.

At each stop, I collected some basic data to share with fellow LEAF drivers.  Let me just say that it is almost an embarrassment to post the number of battery bars used to travel in a LEAF, as the car's display is truly a guess-only affair.  Without a proper GID meter, though, this ballpark reading may serve some bit of usefulness to other LEAF owners.

Some points from the chart need clarity.  I had the AC blowing the entire trip.  Yes, running the AC in warm weather is massively more efficient than having the heater on in the winter.  I had a close eye on the energy consumption of the climate control and it ranged from 0 kWh to 1.5 kWh, with the average probably about 1.0 kWh for the day.  Second, the Low Battery warning (~12 miles of range remaining), was only hit once--pulling into Suncadia Lodge.  Third, the trip from Cle Elum to the top of Snoqualmie was a horrific experience!  As you can see in the chart, the battery was getting warm.  There were actually eight temperature bars when we pulled out of the Suncadia Lodge parking lot.  I drove at 55 m.p.h. on I-90 from Cle Elum to the Summit at Snoqualmie Pass which helped to get the battery to cool, but I truly was public enemy number one to the folks driving home over the pass after a nice weekend east of the mountains.  I had so many trucks road raging because of my snail's pacing that I was having flashes of Steven Spielberg's Duel haunting me.

How to get 100 Miles of Range?  Drive Downhill.

This ties in with my final thoughts on the average speed.  For most of the trip, I went the speed limit.  The only other times that the speed limit was not maintained was on the stretch from Skykomish to Stevens Pass (55 m.p.h.) and the final 10-ish miles leading up to top of Blewett Pass from Leavenworth.  On the way down from the Passes, I frequently shifted the car into neutral and coasted at the speed limit, shifting into "gear" only to activate the regenerative brakes.

Beyond going geek today, I was a dad!  My five year old daughter, Sabrina, joined me for this trip.  As for being a fun experience for the two of us to enjoy, today was a resounding success!  Needing to stop every hour, or so, has some great benefits...it slows you down.  For those who know me professionally, having a full day to be present with my daughter is a real blessing.  Slowing down is not my usual modus operandi.  

We Actually Built a (Small) Sand Castle

While charging in Skykomish, we played along the Snohomish River.  Who ever takes even 15 minutes to pull over in Skykomish to walk the town?  It was awesome.

Today, I fell in love with Leavenworth all over again.  When bombing across the Pass and stopping in Leavenworth for food, we typically stop at Heidleburger Drive-In.  Sure, the grub is good, but we stop there nearly every time because it's the first food stop in the town when traveling from the west.  Today, we ate at the Leavenworth Sausage Garten.  It is every bit as fast-food as the Drive-In, but it was a change.  A change that wouldn't have happened unless we had to charge!

On Your Mark.  Get Set.  Go!

While looking for a park for Sabrina to play at in Leavenworth, we stumbled upon an Easter egg hunt...at the Suncadia Lodge, we went on a "bear hunt" (a.k.a. hiking trail) and enjoyed stunning panoramas of the Yakima River...at the Summit at Snoqualmie, Sabrina and I had some care-free moments in the snow.  Before owning an electric vehicle, we never took the time to enjoy these places like this.  Today was casual.  There was no worry about hitting the tourist spots like what happens when these places are the destination.  Instead, our stops today gifted us with the time to recharge.  It was perfect.

It's St. Patrick's Day. We're Going Green!

Driving an electric car for the purpose of being "green" was about 17th on the list of considerations for me when we decided to buy our LEAF.  However, after more than 10,000 miles of gas-free driving, there became a realization that being gas-free is not just good for the pocketbook, but it's also pretty good for the environment.

Grand Coulee:  The World's 5th Largest Hydroelectric Dam

Upper-Most Section of the Youngs Creek Falls

I've read that EV ownership in the Pacific Northwest is particularly environmentally friendly because the electricity that is generated for consumption in the region comes from sources that can harvest electrical energy with minimal impact.  In Snohomish County, our electricity is provided by the Snohomish County PUD.  The power supplies for PUD come from several different sources:  hydroelectric, biomass, wind, and landfill gas--with other methods in development.  Hydroelectric generation accounts for more than 80% of the utilities' power.  When I think of hydroelectric power, the concrete monstrosity that is Grand Coulee Dam comes to mind.  However, the PUD is increasingly incorporating small scale hydroelectric operations.  Today, we set out to visit one of these locations:  The Youngs Creek Project.  The power generation at the Youngs Creek Falls is only 7.5 megawatts.  Compared to Grand Coulee's 6000 megawatts peak capacity, this seems like a pitiful joke by the PUD.  There are benefits to downscaling power generation, though, mainly being a much lower impact on the local environment and fish habitats.







Not every region in the U.S. is able to produce electricity as "clean" as the West.  Want your EV to be green?  You better go coastal.  Multiple studies show that regions where electricity can be generated from wind and water benefit the most from maximizing the use of that clean energy.  Electric vehicles happen to be an ideal application of the use of this clean electricity because an EV purchase is likely to replace a gas-powered vehicle on the road.

Want your EV to be green?  You better go coastal.

So, that brings me back to today's trip.  I cannot imagine taking my kids to visit BP's Cherry Point oil refinery in Anacortes, WA for a fun adventure.  Rather, a family outing to Cherry Point serves as a cautionary tale.  On this St. Patrick's Day, "going green" was also a lesson on what is right in going gas-free.