Before the Leaf There Was the Ranger

Part 1 - The Up Side


The Leaf was not the first electric vehicle I've owned. In 2006 I purchased a 1998 Ford Ranger EV pickup truck. It had 8000 miles on it at the time, and I paid about $15,000 for it. It was originally part of a fleet of vehicles owned by Broward County, Florida. I bought it from a guy in Portland who had a passion for electric vehicles. He owned a few Rangers and at least a couple of Chevy S-10 EV pickup trucks at the time.

I'm not sure exactly how I came to be interested in EVs in the first place. I remember reading about the movie Who Killed the Electric Car? in Time Magazine. Eventually the movie was out on DVD and I purchased it. At around the same time I had a patient who owned a Geo Metro that had been converted to run on electricity. The gasoline engine had been replaced with an electric motor, and several batteries (12 volt lead-acid batteries, if I recall correctly) filled the rear compartment. Cool! A short while later he told me he had purchased an electric Ford Ranger. He found it on eBay, paying about $25,000 for it. A year or two newer than the 1998 Ranger I eventually bought, it was powered by NiMH (nickel-metal hydride) batteries, which were more reliable than the 26 lead-acid batteries in my Ranger. 

We went for a ride. It reminded me of riding in the electric city buses in San Francisco when I was a child. Their electric power came from overhead wires. Riding in one was very different from an ordinary bus – no engine roar, no jerky gear shifting, and no stinky exhaust, just quiet, smooth acceleration. (Another interesting feature of these buses was that the trolley poles often disengaged from the overhead wires, so the driver had to get out and guide them back onto the cables.) Riding in this Ford Ranger EV was quite a thrill. I had to have one! Not long after, I noticed an electric pickup truck with a FOR SALE sign on it. It was too good to be true (and in the way it was). It was parked in front of the shop of the guy who owned several electric trucks. I visited with him a bit, then came back with my wife to take a test drive. She was hooked too.

Arranging the financing was interesting. The loan officer at the credit union had never heard of an EV, much less made a loan for one. He had no idea how to estimate the value of this truck, so I sent him links to several websites that featured EVs for sale, including a couple of other electric Rangers. That was good enough to establish the market value for him. The CU got the title, and I got the EV.

She looks brand new here. The charge port cover can be seen to the right of the headlight.

Under the hood.

That Ranger was everything I hoped it would be, and less. It drove just like I expected it would: smooth (for a pickup truck) and quiet. The electric motor had a lot of torque, so acceleration was no problem. It had a top speed of about 70 mph. A dedicated 220 volt circuit was installed in my garage, I purchased a portable charger for about $300, and changed my electric utility service to a time-of-day plan so it would cost less to charge at night. I made two bumper stickers and applied them to the rear of the truck. One said ELECTRIC VEHICLE. The other announced ONLY GAS IN TRUCK IS DRIVER’S. I was having fun. (My wife strongly recommended removing the latter sticker.) There was even a gas tank cover where a service station attendant (we don't pump gasoline in Oregon) might insert a gas pump nozzle, although when you opened the cover there was no receptacle for the nozzle, just a dead end. I thought it would be fun to pull into the nearby 76 station and ask for a fill.

After removing one of the bumper stickers. Look, Ma! No exhaust pipe!

That was about where the fun ended. And this is where this post ends. 


Next: Part 2 - The Under Side.

The Nav

A lot of cars now come with GPS navigation systems, so what I'm writing about is not necessarily specific to the Leaf or to EVs in general. But I have never used a navigation system prior to the Leaf, so to me they are one and the same.

The Leaf's navigation system uses a computerized female voice that is relatively pleasant, but I wish it didn't always have such a neutral tone. A few days ago I wanted to go to Portland State University to drop off a document. Although I was fairly certain which building to go to and where it was located, I nonetheless entered the address into the navigator because I've found that it will often take me via a route I would not normally choose myself, a route that may be shorter or at least novel and even scenic. It also has helped me get to the exact location of my destination, not just the "around-here-somewhere" locale my internal bio-navigator would settle for.  

It would be an exaggeration to say that I'm developing a love-hate relationship with the navigator. It's more like appreciate-resent. When I enter a destination, The Nav calculates a route from my present location. Then it (she?) starts giving me directions; for example, "In approximately one-quarter mile, left turn onto Southwest Huber Street." (It doesn't exactly command me to "turn left," does it? It's more of a statement of fact: the "left turn" exists in future time/space, one-quarter mile hence. I think the geniuses at Nissan did that purposefully so as not to antagonize drivers who have problems with authority figures.) I get a reminder when I approach the intersection, and just a second or so before I'm supposed to turn, I hear a bell ring. It sounds like a doorbell or, actually, the sound an elevator makes when it arrives at your floor. DING! Ladies' lingerie - next left.

In addition to all these audio cues, the navigation map displays a split screen showing my current location and an image representing the directional choices currently available, clearly highlighting the recommended route. Cool! I get it! There have been so many times I've been confused trying to follow directions. Do I take the sharp right here or the somewhat less acute fork that's just beyond the sharp turn? With The Nav there is little doubt. When I hear the DING I turn the wheel. When I think of how this works I see an image of my aging father getting confused as he drove his 1965 Chevrolet Caprice while dementia slowly but inevitably took him over. Maybe he wouldn't have had to sell the Chevy and could have kept driving a few more years if he had a nav that went DING when it was time to turn. I think we all could use an internal navigation system to help us get through each day more successfully. For example, when I can't remember why I walked into the kitchen, I might hear a DING coming from the pantry and remember that I was going for the peanut butter. Or maybe the next time I push a shopping cart around the Fred Meyer store, The Nav will DING me up the paper products aisle to the TP I forgot to put on my list. I could even use it to help me remember familiar looking people. "Hmmm. Her face sure rings a bell."

A feature I've appreciated, but which I am now beginning to find irritating, is that The Nav never loses her temper when I don't follow her directions. On my recent PSU trip, The Nav directed my onto the freeway, but I prefer not to take the freeway when I'm not in a hurry, and also because freeway driving shortens the Leaf's range, as I've explained in a previous post. Whenever I ignore one of Her Navness's directional pronouncements, she patiently informs me to "continue on current route" while she does some recalculating. And Man! Is she patient! I passed two more freeway entrances on my way to PSU. Each time I was directed to take the ramp, and each time I continued on the street instead. I found myself wishing she would get just a little frustrated with me. "Sigh. Oh, alright. Continue on current route." It would have even been enjoyable to be insulted: "You moron! Didn't I tell you to get on the freeway back there?" Why would that be fun coming from Her Navness but offensive from a passenger like, say, my wife?

It turned out The Nav wasn't so Buddha-like after all. Like Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, she waited for the opportune moment to get revenge. That moment came as I approached my destination. "Left turn in one-tenth of a mile onto Montgomery Street." Okay. Here it comes, on my left, just as she predicted. But whoa! Montgomery Street is one way — in the wrong direction! Good thing she didn't tell me to get into the air-lock!

After I finished my errand I got back in the Leaf and set Home as my destination. Then I drove to work. The Nav continued her Zen concentration on the route, even as I put more miles behind me and home. "At the next exit, right turn onto Northeast 33rd Avenue." "At the next exit, right turn onto Halsey Street." "At the next exit, merge onto Interstate 205 South." I could see she wasn't going to get riled up, so I turned her off. But I fear she's biding her time, waiting for the chance to direct me up the freeway ramp, past the "Wrong Way" and "Do Not Enter" signs, onto that highway of fire. It may be quite a while before I turn her on again.