From the owners portal you can see that there are two cool free apps available for iPhone, etc. The Nissan LEAF App lets you check charge, start charging, etc. The ChargePoint App shows you where nearby charge stations are and whether they are currently available to charge. It shows the two nearest charge stations are in Honolulu and Ewa Beach. A somewhat impractical drive…

Anyway, you can check the state of charge and start charging etc from the portal also.

From the Owner’s Portal, by poking around at the bottom of the status page, you can get to the CARWINGS site. Apparently CARWINGS is free for 2 years. The site collects LEAF driving data from all over the world. (It is that annoying “Is it OK to connect” thing that pops up every time you start up.) It has cool stuff like your yearly/monthly driving history, distance, electricity consumption, etc. It lets you plan trip routes and have them downloaded to your car (via RSS). It has comparative rankings of all participating LEAF drivers around the world and rates your relative energy efficiency. I am “Gold”.  Cool.

There is also an interesting page “All Info Feeds” which allows you to enter URLs of RSS feeds. (Really Simple Syndication). You can google ‘RSS feeds’ to find feeds you like. I found a bunch of feeds like: Hawaii Surf Conditions, Big Island Road Reports, Big Island Weather, Volcano Update, and more…

The way it works is kind of interesting. After you type in your feeds (hint: use http: not feed:), when you get in your car, go to the CARWINGS page (from the menu button). Et voila, your feeds show up in your LEAF! RSS feeds are generally brief text messages (but can contain images, audio too – RSS format is XML). Since it is kind of hard to read text while driving, your clever LEAF will read the text to you aloud! What fun! Pronunciation of Hawaiian words like street names is particularly amusing.

I attached a (compressed) image to give you a feeling of what the CARWINGS site page looks like and some of the feeds I have. If you are interested in a particular feed, I can send you the URL.

Also check out this cool EVSE upgrade! http://evseupgrade.com/ It let’s you do a level II charge at RV plugins.

So, I did the EVSE upgrade. Very cool. It transforms your trickle charger (voiding the charger warranty – but the upgrade has a 1 year warranty) to almost a full Level 2 charger – for MUCH less $$$. Most of the smarts in charging are onboard in the car. The charger only offers up proximity (i.e. connected, don’t drive away) and “this is how much current (amps) I am willing to deliver”. The upgrade converts the 120V plug to a 240V plug, and then they update the eprom to offer more current (amps). I got the 240V -> 120V compatibility cable so I could still charge at 120V.

BUT BEWARE! The 240V connector is NOT the clothes dryer plug that we all have. It is 240V, but not the dryer plug. In order to not have to install a special plug, you will need another adapter…

What fun!
Doug