Hey There! It's 7:30 AM EDT, 52°F, overcast, winds 7 mph S
A rather calm day yesterday. I got my usual routine going, but I am noticing my skimming of the headlines is getting quicker and quicker. The daily battering of bad news and corruption is becoming more and more irrelevant. I know that when voting time comes I will do my part, but until then, even very powerful people seem stymied by the present situation. I've now separated news feeds from blogs and RSS feeds, so I can spend more time with the blogs/RSS and less with the news.
I've been looking at purchasing a used Nissan Leaf, and so I spent most of the morning doing research and preparing to go check one out locally. I've been learning a lot. Things like battery degradation and regenerative braking are not exactly new concepts, but ones I have no experience with. So I went down the rabbit hole of reviews and videos, trying to absorb as much information as possible. I also bought a Bluetooth OBD II diagnostic tool, but it seems the one I bought doesn't play well with Android. I couldn't get it to connect to one of my cars.
Anyway, I busied myself mostly with that and some chatting with Son2 about content for the studio's website. I have to get a little looser with the videos and not so scripted. And listicles - jeez, I hate those. But if I am going to create content for his website I have to do it in such a way that it works the way these things are supposed to work.
At 3pm DW and I went to see the car. Generally speaking, it's in good shape, but the battery pack has seen some significant degradation. It has 8 out of the 12 bars it's supposed to have, and if I read the gauge right on the dashboard, when fully charged its range will be around 60-65 miles. Given how I intend to use the car, that's not so bad, but of course that's the reading when the car is standing still. Start driving it and the range keeps recalculating. It rides nicely, no significant rust. So I have to decide if 60 miles of range at full charge is sufficient for my use case. It may be. But the car is overpriced, so if I decide to buy it, I will have to negotiate $800-1K off the asking price.
I got the CarFax when I got home, and the car has been in Texas and Florida most of its life, which probably accounts for the degradation. Hot climates are harder on the battery pack. I decided to pick up another BT OBD reader and see if I can get that working, because there's a special program called Leafspy which is supposed to give you the best data on the battery. I might be able to get that device on the Leaf and check it out.
The rest of the late afternoon was spent on YouTube looking at videos on Leafs. I found one guy in particular who had a nice buying guide, and of course battery health is the #1 issue. While I really would like a car with better battery health, I do believe if the car can charge to 60 miles of range, it should be fine for running around here. I've no intention of driving it on 30-mile round trips or anything like that. If I were to drive it 20 miles in one day that would be a lot. I left it with the owner that he will take care of some things in the meantime (the car is not currently inspected, and the tires are low, and there are some dash lights on), and I will check in again next week. The car was not really prepped for viewing. I think if he wants to get rid of it he will come down in price.
We had dinner, which was tortellini with mushrooms and spinach, and also had a meeting with our financial advisor in the early evening. Our financial position remains solid and stable. The market these days is like riding waves on the ocean - up and down - but overall the portfolio is healthy. So we made no changes except to grab some loose cash sitting around and put it into a money market. After the meeting I went to watch the ballgame, a losing effort. Bedtime was 11:05.
'Til We Meet Again!