Testing LEAFs in Santa Monica

This weekend was the first stop on Nissan's public test drive extravaganza. The lead off venue just had to be the 5th AltCar Expo in Santa Monica given its history of teasing us with the potential of "some day soon" production EVs. I spent the previous four iterations of this early October expo in a Plug In America booth with veteran PIA board members and a legion of well educated volunteers dispensing our brochures and telling folks of the coming alternatives to oil. My prediction after last year's AltCar that the next one would herald the dawn of the new EV age was spot on. The 2,000 or so lucky people who got a chance to drive the LEAF and Volt would agree.

In addition to the LEAF, the expo had the winner of the Automotive X-Prize, an incredibly fast motorcycle, the E-Tracer, ably demonstrated by Plug In America's own Stefano Paris. Both the Coda and Volt were there available to buy, although delivery for all of these cars would be toward the end of the year. I heard many people have been talking to dealers about putting in orders.

Ironically, this was the first year Plug In America didn't have a booth since Zan and I, who usually take the lead in organizing the booth, were instead working for companies displaying vehicles for sale. Zan was helping AC Propulsion with PR for their part in supplying the drive train for the ultra-fast E-Tracer, and I spent both days assisting the Nissan folks demonstrate their LEAF.

As much as I love informing people about the coming EV revolution for Plug In America, it was vastly more exciting to actually ride with people in an EV that they not only could buy, but one that many of them had already purchased. Well over 500 LEAFs have been sold as Nissan makes its way through the 20,000 "hand raisers" who have deposited $99 for a place in line. Quite a few of my friends, who had never driven an EV, and who bought a LEAF having never seen it, much less driven it, were there to confirm they'd made the right decision.

To a person, they were all excited about the performance of the LEAF. Even the old timers who have driven EVs for years were impressed.
Here's Doug Korthof, the EV movement's bulldog, giving the LEAF a thumb's up after his test drive. Those who know Doug will understand how significant this endorsement is.

One of my favorite customers is ex-Fox News producer, Bob Tarlau seen here displaying his "EV grin".













Steve Factor, my co-worker at SolarCity expresses his disdain for the effluent coming from the tailpipe of a soon-to-be-extinct gas burner. Not soon enough for us, but they will go away eventually.





Last night, after the final test driver had left the lot in Santa Monica, I watched as the crew dismantled the elaborate glass "tents" and loaded the LEAFs on transport trucks. I was suddenly struck by the similarity of this view to that of March 2005 when GM workers loaded the last of the EV1s onto similar trucks and hauled them into the Arizona desert where the jaws of an industrial crusher sealed their fate. Instead, these gleaming LEAFs were being carefully treated by the crew so that at the next stop on the LEAF tour, a few thousand enthusiastic Americans would get to slide behind the wheel and glide through their first experience in a quality EV.


It's my goal to ensure that when this young man is old enough to buy his first car that there will be nothing but plug-in vehicles in the market. He and his friends deserve a world with clean air, a strong economy, and no wars over oil.

Photos courtesy Nissan.

Mandarin Moon Shots

Thomas Friedman makes a very important point in his excellent column published in the New York Times on Saturday.

The gist of the article is that China is looking decades into the future and building the world's biggest network of ultra-modern airports, creating a web of high-speed trains, developing a world-class cell/genetic engineering industry, and lastly, China is investing $15 billion in its fast growing electric vehicle industry.

After laying out this expansive plan that will undoubtedly make China the most powerful nation on Earth, Friedman puts it all into perspective with this:

"Not to worry. America today also has its own multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot: fixing Afghanistan."

Sigh...

We spend billions to fight wars over oil and China spends billions to get off of oil.

Friedman further states, "... the country that replaces gasoline-powered vehicles with electric-powered vehicles — in an age of steadily rising oil prices and steadily falling battery prices — will have a huge cost advantage and independence from imported oil."

This is the best argument for why it's right and proper that our federal and state governments provide incentives to get the initial cost down for plug-in cars.

Consider that every day our country spends over a billion dollars for foreign oil. That's over a thousand million dollars leaving our country every single day. The longer we wait to end this dependence, the higher the price of oil and the more money we ship out of the country.

What's worse is that 90% of the money we spend on gas leaves our communities. While losing much of it to other countries is bad enough, think how many billions of our dollars are lost to local merchants and industries that would hire our friends and family if only those dollars were spent for locally grown or manufactured goods instead of sent to the overflowing coffers of the oil barons.

Of course, it doesn't stop there. Those oil barons spend millions of "our dollars" hiring effective lobbyists to essentially run Congress, and millions more to affect political contests. Witness the massive fight we have on our hands here in California over Prop 23, a measure that will overturn the will of the citizens of this progressive state who enacted AB32, the country's most progressive climate change legislation. Two Texas oil companies and a couple of right-wing billionaires from Kansas are pouring oil money into this fight.

Those who buy plug-in cars will no longer contribute their own money to be used against them in this manner.

Friedman says. "Europe is using $7-a-gallon gasoline to stimulate the market for electric cars; China is using $5-a-gallon and naming electric cars as one of the industrial pillars for its five-year growth plan. And America? President Obama has directed stimulus money at electric cars, but he is unwilling to do the one thing that would create the sustained consumer pull required to grow an electric car industry here: raise taxes on gasoline."

I don't blame Obama alone for this since there are precious few in Congress who would dare promote raising taxes on dirty energy, yet without those price signals, we'll make slow progress in ridding our country of its addiction to oil.

It comes down to individual citizens and their personal position on dirty energy. Ignorance is no excuse, the information on how coal and oil hurts our country is everywhere, you only need to read it.

Every day wasted making the transition to clean, renewable energy results in more sick and dying citizens poisoned by our collective waste and more dead soldiers sent to protect our access to the dwindling supply of oil.

If you are not in favor of higher prices on dirty energy, you are not an environmentalist, you are not a patriot, and you will share responsibility for the failure of our country to thrive in a future where fossil fuels will no longer be cheap nor plentiful.

Vote accordingly.

Selling Leafs in Santa Monica

My memorable trip in June to Yokohama to test drive the Nissan Leaf concluded with a private lunch with CEO, Carlos Ghosn.

After hearing Mr. Ghosn describe Nissan's plans for electrifying their fleet, and driving this remarkable car on their test track, I came to the conclusion that I wanted to personally help Nissan get the car into driver's hands. One by one, I want to replace those filthy internal combustion engines using 60% foreign oil, with clean, powerful motors using domestically-produced, renewable kWh generated from sunlight and wind.


Plug In America co-founder, Marc Geller, and I with Mr. Ghosn.


Since returning from Japan, I have been talking to various Nissan folks, and ultimately the very nice owner of Santa Monica Nissan. After being offered a position, I decided to go to work for Santa Monica Nissan exclusively selling the Leaf. I'm very excited since I'll still be selling solar PV systems for SolarCity, making me the first person on Earth to sell those two items together.

EV/PV. It has a nice ring.

Coincidentally, Dan Neil, the most talented auto writer in the English speaking world, finally got his turn behind the wheel of Nissan's Leaf. After describing the attributes of the Leaf, he states, "Such a car would have been science fiction five years ago."

Five years ago, Plug In America was deep into the fight with the auto industry to stop the crushing of EVs.

For almost eight years, I've known the day would arrive when well made, highway capable EVs would once again be available, and that when it happened, it would mark the beginning of the transition from oil to electricity as the energy source for our vehicle fleet. I have had the privilege of a front row seat to this amazing sequence of events, and now I want to do more than talk and write about it, I want to literally replace the dirty cars with clean ones.

If you live anywhere near southern California, and are interested in buying a leaf, I encourage you to contact Santa Monica Nissan and ask for me. If you haven't put down your deposit for the Leaf already, go to this Nissan site today and secure your place in line.

Neil makes the comment, "The Leaf also represents one of the most daring bids for market dominance I've ever seen in the car business because no one, and I mean no one, knows if the damned thing will sell."

Well, Dan, I know. I intend to be the number one Leaf salesman in the world. When you are ready for yours, look me up.

:~)

VOLT or LEAF

Those of you who listen to Ira Flatow's "Science Friday" on a regular basis know how good the show can be.

Tonight was especially good

as Ira had as guests, Mark Perry of Nissan and Tony Posawatz of GM. Both talked of the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt respectively.

I urge you all to listen to this show. Intelligent questions were asked by Ira, along with several callers, and both Mark and Tony were spot on with their answers.

Best of all, they were collaborative.

Each car represents a different market niche, and both are needed. Twenty years from now, virtually all vehicles sold will be either fully-electric or some variation of plug-in hybrid.

Rather than trying to one up each other, they spoke of the relative merits of each car. I detected mutual admiration from both parties since they seemed to understand that this is more about electricity vs. gas than Nissan vs. GM.











The sleek Leaf knifes through the air.

The Volt holds Bruce Tucker's upright bass with room to spare.

GM's Bright Idea

A couple weeks ago, I got a call from John Waters of Bright Automotive to talk about things. I'd heard he might be leaving the company he helped start and was pleasantly surprised to hear his upbeat tone. Turns out, the rumors of Bright's imminent demise were unfounded. He instead indicated there would be a big announcement soon.

This week's announcement of a $5 million investment by GM Ventures to buy a minority stake in Bright was the reason for John's great mood. Bright will now be able to get much closer to a production-ready model of their Bright "Idea".

According to Bright CEO, Reuben Munger, "... GM has taken a minority stake in our company, and will supply advanced powertrains and technology for the Bright plug-in hybrid IDEA vehicle. GM's investment puts us on the fast-track toward mass production of the IDEA as we ramp up development later this quarter."

As I wrote in a previous post, Bright was formed of some of the best EV engineers brought together from the likes of Rocky Mountain Institute, Aerovironment, GM and Andy Frank's UC Davis PHEV program.

Their creation is designed to be light weight and aerodynamic in order to use a minimum amount of energy to get the job done. Millions of fleet vehicles burn millions of gallons gas and diesel every day in the U.S. Keep in mind that 60% of our oil is imported, so anything that can double or triple efficiency is extremely beneficial.

Should the DOE follow through with the loan to get these vehicles into production, there will be thousands of Americans hired in Indiana, a state that could use the jobs.

As for the rest of us, our local post office can trade in their funky, inefficient vans for something that does the same job with a tiny fraction of the energy.

Good for GM. Good for Bright.

RAV Resurrection

There was a rumor recently that Telsa had converted a new model of Toyota's popular RAV4 into an EV. Today, Toyota announced that Tesla will supply the drive train for a resurrected RAV4 EV, possibly to be built at the recently purchased NUMMI plant in Fremont, CA. This is the giant 5 million sq. ft. plant that was the subject of a fascinating story on This American Life in March.

This is really good news for the EV community since the RAV EV has been the most reliable EV from the ZEV mandate days of the late 90s and early 2000s. It also gives consumers a great option if what the family needs is a reasonably sized vehicle that can haul stuff. Both the Nissan Leaf and GM Chevy Volt are great cars, but there is clearly a market for SUVs out there.

Here we are taking possession of our brand new RAV on winter solstice, 2002.

Our experience with the RAV has been nothing short of amazing. The car just works. Other than replacing the shocks at 60K miles, and consumables like tires, aux batteries and wiper blades, there has been virtually no maintenance or parts in 8 years and 84,000 miles.

Some RAV drivers have had their battery packs replaced, but they averaged about 120,000-130,000 miles before doing so.

I can't tell you how many times I've plugged my car in at a public charger and had people engage me in a long conversation about what this vehicle means to society and then express the burning desire to get one just like it. It's happened hundreds of times over the years and each time, I had to tell them, nope, can't do it, they destroyed hundreds of them, and the remaining 800 or so RAV EVs are all there would ever be.

Now I can tell them to wait a year or so and they'll not only be able to buy a RAV EV, but it'll be powered by a Tesla drive train with, we can assume, a LiIon battery pack. We don't know pricing or performance specs, all that will come in due time, but the importance of this announcement is that Toyota is getting back in the EV game. We'll have to update Plug In America's vehicle tracker page to list this popular model.

This leaves Honda as the lone hold out. They are still claiming their Clarity fuel cell vehicle is the end game of alt-fuel vehicles. But as more and more EVs are announced for delivery in the next two years, it seems as the game might end with fuel cell vehicles forever in the on-deck circle, never getting a chance to step up to the plate and bat.

Some Historical Perspective

TEXT OF LETTER (December 23, 2002):

To the Editor:

The Column notes that fuel cell technology, while promising, is unlikely to be viable for decades. We have just taken possession of our new Toyota RAV4 EV, an all-electric car that we will charge with power generated from our rooftop solar panels.

Our new car will easily accelerate up to 80 miles and hour and travel 100 miles on a single charge. Installing a charger at work would give the car a traveling range of 200 miles. More than enough for most folks.

The column says we must cut our dependence on foreign oil. I strongly agree that self-sufficiency is a laudable goal. However, while auto companies go on searching for their fuel cell holy grail, we'll be cruising the streets and freeways of Southern California in a 100 percent pollution-free vehicle using technology that's been around for over a century.

Paul Scott
Zan Dubin Scott
Santa Monica, CA , Dec. 23
***********************************************************************

I was going through some old papers and came across the letter above that Zan and I wrote to the NY Times back in December of 2002, just days after taking possession of our brand new Toyota RAV4 EV. We had responded to an article about hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars that were all the rage during the early Bush administration. We were so new to the EV world that we didn't know a fight had been brewing for some years over the controversial Zero Emission Vehicle mandate that had forced the auto companies to build electric vehicles, a fight in which fuel cell cars played a pivotal role.

Within two weeks of this letter, we'd organized our first event drawing some 50 EV drivers to our quiet street in Santa Monica. That's when we started meeting all these other activists, some of whom had been working on the issue for a few years. In our naivete, we thought a few protests and a concerted letter writing campaign would suffice to save the EVs from destruction. Boy, were we wrong!

The crucial California Air Resources Board (CARB) meeting of March 2003 stunned us. In spite of overwhelming support by the drivers of these EVs, the Board acquiesced to the demands of the car companies to kill the battery EV in favor of this promising new kid on the block, the fuel cell.

George Bush proclaimed in his 2003 State of the Union speech, “With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free.”

When I heard George Bush say this, it occurred to me that a child born before the Civil War was able to drive a battery EV since that technology dominated the cars of the 1890's. Well, the kids born in 2003 are now seven years old, still a ways from driving age, but much has happened in the intervening years. Virtually all the car companies have announced plug-in vehicle programs (Honda, where are you?), and we're on the cusp of seeing thousands of Leafs and Volts on the roads.

Just this week, Tesla held a very successful IPO becoming the first electric vehicle company to do so. And on Wednesday, Zan and I were invited to see the gorgeous Fisker Karma at the local Santa Monica Fisker dealer. In this picture, newly minted Phd., Shannon Arvizu ("Miss Electric"), joins us in celebrating the moment.

So, as the oil continues to gush into the Gulf, billions continue to gush out of the country to buy oil, and our Congress continues to gush over oil companies' largess to their campaign coffers, the only good news is that, with each spin of the Earth, we get closer to the day when we no longer have to participate in all of that.