Seattle Area Drive Electric Week event

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Kakkerlak

Well-known member
Joined
May 16, 2014
Messages
122
Location
Seattle, WA
There's an old burger stand out in Issaquah (about 20 miles east of Seattle) that has an automotive Americana theme and hosts about 20 car shows a year. Sunday was the second Electric Vehicle show, as a Drive Electric Week event.

Three Focus Electrics were on display, and by luck we parked them all together.



There were a handful of Teslas, a bunch of Leafs and Volts, and four BMW i3's, both REX and full-electric. A couple of Zero motorcycles, some bicycles and scooters, and one antique 1920's era runabout with pedal assist !

I think the coolest were some of the retrofits especially an F-250 with two 90 HP motors on a common shaft, and battery banks made of Nissan pouch assemblies. The White Zombie electric race car was there, and an electrified Fiero towing a range extender trailer longer than it was ! Manzanita Micro was very well represented in person and on the conversion vehicles.

I talked myself hoarse in the sunshine. I can't count the number of times I heard "I didn't know Ford made an electric car", or when I explained the difference between the Focus Electric and the C-Max Energi. Helpfully, the Sierra Club had a C-Max parked a few meters away for contrast.

I got the car just three weeks ago and am still running on temporary tags, and several people asked me if I was a Ford representative. I turned around the dealer plate frames and inserts and didn't get the question anymore.

Lots of folks asked about range, and I sat a dozen people inside to illustrate how it fit and felt from the driver's seat.

It left with a feeling of cameraderie, a solidified positive attitude toward EV driving, a belly full of cheeseburger and root beer, and a sweet PlugShare bumper sticker. And then the Seahawks pulled off a win in overtime over Denver, so it was a very satisfying day.
 
Very cool. Food & beverages was one thing our event lacked. There was nothing close by for food or even water. There were only some porta-potties available...
 
I found out about the Drive Electric week events from this Forum and the Reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles subreddit.

The Triple XXX Root Beer drive-in would have been swept away by suburban property value years ago if not for Sunday car shows. It's a great synergy, even though that burger and fries probably took a month off my lifespan. I agree that sponsors or organizers should make an effort to provide catering or at least water... I imagine that most cities have a taco truck or two that wouldn't mind having a hungry captive audience.

A couple of the Tesla drivers were great fun to talk to, especially about how starkly plain the cars are, compared to their sophistication. There are two physical buttons and a shifter stalk.... everything else is on the gigantic touchscreen.

I learned some new things from about the MyDisplay features, and we compared touchscreen backgrounds with the other FFE owners.

The thing I kept finding myself saying to visitors was "I don't think I'll ever buy another gasoline-powered car. Driving electric is just too fun."
 
Drive Electric Week has its own official website:

https://driveelectricweek.org/index.php

There is an events page where you put in your ZIP code and it shows you all the registered nearby events:

https://driveelectricweek.org/events.php
 
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