National Drive Electric Week

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Gigi

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 12, 2013
Messages
136
Location
East Cobb, Georgia
Atlanta got a jump on National Drive Electric Week with an event at Atlantic Station today. My wife and I took our FFElectric and FFEnergi to display along with other owners. It was great fun talking with curious passersby about our cars and about driving electric. I think that we had 15 different production EVs on display.

Thanks to EV Club of the South for organizing and to Nissan and PlugShare for sponsoring.

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https://driveelectricweek.org/event.php?eventid=129
 
Do you know of any other events happening this week in Atlanta? My wife hinted that she wanted to drive the FFE and Model S together down there.

I've been to busy to look anything up but I thought there was something next weekend as well.
 
It looks like fun. Looking forward to the event in the PA/Philadelphia area. For anyone in the area, please stop by!

https://driveelectricweek.org/event.php?eventid=178&view=public
 
Atlanta got some coverage on the Weather Channel.
https://driveelectricweek.org/media.php

ElSupreme - looks like Sept 13 was the event in Georgia. Nothing on the schedule for the weekend.

Here's the event schedule:
https://driveelectricweek.org/events-list.php
 
Watch the 3rd video from The Weather Channel: They go over "expensive" EVs including...The Fisker Karma..!? really talk about niche vehicles that you can't get (because they don't make them).
 
jmueller065 said:
Watch the 3rd video from The Weather Channel: They go over "expensive" EVs including...The Fisker Karma..!? really talk about niche vehicles that you can't get (because they don't make them).

Yeah I quit watching that one when she got to the Fisker.
 
The Chicago event on Friday - in my view - a total complete disaster. At the end of the day it was a sales event for Nissan and Chevy. They took over all the parking. I could not park my car. In disgust after being yelled at by a Chevy representative, I left. Wasted 2 hours in traffic that morning.

I signed up, registered for the event. I arrived around 10AM, an hour after the event started. It was held in a really bad location - Daley Plaza. Great for people walking by, but horrible what they did to traffic. It jammed the intersection almost solid. Took me 10 minutes to creep a quarter block.

My first pass - all I saw were Leafs and Volts lined up by Nissan and Chevy signs. All behind cones. I couldn't find a spot to pull in, so I did another pass.

The second pass I pulled into a spot. Somebody dressed in Chevy clothes walked up to my car and yelled at me to not park there. This was reserved for Chevy test drives. I would be towed. When I tried to leave my car and talk to the organizers - the person yelled at me, said OK, I'm taking a picture of your license plate and I'm having you towed right now. I got in my car and left. Yes I gave the person a good solid piece of my mind.

From what I could see, there were huge Nissan and Chevy displays. A couple of tables for the organizers. Every car parked had dealer plates.

A cautionary tale to anybody organizing these - be careful to not turn these into a sales event. Unless that's what you want, but be up front about it. Don't ask for owners to show up with their cars, if you are counting on the dealers to fill the day.

The response I got from the Sierra Club group that organized this and the Naperville event - wasn't exactly a great apology either. It had a bit of, this was my fault tone to it. I should have volunteered to work the event, then I would have gotten my "free" parking spot. Yeah, right.

I'm not going to the Naperville event on Sunday. The same Chevy group will be there. And, well I'll do something else.
 
EVA said:
The Chicago event on Friday - in my view - a total complete disaster.
I'm sorry you had such a miserable time. One would hope that people who drive EVs would be more considerate than the average driver.

Here in Atlanta, the event was run by The EV Club of the South, a local organization that has been meeting regularly ever since people began building EVs on their own. Think Georgia Tech engineers, and you get a picture of a good portion of the club.

We had dealers displaying their models and offering test drives, but these did not dominate the event. While the number of Leaf registrants far outnumbered the rest of us, the organizers from the EV club chose only a few Leafs to go on display along with one or two of each of the other models. I think we may have had 25 cars on public display and of the 25, there were 15 different models represented.
 
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