EV-ents April 27 - May 16-19 - Sept 20-22 - Sept 28

2013 comes into focus!  

Coming up in real-time, folks:

WESTPORT CONNECTICUT ELECTRIC CAR RALLY: APRIL 27, 2013

The Westport Electric Car Club announces the first-ever Electric Car Rally in Connecticut, a 40-mile event and education on Saturday, April 27th.  Entrants must be “plug in” cars, partial or fully electric.  An estimated 20 unique cars will showcase to the public and display at Earth Day Events  in Westport and Fairfield. The public is invited for a Free event, to meet owners and local dealers including solar home options;  with 1pm-3pm public viewing and general education.

President Leo Cirino says, “ This is an exciting and timely event for the revolution of electric cars In America. Electric cars get very little attention in this region of the country, yet Westport is a leading community in the state and nation.  We invite the public to see and understand the variety of long-range electric alternative vehicles”.

Rally begins 9am at the Eastbound Saugatuck Train Station.  EV Cars will follow a Time-Speed-Distance Rally, with a public  “Pit Stop” at 11:30-12 noon at the Fairfield Earth Day Celebration held annually at Ward High School.  The Rally concludes near 1pm at the Saugatuck station where the public is invited 1-3pm.  Adam Lubarsky, owner of the Blu Parrot has offered free sliders and free music.  A family event for all ages, all are welcome to see electric cars and meet dealers.

Steve Smith, Town Building Inspector states, “The Road Rally is our way of being proactive in showing that electric cars are real, practical and can make a difference in energy resource sustainability.  This follows our April launch of solar-paneled train station charging stations;  attended by Governor Malloy and local citizens.”

Rally vehicles include Tesla Model S (Car of the Year 2013), Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, Fisker Karma, Mitsubishi's i-MiEV, Smart Car EVs and more.  And… first electric cars in America will rally:  1907 Columbia built in Hartford CT and 1910 Broc Electric Car, courtesy of Dragone Classic Motorcars of Westport.

To register a car: contact jshuck at optonline.net

For general information:  www.westportelectriccarclub.com

Business contact for sponsorships:

Stephanie Weiner, New England Smart Energy Group
cell: 203-722-5386
stephaniew at ne-smartenergy.com 




Other Club Contacts:
 
Remy Chevalier  203-227-2065    remyc at prodigy.net
Leo Cirino, President Westport Electric Car Club    lcirino at snet.net 203-226-0034
Barry Kresch, Marketing & Education                 evs at westportelectriccarclub.com

STATE COLLEGE PA 21st CENTURY AUTOMOTIVE CHALLENGE  MAY 16-19 2013

Registration is OPEN!!!

Registration Forms and latest information on 21st CAC 2013 available here

What’s new for the 21st CAC in 2013:

• Technical Testing May 16 and 17 to be held at Central Pennsylvania Institute of Technology
• Saturday Charging/Display at the MorningStar Solar Home open to public 10 am-4 pm
• Press Display Event and Preliminary Awards Sunday 1 pm – 3 pm
• (Tentative) EEVC Awards Ceremony at their June 12 regular meeting

SEVEN SPRINGS PA MOTHER EARTH NEWS FAIR SEPT 20-22

RSVP now to jbelak at paelectrics.com to qualify for $70/night accommodations at the Days Inn Somerset 10 miles from Seven Springs.  Bring your EV and help thousands of people get the plug-in driving word at this very well-attended Earth Fair.  I told Jon I'd come speak, stay tuned!

FRENCHTOWN NJ GREEN FAIR SEPT 28

Hurray!  I got put in charge of organizing an entire Green Transportation segment of our 2nd annual local Green Fair, so now I am the Phil Jones of Frenchtown!  Hello all EV and other alt-fuel-vehicle drivers within range of charming Frenchtown NJ, please join us to put your car on display AND share your gift of gab if you'd like to be part of the educational programming.  I'm so excited about this I almost said no to the Mother Earth News Fair, but then I realized, it will all be arranged by then and I gotta get to Western PA that weekend, because frankly, I've been missing the EV stuff while totally preoccupied with other aspects of my life!  I have a conflict with the 21st Century Automotive Challenge and hey, if you read all the way down to the bottom you're probably wondering "What the heck ever happened to the Macungie EV picnic, wasn't that supposed to happen in 2013 too and doesn't it normally occur, like, in the spring?

STAY TUNED!

Blast from the Past - 2007 Alt-Fuel Flashback

The 'oh yeah that's how we got here' alternative fuel news department brings you back to March 2007 -- NOTICE NOT A WORD ABOUT PLUG-IN EV's BACK THEN IN THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST

By Moira Herbst

updated 3/28/2007 6:54:55 PM ET

President Bush enjoyed a high-profile photo-op Monday with the heads of the Big Three automakers and their latest clean-car models. The impressive lineup included a General Motors  model that can run on ethanol, a plug-in Ford powered by hydrogen, and a DaimlerChrysler  Jeep filled with a biodiesel blend. 

It was smiles all around as the automakers announced they would make half of America's vehicles ethanol-ready by 2012. "If you want to reduce gasoline usage—like I believe we need to do so for national-security reasons as well as for environmental concerns—the consumer has got to be in a position to make a rational choice," said a beaming Bush.

But there's a dirty secret about clean cars. The policies for flexible-fuel vehicles—those that can run on mixtures of gasoline and more than 10 percent ethanol—are written in such a way that they result in a number of unintended consequences. One result is that automakers gain some leeway in meeting fuel-economy standards if they produce flexible-fuel cars and trucks. So Detroit's automakers have been pumping out hundreds of thousands of the vehicles, even though most consumers have no access to alternative fuels because they're available at only a fraction of U.S. gas stations.

Here's why that's an issue. Automakers need to meet certain government standards for the fuel economy of their fleets. For flex-fuel cars, fuel economy is calculated based on the assumption that their owners use 50 percent gasoline and 50 percent ethanol. But the reality is that just 1 percent of the nation's flexible-fuel vehicles actually use what's known as E85—85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. The remaining 99 percent are using good old-fashioned gasoline.

More greenhouse gases 

The result is anything but green. The more flex-fuel cars and trucks that are produced, the more gasoline is consumed—dramatically increasing greenhouse gas emissions and deepening the country's dependence on petroleum. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that without the policy in place, the U.S. would have burned 4 billion fewer gallons of gasoline since 1998. "Automakers have an [economic] incentive to sell cars less efficient than the law requires," says Don MacKenzie, a vehicles engineer for the Union's clean vehicles program.

Environmental advocates aren't shy about voicing their outrage. "It's a total scam," says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global warming program. "The automakers are trying to shield themselves from having to make more efficient vehicles. They're avoiding the path to cutting oil dependence, curbing global warming, saving consumers money, and ultimately saving Detroit from competitors like Toyota."

The culprit is a 1988 law called the Alternative Motor Fuels Act, which has been extended through 2008. It gives automakers extra credit toward meeting fuel-economy standards for making cars that can run on alternative fuels. It's cheap for automakers to make cars fuel-flexible; it only costs them about $50 per vehicle, whereas actually meeting fuel-economy standards (making cars travel more miles per gallon) can be much more expensive. So in recent years auto companies have been pouring out flexible-fuel, gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles without worrying too much about fuel economy.

Shortage of ethanol pumps

But, as the Bush administration itself acknowledged in 2002, the consumers who own flex-fuel cars aren't going for alternative fuels. Ethanol-based fuels like E85 are hard to come by, and are only available in certain regions of the country. Only 1,600 of the nation's 176,000 gas stations pump E85, the most popular and commercially viable alternative fuel, says the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. So the more flexible-fuel vehicles that hit the road without an ethanol pump in sight, the more pure gasoline Americans continue to guzzle.

Ethanol advocates say fuels like E85 are a right-here-right-now solution to reducing oil dependence. "[T]here's nothing that can be done which can reduce the curve of growth in imported oil and actually turn it down like using E85, taking advantage of what's there today," said GM Chairman and Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Wagoner Jr. at the White House event.

They also argue that the mismatch between the size of the flexible-fuel fleet and the availability of ethanol will be solved over time. "You've got to get started somehow," says Phillip Lampert, executive director of the NEVC. Lambert points out that the number of gas stations providing E85 has doubled in the last year, and his group—backed by automakers and ethanol producers—is pushing for bigger tax incentives for fuel retailers.

Still, the conversation that Bush and the Big Three avoided was talk of fuel economy. In the short term, it's far cheaper for car companies to keep producing cars that seem environmentally friendly than to re-engineer cars to squeeze out more miles per gallon. Until the U.S. has much broader availability of alternative fuels, old-fashioned gas guzzling will continue to rise into the not-so-green future.

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