On a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, already a tireless advocate for EVs and a Chevy Volt owner, got behind the wheel of a Tesla Model S. Though he sings the praises of his Volt, after driving for 20 miles, he was very impressed by the performance, comfort, and features of the Volt -- he got a brand-new "EV grin."

A month ago, Felix Kramer, Founder of CalCars.org and DrivingElectric.org, gave a 15-minute update to the annual meeting of the Electric Auto Association (EAA), held February 23, 2013 in Palo Alto.  Here's half of that talk: the part that explains how far DrivingElectric has come, and where we aim to go with more support -- which we hope will be forthcoming in the near future.

Great Volt Lease Deals – South Carolina

Some love leasing a vehicle while others would never lease a vehicle. Here is why you should lease a Volt in South Carolina.

After my "getting started" post, I stopped and looked at the rates again.  Duh.....if I'm running a few errands during the day and have some time before using the car in the evening, it makes sense to use the 110-volt trickle charger that comes with the car and plug it into a standard household circuit.  That's about half the dedicated 240 daytime rate.  

I am a super efficient Volt Driver. I almost always get more EV miles out of my Volt, than what the dashboard states.

Here are some of my driving tips to increase efficiency.

Installing charging station, MI power rates, new lessee

I have driven an MG Midget for 35 years. About 10 years ago I thought it would make an excellent car for electric conversion. The older models only weigh 1600 lbs, and there is no power brakes, steering, or air-conditioning to deal with. I finally decide to do the conversion when I realized that Colorado was offering $6,000 in rebates to do it. This ’77 midget was started by people in California. I bought it with just the motor in it and added Lithium batteries, a controller, BMS, and other items. I was able to keep the weight down to 150 lbs over original.

So last week the temperature was high enough to have the windows down. It's also fall so the dry summer leaves are on the ground, driveway, gutters, street, cereal...ok so that's a little extreme but with 3 big oaks in the yard fall is a nightmare. But what is nice is the silent drive of my Nissan Leaf. It's so quiet that when I run over the dry leaves from the trees I can hear the crackle of the crushed leaves. 

They say silence is golden. The silent running of an EV is priceless.

Better Place

For all my posts to date on Better Place, click here.

How it all began

The story so far: in January I saw a tweetup (meeting of people on twitter) being organised for the Better Place visitor centre which is only a 10 minute drive from my home. That short visitcompletely reversed my opinion on electric vehicles.

We explain why we need a way to connect drivers and EV-curious people. The photo shows some of the team at National Plug In Day, holding the mini-flyers we've made available for anyone to download, print, and keep in their cars or hand out at events: Howard Clearfield, Rachel Schapira, Felix Kramer, Marc Geller, Ben Jones; also see the photo/video gallery "Speech at launch of DrivingElectric" for more pictures and watch video of the speech without leaving our site.