National Drive Electric Week: 2 Skinny Wheels - Thinking Smaller

So, what's National Drive Electric Week all about? Is it to get everyone into an electric car? Or is it to get people out of gas-burning cars? For me, it's the latter. It is an opportunity to make a concerted effort to promote ways to help us all stop extracting, buying, and burning fossil fuels so that we can do less damage to the environment in which we live.

To celebrate National Drive Electric Week, I took Electric Bridget out for a ride on Saturday. And, no, Bridget is not an electric car -  she is an electric bicycle. Electric Bridget came to me as an old Bridgestone mountain bike that sat out in the weather for a while and was generally just neglected over the years. When I decided to build a low-dollar e-bike workhorse, EB got a new lease on life.

To be honest, I have ridden EB very little. Since EB does not (yet) have a pedelec controller, miles ridden on EB do not qualify for the National Bike Challenge. (But there are only 15 more days of that.)

So, I had kind of forgotten what it's like to ride an e-bike. It's awesome! I did a quick 8 miles. It was windy. I went up all of the slight inclines that feel like big hills on a non-electric bike. I still arrived home breathing hard and sweating, but I did eight miles in about the same time (and exertion) as I normally do four. I did not check, but I doubt that I ever exceeded 17 mph.

But it sure keeps me thinking...

One of my favorite blogs to read is Bike 5. The premise of that blog (Go read it already!) is pretty simple, For trips of 5 miles or less, a bicycle is best. (Health, budget, breathing, saving the planet, etc.) (Ironically, my office is 4.9 miles from my home.)

With the electric bike, it seems you could easily go to a bigger radius. (With apologies to Bob, who writes and lives Bike5.) One could easily create a blog for e-bikes called E-Bike15. For trips of 15 miles or less, the e-bike is best. From all of my DIY days, I have learned that having the right tool for the job makes almost everything better. I have lots of days where the bike (with me powering it) is not up to the job, but the 4,000 pound Dodge in my driveway is definitely overkill. At those times, the e-bike is the best tool for the job. It's hyper-efficient, fairly low-cost, and amazingly inexpensive to maintain and operate.

Learn more (and see this larger) here

And then there's that whole commute with a smile idea. Some people refer to it as the "EV Grin". When I ride a bike I smile a lot more than when I drive a car. (E-Bikes are funner than cars, y'all!)

Honestly, not everyone needs an electric car in order to make a positive impact. With that in mind, consider the advantages of an electric bike: they are easier to park - you can even park one in your tiny house. Try that with a Nissan Leaf! You don't have to buy a big fancy charger or have your house rewired. And there are lots of different options for different needs, different budgets, and different physical abilities.

From this...

 

...to this,

there's an e-bike for everyone.

In case you are wondering, this is not a Don't buy an electric car post. I love electric cars and see them as one great tool for cutting our dependence on carbon, but not everyone is in a place to own one. (I'm not.) If you're like me, the e-bike might be the next best thing. You might even come to realize that an e-bike is the best thing for you.

May you find the best thing for you and may it be a better thing for us all!

Electric Vehicle Sightings in Lubbock and a Super-Fast Electric Beetle!

[Since National Drive Electric Week starts in two days, I thought I'd write about EV's in the LBK this week.]

Yesterday morning, I left the house (in the pickup, snagit all to Midland!) around 6am. I pulled up to the bicycle lane on Flint and noticed a high-powered LED bike light coming toward me. He was moving pretty quickly. I was thinking that he must be pedaling hard, then I noticed he was hardly pedaling. Then I noticed a big honking hub motor in the rear wheel and a battery pack hanging under the rear rack. It's a rare thing, but I saw an electric bike in the wilds of Lubbock traffic. Woohoo!

Most of the EV sightings this week have been (battery only) Nissan Leafs: a silver, two blues, a white, and a black one. I also saw the white BMW i3 humming down Marsha Sharp yesterday - it's such a cool car with all that carbon fiber and such. The two semi oddballs for this post were both PHEVs (plug-in hybrids).

I saw the Ford Fusion Energi yesterday afternoon. I often wonder how many of these I see without noticing since they look just like the standard models and the hybrid models.

And I parked near this last-generation Chevy Volt this morning. I like that the first Volts were a distinctive model that looked different enough to be noticed. The new generation Volt blends in much more.

When talking about EVs and Chevy, I have to mention the Bolt somewhere, so check out the next link. I have seen questions like this about the Volt a few lately: Does the Chevy Bolt EV make the Chevrolet Volt irrelevant? Is that a problem? (EV fans - Read more John Voelcker!)

And here's a link to a Gas2 (by way of Inside EVs) article that tells about EV sales AND has a list of all the EVs that are selling in the States: Electric Car sales Up Strongly in August. Be sure to check out the top 6, and (sadly) the last car on the list. (Toyota, what's up? Still waiting for the perfect storm for hydrogen?)

Saving the good stuff for last: Black Current did it Again: All-Electric Black  Current III sets 1/4 Mile Record 8.28 Seconds (Inside EVs again). Be sure to watch the video! Dang, that thing is fast!

National Drive Electric Week starts in two days - go test drive an electric car already! See what you're missing!

May you not miss pumping gasoline, or burning gasoline, or smelling like gasoline, or paying for gasoline.

Fossil Free Friday: Random Electric Car Stuff

A day of three faster EV sightings

I keep a count on daily electric car sightings here in Lubbock. So far, I have seen none today, but the day is young and foggy. But last week I had a banner day. In one day I spotted two Teslas (a black Model S and a charcoal Model S) and the white BMW i8. Generally, if I see an electric car, it's a Leaf. Once in a while it's a Volt or one of the PHEV Fords. Yes, I know, it's nothing too exciting, but we take our thrills where we can. (But the EVs are still a vast minority in our gas-powered town. On a more encouraging note, I am seeing a lot more bike riders!)

On the same day and the other hand - 4 white Chevy SUVs outside the little guy's school

Buy this Lectric Leopard photo on Ebay 

One of those things I kind of missed on EBay is another Lectric Leopard, and this one was sad to me. The sad part was how it was marketed. The guy was trying to sell it as a rust-free candidate to be converted back to gasoline power. Oy vey! Such a shame!

Speaking of oddball unconventional EVs on Ebay...

All of these beauties are currently for sale on Ebay.  Guess which five I want!

A great article in prep for National Drive Electric Week:
CleanTechnica: 30 Reasons Your Next Car Should Be Electric - I like 2, 5, 15, 18, and the TMBG video. How about you?

And here's a great article to prep all of you obnoxious Texans for National Drive Electric Week:
Green Car Reports: Why I leased a 2017 Chevy Volt (in Texas) to replace a Volvo

May you experience Reason #2 while helping out with Reason #16, and may you have a great day!

National Drive Electric Week: Final Post

It's that simple. We are doing unprecedented damage to the ecosystem that allows us to live, breathe, and thrive. It's not really about driving electric - it's about not driving gas (or diesel).

So, any step you take away from extracting or burning fossil fuels is a step in the right direction. To jump on a cliche' - if you're not part of the solution...

May each of us choose to be a part of the solution.

Nat. Drive Electric Week: Buying vs. Building plus more Leaf Temptation

[I apologize - this one is a bit of a rambler.]

More about this Leaf further down the page

One of my favorite on-line places to hang out is endless-sphere.com. It's (mostly) a forum for people who are involved with electric bicycles. A really common thread on E-S is a newbie who asks which new electric bike to buy - the question is normally answered by a chorus of Build Your Own Electric Bike for Half the Price - and End Up with a Better Bike in ten-part harmony. For those of us who have more mechanical skill and time than money, it's a very valid piece of advice (for electric bicycles.)

Love this place!

I feel pretty safe in saying that you cannot buy a decent quality electric bike for less than $1500, and it's quite possibe to build a very competent electric bike for somewhere around $800. Also, it can be done in very little time. One of the plusses (to me) is the amount of knowledge you gain by building (and repairing) your own. (I rode my electric bike smugly yesterday because I had just repaired the charging port and spent about $5 doing so.)

Back on the road!

Another online place I love to hang out is EVAlbum.com. It is mostly for electric cars, especially the DIY conversions, but it, like E-S, has a little bit of everything. I love seeing the motorcycles, scooters, and bikes there. Lots of labors of love appear on there, and lots of shop-time epiphanies show up there too. And it links to EV Tradin' Post - dangerous stuff!

Love this place too - lots of Citicars!

For many years, if you were an average joe or josie and wanted to drive electric, you had to build it yourself. That's no longer true.

I mentioned earlier this week that I would go drive a new Leaf for part of my own NDEW pursuits. So yesterday I jumped online and found that our local Nissan dealer does indeed have a new one in stock, a white 2015. And it is deeply discounted. And it is eligible for 0.0% finincing and a possible $5000 financing discount. And it's eligible for a $1500 Texas discount and a $7500 federal tax break. When all is said and done, the Mesquite Hugger household could have a new Leaf and a fast charger in the garage for less money than almost any new car on the market. And it could replace our primary driver that costs us $50-75 dollars per week in fuel plus lots of maintenance. (Like me, its age and mileage have made it much higher maintenance.) We could fairly easily put a huge check mark on our Personal Carbon Reduction checklist.

Oh the temptation! But then I step back. Times are tight. There are educations to pay for. We have done our best not to create new debt, and the jobs become steadily less secure. It's really not time for us to buy a new car, and like I keep telling myself, the best way to avoid temptation is to avoid temptation. I guess I had better not test drive a Leaf this week.

Maybe I could cancel the internet at home and give up the smart phone (upon which I am writing this post), cancel Netflix, and quit buying a $3 coffee each morning. I could also sell Lucy (sniff). All of that combined could help make Leaf payments.

The conclusion? Yes, it makes good sense to build your own electric bicycle, but it does not work out the same way for a car in most cases. Used (and even some new) electric cars have dropped into the range of attainability for the common person and are often much less expensive than building your own. (It's not hard these days to find a lightly used Leaf for $9000-$12000 - you will be hard pressed to build a quality electric for less than $12000.) As an added bonus, you can be driving your car during the two years you would've spent building your own. And it may even have a warranty still attached.

An electric pickup? Now that's another story. Until Nissan or Mitsubishi offers one up, you are probably better off building your own. Speaking of which, does anybody out there want a Mazda pickup that's halfway there? I may need some down payment money for a white Leaf...

May you avoid temptation unless it leads you to a better place, snagit!

PS. If you want a really cheap electric car, look at buying somebody else's conversion. These low gas prices may be hard on electric car sales, but they do wonders for electric car cheapskates. (I hope you are a good mechanic/electrician/plugger-inner.)

National Drive Electric Week: Popular Mechanics and Vintage DIY WeirdCoolness

I didn't know it, I was just a kid, but I grew up in a heyday of electric cars, and the charge was all documented and promoted in Popular Mechanics magazine. My grandfather kept a subscription, and I loved reading the magazine and checking out the ads in the back. For an 8-12 year-old, the electric vehicles were truly droolworthy stuff!

I wanted it then - I want it now!

 

A little before my time - an electric love child of a '58 T-Bird and a '57 Chevy - so uglycool!

 

And lots more cool plans! (My fave is the Boonie Bug)

 

The Oh So Cool Trimuter! (Plans here)

 

Another Trimuter on EVAlbum

 

When the world is all crazy for Leafs and Teslas and Volts and so forth and so on, you may be wondering why I chose the Popular Mechanics article for today. Well, Craigslist got me again. I went to see what motorcycles were lurking around the area and found this little three-point diamond:

 

This Trimuter popped up on Lubbock CL today!

 

And now my overactive brain is scheming and dreaming. At 72 volts, this could be a mean green machine, at least as mean as you'd want in a delta trike. Oh the possibilities. Someone please buy this beast, yank the VW motor out, and make the Leaf and Volt drivers green with envy at next year's Lubbock National Drive Electric Week! If you build it, I will host the event!

 

May your journey to green be anything but boring!

National Drive (Ride) Electric Week: A Moustache on an E-bike and some MH faves

found on pinterest

Generally speaking, NDEW events focus on electric cars, but there are other electric vehicles out there that make a lot of sense, especially to those of us who are hoping to save money while saving the earth - electric bicycles.

If you've spent much time around this blog, you know that the MH staff is pretty crazy about electric bicycles. And we love to list reasons why they make so much sense, but don't take our words for it.  A while back we re-posted a trying-out-an-ebike blog post from Mr. Money Moustache - a blog based on financial wellness and living a better life. Well, MMM has now posted a follow-up to that original post - and it sounds like the verdict is very favorable for electric bikes. Check it out:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/08/31/electric-bike-reviews/

 

 

Here are some of my favorite e-bikes in the less than and equal to $2000 category:

The Riide e-bike $2000

 

gneZe e101 Sport $1500

 

gneZe e102 Recreational Riser $1500

 

The Radwagon $1700 ($1400 if you act soon) (drool)

The Daymak Beast ($2000 for base model - yes, it's a stretch, but it has pedals. :-)

Do you want to learn more about factory-built e-bikes? Check out Electric Bike Report.

 Do you want to learn more about building your own e-bike(for a lot less money)? Check out the Endless-Sphere forum.

Do you want a low-carbon and inexpensive commuter that won't drench you in your own sweat? Check out an e-bike!

May you find yourself enjoying your commute, saving the earth, and treading lightly!

Bonus link from Mr. Money Moustache: Curing your Clown-like Car Habit (It may make you sputter and blush.)

National Drive Electric Week: I found my dream car! (Again!)

All roads lead to Johannesburg Anacortes, Washington. To start, JG, my work buddy, has an Aunt who lives there and drives a boring little brown four-door sedan, a Tesla Model S. Next, my buddy Chris (the Kanadian Kneivel) likes to take the ferry from Anacortes to the land where he grew up - Vancouver Island, BC. Knippa (who appears on these pages often) recently sent me a Craigslist ad for a mobile scooter rental shop for sale in Anacortes. Considering the fact that I live in dusty Lubbock, Texas, it's strange to me that Anacortes - a small town located on the very northwest corner of our country - should keep popping up like that.

 The Mesquite Hugger dream - right there near Seattle!

And this morning, Anacortes just popped up on my National Drive Electric Week radar in the form of a bright yellow citicar (the Mesquite Hugger unofficial representative of all electric cars) is for sale on Ebay. I think somebody is trying to tell me something...

American Electrons - my kind of patriot!

 

May you never stop dreaming AND may you find your own electric dream car!

National Drive Electric Week in OKC and Lubbock(?!!!)

Green Car Reports Article

I watched a video by a guy named John Gallagher this week. And I was excited by what he had to say.

NDEW Website

 

You see, John Gallagher is organizing a National Drive Electric Week gathering in Oklahoma City. It shouldn’t be surprising that there will be such an event in OKC, but it is. OKC, like my own hometown, is just not that interested in such things. We are conservative and extravagant in our thinking. Why would we be interested in something thrifty and short range when our surroundings encourage us to seek comfort and rugged utility? Why drive a Leaf when I can have a well-appointed four-door Ford F150 for similar money? Why worry about the environment when I can worry about paying the bills and keeping myself distracted? Having the gathering in OKC is the first of three surprises (for me) in John’s video.

The second surprise in the video is that John does not own an electric car. He explains that he does not own one but he does understand that electric cars are the obvious and appealing next step in personal transportation. I always expect the organizer of such an event to fall into one of two camps – the old-school early adopter or the very enthusiastic newcomer to EVs. Just so you can visually follow my thinking – I expect the old-school guy to be driving a Ford Pinto he converted to electric in the 1980’s or maybe he stumbled upon an old and neglected Citicar and lovingly restored it. (Sigh) The newcomer, on the other hand, I picture driving a Tesla, wearing a Tesla hat (and possibly monogrammed Tesla underwear), and wearing a T-shirt that commands, “Question Internal Combustion!”

The third surprise in John’s video is learning that he drives an oil tanker truck for a living. Yep, he pulls up to a drilling site, fills his truck with crude oil, and delivers it to a pipeline to be pumped cross-country to a refinery. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That’s how he pays the bills.
So, here’s where it gets a bit sticky for me. That guy is up in OKC organizing a Drive Electric Event, and there is no drive electric event happening in Lubbock, Texas. And that guy doesn’t blog all the time about electric vehicles. That guy doesn’t own an electric vehicle. I own several – a few of them even run! Hmmm…

Jerry Garcia quote

So, I’ve been asking around to see if anyone has any plans for National Drive Electric Week in Lubbock. The answers have been communicated more by puzzled looks and silence than actual answers.  So, let’s see. Nissan sells electric vehicles. Mitsubishi sells electric vehicles. Ford sells electric vehicles. Chevrolet sells electric vehicles. Kia sells electric vehicles. BMW sells electric vehicles. Cadillac sells electric vehicles. All of those companies have dealers here in town; however, very few of those actually sell electric cars here. I know that Nissan, Ford, and Chevrolet do. Cadillac maybe. [In case you are asking about Tesla at this point, just know that Texas lawmakers do not like Tesla and continue to aggressively work at keeping it illegal for Tesla to sell new cars here. Snagging lobbyists…]

 

 

When I search for public EV charging in Lubbock, I only find the Nissan dealership. [Last minute update: Googlemaps is now showing Rick's Tire Warehouse and Dave's Custom Carts as possible public charging stations, but I have not verified either.] [Another update: Rick's Tire Warehouse reported back that they do NOT have an electric car charging station.]

So, where would be a logical place for a Lubbock EV event? We can’t really gather around the one (or one of the three) charger(s) in town, can we? Should we ask a local battery retailer to sponsor an event? How about a local eating place? The Rust, Inc. crew gathers at Jumbo Joe’s. The guys with shiny old cars often gather at Sonic. Maybe we should gather at a local park.

Speaking of “we”, will this be just like junior high where I show up and wonder where everyone is? I am seeing more and more EV’s around town. Last week I spotted a black Tesla Model S in town. Yesterday I spotted a white BMW i3 - the second one in town. One of my co-workers just texted me a photo of a Tesla Roadster he spotted in Lamesa, Texas, a small town about an hour south of here. And I am seeing more and more Leafs. I did see a guy riding a Zero FX on Slide Road recently. It's not a revolution, but they are starting to show up. The real question is will they show up to an event? I am waiting for a Field of Dreams voice of inspiration, but it just has not happened yet.

And why should I bother? Is it because I would love to have an electric car to replace my beloved (but flawed) Lucy? No, what I’d really like is for a whole lot of us to find some form of non-polluting personal transport, and an electric car seems a great place to start.

May we reach our destination without destroying our home.