SEVA Meeting Minutes – June 2025
Seattle Electric Vehicle Association
June 10, 2025 meeting minutes
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The June 10, 2025 Meeting of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association took place at the UW Clean Energy Institute, 4625 Union Bay PL NE, Seattle, WA.
Fifteen plus people arrived early for the guided tour of the facility and more discussed EVs in the parking lot prior to the meeting.
At 7:04 president Stephen Johnsen called the meeting to order and introduced the first presenter, Dr. Michael Pomfret, Managing Director of the UW Clean Energh Institute. Clean Energy Inst
The Clean Energy Institute is Accelerating the Path from Clean Energy Research to Industry Innovation. The goal is to help move technology from lab to market, for energy. They support every part of the process from chemistry at the atomic scale to load management for the national power grid, working to keep everyone in the chain aware of the other links in the chain and encouraging cooperation. They work with the Department of Energy. Typically, hardware takes 20 years from idea to fully implemented. They began with $8 M funding from the state of Washington. They sell the use of specialized tools as their source of ongoing funding. Since users are billed full cost, there is no IP entanglement with the University of Washington. Research often starts small, say, fingernail size for a solar cell or battery. That must be scaled up to a demo scale, say 1 foot square, then to manufacturing scale of a meter or more a solar panel. Manufacturing then scales up from there. They provide consulting, systems integration, a Super Computer and Live Hardware for testing tiny coin cell size batteries to 30kW systems. They have 900 regular users from 35 states and 20 countries, including 120+ startups and small businesses.
New attendees included a family with a Rivian and Model S, she has spent 10 years in working in clean energy. Kelson has a plug in hybrid.
Stephen noted that we’ve recently lost an EV great, Steve Huff. He was the first to go over 200 mph in an electric dragster. See details here; Steve sets record
Important EVent – The last intact fully electric Interurban Electric Trolley it in danger. This coming week (June 17) the city council of Yakima will take a vote. If they take the option to save money and pave over the tracks, it will do away with this historic, fully operational 1907 trolley system.
Greenwood Car Show; this is usually our biggest event of the year, on Greenwood Avenue, June 28th. To show your car, send your car’s information to Charlie at c4tsai@yahoo.com and SEVA will pay the registration fees. So far, we have 13 signed up, mostly conversions. More production cars would be desirable. This is a great opportunity to visit with and promote EVs to thousands of folks. Ryan will be bringing up the White Zombie from Portland.
Our Second presentation for the night was Scott Vanderwort from EV Works reporting on a beautiful 1973 Volkswagen Brazilian Bus conversion. EV Works are Passionate Innovators. They do Nissan Leaf upgrades and conversions, in-house. They even sell connectors and NACS interface adaptors to allow EV conversions to use Tesla charging stations and connectors. It even locks while charging and displays the standard colors. For this Bus conversion, they did a 3D scan so they could fit batteries and drive into the original engine compartment. They kept the clutch and transmission and limited the motor torque to match the existing transmission. When doing conversions, they test the wire harness routing with rope, then lay out the harness on a board. In this case, they used 50 different colors of striped wire. Photos and more details here; EV Works Bus
Questions; When EV Works does conversions they can supply NACS which is approximately J3400 for faster charging or the older J1772 level 2, owner’s option. Some NACS Tesla chargers are still “Tesla Only”. If you would like a standard VW converted to electric, they have a pre-designed solution that runs around $65,000 for labor and parts.
Jay is selling parts from a wrecked 2013 Nissan Leaf he bought for the battery.
Stephen noted that the 2013 Nissan Leaf is the last year that can stop charging itself at 80% (extends battery life), charges with J1772 at 6.6 kW and will accept up to 62 kWh batteries for a 230 mile range. To maximize battery life, keep your Leaf out of the heat as the batteries are not temperature controlled.
Ryan, Micha and others did some off roading with Cybertrucks on forest roads starting near Enumclaw and heading towards highway 410. Tire trouble and other issues stopped them this time, but they plan to go at it again.
No location has been set for the July meeting.
Adjourned 8:30 pm.
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Zoom/YouTube Meeting Recording(s):
: YouTube: SeattleEVA.org 20250610 Meeting