SEVA Meeting Minutes – March 2018

SEVA Meeting Minutes 13 March 2018

Jay Donnaway conducted and welcomed the attendees

2018 Nissan LEAF featured EV of the month

Joanna Grist – paid EV lobbiest will be presenting

Sandy operated the monthly meeting raffle

Tony Blair – Center For Advanced Transportation Solutions. Whidbey Island holding an event throughout the month. There are charging stations on the island. On Earth Day there will be an EV show at Bayview. There will be speakers presenting.

Jay asked that one SEVA member volunteer for each car show to coordinate our efforts.

Renton River Days was discussed… there has not been anyone step forward yet, and we currently do not have a plan.

Phil Scoog will be coordinating the XXX Drive-In show during May.

Forth, formerly Drive Oregon, has been holding events.

Gasless on Greenwood

Northwest Solar Fest

Snohomish Car Show

Drive Electric Week

Earth Day at Bellevue College (Wednesday April 18th) – April 21st is the City of Bellevue Earth Day events.

Sustainable Ballard – September 22nd.

Phil Skoog is accepting show information to help us accomplish our outreach goals.

Tonya Buell from WashDOT

New attendees: Miriam Gray (Bolt), Maureen (Bolt), Steven (P100D – also electric boat), Tim’s friend

Andrea researching EVSEs at Seattle City parks. Proposal due at the end of March. Tennis center is a proposed site.

Joanna Grist, lobbyist from Forth (forthmobility.org) lobbies on environmental issues. In 2015 transportation incentive package it was placed in the multi-modal account. Sales tax exemption was not extended due to a short session and disagreements on where the money should come from. Problem was in the state senate republican caucus – apparently for political reasons. It is expected to run out in April. The state will give a 1-month warning in advance of its ending, so it may end May 31st.

On even years the legislative session is 60 days. On odd years it is 105 days. So, this year was a short session and made it difficult for the political roadblocks to be resolved.

VW money is going to charging infrastructure as well as changing older diesel and gasoline improvements.

There may be some money in the budget available in the carbon tax proposal which will be on the ballot at the end of the year.

Municipal utility bill 6187… PUD Authority Bill did not pass. Requested to use ratepayer money to provide incentives for charging stations. Bill died because lawyers for the parties involved could not agree on the format.

Previous carbon measure could not pass previously because its supporters could not agree. The environmental community sometimes tends to tank their own interests due to internal disagreements.

Forth will be doing lobby days in the future.

What is most effective is to go to campaign events and making contributions. Going to district meetings as the party events. Getting to know the legislators, showing them a car, etc. Meet with them outside of their time in Olympia since they will only give you a few minutes while session is going.

Phoning in and stating your position.

EV champions in the legislature: Senator Polumbo, Mark Mullett, Dick Murey, Ed Orcut, Jake Fy, Carey Condota.

The lobby work needs to be done before Thanksgiving. Meet with them in the summer at their district offices. If session is going they only count the tallies of supporters.

EV caucus of legislators will be reformed.

Tonya Buell with WashDOT – updates on what’s going on. Joanna Grist has been phenomenal. The legislature awarded $1M to assist in EV charging infrastructure a couple of sessions ago. It’s going to be used with DC charging stations out to Yakima. New ones are going in on I-5. Six locations between Seattle and Portland. First one will be at LeMae Car Museum in Tacoma. Then in eastern Washington there will be other. That $1M was leveraged to get an additional $1.5M. Each location will have CHAdeMO and CCS and Level 2.

Electrify America (part of VW settlement funds). Been working hard to get them to look at Seattle and Washington to allocate some of the $1.2B for infrastructure. Seattle did win some in cycle 1 as well as some highway corridors. They are working on cycle 2 now. There is a proposal from our state to win some. The proposal focuses on destination charging. Also submitted were 472 potential locations where state employees park.

The Department of Ecology is handling a small portion of the VW settlement. $16M over 10 years to install EV charging.

The charging stations going in are 50kW. The Electrify America ones are 300kW.

Update on PowerFlex charging. Multi-family buildings. $200/unit. Conduit is run to each stall.

Jay – ICEd locations. Charging stations are sometimes not marked. Need to educate property owners.

Steven – signage problems sometimes don’t indicate “no parking (EV charging excepted)”

GTSE April 17th and 19th.

For the good of the order…

Remember to update your credit card with the charging station operators (Blink).

Some of us are driving around with the WA road usage tax monitoring devices.

Jay Donnaway – President

Presented his bio/CV. (Hopefully he will make this available so that I don’t have to type it all out.)

Rich with Manzanita Micro – 20kW motor winch. Has ripped apart magnets. Discussed improving magnet engineering.