SEVA Meeting Minutes – May 2022

Seattle Electric Vehicle Association

May 10, 2022 meeting minutes
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Meeting Notes

Seattle electric vehicle association (SEVA) May 10, 2022

Weather was good and as such the impromptu pre-meeting car show tradition was back in play in the parking lot. Kent Bakke brought and presented a one-off bright yellow single seat custom ‘dolphin’ 3 wheel streamliner built by an ex-Lotus engineer in europe about 20 years ago. Originally designed for vespa power it now has an 8KW (12hp) rear drive wheel motor and about 16kwh of OX brand lithium modules. Per Kent it has been tested up to 60mph.

Meeting called to order 7:05 PM. Officers/Bigshots present at front of room:
Jay Donnaway (Prez)
Charlie Tsai (Treasurer)
Phil Skoog (honorary officer / event coordinator)
Notes taken by Brian Hughes filling in for Billy Kreuter
Steve Lough (Bigshot emeritus) also present

Jay introduced Julie S. who after being shown a late 1990’s ford ranger EV by Jay chose to purchase one. The late 90’s ford ranger EV has proven one of the best surviving OEM EVs from that era. Unfortunately only about 300 survive out of the 1200 or so produced, but those remaining have been shown to be robust and are upgradeable to modern batteries with potential for a solid 250 mile range. They have novel drive systems and decent support from a large stock of spares currently being curated by the enthusiast community with the help of one crazy guy who bought truckloads of it when the original contracted support organization decided to end their involvement.

WKTEC (Who killed the electric car) movie/documentary brought up as tangent to Ford Ranger discussion as required training for EV newbies. Available for streaming near you.
First Timers (welcome all)
Dennis from U-District: looking for help on charging without access to a driveway or garage. Jay brought up Seattle now has a streetside charging program where apparently they will at the utility’s cost install a charging station on nearby telephone pole and any user can activate via an app. Charger is NOT reserved solely for homeowner and there may be other terms – do your research but seems like an encouraging program. Here’s a video of the equipment that SCL will be using. https://youtu.be/UjiR-Wz_Z8s
Jerry from Whidbey Island: Has a Austin Healy Bugeye sprite thinking about converting. He’s a modelmaker and metal sculptor and has experience building all kinds of things.
Andrey from Woodinville- has a Gen1 leaf and was generally curious about the group. Also has a 1986 school bus used for recreation purposes thinking about conversion options to get rid of the smelly diesel. Has built home energy storage using leaf cells.
Jessie (sp?) – U District : her family has Teslas so she bought a Mach-E. Must be because of her purple hair. Here to learn about the weird, wide world of Evs and the people who drive them.
Mark – Brier: Has Model S which was original order #52. Has solar installation on home, Now has a Tesla Roadster and a 2011 leaf with a very weak battery. Looking for ideas on how to revive the leaf. Several others shared similar desires. Jay has experience lookin at this and explained Nissan is very stingy about selling new battery packs, no near-term 3rd party battery packs on the horizon and there are other barriers to doing battery replacements en masse, so unfortunately many of these cars may go to a much-too-early grave.

Mark Schiller presented on upcoming Greenwood Car show. This is our biggest car show of the year, where we try to come up with our biggest showing and engage with as many of the 30.000+ gearheads and curious skeptics as we can during the day. If you have a unique conversion, obscure vintage EV, or any one of the newest or high performance OEM Evs like Rivian or Tesla Plaid, or know somebody who does, you/they are strongly encouraged to spend the day at the show showing off your car and talking to people about it. SEVA will pay entrance fees for everybody this year (motion passed on voice vote with no audible dissent at 7:33PM). Admission forms were passed around. There is a deadline for application but it isn’t here yet so please contact Mark or Steven Lough to get the form and submit it. Date is June 25th expect to be there by 6am and stay til around 4pm. If enough people attend Steven Lough suggested his family would host an after show barbecue at their home as has been done to great fanfare at previous years events.
Phil Skoog (unofficial but yet highly effective SEVA event coordination/promoter) gave report on May 8 mother’s day Issaquah XXX EV car show, another annual event in conjunction with NDEW (National Drive Electric Wildy Week) Weather wasn’t greatest but didn’t rain during show. About 2 dozen cars registered and most showed, including several conversions – Scion xB, Karmann Ghia, VW Bus, and a for-sale Honda Accord classic ‘lead sled’ originally built by EV-Luminati John Wayland. OEM vehicles included the usual panoply of Teslas as well as a Rivian Pickup, Polestar 2, a couple Mach E’s, Leaf, Volt, Fiat, Niro, Zero, Yo Quiero. As typical for this event not huge crowds, but we drew more than a few enthusiastic onlookers who spent quite a while talking with people about their cars and experiences owning an EV, and all went home to sleep out our food comas.
Aforementioned 1996 Honda Accord EV conversion by John Wayland is for sale asking $3500. It has newer lead acid G31 batteries for 144V system and about 30 mile maximum practical range, and has the classic 9” Advanced DC motor and Curtis 1231 controller. Charger unknown. This is the bog standard entry level conversion formula circa 1995 – 2005. Highest and best use would be a lithium upgrade and maybe a motor/controller upgrade to AC, but believed operational as is. Editorial: Any interested buyer is in the drivers seat on price. Conversions especially dated ones don’t have a strong resale market, but can be a great way to get parts and learn about EV conversion on the cheap before taking the plunge on a bigger, better one or upgrade regime. Contact Jay to link up with the non-SEVA seller.
Facebook networking was brought up as great way to promote SEVA events and Shows.
ElectroMechanica SOLO was supposed to be on display and have presentation given, but no show (Jay)
Jeff Finn gave update on his DEED (Drive Electric – Earth Day) shenanigans in Kingman Arizona with the Route 66 EV museum down there. Their DEED event included ride and drives and the opening of 18 new tesla superchargers in town. The museum has acquired Tesla Roadster #480 and they have a new facility in the works. They got attendees to the event from hundreds of miles away.
EV Infrastructure – Jay – Apparently the state is looking for shovel ready projects to throw another round of grant money at. Any ideas please bring them to the attention of the group. Seattle streetside charger program one possible example. Note – these chargers are a novel ‘rapunzel’ design that sits high up on phone poles and when remotely activated unwinds a cord which drops down to within reach of the user. Brian is envisoning Jay’s iMiev dragged halfway up a telephone pole by a charger malfunction.
Aformentioned new attendee Mark gave a brief talk about his Tesla Roadster, which he bought out of HI in 2014 having not seen it in person from a dealership that really wanted it gone on a tight timeline and strict terms in 2014. Its white, shiny, has 16K miles since new (4K when he bought it), and still has about 160 miles range. Nice to see a roadster in the wild, most are off the road now as they are becoming collector and museum items or launched into orbit.
Jay – “Electrify Expo” to be held at husky stadium 23-24 July. Apparently big tent for promoting most anything related to commercial electric transport, but clubs not invited unless paired with a sponsor like a dealer or something. Not clear exactly who “Electrify Expo” is themselves. This will be the 2nd one ever. Not clear who all might be presenting or who all the target audience is. Apparently everybody things SEVA is involved but we aren’t.
Ron Easley put in a plug for “Holley High Voltage” Race in Sedona California July 9, 10. Good entry fee for what you get – autocross, drag, circuit racing, car show, bunch of other events all EV related. Many very expensive very well done conversions to see in CA as well that show up at these events. Holley – the maker of aftermarket performance carburetor and other fuel system stuff – is apparently looking to diversify into performance Evs likely seeing the writing on the wall as the rest of enlightened folk do so good for them. Holley has bought “AEM” automotive electric component maker and they now have products like adapter boards to be able to run a tesla drive unit in a conversion and such. Cool beans.
Locally one of our members Scott V. who is actually gets people to pay him and his employer to do conversions is using an AEM drive to convert a Jaguar E-Type.
Brian GrunkenMeyer (sp?) gave brief update on his EV charge management app and Rocky Mountain Institute involvement with. If we all charged at the right times of day we could reduce EV charging emissions by 25%. If interested in getting the app or getting involved contact him. Jay ragged on him for app not supporting older EV models.
Apparently Dave Paul – WA house of reps member – District 10 (D) is exploring legislation/policy to promote conversion of ferries and local transit to all electric. Write him with your thoughts, critiques, and encouragement.
Jay – will miss next SEVA meeting as will be in Europe for EV35. And to EV roadtrip around Norway. Jay also apparently speaks Norweigan, or else he pulled a fast one on all of us. He will be back in time for Greenwood. (Ja- Jay snakker Norsk!)
Meeting Adjourned 8:15PM. Chairs all made it into storage safely. Hobnobbing and networking continued til around 9pm.

Zoom Meeting Recording(s):
: Did Not Stream Meeting