SEVA Meeting Minutes – October 2023

The Oct. 10, 2023 membership meeting of the Seattle Electric Vehicle Association was held in the social hall of First Church of the Nazarene in Wallingford.  After the parking-lot car viewing, President Jay Donnaway commenced the meeting at 7:02 p.m.

NEW ATTENDEES: Ethan heard about SEVA at the Green Transportation Summit and Expo. He works for a contractor for Seattle City Light. Sarah Cook restores cars with her partner; they’re currently working on a ’74 Opel.

POLICY UPDATE – Jay announced that the Washington State Electric Vehicle Coordinating Council is presenting its master plan on Oct. 11. Commenting on the plan will provide a chance to influence the state’s EV policy. Public comment is open until Oct. 30. Find more information and submit your comments here.

BOARD UPDATE: Neither Vice President Grace Reamer nor Secretary Billy Kreuter will seek reelection to these respective posts when their board terms expire after board elections at the annual SEVA meeting in February 2024. Candidates can volunteer to run for the open board positions by sending a message to president@seattleEVA.org.

MUSEUM UPDATE: Jeff Finn reported that the city of Kingman, Ariz. wanted the Historic EV Foundation to present at National Drive Electric Week, but the city manager was fired and the event didn’t happen. The foundation is now having a fundraising campaign for the museum. For this campaign, they’re selling “virtual batteries” at various virtual amperages corresponding to price, which starts at $100.

SPECIAL GUEST: Tom Gurski from Blue Dot Motorworks was the special guest and provided a presentation about his start-up business. Tom described Blue Dot as “evangelizing for conversions.” They initially tried but abandoned a pusher trailer.  Their research shows that climate goals can’t be met solely by new EV production, because meeting targets would require doubling the size of America’s car industry in order to manufacture millions of EVs, while scrapping ICE vehicles before they reach their life expectancy would cost $12 trillion of their value. Instead, Blue Dot is now developing a product called the “Narwhal” to retrofit ICEs into PHEVs. It’s a battery, motor and components placed into the drivetrain. Another product, the “Humpback”, is an external device coupled to the rear lug-nut threads. These PHEV-retrofit solutions would reduce the premature-scrappage cost 36-fold, to $300 billion.  The products will offer three sizes of battery and cost. Learn more at BlueDotMotorworks.com.

IN THE NEWS: Jay reported that Bloomberg has an article showing that annual production growth and cost reduction of EV batteries exceeds any product development seen in the 20th century, for example the ramp-up of the Model T.

EVENT REPORT: SEVA members took part in several events for National Drive Electric Week in September. Steilacoom was a bifurcated event with production cars at one end and conversions at the other. Oregon EVA had a very successful event.  Grace reported that Seattle City Light’s ride-and-drive had to deal with a storm in the middle of the event, but she and husband Kevin gave 26 test drives. The SeaTac/Tukwila Rotary’s “Auto R-EV-olution Expo” at Southcenter could have been better; for one thing, the organizers delayed listing it on the NDEW website.

SCOPE of SEVA: Continuing the discussion from last month, the board said that a newsletter would be in addition to the SEVA Google Groups list. Larry Ryan favored a name change, suggesting a geographic expansion beyond Seattle. Andrea Tousignant said that Drive Electric Washington is still active. Its board has been bigger than SEVA’s and was therefore able to have committees. But Jay said that he judged DEW not to be viable any longer, so SEVA could fill a role providing broader representation.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Jay said he hopes that the state will install L2 charging at every DCFC station they fund.
• Ryan Plut reported that a subsidy will be provided by the State of Iowa to its residents, who can either take cash or a check towards the down payment on an EV.  Ryan also test-drove a Bolt on which he’s had a deposit for many months, but the dealer then cancelled the sale and has yet to refund the deposit.
• Tom Gurski said that the federal tax credit sometimes can be folded into a lease, and some dealers then allow an immediate lease buyout so the buyer can recover the credit.

Jay adjourned the meeting at about 8:20 p.m.