EV1 Club MeetingJul. 17, 1999
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The July EV1 Club meeting was held Saturday, July 17th, from 1 to 4:30pm at the AQMD in Diamond Bar. After a round of self-introductions by the attendees (with the usual conflicting claims of having the first delivered EV1), topics such as infrastructure updates, EV Rental Cars, and the upcoming 50-mile Malibu Coast drive were presented. The guest speaker, John Hepke, Director of Propulsion Engineering and Program Management for GM in Michigan, spoke about the Gen 2 EV1, the GM-Toyota collaboration, and closed the meeting with an interesting question/answer period. Infrastructure Updates
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Update on Budget's EV Rental
Program (Joe Borges)
Joe reported that since Dec. 15 1998 when EV Rentals began operations, they have had over 940 rentals in total (EV's + natural gas vehicles). They have 100 rentals logged in July, which is half over, so July is looking like it will be a great month for them. The average rental driver has been driving about 80 miles, indicating that drivers are using the infrastructure out there, and the average duration is 2 days, which is about half of the average for gasoline vehicles. He reported that they've had drivers from all continents (New Zealand, Australia, Japan, India, and the Middle East to name a few specific places). And domestically, EV Rentals has had drivers from numerous states, and Joe even pointed out one customer (a repeat customer from New Mexico) who was sitting in the audience! The most recent additions to their alternative fuel vehicle fleet are the Toyota RAV 4 (inductive version) and the Honda natural gas car. The EV Rentals facilities expansion plan is also aggressive, with Joe reporting that they will be opening up in Sacramento on August 11. Also in the works are rental sites in Ontario, Orange County, Anaheim, and Beverly Hills. Burbank is also in consideration, pending selection of an adequate location for their facilities. Joe also talked about the EV trip planners provided with each EV rented out. They are currently in the process of visiting each public charger location so that they can provide, along with a marked map, address, onsite direction, number of chargers, hours of availability, photos, mileage from Budget facilities and major tourist attractions. In addition, they will be providing latitude and longitude and information detailing facilities near each charger such as restaurants, shopping, entertainment, etc., just as the EV1 Club is doing on its charger list. EV Rentals has been aggressively promoting EV's and one of the upcoming events they will be participating in is the LA Street Race at Exposition Park (9/4-9/6). They will be providing some Ford Rangers as well as have an area where more EV's will be on display. They are also working with Edison EV and LADWP to approach some 30 hotels to get them to install chargers. The equipment will be provided and installed free of charge to the hotels, and they will also get the benefit of special listings and promotions. In return they will be asked to provide discount rates to EV customers, make the chargers available for public parking, and (most important!) they will be asked to enforce EV only parking. In addition to the hotel sites, they are also looking at providing EV facilities at other Budget facilities, including Malibu, Sunset Bl., West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, and Mid-city Wilshire. And finally, they are aggressively supporting AB71 (now in the California Senate), which would allow EV's to drive in the carpool lane. Obviously this would be a nice incentive for visitors to LA to rent an EV for their stay here! |
EV1 Rally Planning (Greg Hanssen)
Due to lack of time, the Malibu Drive, planned for the Labor Day weekend (9/4-9/5), was not discussed in detail. However, the basic plan is:
Greg said that the ideas will continue to be discussed on the email list. The latest information is available on a web page maintained by Colin Summers at: http://evrally.mightycheese.com/. If this site is down, a mirror site is accessible from the EV1 club home page also, though this may not be as current as Colins' site. |
Saturn Update (Rick Ostrov)
Rick Ostrov, Saturn manager of EV Marketing Services, reiterated Saturn's commitment to the EV1 program and reported their latest marketing efforts which are specifically targeting the heads of high-tech companies as well as Hollywood trendsetters. For the main section of the meeting, Rick introduced our main speaker, John Hepke, as well as other GM ATV personnel in attendance - Jeff Colman, Director of Communications for Advanced Class Vehicles, Sharon Sarris, GM's Communications person for the Southern California area, and Mary Moore, assistant brand manager, who with Frank Pereira's departure, has been running this part of ATV's operations. |
Featured Guest Speaker - John Hepke
The featured guest speaker for the meeting was John Hepke from GM ATV, the Director of Propulsion Engineering and Program Management. John's first task was to explain the delay of the Gen 2 EV release which he said was for engineering reasons (sorry, details not available for publication) and for which he took full responsibility for making the decision to delay the release. He also confirmed that release date is still not firmed up but is still officially "Fall 1999". In the mean time, the factory is indeed in operation, producing Gen 2 vehicles. John also took the opportunity to repeat that GM is not giving up on the EV1 as has been speculated, but is firmly convinced that vehicles of the future will all include electric propulsion systems. The EV1 is serving as the target platform for that critical technology and GM's recent efforts in redesigning the power electronics for the Gen 2 vehicles is an indicator of this. John also indicated that we can look for announcements from GM at the end of 1999 that will be strong statements on where GM will be headed for the 21st century. John then opened up for questions and comments from the floor, many of which turned out to be requests for feature changes (not all unanimous, though!):
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The next meeting is tentatively planned for October. See you there!
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