EVS-20 Live!

Friday 14th November 2003 - Seven cars from the CaFCP drove from Long Beach Community college to the LB convention center. Seven cars were in the rally including the new X-Trail from Nissan. Joe Irvine from the CaFCP started the announcements and other speakers included LB Fire Chief Brad Wilson, LB Police Lt. Richard Rocky, Cynthia Vidula Perelta on the SCAQMD board and Kitari Kalahau of EDTA. The name of the conference this year is Battery, Hybrid and Fuel Cell. There was one of the three Ed's in attendance, Ed from SoCal Edison. Missing were Ed Rediel and Ed LaRocque from Toyota. Other attendees included representatives from as close as the CaFCP and SCAQMD and from as far as Japan. This event was to encourage public to attend the Ride-n-Drive on Saturday and to support the LB Community College and their efforts to train technicians to work on these types of vehicles.
—Tai Robinson Reporting

All Photos Tai Robinson - HiRes available upon request

Saturday 15th November 2003 - This show is electrifying! Billions of research money to showcase all this. The hottest both and best looking package is from Wavecrest, they are showing bikes, outboard motor and the DaimlerChrysler Smart roadster converted to electric. The inductive charging system is great, no plugging-in to charge, and fast too. Alpha EV is offering Alphagel batteries that reach 80% charge in 12 minutes! With more capacity, longer life and no harmful components. AC propulsion has a $788,000 dollar hybrid plug-in Volkswagen Beetle and of course, the tZero. PEI has some funky looking things as well. My eyes have been opened to the electric future, who needs hydrogen?
—Tai Robinson

Sunday 16th November 2003 -Today was productive. I drove and rode in more vehicles, and made good contacts. I did not get as many contacts today as yesterday but all is well. I would like to declare my Ride-n-drive champions: # 1 champion is Honda with the FCX # 2 Best looking exterior vehicle - Nissan X-Trail # 3 Most practical pure EV vehicle - Electrovaya Maya # 4 Best looking bike - Wavecrest TidalForce io # 5 Most impressive technology - inductive charging.
Automotive Roundtable - Roundup
- "Sustainable Mobility, for which there is no single solution, but multiple pathways to be taken right now to achieve this goal. The most important indicator is the environment yet this is the least important to the consumer. The next best indicator is the economy which is what drives the consumers choices and the distant third indicator is social which would include aspects such as traffic jams and security within the vehicle." The moderator concluded by saying we know less than we think we do. Oh, Brilliant guy!
- The Rcar (Reva in India) car looks good, they are exhibiting next to Calstart-Weststart. Bruce Meland told me to check out Wavecrest, which I already had and am completely impressed with the Russian technology, mostly because of their packaging. They are the ones Gen. Wesley Clark had to resign from (as well as all other boards he was sitting on) to be completely safe in his presidential bid. Maxwell I need to check out a little bit more, but they have an EV-1 on display with their ultra caps which was designed by BYU students in Utah. Zap car is cool but I did not get to drive it yet. —Tai

Monday 16th November 2003 - Tai got written up in today's ShowTimes edition and photo on the front page with title of article Hydrogen-Capable Hummer. The story was about Schwarzenegger's project and his clean vehicle agenda. As a result, Tai's Electrifying Times badge was taken away from him by the EVS media office. Keep you posted... (Oy Vay! Remy C.) Wavecrest Labs out of Dulles VA converted to electric a new Smart Roadster, a new model by Mercedes available in Europe since March 2001 but not available here in the US yet. They are showcasing their new 17 kW volt on electric hub motors which saves space for small size conversions. More later — Bruce Meland
From Josh Landesh—evworld correspondent, on loan to Electrifying Times
"Renowned Hollywood director Rob Reiner's speech was, in my view, exhilarating. He spoke from the heart, and I'm mentioning it to Electrifying Times for a couple of reasons. Remy and I have talked about the role of celebrities in our efforts. One of the first things Rob discussed was what Celebrities could do to help the cause, and what their limitations are. He emphasized that Celebrities could really help out with certain things and that it was OK to ask this of them. He gave an example that one thing a Celebrity couldn't do would be to endorse a specific car model, but that they could endorse the use of a type of technology. Rob also did a good job of laying out some of the common-sensical reasons for endorsing better oil-conserving technologies, including helping in the War Effort. He mentioned President Kennedy's amazing call-to-effort when he promised a man on the moon in 10 years (or was it by the end of the decade?) and said that it would be possible to do the same thing if the goal were energy independence, and that we all know that it's an attainable goal. He received robust applause on that point if I recall correctly."

Tuesday November 17th 2003 - Not much news to report today since ET's web eyes and ears at the show have been decapitated! You'll just have to wait till the print edition. Here's a scan of the culprit, the ShowTimes cover article which got Tai, ET reporter extraordinaire, unceremoniously booted from the EVS-20 show floor. Conflict of interest we're led to believe. All that on Mickey's birthday!
—Remy C. Your ET web-host. Oops, spoke too soon...

It is a little more difficult to report without a badge but I have a job to do, report to ElectrifyingTimes on EVS-20. Below is a picture of the Honda FCX refueling from the Air Products mobile hydrogen fueler and a smaller Air Products hydrogen refueler for 3600psi vehicles. The company with the slick Inductive Power Transfer Technology is Wampfler from Germany. Speaking with Wolfgang Eiche about their solutions for a moving world made me realize how much closer pure EVs are to being able to cover vast distances. With their simple system a person needing to charge an EV simply drives over the inductive plate in the pavement at a charge station. The picture of the little yellow box up top is Wampfler's inductive power transfer unit to be installed in ground. The driver does not even have to leave the vehicle and within 20 minutes most vehicles could have an 80% charge on their batteries. With this technology on current and new EVs, and in filling stations the world over, a consumer who travels by EV could actually make it a long distance without overnight recharging.
—Tai Robinson, Reporting from the "outside" of EVS-20

EVS-20 QUEEN MARY GALA PICTURES
Thanks to Toyota and Edison for taking us back 70 years on the Queen Mary for the Gala event in Long Beach. Wonderful food, variety of music, entertainers and the ghooooost tooour! Toyota must be selling a lot of Priuses to have a party like this! As the evening progressed the open bar took its toll. Networking proved to be fruitful. California Motors says they are working on a hybrid drive train for a Hummer H2. Wouldn't that be nice to have in your own Green Hummer Mr. Schwarzenegger? Power, range and lack of emissions! An addendum to the Intergalactic Hydrogen proposal to convert Arnold's Hummer may be in order. Maybe we will even throw in a Fuel Cell APU to showcase a wide variety of advanced technology! Hold on to your steering wheel Mr. Governor, the rEVolution has begun.—Tai Thanks Tai for the terrific job reporting back to us live, despite the slight snag. You helped us put Electrifying Times on the map as the best EVS-20 coverage on the web! Stay tuned for the new ET special print edition, at a newsstand soon near you.—Remy C.
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