"Evvie" Comes Home

This is our 2012 100% Electric Nissan Leaf "Evvie". We picked "Evvie" up from Blue Springs Nissan on October 30th 2012. We leased the car for a two year term. On this blog I will chronicle some of our adventures as we go along. We are getting a late start so I’ll have to do some catch up work here.

My family is not new to driving electric. In 2006 I had an electric vehicle dealership called Midwest EV here in Leavenworth Kansas where I mainly sold the ZAP electric vehicle. Here’s a part of a post I did on the mynissanleaf.com (MNL) forum that tells a short history of my experience with electric cars before I got my LEAF.

 Ever since I worked at a gas station pumping gas back in 1976 (I was 12 years old BTW) I dreamed of having an electric car. I saw the "gas crisis" up close and personal. Grown men yelled (and I mean YELLED!) at me like it was my fault that gas had risen over fifty cents a gallon.

In 2004 or so I decided I was going to have an electric car no matter what it looked like or how primitive it was in function and design. I am not a DIY guy so I needed a vehicle that was made by a company (preferably still in business) with some kind of support. I also needed it to be affordable and as useful as possible. The Myers motors http://www.myersmotors.com/ car wouldn't work. Very fast but no place to put the dog. The four wheel cars for sale like the GEM and ZENN NEV had a top speed of 25. Too slow for my town. Then came the ZAP. It had three wheels so it was classified as a motorcycle. Since it was a motorcycle there were no safety or speed restrictions. This is my ZAP: http://evalbum.com/993 The ZAP had a breakneck top speed of 35mph and you could get up to 40mph with a good wind behind you. You also had a 25 mile range that was way more than I needed in a town 7 miles long and 2 miles wide. I loved driving electric so much I became a dealer. The vehicle was very flawed and gas prices dropped and that was the end of my dealership.

Even though the dealership failed, I still look back on the experience as one of the best experiences of my life. I remember talking to one of my fellow dealers and saying “Can you believe we are looking at multiple electric cars, all in one place and anyone can buy them?” It was amazing to us after the hope and then disappointment that was the EV1 experience. Seeing the look on my customers faces as they took their first drive in their all electric cars made me tear up.

My dream then morphed into having an electric that I would be able to drive from town to town. Then came the Leaf.

Yesterday I drove from Leavenworth Kansas to Topeka Kansas to visit a friend. My friend also happened to be an old customer from my ZAP days. I dropped my car off at Capitol City Nissan in Topeka for a charge. My friend and I had coffee with a rep from Westar (our local electric provider) hung out and talked EVs then it was time for the return trip home. I was brought back to the Nissan dealership in a ZAP.

We may not be all the way there yet. There will be problems with this car (no car is perfect right off the line) and improvements and modifications will be made. Most will love the car and some will give up on it but we have come a long way and I’m very happy I am able to be a part of it.