Another Day, Another Interested Motorist

I've frequently written about how often people stop me and ask questions about the MINI-E. Is it a hybrid? Is it really all electric? How do you charge it? The final question is often: Can I buy one?

I had another "electric car moment" this morning on my way to work. As I pulled up to a traffic light in Morristown I noticed the person behind me holding up their cell phone to take a picture of the back of my car. This happens all the time since I got my EF-OPEC vanity plates. Usually once they get a picture, it ends there but today was a bit different. Once the traffic light turned green and I started moving I noticed that he moved into the lane next to me and sped up to get even with me. He then lowered his window and motioned to me to lower my window. We were pulling up to another traffic light so I really didn't mind.

Once I lowered my window he quickly asked "I hate to inconvenience you, but do you have a minute, I would really love to talk to you about your car" I really wasn't in a rush to get to work anyway so I agreed and told him to pull into the Dunkin Donuts parking lot that was right up the street. It turned out that he read the article on me in the Star Ledger a few weeks ago and knew all about the MINI-E from reading about it but he had never saw one in person. He had lots of questions about range, charging, temperature management and even wanted to know if I had noticed any battery degradation yet so he knew the right questions to ask. He said he has a deposit on a Nissan LEAF and is waiting for it to be available in New Jersey.

After about a ten minute conversation he thanked me, I gave him this blog address and we parted ways. Encounters like this have been one of the most interesting part of being in the MINI-E program. I have met so many people that are interested in electric cars, much more than I ever expected. With cars like the Chevy Volt and the Nissan LEAF coming to showrooms in a couple months we will finally have a choice.

Front Page News Story on Me & #250!

Recently I was contacted by Mike Frassinelli, a reporter for the Star Ledger, New Jersey largest newspaper with a daily circulation of over 300,000. He wanted to do a story on me and the fact that I'm driving an electric car and also charging the car with electric that I generate myself from my home solar array. Being the media hound I am, I happily agreed and he came over to my house with a photographer about a week later. We talked for a while, took some pictures and I even let him drive the car for a while. Mike is a great guy and a good journalist, asking all the important questions and even following up my interview with a conversation with Richard Steinberg, head of BMW's electric car division here in the US.

A few days later I heard from Mike and he told me that it looked like the story would run in Sundays paper but that was tentative. Then on Saturday, the day before it was to run, he called me back again and said he had good news and bad news. The bad news was that it wasn't going to be in Sundays paper. He then went on to say the good news was that the paper liked the story so much, they want to put it on the front page and Sunday wasn't possible. Wow, front page ink! That was good news.

So on Tuesday, August 31st, I started getting text messages from friends early in the morning. . The first one came at 5:50am  and said "I'm staring at some goof-ball on the front page of my morning paper, you really out did yourself this time". That was how my day was to be. I had dozens of telephone calls, text messages and emails. Also just about everyone that came to the restaurant that day had the paper in hand and wanted to talk to the "celebrity" some even had a pen and joked about wanting my autograph.

It was a fun experience and hopefully I got some people thinking about electric cars and solar electric. The combination is really great and hopefully a model for future personal transportation.

You can read the entire article from this link.

MINI-E Vanity Plate Poster

A few months after the MINI-E trial lease program started last year, I noticed some of the participants had applied for vanity license plate to proudly proclaim that they were driving a car that doesn't need gasoline or oil. I'm not a big vanity plate fan and I generally like to blend in with the crowd rather than stick out, but I thought if ever I would want one give people a reason to look at my car this would be it so I applied for, and received "EF-OPEC"

Most everywhere I go people love the plate and take pictures of it all the time. I also get a lot of "Does that mean what I think it does?", to which I just smile. I few months ago I asked some of the others in the program to send me a close up picture of their vanity plates and I organized them and sent them to my printer and made up this poster. I then sent copies to the people that contributed their plate and also to some of the BMW employees in the electric car division. I never got around to posting it here and I have had a few requests to see it lately so I thought I would put it up for all to see.

Gotta go now, I have a reporter from the Star Ledger, a newspaper in New Jersey, coming over to interview me about the car and my solar electric system. I'll post a link to the article when it comes out.