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.

A Rolling Political Statement

When I first agreed to lease the all electric MINI-E, I really did it because I thought it would be interesting to drive a car so different than everything else on the road. I thought electric cars might be a viable alternative to internal combustion cars but I wasn't really sure if they were ready to take on the established oil burners just yet.

Driving the car for a year taught me a few things, not the least of which that we have the technology to build these cars now, not ten years from now, and that they can compete head to head with their ICE counterparts. Of course there are things they do not do as well as gasoline powered cars can, like drive long distances between refueling and this will make a lot of folks hesitant to buy one until the single charge range increases. However there are a lot of things these cars do well and even better than gas burners like the simple fact that they do not use oil for fuel.  I proudly display that fact in more than one way on #250 and it garners a lot of attention from passers by.

I always see people taking pictures of the car, the emblems and the license plate, sometimes even with their cell phone while they are driving. A wave and a thumbs up usually follows. Recently, I ordered some new magnets from TwistyBitz.com. Robert at TwistyBiz offers all kinds of t-shirts and magnetic badges for all MINI Coopers, and he has a whole line of MINI-E specific stuff like the badges you can see in the picture above (No Oil, No Gas, Plug in & Powered by Sunshine) which would be good for any electric car.

Somehow over the past year I turned from someone that thought driving an electric car would be a fun thing to do to someone that advocates energy independence for financial, environmental and security reasons. How'd that happen?

I had to do it at least once

Ever since I picked up MINI-E #250 I have had the urge to stop at a gas station and say "Fill er up". Here in New Jersey it's against the law to pump your own gas (crazy I know) so there is always someone there to pump the gas for you. I always thought about doing it, but I really never pull into gas stations any more so the right opportunity never presented itself. The other day I pulled into an Exxon station to get a cup of coffee and instead of pulling in a parking spot I pulled up to a pump got out and walked to the convenience store to get coffee. As I walked away, I said to the attendant "fill please". I was out in a minute or so with my coffee and the guy was looking at me like I had two heads. I quickly told him that he's not crazy and I was just messing with him. He laughed and said he loved the car(especially the license plate!) and wished he had one. He had a bunch of questions about range, the electricity cost, etc; all the usual questions I get all the time. I asked him if I can take a picture of him and he happily obliged. OK, now I can cross that off my list.

Quoted in the Financial Post

Last week I was contacted by Rebecca Walberg of the Financial Post in Toronto, Canada. She was doing a story on the MINI-E and somehow found this blog. She wanted permission to print the lettering on my vanity license plate and had a couple of questions for me. I granted her permission and happily answered her questions. She had promised to send me a copy of the article or a link to view it online, but I guess she forgot. A friend came across the article and sent me the link. That's it for now. My next post will be my comments on passing 20,000 miles with #250.

Update: Rebecca emailed me on Monday 2/1/10 to tell me the article ran earlier than she expected and she sent me the link, so she didn't forget me!

MINI-E Program Extended, Will Transition To The ActiveE!

While the trial lease participants haven't yet been notified, it appears as though BMW has announced what we all expected, they are going to extend the MINI-E leases beyond the one year we all agreed to. How many of the existing participants agree to continue will depend greatly on how much the monthly payment will be. We are currently on the hook for $850.00 per month which does include all maintenance and collision and comprehensive insurance. I think most of us agreed to be in this program because we wanted to be part of something that we believe in, not because we think the car is worth an $850 per month lease payment. I know that's way I got involved. I wanted to offer my help and support in the hope that I could help prove that there is a market and demand for electric vehicles. That many people are sick of polluting the air we breath and paying outrageous amounts of money for gasoline while we send billions of dollars for imported oil to radical regimes that are no friend to the US.

I would definitely like to continue and extend my lease for another year, provided the second year lease payments are much lower than $850. I do think BMW will be reasonable here since it is in their best interest to keep many of the same participants involved. We all have installed and inspected wall chargers and that was probably the biggest hurdle for BMW in getting this program off the ground. (Follow this link to read Richard Steinberg's MINI-E program overview.) To now remove all the chargers and install them in new locations just makes no sense at all as the cost would be about $2,500 per participant. Removing that cost alone should knock $200.00 off the monthly payment. I'm going to go out and say I expect the lease offer for the second year to be $450 to $500 per month. I think if the cost is in that range most of the participants will re-up and be happy about it.

Finally, the real carrot in continuing the lease is that BMW is planning on offering a similar lease program for the ActiveE and it's scheduled to begin mid 2011 which is when our lease extensions will end and they are planning on offering us the option to transition into an ActiveE. Now that's what we all have been waiting to hear. The only question I have is "Why another trail lease?" How much data and research do they need. Other auto manufacturers have already announced that they will sell EV's and extended range plug in hybrids in the near future. BMW needs to get out there and announce that they will be selling these cars soon, not only testing them. I believe we will hear a similar announcement soon because I do believe they are committed to selling an EV soon, and that they are just waiting for the right time to announce it. For now we'll have to live in the "research" stage. I'm up for it, the only question is: can I transfer my license plates to the ActiveE?

My vanity plates have arrived!

Just in case driving an electric car isn't a strong enough statement, I thought I'd make my feelings clear. EF OPEC just about says it all...