Car Show Number 2

Today was the second car show in as many days.  Unfortunately, the heat has decided to hang around a bit long here in Phoenix, so while the rest of the country is enjoying the crisp fall weather, it was 92° F and sunny.  Too sunny, if you ask me. 

Any way, one of our local power companies, SRP, was putting on what they call the "Party for the Planet" event.  Apparently this is a yearly event for SRP.  They have multiple booths with a wide variety of different groups showcasing their green technologies or methods.  One addition they thought would be good was to throw in a few electric cars, so they asked me if would be willing to bring the EV Z3 down.  It was a nice turn out of mostly SRP employees. 

As it turned out, there were three EVs present.  Take a look:

Up front, you can see a Citicar owned by one of the EAA local members named Bruce.  Behind that is a Ford Probe owned by SRP employee Abel.  Abel told me that the car had originally been owned by SRP and used for electric racing.  They sold it away, and he ended up getting some time later from the second owner.  It's an AC drive system using Optima yellow top lead acid cells.  Eventually Abel wants to drop some lithium cells in it.  Behind his car, just peeking around the corner is the little Z3. 

Quite a few people stopped by to take a look at it and ask questions. 

It was the usual battery of questions, which is just fine.  A few people had some insightful questions which is always fun to come across.  The nice thing about this show is that there were way more pretty girls stopping by telling me how cute the car was.  One girl took some pictures and asked lots of questions that she then forwarded off to her boyfriend who is a BMW enthusiast.  I have to tell you, I wonder how BMW enthusiasts would react to this car.  I'm not sure if they'd find it really cool, or want to stone me on the spot for perpetrating such sacrilege. She encouraged me to take the car to a dealership thinking that BMW corporate would be very interested in hearing about the car.  Perhaps they would.  My thought is that it would largely be a waste of time.

At any rate, it was a great day showing off the car, opening peoples minds to the potential of converting a car themselves.  It was just too damned hot.