2016 NDEW at the Kona Commons!

On Saturday, September 10, 2016, several of us converged at the Kona Commons Shopping Center to participate in our 4th annual National Drive Electric Week event. We had sunny (and hot!) weather and, overall, a successful event. We had a good turnout – estimated at around 100 visitors during the 4-hour period.  We had some people trickling in even after the event ended. Many people had questions about EVs and several were keenly interested in purchasing and wanted to know more. Many came to check out the latest electric cars.

Our Venue and Activities

The event area provided by the Kona Commons was cordoned off with colorful flags and there was a huge banner at the entrance to the complex announcing the event.  This banner was hoisted several days back and was visible from the entrance to the Target/McDonald’s complex across the street. The Kona Commons offered a couple of canopies while some of the participating companies brought theirs.  Our association did not bring a table and chairs so we had to make a trip to Target for those supplies.

We had several companies represented at the event.  They handed out materials and fielded questions about EVs, PV, electric bikes, charging stations, and emerging services. Among those that participated:

• Nissan and BMW (they offered test drives of the LEAF and i3)
• Provision Solar
• Rising Sun Solar
• Bike Works
• HELCO (fielding questions about their charging stations and EV charging rates)
• Hawaii Solar Auto Station
• Numi International – it’s founder, Ron, also brought his new Model X and shared details of his upcoming luxury EV limo service.

Importantly, we addressed many questions regarding EV ownership, charging, and buying experiences. We also distributed had a large number of informational handouts from our national organizers and issues of Electric Car Insider (courtesy of Christopher Alan).

Our EVs

We had several electric cars at our event.  Most stayed the full duration and all were enthusiastically shared by their owners.

• 5 Nissan LEAF
• 3 Tesla Model S
• 2 Tesla Model X
• 2 Chevy Volts
• 1 VW e-Golf
• 1 BMW i3
• 1 1980 Mercury Lynx
• A couple of electric bikes
• An electric scooter

I’d say that we satisfied the questions of our guests and contributed to a growing number of EV owners on our island (Nissan indicated that they had some promising leads as a result of the test drives).

Here are images from our event. (Thanks to Gary Miller for these excellent pictures.)

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”2″ gal_title=”NDEW 2016 Kona Event”]

Thanks to several of our officers and members who assisted in the event: Richard Castro, Cody Osborne, Emily Ebert, Lorn Douglas, Stephanie Hall-Morin, Ronald Morin, Sean Morin, Tom Kraft, John Pierce, Gary Miller, Ron Glogovsky, and Bill Bugbee. (My apologies to those I’ve missed.) Special thanks to our friends at the Kona Commons Shopping Center, particularly Nancy Sakamoto for making our event venue a reality, to Nicole Gour of The Wave 92 and Sherry Bracken of LAVA 105.3 for our radio spots, to Keiki of BMW and Doug Hauler of Nissan for the very valuable test drives, and to Brooke Bonhoff of Rising Sun Solar, to Ben Noyes of Provision, to Kathleen Irwin of Hawaii Solar Auto Station, and Darren Elisaga of HELCO.

Special thanks to our national organizers: Plug In America, the Sierra Club and the Electric Auto Association, and Nissan, our national sponsor.

On to our Hilo event (this Saturday, September 17, 10-noon, at the Wiki Fresh parking lot in Hilo)!

Noel Morin