North Texas Electric Auto Association

World Environment Day

Date :  June 5th, 2010 (Saturday)

Time : 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM

Location : Dallas Public Library

Address :  1515 Young Street  Dallas, TX 75201

The Dallas Public Library hosted the World Environment Day.  Jared was able to make it down there with his EV Fiero.  There was a lot of people passing through on their way to the library so a lot of visitors stopped by.  The library had Jared pull his Fiero up on the side walk and right up into the main walk way of the library.  I bet they don’t see to many cars pulled up there!  With the slight breeze and the shady over hang of the library, it kept all of the patrons nice and cool while looking at the car.

Lake Wood Stock

Date :  May 16th, 2010 (Sunday)

Time : 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Location : Lake Wood Village Shopping Center

Address : 6400 LaVista and Abrams / LaVista and Gaston in East Dallas

Website : http://www.lakewoodstock.com/

We were pleasantly surprised about this event.  There was live music and family fun and the admission was all Free.  We had few EVs there to show off; Jared’s Fiero, Don’s Jeep, Neal’s Golf and and David’s Sparrow.  We got a nice shady spot and setup shop.

We talked to a lot of interesting people at this event.  We had quite a few people people who wanted in depth description of all of the parts of our EVs.   I (Jared) believe we almost had just as many people at this event as the Living Green Expo in Plano.  So that was a nice surprise to see that many people at that event and be interested in electric cars.  I hope they continue this event because there was a lot of people there an it was fun.  NTEAA wants to thank the sponsors of the Lake Wood Stock for inviting us to their event, we hope we get invited to their future events.

(From Mike B.)

Turned out to be a nice (WINDY) day in Sherman Texas, for it’s Annual Earth Day Festival.

Forgot camera, took/posted some horrible photos from my phone, couldn’t see the display from the sun, apparently I had it set for fluorescent lighting.  Made some very weird looking photos.

Time : 9:00 AM – 7:00 PM

Location : Plano Centre

Address : 2000 E Spring Creek Pkwy, Plano, TX 75074 Map It

Website : http://www.livegreenexpo.net/exhibitors.html

As usual, this event was a huge success!  I don’t think they make counter clickers high enough for the number of people there.  We were lucky enough that it only sprinkled on us in the morning but it was clear for the rest of the event, that is until it was over and then it started sprinkling again.  NTEAA wants to give a BIG THANKS to the City of Plano for putting this event on, they were gracious enough to waive the fees for our Non-Profit group this year.  This years event was really organized with volunteers and a big push to make the event be a Zero Waste as possible.  They even had learning “test” for the younger patrons so that they will learn stuff about some of the Exhibits; and best of all, Electric Cars were part of that test!  That was really great to see and be a part of.  Every year this event gets larger and larger.  I (Jared) was finally able to walk around this whole event for a little bit and it was huge; there were tons of exhibitors.   Lots of great products and information, I (Jared) learned a lot about composting and have started my own.   We had 2 electric cars there (Jared’s Fiero and Neil’s Golf) along with DJ’s scooter and some EV components.  We had a good turn out of volunteers to help with our booth.  As usual NTEAA looks forward to next year!

Date :  April 10th, 2010

Time : 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Location : Sam Houston Trail Park at Champion Trails in Irving TX

Address : 333 E. Interstate Highway 635  Irving, TX

Website : http://www.cityofirving.org/begreen/

This a a nice little Earth Day event.  They setup a lot of tents to keep people in the shade as much as possible and they had a lot of booths setup with a wide range of things.  We were able to get 3 Electric Cars; Jared’s Fiero, Don’s Jeep and Neil’s Golf;  there was also Paul’s scooter and Mike’s range extender trailer.   Jared brought a few EV components to put out for display and Paul had his great demo there and with fully charged batteries this time (just poking fun at you Paul).  We had quite a few hands there to help out and we got to talk to a few quite a few people there.

We even met some very interesting people; one that really stick out is the family who is building the SUNN solar powered car with students.  He has an entire classes on understanding the electronics for 1st – 7th grades and for high school’ers they build the SUNN solar powered car.   I hope we will be able to help them in the future.

All in all I think it was a great little event, we got lucky with good weather and we had a good turnout.  We hope they will have another event next year and that we are invited again.

Chevy was doing a Volt Test Drive in Austin TX today.  Our very own John Brecher got an invite to do the test drive.    Since I (Jared) was in Austin that day by chance visiting family I met him at the test drive course.   It was great to see a fully working driving Chevy Volt.    John got to actually drive the car around their test track.  He got to do a “Sport” mode take off from a stop and he was impressed.   They did the whole day of test drives and we never once heard the gasoline engine kick on and lots of people got to drive it.  There was also a stripped down shell of the Chevy Volt in downtown Austin to see.  Click here to check out the pictures below to see the test drive and the Chevy Volt Shell.

Some very cool news, Tesla is doing a road trip from California to Michigan!  2700+ Miles, 16 employees and 0 gallons of gas.  You can follow them during their trip on their website here.

Tesla Road Trip Website

They will leave California on December 17, they will be in Ft. Worth on December 27th and in Dallas on December 28th.  You can get further details here for the DFW part of their trip.

Ft. Worth Details

Dallas Details

A few member attended the Tesla Road Tour at the Motorsport Ranch in Cresson and also at the Shops at Legacy in Plano.  While at the Motorsport Ranch, they took the two Tesla’s out onto the race track and had some fun.  It was nice to see racing without all of the engine noise.  The only thing that you could hear was tires screeching into the corners.  NTEAA was even mentioned in the Tesla Road Tour Blog!  You can read up on that on the links above.

Garland Goes Green

Date : Saturday September 26th, 2009
Time : 10 AM to 5 PM
Website : www.GarlandGoesGreen.org
Location : Garland, Texas at Garland ISD Special Events Center

We had a lot of fun at the Garland Goes Green event.  There was a lot of great people we met there.  We had DJ’s Scooter, Jared’s Fiero, Mark’s Mower and John and Nancy’s Sparrow and Fiero at the event.  We started out in the parking lot of the event center and after a few hours we moved to the entrance/exit of the center.  Once we moved up front, we had a ton of people stop by and talk to us at the event.   We had several NTEAA people help out at the event (Brian, Paul, Jaquin, Ron, Jared, John, Nancy, and DJ), many thanks to all of you that helped out.  Hopefully with as many people we talked to at the event we will get more people interested in electric cars.

Dallas Green Festival

Date : Sunday Sep 20th

Time : 11am – 3pm

Location : 521 E. Lawther Dr. Dallas, TX 75218-3311

Website : http://www.greendallas.net/

NTEAA has a lot of fun at the Dallas Green Festival.  We had 4 vehicles there at the show; Brecher’s Fiero and Sparrow, Neil’s VW Golf and the gentelman who drives the NiMh Ford Ranger.  Channel 4 did an interview with Neil in front of the Sparrow.  Although they did not use the clip during the news.  There was just a quick flash of the sparrow during the news.

At one point a guy named David drove up on his electric bike he parked the bike and visit with us. His bike has a plywood frame, downhill bike components, an etek motor, a 48V pack and an Alltrax controller.  This was a pretty neat looking EV and had some great performance.

We also ran into another gentleman who has a GPS Motorcycle (which is an EV motorcycle).   He will be coming to some of our future events, he hopes to get a lot of questions answered.  He is currently experiencing problems with his motorcycle.

But all in all, we talked to a lot of interesting people and hopefully we will have more people coming to our monthly meetings.

Here is an email we got from the Green Festival :

Dear Green Festival 2009 Exhibitors,

Thank you so much for making this year’s Green Festival such a success!  We could not have been more pleased with the result from the exhibitors to the weather to the guest turn-out.

Over 1000 people attended the event this year at the Bath House and walked, biked, or drove away with more knowledge about living a green lifestyle than they came with.

This event would not be possible without each of your support and unique expertise.  The goal of the City of Dallas Office of Environmental Quality is to build a greener Dallas .  The Green Festival brought together over 50 green exhibitors in non-profit, government, higher education, and business as well as interested Dallas residents with the unified goal of building a greener Dallas and a cleaner, healthier world.

We hope you found the event productive towards your own green goals and I look forward to receiving your feedback survey (see attachment).  We want to make this annual event better each time.

Again, thank you.  You have made a difference.

Best wishes and stay green,

Hannah Kolni

John thanks everybody who helped make the Garland parade a real success. We were a croud pleaser!  Three cars, three scooters, one barstool and one Mennonite buggy.

The scooters and barstool were zipping around the cars down the steet getting everyone’s attention and then they saw the car.  Eventually when they got to see the Sparrow pulling the Marlo’s House horse and buggy, they were all awestruck.  Everyone pointed to that float with excitement!

Everyone had a good time and it was a lot of fun to see so many excited faces at the parade.  We hope that we can do more parades in the future because this was a lot of fun!

Here is some quick video’s of the Parade :

Mark\’s Video of the Garland Parade

Justins Video of the Garland Parade