2024 Green Home + Energy Show

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Attend the 2024 Green Home + Energy Show | Green & Healthy Maine HOMES

Tickets available here! Come to the Green Home + Energy Show to connect with Maine's sustainable home experts and learn how to make your home healthier for both you and the planet. We'll have exhibitors, workshops, electric vehicles, food trucks, and more!

greenmainehomes.com

2024 Green Home + Energy Show will again be at The Point Community Center in South Portland near the Maine Mall.
It's on Saturday April 6th 2024 from 9am to 4pm.

The EV Expo will be from 11am to 2pm which will be offering EV drives and rides.
As always we're looking for EV owners who would like to offer rides (or preferably) drives to visitors, as well as answer questions.

There's an associated page at the Drive Electric Earth Day site if you would like to register to attend or volunteer at the EV Expo.

Drive Electric Earth Month • EV Expo • South Portland, ME • Apr 06, 2024

Drive Electric Earth Month events feature plug-in electric vehicle owners sharing their experience with others interested in driving electric. #DEED2024

driveelectricearthmonth.org

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Bump.

This event will be happening in about a month.

We always appreciate owners willing to show off their vehicles, and offer rides and drives, Tesla or other.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

So, it happened, and, of course, it rained almost the entire event, 11am to 2pm.

A dealership brought a Mach-E, F150 Lightning and IONIQ5 for people to test.
There were 3XY that the owners let people drive and during the event an owner with a Cybertruck arrived and let people have a look and gave some rides. (Going into the main building, I heard people talking about the Cybertruck being there, even though they didn't know it's name.)

A Rivian owner offered rides, and an organization and an owner allowed people to drive their Kia Niros.
An EV6 owner also brought their car to allow people to look at.
As well as cars there were organizations and companies with e-bikes, Ego riding mowers and mini-(motor)bikes on display.

Can't say we were mobbed, but we generally had steady interest, with some people just asking question and checking things out.
I'd be interested to see how we'd do if we ever got good weather.

 

[Tdreamer]

Seen on the Maine Turnpike southbound in Scarborough at 8:11am Sunday morning...

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Oh, and I had an interesting conversation was with a woman who had bought a dealer-buyback Bolt. There's a dealer with a bunch of cheap Bolts, presumably due to the battery recall.

She was asking questions about where to charge as she currently had no power due to a recent storm and it wouldn't be restored for a couple of days. This is the reality for many Mainers, as restoration often involves a stretch of work to remove trees and put in new poles in an area before they can turn the power back on. DCFC matters here for more than just travel.

I asked her if the word Plugshare meant anything to her and it didn't. All she had was the EVGo app. (That's GM's main charging partner).

So, I then reeled off my "EV Owners Toolkit" list: Plugshare, A Better Route Planner, ChargePoint(, EVGo), Electrify America and Tesla. Two information apps and the primary charging providers in Maine. (Most of the non-NEVI CCS DCFC in Maine are ChargePoint, ChargePoint has destination chargers as well as DCFC, and it also has some roaming agreements.) (BTW, she had been told that NACS adapters would be available to GM EV owners from next month).

As suggested by another attendee, I think I need to have that toolkit printed and shown somewhere.

The same woman asked about how things are with outages, naturally concerned, and I explained the usual process of restoration and that because chargers are normally located in commercial areas they're less prone to outages and normally have power restored relatively early. I told her my story of being able to charge after a location with chargers got power restored before my house did.