Well the event in Berkeley didn't quite wind up being as big as I'd thought (50-ish EV owners signed up, but I'm guessing there were no more than 20 cars total, probably 15 at any one time). Kind of hard to tell because we were all parallel parked at the curb along a street. I'm just gonna be lazy and share a couple of photos I already uploaded for a different post:
Pictures of production Model 3s
I was parked between our own
@Randy Spencer and Doug Brown from GGEVA. Of the Teslas I could see, there were 2 Model Ss, maybe 4-5 Model 3s. The other Model S was a pre-refresh AP1 car with a cream-colored wrap and gold chrome accents, didn't really get to talk to its owner for any length of time.
As expected, the Teslas were huge draws. Lots of interest in the 3s and I chatted with one or two future 3 owners (with orders placed). It was good to have my S parked next to a 3 so I could talk about the differences in these two cars. This event was a good reminder that even in the SF Bay Area, not everybody's seen a Tesla up close or knows a lot about them. So I still got a lot of the usual questions about range, charging, price, maintenance, etc. I had prepared some stats and diagrams from TeslaFi, supercharge.info, and so on, but wound up not needing them. It was a pleasant surprise to get some really in-depth questions from some non-owner enthusiasts. For liability reasons, this event did not include rides or test drives.
The only downside on the day is that I didn't a chance to explore the rest of the event, because people kept checking out my car and asking questions, so I couldn't leave! (Thanks to Doug Brown for sharing some food and keeping me from starvation. Next time I'm gonna pack a sandwich.) If I'd had time, I would have liked to check out a new Leaf and a Bolt that were there.
Overall I think the City of Berkeley did a great job putting this event together...well organized (at least from what I could tell) and they picked a good venue...we were adjacent to the Farmers Market in downtown Berkeley.
Bruce.
PS. Some people might have read my account of the NDEW event in Marin County a couple of years ago, where my son was driving his RC EV (Traxxas Stampede) through the event. He didn't go with me this year. I think he's had enough EV geeking out with Dad, so he said he'd only tag along if there was going to be a Rimac there.
