LeftieBiker said:
There was also a fair amount of suppressed hostility (one Harley rider insisted on parking in front of our sign). Hopefully your classic car fans are more liberal than ours in Upstate NY.
I'm a newer LEAFer, and I've come to notice that under-surface hostility as well. I want to say it's just the regular A-holes you see around traffic, but boy, I hadn't noticed it this extreme when I was still driving my truck a few weeks ago. Holy moly! I didn't bother to ask whether or not they were conservatives or liberals, though. My suspicion is they're just the usual A-holes, but something about EV's just sets them off.
I also had that discussion someone else mentioned above: I was at my neighbor's house after my sons' friday night football game. He asked me how I liked the new LEAF. I couldn't stop listing all the advantages I had never even considered before I bought it. I told him (and company), I couldn't go back to driving an ICEr. One of the visitors there made some snide remark about "our" (as in his and mine) car. "Whatever do you mean with that?", I asked him. Turns out he felt he personally helped pay for my car, since there's a federal tax credit. I asked him, "Is that your new Chevy pickup in front of the house?" He said, "Yeah". "So, how does 'our' pickup drive?" He asked me what I meant. "I believe until just recently, we were all co-owners of GM, right?" Boy was he pissed. Heck, I have a GM (although mine is pre-bailout :lol: ).
I'll give it about 5 years. Wait until the electric cars/motorcycles start getting cheaper, and the performance starts to blow the doors off of those antiquated ICE vehicles, and most people will come around. More range/higher performance will do all the work to turn opinions around.
Normally, all it takes is a test drive, or to ride along for a short haul, and you hear the tone changing, and you realize they're asking those questions because they're actually liking the car for the same reasons we do. The trick is getting them in there for that first ride.
I think what you guys are doing is a wonderful thing: get them to just go for a quick spin, and attitudes start changing really quickly.