Wow, I go off line for a day or so and come back to an explosion of interest in the meeting. I'm very happy to see it and I hope people outside the group see it as well. Several things come to mind in reading through postings of the last 36 hours:
We definitely need to give Nissan due recognition for bringing out the LEAF. That is why linkim and I decided to ask for people's top 3 likes at the beginning of the thread. And I think those 3 are pretty clear, mostly around performance. Presenting a top 10 is definitely a worthy thing to do. Finally, on this topic, the very first slide we will show at the meeting (even before the agenda) will have wording to the effect of "We applaud Nissan Motors for having the courage to be the first major automotive company to introduce a mass-produced, 100% electric vehicle to the North America market." Exact wording to be worked out. We'll also thank Kadota-san for bringing his team to our meeting.
This meeting cannot turn into a rant about what's wrong with the LEAF, as Phil says. As linkim says, they are eager to learn, and not to hear the obvious. I really like the idea of dividing the suggestions into two categories: Improvements for the LEAF, and suggestions for future EVs. The presentations we give must be carefully thought out and presented in the proper context. We must demonstrate a depth of knowledge to back up our suggestions. We'll show progress on this at the November meeting.
Linkim and I have discussed including a section at the end, i.e., how can we help each other? Suggestions for beta testing, in my view, are spot on. I also think we could do some of their vehicle to home unit testing as our power system is nominally the same as that in Japan (120V, 60 Hz).
Given the explosion in interest in this meeting, it's going to be way beyond the ability of the existing small team (linkim, Hy and me) to accomplish it all. So, we will be requesting volunteers to help support the effort. Particularly, getting web access for those who can't attend and for expanding the number of charging docks/coordinating charge schedules. We are in touch with Rolf and will ask to get some of the docks reprogrammed to accept non-Googler cards for activation.
Thinking out loud here, linkim and I already knew that we had too much information to present, so we thought that focus would be best. Perhaps we can ask if they would be interested to have a series of meetings, regularly? I imagine that they come to North America on a quarterly basis. If they are willing to invest 1/2 day each trip to meet with informed and excited users, we'd be happy to expend the effort to put it together. If they do agree to have some beta testing here in the US with us, then I would think they would want to have such regular meetings. Maybe we can put together a roadmap for Nissan/owner Engineering interactions. Again, all this is just thinking out loud.
