Once again, thanks to all who braved the often heavy rains to participate in gathering #4 on June 4th at Luscious Garage in San Francisco. Many thanks to Carolyn (owner), John and Greg who made us feel very welcome in the garage and who provided a great deal of support to make it a successful meeting.
Highlights: 30 official attendees (14 of them new!), 6 LEAFs charging simultaneously at Luscious's brand new 240V outlets (NEMA L-620 twistlock), overlap with GGEVA meeting (which was very informative, and especially on advocacy activities), many members with LEAFs less than 1 week old, participants from Serramonte Nissan (who gave demo rides) and Plug-in America.
Less-than highlights: The weather, no official LEAF count (maybe 12-15? I think we had 9 inside the garage, plus Ingineer's plug-in Prius), little dialog about the car itself.
Quick discussion summaries:
Venues: Try for places with indoor meeting space, large parking lot, charging (roughly prioritized). Suggestions included libraries, eco-friendly companies with chargers (e.g., Google, SAP, etc.), EPRI. Avoid restaurants if possible. Nissan Dealerships fine if above criteria can be met. Maintain rotation of 4 locations.
E-9 Rates: Very long discussion and bottom line is that everyone should do their own research using available tools (see links in TEG's post above) to see if it is workable for their individual circumstance.
Private Charging Network: Members are interested to maintain the map for use in emergency situations or where public charging infrastructure doesn't exist. Will be strictly limited to BayLEAFs participants (i.e., those on Mindfart List Server). Please PM me if you would like to add your dock/outlet. Side-note, interestingly, GGEVA had an item on its agenda for this but there was no discussion given the keen interest shown in the two guest speakers.
General Charging: Extensive discussion on getting comprehensive lists of stations. ElectricVehicle and Marc from PIA gave a summary of their conference activities (e.g., Charge 2011) and put in a plug ( :lol: pun intended) for more of us to join them.
West Coast Relay/Convoy: Plenty of discussion here (previewed in previous posts). As enthusiasts, we had not considered how the non-LEAF community would view it. Sherry from Plug In America suggested it would highlight the worst feature of the car, i.e., limited range. The group decided to consider such an activity ONLY as a fun event, and not one to try to raise awareness through the press or media. Will post more in the dedicated thread.
Advocacy: Smaller scale events such as local rallies and parades, green fairs, etc. Best resource for these seems to be existing organizations such as Electric Auto Association and Plug In America. Sherry offered her book for free to students and teachers.
L1 EVSE Mod: Due to time shortage, the group decided to defer this to the GGEVA meeting.
I'm sure I've overlooked something--members please add items and accept my apology if I've forgotten something important. As organizer, I wanted to keep the discussion going and didn't get to take notes.
Next meeting (Gathering #5) is slated for the South Bay and will be held on July 9th. We're looking for a meeting space, ideally, that can be fixed for every fourth one. Google or HP (Cupertino) would be great. Need some member support here. Sunnyvale and Stevens Creek Nissan have both volunteered but neither has a meeting space that would be ready/appropriate for us. Maybe we should have a volunteer to take notes as well?
Please also post topic suggestions: For Gathering #5, I have a strong impression that the group would like to focus on the LEAF itself, so I could see dedicating the time to driving experiences, accessories/modifications, and charging (SOC, stations, etc.), with minimal discussion of general topics. Also thinking we should expand the meeting part to 2 hours (up from 90 minutes) plus the tailgate party. Please make your opinion known.
