23. March 2009 by admin.

Its true.  The pea is up for sale.  It’s taken me a while to come to terms with this decision (really encouragement by my wife) but I guess all good things come to an end.

In reality, when my employer moved my office it has been difficult to use the car as a full time commuter.  And with the three kids I’ve even been finding it difficult to use it on the weekends (because we just don’t all fit).

I’d love to keep it but with our trying to save for a house it makes more sense to free up some capital.  The other consideration is that its not getting driven and therefore is not spreading the message or initiating the conversations that made up so much of its value to me.

If any of you are interested please send me a note and I can tell you anything you can’t find on this website already.  Asking price is:  $8500 but feel free to make an offer.

Peace.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

13. July 2008 by sean.

I spent the week in London and Ireland for work. In between meetings I ran up to see my niece and nephew in St. Johnswood. Just outside their school were two odd looking parking meters with LED lights around their tops. They turned out not to be parking meters at all, rather they were ‘Juice Points.’

Juice Points are plug-in stations and dedicated street parking for Electric Cars!

I felt like an explorer who had found a tribe of lost peoples to which he finally felt a sense of belonging.

So far I’ve had to be very strategic with the routes I take driving my EV in San Diego County. I rarely deviate from a known and pre-driven/measured path. On Fridays or weekends I get a bit more adventurous and may add another 3-4 miles to my range maximums but dare not go further for fear of dead batteries.

Imagine if I had more than two plug-in points on my driving corridor? One at the train station, the grocery store, near my favorite coffee shop or restaurant. It would change the way I use my EV. . . it would become a ‘real’ car.

For EV drivers in London, in addition to getting charging stations all over the city they also get free parking as there appeared to be no fee to park and charge at a Juice Point. I truly envy the drivers of London who enjoy this option.

One other cool discovery: Where there were parking meters you could pay, be notified of expiring time, and top-up the meter by text on your mobile phone.

So cool. Now only if it didn’t rain all the time there and you could find some surfing.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

23. June 2008 by sean.

I’ve come to believe that seeing an electric car on the road is like seeing a UFO in the night sky. People point, tell their friends to ‘Look!’, and begin to try and figure out what that thing was.

Since getting my own EV I’ve witnessed this phenomena first hand but only really felt the emotion as the observer for the first time today.

While driving my family through Carlsbad today I saw an Aptera on the road heading in the opposite direction. My wife was the first to see it and being a loyal reader and participant of the blog knew immediately what it was. When a friend in the car asked what it was my wife beat me to the reply with some details and the fact that they were actually being made in Carlsbad.

A UFO isn’t a bad analogy for this car’s design. Looks a little like the Naboo fighter Anikan Skywalker uses to destroy the drone army battle ship in Phantom Menace.

I’ve been more than vocal about my disdain for EV companies that show flashy pictures of futuristic vehicles with impressive (and most often make believe) performance specs but have waiting lists, reservation programs, and future ‘availability’ dates with HUGE price tags.

I initially dismissed Aptera and lumped them in with all the other ones but after today I am hoping they will be making a liar out of me.

Posted in Electric Vehicles, Around Town, General | 1 Comment »

23. June 2008 by sean.

Carbon calculation for my roundtrip travel from SoCal to Singapore, with day trip to Kuala Lumpur:

San Diego to LAX (Economy; Direct)

• Air Miles: 218
• CO₂ lbs.: 209

LAX to Singapore (Business; Direct)

• Air Miles: 17,512
• CO₂ lbs.: 20,212

Singapore to Kuala Lumpur (day trip; Economy; Direct)

• Air Miles: 370
• CO₂ lbs.: 225

Total Air Miles: 18,100 miles

Total CO₂ : 20,646 lbs CO₂

Posted in Travel, General | 1 Comment »

22. June 2008 by sean.

Majulah Singapura is Malay for “Onward Singapore” and is the title of the Republic’s National

Anthem. (Listen)

I spent last week in Singapore on business travel. I had been to the airport several times but was glad to finally have the opportunity to see the city. My colleagues brought me out to some Black Pepper Giant Crab and Sing Chicken & Rice in between biz meetings, rides on the world’s largest ferris wheel, and hunting for the Merlion. I even had a (few) Singapore Sling(s) in the Long Bar of Raffles Hotel - where it was invented.

Posted in Travel, General | 1 Comment »

11. June 2008 by sean.

Another driver (and surfer), Cliff, shot me an email and a pic of the car during our commute. What a cool surprise. Anyone else that can safely pull off a shot of the car when you see me out and about please send it to me and I’ll throw it up here.

Thanks!

Cliff had a few questions. I’ve included them and my response below.

On Jun 10, 2008, at 9:13 AM, Cliff wrote:

The machine in action this morning. I saw you pull over before the big hill, does the zapcar have issues with the uphill?
What kind of range? How long to charge? Price tag?
Your vehicle looks like something everyone could get into and not break the bank in the process?

Cool stuff!
Cliff

Sent from my iPhone

My reply:

Hi Cliff,

The car doesn’t have a great deal of power and this is most evident going uphill. The other thing is that based upon the distance of my commute I have to meter out the current draw so as to be sure I have the charge to make it all the way. Therefore, I get out of the way of other cars to let me drive my own way and not attempt to keep up with traffic patterns.

I drive about 20 miles to work and while I am sure I can go further I dare not test it. The charge will last for 30 days but I plug in at home and work all the time. There is a regulator that shuts off the current to the batteries when their full.

It cost me $11,500 after tax, title, delivery, insurance, and reg.

I spent a lot of time considering my options and the Zap was the only alternative available to me. There are definite tradeoffs to going with the Zap but all of the reasons for the purchase remain true so I’m happy.

I’ve been blogging about it at: http://www.dirkenstock.org

Thanks for the interest,
Sean

P.S. Where do you surf?

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

10. June 2008 by sean.

One of the most frequent questions I get about the car is whether or not it feels unbalanced or like its going to tip over.

Short answer: No, it doesn’t feel like its going to tip over.

Long answer: On the test drive I backed the car into the storage/showroom warehouse up some really steep ramps and had to turn the wheel while I did this. I had three main concerns with this:

1. I was going to tip all of the way over,
2. I was going to tip over just enough to scrape the front edge of the car, OR
3. the car would not have enough power to get up the steep ramps in reverse.

None of these things happened and I have been bombing steep driveways and turns at speed ever since.

Fast forward to today.

Some background notes:

• Note 1: Due to the car’s weakness going up hills I often time speed up before I get to them in the hope of using momentum to get me part of the way up - like riding a bike.
• Note 2: My brother’s roommate in college was this Greek sculptor (not a Greek sculpture) that raced VW Golf’s on a closed track up in Syracuse. He would show us videos of his races and whenever he took a tight turn really fast the inside rear tire would lift up.

Yesterday I was driving near then end of my commute and I had to go up and over D street. For any of you who don’t know this street its super steep. I was driving North on Vulcan and had to make a right up the hill. Because the light was green I decided to speed up to the light and take the turn at speed to give me some momentum up the hill. Now, normally I approach D street from the 101 and its a straight line approach.

For those of you that read Note 2 above you may know where this is going.

As I took the turn my rear passenger side wheel lifted off of the ground a few inches and then the car dropped back onto all 3 wheels and continued of the hill.

I was more curious than alarmed by this event and at no point did I feel like the car was going to tip over or roll. However, I will have to rethink my aspirations of closed track Vdub racing.

Posted in The Car | 3 Comments »

9. June 2008 by sean.

I had the car out in front of each of the venues of the film festival all weekend and the response was really great. I love how this little green three wheeled thing is getting people’s attention and encouraging them to rethink some things, ask questions, or just meet new people and talk about important topics.

On Friday night, I was parked outside of the E Street Cafe on the sidewalk with 2 other electric vehicles. Peter brought his GEM down from Carlsbad (I forgot to ask him how he pulled that off), and there was one of the old EV converted RAV4s there too. The music at the reception was powered by a portable solar station. I’m kicking myself for not taking a picture. If anyone got one please send it to me so that I can post it here.

While we were there a lot of people asked about the car and climbed in. Most people initially thought that I was there to sell them something. When I told them I was just like them and just attempting something new their guard came down. Afterwards some really great conversations were had -I was either thanked or congratulated for my commitment.

The highlight of the night though was Gary. He was a real trip. He told us a story that began back in the “Ray-gun administration about Star Wars and it was the Dark Side of the Force that started to build a geophysical weapon in Alaska called HAARP (official site or conspiracy site) that was responsible for the earthquake in the Szechuan province of China a few weeks ago“, and on and on he went. In all of the ranting though he did make some really great observations.

At one moment of clarity he said: “And here we sit trying to decide what car we want to drive and water we want to drink and believe that those decisions will make ALL of the difference.”

He went on to ask: “Do you think any of the people living around here [San Diego] will stay as calm or act as respectfully towards one another when a big earthquake like the one that hit China hits here?”

I thought that was a really good point. Unfortunately, based solely upon how we treat each other on the roads in our cars, I don’t think we would.

Gary departed by saying: “I come and I go. I go and I come.”

To you, Gary, I say: Keep going and coming, coming and going. . . . Infinitum. Peace.

Posted in People, Around Town | 1 Comment »

8. June 2008 by sean.

Today was the last day of the Cottonwood Creek Environmental Film Festival here in Encinitas. It included a fair at Cottonwood Creek park and the screenings of the winning films from community entries at the Encinitas Library.

Carris was the MC and showcased the top 3 finalists in each category that spanned school grades and a general category. She shared her regrets for not being able to include some films in the competition due to their length and/or adult language.

The prizes were impressive with cash, bamboo skateboards & organic clothing from Sector 9, and a bicycle from Electra being spread amongst the finalists.

Some of the standouts for me were:

• Ms. Hinze’s 2nd grade class from the Paul Ecke Central School with their film (1st place grades 2-6) about Honeybees. The class wrote a song and performed it as a part of the film and soundtrack.
  • If you think that sounds easy I’d like to hear any of you try rhyming a lyric with “Colony Collapse Disorder”
• Cobi’s film (3rd place Grade 7-12) about trash on beaches in which he recommended a good approach to keeping beaches clean by picking up all of your trash plus an extra 3 pieces that you didn’t create.
  • It was a good message but through no fault of Cobi it fell into the subtle trap of portraying Environmentalism and solutions as being an elitist issue with images of Del Mar surfer kids vacationing in Bali with their family telling the audience how to reduce their litter so as to be able to continue to enjoy their expensive and impacting recreational activities.
• Zack’s film (1st place Grades 7-12) called “Paper or Plastic” where he outlines some great facts about the impacts of the non-choice most consumers have at the checkout counter of the grocery store.
  • His recommendation was to use reusable bags because for one thing if you use a reusable bag for 2 years it keeps 1,000 plastic bags out of the waste stream. He had another 7 minutes of tasty nuggets like that one in his film. I hope I’ll be able to get a copy and link to it.
• Kenton and Jeremy won the Electra Amsterdam bicycle as the first prize in the General category with their film “Bike to Work.”
  • Kenton made some really cool remarks as a lead in to the screening. He said that he rides and walks a lot of places and that he sees things and experiences his community in a manner that he otherwise wouldn’t if he was ‘going faster.’ He also said that he wasn’t trying to be anti-auto or recommend anything unattainable but suggested that people give things a shot in bite sizes.
  • Jeremy collaborated and narrated “Bike to Work” and said that he began bicycle commuting following his wife’s auto accident. As a result they got rid of a car, made their world smaller and began to see more.

The day ended with a school group (I think they were 4th or 5th graders) called the Wildcat Chorus and their Environmental Musicale.

Round and Round 24/7, round and round 365 . . . . .Earthlings Unite!

Posted in People, Around Town | 4 Comments »

7. June 2008 by sean.

Self identified as ‘The craziest, wildest, most insane event of the year. . . ‘ the World Naked Bike ride was underway yesterday in the UK.

Riders pedaled through Brighton to protest the use of oil wearing only, paint, wigs, and hats.

Sussex police allowed full nudity and were pleased with the good nature of the participants and spectators.

I had also heard of similar events in other parts of the UK and Spain but haven’t found anything online prior to this post.

There are other events publicly announced for London, Seattle, and Tucson. Dates have been hard to determine because some organizers have remained anonymous due to threats from authorities. In Tucson, authorities have threatened to ‘crack down’ on indecent exposure.

While I am sure the indecent exposure charge won’t stick due to the recent Supreme Court ruling about the naked carpenter but it may not avoid an arrest and a lot of paperwork.

The London event is rumored to be next weekend. Here is a video from last year’s London event.

It reminds me of a well intentioned version of the Naked Crit from the World Cup Mountain Bike Event at Mt. Snow in years past - just not as cold.

Posted in Travel, People | 2 Comments »