E-Vacation

[jray3]

I'd like to send out a big thank you to JoeS for his wonderful hospitality over the past few days. My wife had a professional conference in San Francisco last week, so we took the opportunity to add on a few days of vacation afterwards and were hosted by Joe at his beautiful solar-powered hacienda overlooking hundreds of acres of rolling nature preserve! Besides the decades-worth of EV and solar projects to play with, he took us on a TESLA day trip down to Monterey and Carmel, complete with a supercharging experience at one of the new owners' lounges.
We drove Mitti on a local day trip to the Intel Museum and the Winchester Mystery Mansion (built by a guilt-ridden gun heiress), and I got to add several EVs to my list of test drives, including a lithium-powered Sparrow (pocket rocket). Thanks to Joe's connections, we got an onsite visit with the CEO of PowerFlex Systems http://powerflex.com/
PowerFlex recently added a slew of L2 EVSE and a dual-standard DCFC to Los Altos High School, integrating them with the huge 200 kW/400 kWh battery installed in 2015, fed by a 515 kW solar array that was installed in 2011! http://www.engiestorage.com/caiso-market-entry-green-charge-distributed-energy-storage-mvla/
Thank You Joe!

Finally, I got home on the 4th to find my best friend acquiring his ultimate EV conversion project- a custom crewcab, long bed, manual-transmission 1985 Ford Ranger with a dying engine. More fun with funky vehicles to come!

-Jay

 

[JoeS]

Hi Jay,
It was a pleasure hosting you and your wife, and glad you managed to see some of the local sights.
"hacienda overlooking hundreds of acres of rolling nature preserve" is laying it on rather thick, as around here my house is considered a teardown but I am lucky with a nice view.
Right after I took you to the airport on July 4 I drove down to Hollister and picked up the crates of freshly-picked apricots and delivered them to my wife and her 96-year-old mother in Medford and turned right around and came home yesterday on another relaxing 1000-mile Tesla trip. Shoulda got Autopilot!

 

[Phximiev]

That's cool especially considering that we are in our own vacation now. Wife and kids flew into Seattle, WA, whilst I drove the Volt up. We traveled up through Victoria Island, Vancouver, and down the coast.

We are now in Starbucks just north of Santa Rosa.

BTW, whilst in Vancouver, we saw several Solos in the Canada Day parade as well as a number of other electrics; sadly no iMievs. We went by the Electrameccanica factory, but it was closed.

As far as electrics, saw lots of Teslas and Volts on the road, a few Bolts, i3s, and one Kia Soul EV. Again, no iMievs.