Studded tires have bothered me for years. The driving on ruts, the road noise, the dangerous hydroplaning, and the costs to repair the roads are all concerns for me. As a citizen activist, I contacted my legislator and the Oregon Department of Transportation, but couldn’t get any justifiable answers as to why studded tires are still legal. According to an Oregon legislative fact sheet, only 10 percent of drivers use studded tires west of the Cascades, yet they cut road life by 50 percent. They were banned in Minnesota in the 1970s and if any state has winter weather, its Minnesota. The more research I did, the more I learned…
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3rd Annual John Day or Bust at Solwest Fair
Drive your electric vehicle to John Day, OR. This a call to action for all electric vehicle (EV) enthusiasts. Join in and support the vision of replacing the internal combustion engines that are now powering America’s fleet of personal vehicles with electric drive systems. It’s the quickest and cheapest path to breaking our addiction to oil, cleaning up our air, and stopping the flow of our dollars to OPEC.This adventure will coincide with the SolWest Fair that takes place July 27, 28, & 29, 2012.The goal is to promote the wide- spread adoption of the EV as a vehicle of utility and adventure as well as be- ing good for…
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John Day or Bust 2011
Editor’s prologue - Interstate 84 wasn’t exactly choked with electric vehicles leaving Portland for John Day to take part in the SolWest Fair and the John Day or Bust EV convergence that took place the last weekend in July. However, there were three hardy souls and two EVs that did strike out on Thursday, July 28, thereby keeping this event alive for another year.
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Shweeb: Light Rail for Bicyclers
Here’s an idea that seems to be the Portland bicycler’s dream come true: a recumbent bike enclosed from the “Oregon Mist” and suspended safely above auto and truck traffic.
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Volt Owner Gets 300+ MPG
When General Motors unveiled the Chevrolet Volt, the media was caught off balance and failed to fully appreciate what the engineers at GM had come up with. Is it an electric car? Is it a hybrid? Is it an extended range electric car? The debate went on and on. Does it really matter and who cares anyway? So while the auto techno-experts argued over where exactly to put the Volt, people were quietly buying them and putting them in their garages. Best of all, Motor Trend magazine got it right and called the Volt “Car Of The Year”. One of the new Volt owners was Jeff Parmet, who purchased his…
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Velomobiles in the Gorge
If you were traveling on I-84 on July 29, 2011 you might have seen what appeared to be a whole bunch of kiddie cars heading east. Well they weren’t kiddie cars, they were velomobiles and they were going from Portland to Washington, DC as part of the Roll Across America Tour (ROAM). The tour was billed as the classic tour across the United States, a great adventure, a challenge to will and strength – a world premiere of velomobiling. 5000 km, four weeks, fifty riders from Europe and North America. They arrived in Washington, DC on August 24th, 2011. So what is a velomobile? Basically it is a recumbent bicycle…
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John Day or Bust
John Day Or Bust is a call to action for all-electric vehicle (EV) enthusiasts who support the vision that replacing the internal combustion engines (ICE) that are now powering America’s fleet of personal vehicles with electric drive systems is the quickest and cheapest path to breaking our addiction to oil.
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Bob’s Ultimate Driving Machine
People with the ability to take something that interests them and turn it into a passion have always fascinated me, and, I might add, raised a certain amount of envy as well. And, even more so, when that passion makes a difference, not only in that person’s life, but in the lives of all of us as well. Quite often, and usually during times of crisis, these people come to our attention because the focus of their passions offer solutions to that very crisis. Enter Bob Simpson, who gave a presentation at a recent Solar Oregon gathering that I attended. He briefly described the conversion of his gasoline powered BMW…
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Life Without Wheels – An Interview with Kevin Pile
Surely you’ve had one of those days when you thought about just giving up owning a car altogether. You know, one of those days when you just found out that the new timing belt’s going to cost you $1800 and while they are in there working on that they might as well do…(you fill in the blank)… for another $….(again, you fill in the blank)…. Or maybe it was the day the monthly payment, the gas bill, the new plates and the insurance premium all had to be paid in the same week. Or even better, maybe you are one of those that is tired of spewing exhaust gases into…
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There Are Alternatives To This
America’s consumption of gasoline is insatiable, which is, of course, the engine that drives the BPs of the world to search for more crude. Every dollar we spend at the gas pump is another request, from us to them, to go forth and seek more oil even though we all know that means drilling in more challenging areas. For decades there were just too few options for breaking our addiction to oil. But now, thanks to the Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet Volt, the Ford Focus, the Mitsubishi iMiEV, and others, the electric vehicle (EV) will be available to consumers at the end of this year or in 2011. This means…
