Author: Andy Kass

 It is soon time for another ride-and-drive EVent! The Blue Planet Foundation and KauaiEV are holding an electric vehicle (EV) ride-and-drive event on Saturday, February 24th, at the Kauai Community College Farmer’s Market. It’s a free, no-pressure, no-hassle opportunity to learn about electric cars. Come talk with people who own electric cars on Kauai. Go for a test drive (or ride) to see how they handle (hint: just like a regular car, but with more acceleration). Learn about EV and battery repair programs in the KCC automotive department. If you are interested, you can talk with car dealerships who have new and used models available. We can answer your questions about range, batteries, purchase price, tax credits, rebates, private charging, public chargers, cost comparisons between gas and electric, and much more. At the last event, there were Nissan Leafs, Kia Souls, a Ford C-Max, a Chevy Volt, a Plug-in Prius, a Mercedes B-class, and a Tesla Model X (not all available for rides and test-drives)....

Our family recently went on a beach trip to Kekaha from Wailua in our 2015 Nissan Leaf. This is about 70 miles round-trip, and we still have about 100 miles of range on the battery meter, so this was a good test of range in real-world conditions. Spoiler alert: we made it there and back without any issues, though we did stop in Lihue on the return to eat, so we went ahead and charged with 23 miles left (7 miles from home). Why Kekaha? Because we haven't been beyond Waimea in our Leaf, and I realized in 10 years we'd never actually stopped to visit that beach! In our previous gas car, we had always just driven past on our way to Polihale (that'll be another trip for another day in the Leaf). Plus, Kekaha is the start of the "barking sands" beach that wraps all the way from Kekaha town to the Na Pali cliffs at Polihale. You can't...