2025 past Events

Past Event announcements from 2025

This is an archive of event announcements from 2025, collected here for you to see what we were up to in the year. We hold our General Meetings on the second Thursday of every month, except for December when we hold our Holiday Party, and July when we hold our All-EVs Picnic. We hold our major Test Drive & Information Expo events for Drive Electric Earth Month in April and National Drive Electric Week in September at the Daimler Truck North America headquarters. We also put on several events over the summer for the EV community, and attend parades and other community events. It's always a busy year!

If you want to see our upcoming events, go to our upcoming Events page!

April Meeting at Ranger EV in Portland

Thursday April 10th, 7 to 9 PM

Olympic Mills Commerce Building, 107 SE Washington St, Room 133, Portland

Learn About Ranger EV's Innovative Charging Solution

We like to visit our local EV businesses, particularly like to bring attention to innovative new start-ups, and Ranger EV in SE Portland has an interesting solution to a problem you might have encountered on vacation, a solution that you may see a lot more in the future as you road trip around the Pacific Northwest.

Charging at home is one of the great conveniences of owning an EV. DC fast charging lets us go anywhere in the country. But the thing we often miss at our destination is the convenience that we had when charging at home. There are lots of vacation rentals that don't offer EV charging. Not that they couldn't. They just don't see a way to make back the expense, and putting in expensive hardware to meter the charge may not be in their budget.

Ranger EV's solution is like a Venmo for electricity that solves the charging problem for EV travelers and the financial problem of their hosts. Their initial focus is on vacation rentals in charging deserts, but Ranger EV's platform is designed to be a general purpose solution for electricity transactions between hosts and their EV guests. Their software-only social payment approach means there's no new hardware to install. Anyone with an outlet or EV charger can share energy on their platform.

The benefits to Ranger Station Hosts are adding a passive revenue stream to their rental through recouping energy cost and then some by monetizing their outlet or EV charger, and attracting more bookings from EV travelers like us.

The benefits for EV owners are saving time and money by plugging in where we're staying, a quick and efficient way to fill in charging deserts at our favorite travel destinations.

I've certainly appreciated when rentals provide free charging, but not many rental owners are looking for ways to increase their uncompensated expenses these days. Ranger EV proposes as a solution to establish the simple social norm that if we, as EV travelers, are happy to pay a fair price for the energy and the convenience of plugging in where we stay overnight, then vacation rental owners have a nice incentive to provide this amenity. Everyone wins!

At our April meeting, founder/CEO Brian Clark will be talking about the origin story of Ranger EV based on his EV travels. He will include a product demonstration and talk about the broader vision for Ranger EV as a key tool in the democratization of energy commerce. And he is looking for our feedback. He emailed me that, "Adoption and feedback from passionate groups of EV travelers, like OEVA members, will be key to our success. We want to know what you think!"

It looks like a very interesting approach. There is a wide spread between DC fast charger kWh costs and residential power rates. I'd be happy to split the difference between the two rates to give the rental owner a profit and save me a few bucks as well as avoiding the inconvenience of driving to a DC fast charger during my holiday stay. Let's take a look at what they're doing, and share with him some of the Experienced EV Owner Wisdom for which OEVA members are so well known.

Meeting Location and Parking

Ranger EV is located in the historic Olympic Mills Commerce Center, 107 SE Washington St, Portland. Unmetered street parking is available on the surrounding blocks, particularly along SE 2nd Ave. Heads up, some blocks are angle parking instead of the usual parallel street parking.

The event space is in the South Loading Dock area and adjacent Room 133 of the Olympic Mills building. Enter via the South Entrance of the building on SE Washington St. Upon entering via South entrance go up a small set of stairs and the event space will be visible on the 1st floor immediately to your left. Wheelchair access is via an elevator on your left in the entryway to go from level (LL) to level 1.

Ranger EV will provide beverages, and OEVA Hospitality Coordinator Chris Stonard will bring the entree. My guess would be a platter of some sort of delicious sandwiches, but we'll see what Chris comes up with. Please bring something to share, a side or dessert or snack or something. I'm bringing a Costco bag of Boom Chicka Pop, arguably the best tasting sweet and salty kettle popcorn that the ingenuity of mankind has yet devised. It's only 70 calories per cup, and the Costco bag is 50 cups, so enough for, oh, I don't know, at least several people.

It's the same schedule as all of our regular meetings. We'll start with a board meeting at 6:30, which OEVA members are welcome to attend. The General Meeting, open to the public, starts at 7 PM with food, socializing, and looking at the cars. At 7:30 we'll start the program with announcements, primarily about our upcoming Drive Electric Earth Month event (see below), followed by Brian Clark telling the Ranger EV story and giving a demonstration. By 8:30 we'll break for more socializing, and discussing any remaining questions we have with Brian. We'll head home by 9 PM.

Our thanks to Terry Kammer, VP of the Portland Rivian Club for making the introduction to Ranger EV and Brian Clark. If you have a connection to a local EV-related business, send an email to me or one of the other OEVA board members and make an introduction. It's a great way to get the word out about the business to the wider EV community, and it's fun for the club to get out to new places and learn different aspects of EVs.

March Meeting at Tesla Tigard Canceled

We just received word from Emma at Tesla Tigard that there was another incident last night and they need to cancel tonight's meeting. KPTV sent a reporter who gave an on the scene report. Click here for the KPTV story. They report that security at the Tesla site called Tigard Police to report the shots fired at 4:15 AM. Fortunately nobody was injured, though there was significant damage to vehicles and buildings. Tigard Police and Federal authorities are investigating.

We're sad to see that the folks at Tesla Tigard have to deal with this again. They're just trying to do their jobs, selling EVs, like they've been doing for years. Political debate and protest are part of a functioning democracy. Political violence is not. We all hope this is the last of this senseless destruction that our friends at Tesla Tigard need to deal with.

March General Meeting at Tesla Tigard
Cancelled DUE TO ANOTHER gunfire INCIDENT

Thursday March 13th, 7 to 9 PM

Tesla Tigard, 10069 SW Cascade Ave, Tigard Oregon

Check out the New Model Y & the Cybertruck

Our March Oregon Electric Vehicle Association general meeting will be at Tesla Tigard this Thursday. We'll get to check out the freshly arrived New Model Y. From the new trim shape and light bar in the front to the indirect tail light bar in the back, and with upgrades to the interior and to the underlying technology in between, this is truly a New Model Y! The Model Y was the best selling car in the world for both 2023 and 2024, not just among EVs but of cars of any fuel type. That's quite an accomplishment, and that's not it's only one. It is also the most American made car sold in the USA.

Last time we were at Tesla, back in May 2024, we were checking out the Upgraded Model 3 and the newly released Foundation Series Cybertruck. At that meeting Tesla Sales Associate Dan Stanton regaled us with fascinating information about the Cybertruck. Since then Tesla has concluded production of the Foundation series and is now into regular production of the All-Wheel Drive and Cyberbeast versions.

We're working with Tesla to see if we can set up test drives for folks attending the meeting. Tesla Tigard closes to the public at 6 PM, but they are staying open for our meeting until 9 PM. They might be able to set up something for people to use to sign up for test drives in advance. I'll let you know in the meeting reminder email on announce@oeva.org and here on the events page of the website what they have set up for us.

If you haven't experienced Tesla's Supervised Full Self Driving (FSD) recently, and by recently I mean since FSD 13.2 went into wide release around the turn of the year, you haven't seen what the technology can really do. It amazes me that our Tesla routinely drives us from our driveway to our destination with my feet flat on the floor and my hands off the controls the whole way. The feel of the drive is smooth and natural. Tesla's technology is advancing so amazingly quickly. With Supervised FSD the crash rate is already a tenth that of the average human driven car. You still have to supervise it, as it doesn't understand all road signs and pavement markings yet, so it occasionally wants to get into the wrong lane or makes other easily overruled mistakes. FSD will soon learn the things it currently lacks, and "driving" will become as simple and safe as taking an elevator. If you get the chance, I highly recommend you try it out. This will fundamentally change the experience, safety, and economics of automobiles. And a lot sooner than you may expect.

Tesla's Mission is Accelerating the World's Transition to Sustainable Energy. Their over 100,000 employees all around the world are dedicated to that mission, and that goal is right in line with the OEVA's mission to Promote the adoption of electric vehicles through education, advocacy, and community engagement. The people working every day at Tesla, and Tesla owners using their EVs instead of gas cars, are doing nothing but good for the world. There's one guy who owns less than 13% of the company who has set himself up as a lightning rod of political controversy, while the other 100,000 employees and the other 87% owners of the company just want to see Tesla continue to advance the state of the art in EV technology while lowering costs, to make safer and cleaner transportation a reality for everyone. Let's keep that in mind during these politically charged times.

Our Hospitality Coordinator, Chris Stonard, will provide the main dish for the food table at the meeting. The last time we were at Tesla Tigard, she made a batch of her delicious Hawaiian Sandwiches. Those were a treat. I'm not sure what she's planning for this event, but I know she is a master of the delicious. Please bring something to contribute to the snack table. You can bring something healthy, like fruit or veggies, or whatever you would like to share, healthy or delicious. I'm bringing a tub of my favorite chocolate covered mint cookies, so maybe not the healthiest, but I really like cookies.

It's the same schedule as all of our regular meetings. We'll start with a board meeting at 6:30, which OEVA members are welcome to attend. The General Meeting, open to the public, starts at 7 PM with food, socializing, and looking at the cars. At 7:30 we'll start the program with some announcements, followed by Tesla folks talking about the New Model Y. By 8:30 we'll break for more socializing, looking at cars, and discussing any remaining questions we have with the Tesla staff. We head home by 9 PM.

February 13th General Meeting Cancelled

The New Meeting Plan

The weather forecast for Thursday isn't looking great, is it? It really could go either way, warm up a bit and just rain, or cool down a bit and be a real ice and snow headache. We don't want to have a dealership get the staff lined up and the place ready for our meeting, only to cancel at the last minute due to weather. And we don't want people to be out in potentially hazardous driving conditions. So we're canceling this Thursday's meeting.

And yet, we've got the Oregon International Auto and Motorcycle Show coming up next week, and there are a few things we wanted to take care of in person during our second Thursday of the month General Meeting. No matter, we'll take care of things virtually through the internet, the way us 21st century people do everything now, everything except get a haircut.

We have 30 free adult admission tickets from the Auto Show for you to distribute to your family and friends. OEVA Past-President Morris Green is distributing the tickets as links to electronic tickets on Ticket Tomato. Email Morris (past-pres@oeva.org) and let him know how many tickets you want. It's first come, first served, for 1 ticket when he sends out the links. If he has tickets left over at that time he will honor the requests for the additional tickets. I'm not sure when Morris will get around to that particular task, so best to email him right away!

We wanted to give people a chance to pick up their OEVA embroidered polo shirts and name badges at Thursday's meeting, so they could wear them to the Auto Show. Instead Paul Albertson will bring his stock of OEVA shirts and the name badges he has received from printing, to the Auto Show for OEVA members who haven't picked theirs up yet. He will also loan out OEVA shirts to volunteers who aren't OEVA members for their shifts. I find these polo shirts feel particularly comfortable when worn over a long-sleeve T-shirt when it's cool out.

The other thing we wanted to take care of at the meeting was distributing Test Drive & Information Expo posters. I'll bring a stack of letter and poster sized prints to the Auto Show, and to next month's OEVA General Meeting on Thursday March 13th. Please take as many as you think you will be able to find bulletin boards to put them, at work, school, church, or wherever people stop to look at a bit of wall to find out about upcoming events.

It's not often we miss holding a meeting, but these things happen. We've got an interesting meeting planned for March, checking out one of the first units of a spectacular EV just going into production. Details in the March Update!

Oregon International Auto & Motorcycle Show

Drive Electric Featured Exhibit - OEVA Volunteer Opportunities!
February 20-23, 2025, Oregon Convention Center

777 NE Martin Luther King Jr Blvd, Portland

The Auto Show is this month, and the OEVA will be there with our awesome Volunteers as one of the sponsors of the Drive Electric featured exhibit. Drive Electric is the centerpiece of EVs at the Auto Show, and volunteering is a great opportunity for you to share your knowledge and enthusiasm for EVs with show guests. It's a really fun experience, talking with people who are interested in EVs, but are sometimes a bit uncertain about taking the plunge. Sharing your experience and answering basic EV questions at this event really makes a difference.

The centerpiece of Drive Electric is the FIND YOUR EV display, a double-sided wall with 64 large data sheets covering just about every EV available in the US. People at the wall often have questions, and appreciate your EV knowledge and personal experience. OEVA member and former OEVA President, Gary Exner, creates these excellent reference sheets every year for the Auto Show. Last year's data sheets are currently on the Cars page of this website, but we'll get that page updated with the new sheets before the Auto Show.

Surrounding the FIND YOUR EV wall, local dealers from many brands provide a variety of EVs on display. Seeing the data, then examining the car, getting questions answered by experienced EV owners in a non-sales, educational environment, gives people a great introduction to electric vehicles.

In order to be immediately recognizable to auto show guests as an OEVA Volunteer, please wear your OEVA embroidered polo shirt and name badge. Don't have an OEVA shirt and name badge? Why not take care of that! A shirt and name badge are available to you at no charge when you join the OEVA. To get your shirt and sign up for your custom name badge, see Paul Albertson at any of our regular monthly meetings. We'll have some shirts available to borrow at the Drive Electric exhibit.

When you're not volunteering at Drive Electric, take a walk and look around the show. It's interesting to check out what's on display.

Auto Show Dates and Hours:

Thursday, February 20 | 12 pm – 9 pm

Friday, February 21 | 12 pm – 10 pm

Saturday, February 22 | 10 am – 10 pm

Sunday, February 23 | 10 am - 7 pm

Of course you get free admission on the day you're volunteering. If you volunteer on multiple days you get an Exhibitor Badge, good for early entry and all days of the show, which you can pick up at the Exhibitor Entrance on MLK when you arrive for your first shift. If you volunteer on just one day instead of an Exhibitor Badge we'll email you a link for you to download a show admission ticket.

When you choose your volunteer shifts, please keep in mind that we'll need more volunteers during peak hours. On Thursday and Friday the show gets busier after folks get off of work, during the late afternoon and early evening hours. The busiest day is Saturday. So, please, we'll need more volunteer help all day Saturday! Sunday attendance is also fairly strong though it lightens up quite a bit later in the day.

We have a limited number of parking spaces at the "I-5 lot", under the elevated freeway, behind the Convention Center. Thanks to Ken Cornelison, Kia of Portland's general manager, Kia of Portland has offered us free parking in the parking structure on NE Irving street across from Kia, conveniently only a block from the Convention Center. There are some important details and restrictions about parking there, which we'll let you know when we confirm your registration next week.

We're trying a new volunteer registration system at Signup.com. To volunteer, sign up at https://signup.com/go/ZjbKbUr. Please sign up right away. We need your registration by Tuesday February 11th in order to get the registration information from Signup to the Auto show, and then email your admission ticket link or Exhibitor Badge confirmation to you. For questions or late registrations, email OEVA Event Coordinator Paul Burkey at Events@oeva.org.

January Meeting at Kia of Portland

Thursday January 9th, 7 to 9 PM

Kia of Portland, 720 NE Grand Ave, Portland

Learn about Kia and enjoy Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que!

Our January Oregon Electric Vehicle Association general meeting will be at Kia of Portland this Thursday. Find out about the Kia EV6 and new for 2024 EV9, which have proven to be popular in the US. The EV9 is of particular interest as a large 6 or 7 passenger EV at a reasonable price, a standout when compared with earlier compact EVs. The Cox Automotive Kelley Blue Book Electric Vehicle Sales Report Q4, 2024, with full-year US sales estimates for all EVs, will be coming out very soon and I'm excited to see how the EV horse race last year turned out. The EV6 and EV9 are very likely to give a quite respectable showing. I'll be updating the Cars page of the OEVA website with sales data and updated spec sheets prior to the Oregon International Auto Show in February.

I'm curious if Portland Kia has any information about the 2026 model year Kia EV6 and EV9 SUVs, to be made in the USA at Kia's factory in West Point, Georgia, coming out later this year. According to FuelEconomy.gov, the 2026 models will be eligible for the $7,500 tax credit. It's uncertain whether the tax credit will be repealed by congress at the request of the next administration, so if you're looking to take advantage of the credit, best be ready to purchase when these models become available. They will have the NACS charging port, the future of EV charging. At least, that's what I've heard. I wonder what we'll find out more about the upcoming models at the meeting?

Kia has always had interesting features in their EVs, of particular note are the 120 volt power outlets on the EV6 and EV9. Remember that cold snap last year, when temperatures dropped to 15 degrees out? We lost power at our house for five days, but kept the house tolerably warm thanks to pulling power from our Model 3 to run our gas fireplace blower and gas recirculating hot water heater. It took a bit of inside knowledge to use an external power inverter with my Tesla, but that would have been a piece of cake for anyone with an EV6 or EV9. Just plug a power cord in the socket!

Kia of Portland's general manager, Ken Cornelison, is serious about selling EVs. He's on the left in the photo above, personally showing a Kia EV at one of our Test Drive & Information Expo events. He was a great host when we visited Kia of Portland a year ago, and this time he is stepping it up providing dinner for us from Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que! I know we're really there to learn about EVs, and make connections with other EV owners, but hey, it's Famous Dave's!

You're encouraged to bring a dessert to share. Maybe bring some of those remaining holiday treats you've been trying to not binge on. I've decided to postpone my annual holiday dietary repentance until after this meeting.

Kia of Portland has limited parking, so they've reserved the first floor of the parking garage across Irving Street from Kia for us to use, free of charge. Kia will keep the parking garage open late for us, so don't worry if there is a sign that the garage closes at 7 PM. The Kia staff are the ones that lock the gate. It looks like an easy right turn off of NE Grand onto Irving Street (try not to collide with a light rail train), then half-way up the block turn right into the parking garage.

As always, the general meeting starts at 7 PM with food and socializing, and is open to everyone. At about 7:30 we'll start the program with some announcements. We've got another big year of events coming up! Then we'll hear from Portland Kia until about 8:30. I understand that Portland Kia's Master Technician has bought himself an EV6. It's always interesting to hear from an owner, particularly one who also has access to the inside tech info. We'll then socialize for a bit more, say our goodbyes to our EV friends, then head out by 9 PM so the Kia staff can go home. The OEVA board will meet at 6:30, before the general meeting. OEVA members are welcome to attend the board meeting.

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