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As the farmers market a hundred yards away promoted the benefits of buying local food, Sunday’s Goodland Drive Electric Car Show in Goleta’s Camino Real Marketplace promoted the benefits of driving electric.
The car show is a partnership between the Santa Barbara-based Community Environmental Council and the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District.
“Transportation accounts for a huge amount of our air pollution, both in the county and in the state,” said Lyz Hoffman, the Air Pollution Control District’s public information officer.
“As more and more people are driving low-emission and zero-emission cars, it can help reduce levels of greenhouse gases, it can help reduce the levels of smog-forming pollution, both locally and statewide.”
The car show came on the final day of National Drive Electric Week, which aims to spread awareness of the increasing availability of plug-in vehicles and to promote their benefits.
Local EV owners showcased 19 vehicles in the marketplace, which saw its first publicly available DC Fast Charger installed in 2015. The brand of charging station resembles an auto-pay gas pump.
Several more vehicles were on display than last year, said Cameron Gray, a CEC energy program associate who organized the event on behalf of the nonprofit organization. Three local car dealerships also participated this year, he said.
“I actually had to turn people away because we didn’t have enough spots for people who wanted to come,” he said.
In addition to the more widely known Teslas and Chevrolet Volt, the event featured cars from Ford, BMW, Nissan, Toyota and Smart.
The variety of EV makes and models has been increasing over the years, Hoffman said, and as the market for them grows, prices have begun to come down.
One of the most popular EVs available now is Tesla’s high-end Model S, which it introduced in 2012. The car can travel more than 250 miles without having to be recharged.
“I was taken with Elon Musk’s creativity and forward thinking,” said Sheldon Sanov of the billionaire entrepreneur and inventor who founded Tesla.
“As soon as I realized that they were coming out with a car that could get 270 miles on a range, I put my name on the list and waited about a year, a year and a half to get the car,” he said.
After four years of driving the Model S, Sanov said, he has never had to take it into the shop for anything more than a little bit of paint.
Utilizing a couple of different cable fittings, the car can be charged at a traditional charging station, with a conventional house socket or for free at one of Tesla’s own stations along the coast, which Sanov said can do the job in a half-hour.
Especially when transportation is the largest greenhouse gas-producing sector of the state economy, Gray said, the widespread adoption of EVs can have a big effect on our air.
“One of the single most-effective things that people can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions right now is transition from a gasoline or diesel vehicle into an electric vehicle,” he said.
— Noozhawk staff writer Sam Goldman can be reached at sgoldman@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.