Archives

There's a production company interested in someone who's getting exceptional results with a street legal car for a documentary. They're in the SF area with limited budget and want someone with very exceptional numbers.

Lemme know if you fit this and are interested at a few minutes of stardom.

*edit:
I am contacting you from Michael Hoff Productions (www.mhptv.com), a
television production company in the San Francisco Bay Area. I read
about you in a great article on Wayne Gerdes and hypermiling in Mother
Jones (by Dennis Gaffney).

We are producing a 12-part series, FUTURE WHEELS, on alternative fuels
and transportation for Equator HD (part of the VOOM HD network on the
Dish Satellite Network). www.voom.tv/equatorhd.html Our episodes
cover many different fuels and technologies including ethanol,
biodiesel, vegetable oil, natural gas, hydrogen, electric vehicles
(including Tesla) and, of course, solar power.

One of our episodes focuses on the Shell Eco-Marathon event in
Southern California and we recently spent a couple of days shooting
the competition. The goal is to go as far as you can on as little
fuel as possible and the winner takes home $10,000. As the vehicles
there are all tiny "pods" that are nowhere near street legal, we'd
like to open the episode up to show some drivers that are actually
getting amazing mpg in regular street cars.

We have a very limited budget and an even more limited schedule! So
we're looking find any hypermilers that might live in the SF bay area
that we could interview. I know that Wayne is outside of Chicago -
are you there as well? I would appreciate any suggestions and/or
advice that you might have for me as to local resources/people.

As we're under a very tight deadline, I hope to hear back from you
soon. Thank you so much.

Kind regards,

Julie

Julie Kirsner
Associate Producer
Michael Hoff Productions
5900 Hollis Street, Suite O
Emeryville, CA 94608
Direct 510-597-2015
Cell 646-245-6937
Fax 510-597-9640
www.mhptv.com

Hi Evan:

___They contacted me yesterday but I do not know where it will go from here? From the conversation w/ Julie, it sounds very similar to the Canadian Discovery Channel spot we did a few weeks ago but I do not have all the details just yet …

___Good Luck and thanks for the heads up.

___Wayne

Yea, I have the contact info I can give someone in the area if they sound like what they're looking for.

Just to clarify, the impression I got is they want someone who can really go long distances on gas, not just someone doing better than the EPA ratings. IOW someone with an Insight who can get 100mpg+ ala the Marathon type numbers.

Hi Evan:

___Julie did not give me that impression at all but she would be happy to hear about the Accord pulling 1000 mile + tanks as of late ;)

___She is working on a Global Warming documentary and would possibly have the editor and crew fly out here (he was originally from Highland Park, IL. IIRC) for a one on one or me to fly other there so as to give a clinic for their entire staff but it is way early in the planning stages as they are just now putting together a solid budget. I told her about Tarabell and her HCH-II in LA but Tarabell is a very private person so no guarantees.

___San Francisco is a very tough area for hypermiling and would take the right kind of person indeed.

___Julie owns a Prius-II herself and got a kick out of my willingness to show her how we do what we do :)

___Good Luck

___Wayne

I don't have Dave's permission to reproduce the e-mail I've seen. And I may be misinterpreting what she wrote. But she did say :
"we'd like to open the episode up to show some drivers that are actually getting amazing mpg in regular street cars."

So you may well be right.

Dave gave me permission to post the entire e-mail from the individual...see my now edited first post.

Hi Evan:

___Julie did not give me that impression at all but she would be happy to hear about the Accord pulling 1000 mile + tanks as of late ;)

___She is working on a Global Warming documentary and would possibly have the editor and crew fly out here (he was originally from Highland Park, IL. IIRC) for a one on one or me to fly other there so as to give a clinic for their entire staff but it is way early in the planning stages as they are just now putting together a solid budget. I told her about Tarabell and her HCH-II in LA but Tarabell is a very private person so no guarantees.

___San Francisco is a very tough area for hypermiling and would take the right kind of person indeed.

___Julie owns a Prius-II herself and got a kick out of my willingness to show her how we do what we do :)

___Good Luck

___Wayne

Hey Wayne,

If you come out here you could show her (and me) in Little Red (Beauty retired), she would love to really hypermile again! :bananajump:

Gary

Hi Gary:

___If they could possibly spring for the trip, you would definitely be my first CleanMPG contact in the San Francisco area. I would love to drive the “Little Red Beauty” again as it would be like coming home. Remember how emotional Chelsea was when she saw the EV-1 in the basement garage in the film “Who Killed the Electric Car”? You may want to have a box of tissues handy for me just in case :)

___Evan, that is what Julie sent to me as well. I hope we can work with them in a productive fashion. I remember taking a Chevrolet Malibu rental into downtown San Francisco last year. Talk about working the poor thing to death, Jeesh! There was a red stop light every 2 blocks plus the traffic across one of the Bay Bridges out of Oakland was ridiculous. Great to FAS down but a monster climb in bumper to bumper stop and crawl tested my will quite severely ;)

___Good Luck

___Wayne