To all D$W members and friends, 2020 is the first year of the 20’s decade with several anniversaries to be celebrated. The first is a 20th anniversary of the introduction of the first massed produced hybrid vehicles to the American market. The Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius initiated a change to cleaner vehicles that continues today now with the focus of BEV and PHEV’s. The second anniversary is the 50th celebration of Earth Day, organized by our own William Proxmire on April 22, 1970. During these 50 years, so much has changed, some for the better and some not. When the 1st Earth Day was held, the CO2 in the atmosphere was about 325 ppm. Increasing by about 1 ppm each year. Today we are at 415 ppm and averaging a 2 ppm increase each year. The CO2 concern was only part of the reason Earth Day started but is now a metric that needs to be really addressed. For 14 years, Drive $mart Wisconsin has been a partial solution to the CO2 issue by teaching drivers to get better mileage thus lowering GHG emissions. D$W has also been at the forefront of promoting sustainable vehicle options first with HEV and now the PHEV and BEV’s. As D$W continues to be a solution within the Earth Day philosophy, we’ll be hosting 2 Drive Electric Earth Day events in April. The first DEED event will be part of the 58th D$W Meet at the Greenfield Public Library on Saturday April 11th from 10-1 and will feature an EV Owners Panel with Garlan Garner, a Tesla Programmer and Michael Klimkosky, the founder of the Wisconsin Tesla Club. Details will follow soon via another email, but you can register to attend, display your vehicle or offer rides for this DEED event at now at: https://driveelectricearthday.org/event.php?eventid=2312 The second D$W hosted DEED event will be across the state in La Crosse on Sunday April 26th as part of the La Crosse Earth Fair at Myrick Park. This will be sponsored by D$W member Chris Schneider (previous owner of Honda Motorwerkes) of Hybrid Car Store of La Crosse. Due to space limitations, we will only have 6 EV/PHEV on display but will be offering D$W/EV educations sessions as part of the Earth Fair. You can register for this DEED event at: https://driveelectricearthday.org/event.php?eventid=2351 The Earth Day commitment of D$W, our “Tools for a Lifetime” training, currently being taught as part of the MPS Drive education program, has been upgraded to be available through local church Creation Care networks. Called, “Driving in God’s Garden”, it will be part of the resources available to churches through the Wisconsin Conference UCC Creation Care Team and the Wisconsin Interfaith Power and Light organizations. There will be a “Driving in God’s Garden” webinar hosted by both organizations in March and will be followed up in workshop form in June at the Wisconsin UCC General Conference gathering at Green Lake WI. Lastly, D$W will be exhibiting at the Racine Ecofest on Saturday March 21st at the Gateway Technical College in Racine from 9am to 1pm. This will be our second year at Ecofest and we will be promoting our D$W Smart Driving skills training and giving out info on EV/PHEVs. There also may be a chance that D$W will be doing a tent session at this year’s 31st Annual MREA event in Custer with a theme of “The Future is Electric”. The session, if accepted, will be titled “The Fuel of the Future is Efficiency” and will be a shortened Tools for a Lifetime training. Bradlee Fons
For over(?) 14 years, Wisconsin led all states (by a wide margin) in the availability of ethanol-free gasoline(E0), which gives 8% to 5% better MPG than 10% ethanol fuel blends(E10), which dilute most of our nation's gasoline stocks. Has your organization had anything to do with the present 968 Wisconsin E0 sources?
Great point litesong but other than consistently promoting it at one of our 57 Meets over the years, we had nothing to do with with current sources. When I had my 2000 Honda Insight, I would go the extra mile to get real gas and saw at least a 10% improvement in my mileage. I would pretty consistently get 100 mpg tanks with my Insight and the 10% boost from real gas helped. But over the years fewer and fewer stations offer it once their regular underground tanks emptied. Many kept up for awhile with premium until those premium tanks emptied as well. But now few gas jobbers even offer real gas anymore. All in all I gave up looking for real gas but with your reply, I'll do another search. Are you in our SE Wisconsin area?
Glad to meet you, Bradlee. pure-gas.org now lists over 15,000 E0 sources. Three or four states now have 900+ E0 sources & many have over doubled their E0 sources. There still needs to be large increases of 87 octane E0 in all states. Tho I have NOT noted as much MPG increase as you have obtained, I have posted with many E0 advocates, who have obtained 10% better MPG, E0 over E10. My own last five 87 octane gasoline engines have measured 8%, 8%, 7%-8%, 7% & 5% better MPG, 87 octane E0 over poorly designated 87 octane 10% ethanol-gasoline fuel blend (E10). I'm in the Salish Sea (Puget Sound) region near Everett, WA.
