Introduction and Upcoming Meetup Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the plugin for more podcast on today's episode. We have two guests, both from the Tesla onerous club of Michigan. Kelly Stone and Scott Prokrifka are here to talk about the summer meetup in Muskegon, Michigan. That's going to be happening on June 15th of 2024. Now, the cool thing about this meetup is that.
00:00:21
Speaker
It is going to give the potential EV buyer access to hundreds of different EVs and owners to kind of get a sense for what it might be like to live the electric vehicle lifestyle. In addition to that benefit, there's going to be a pretty special event that they're doing to try to beat a Guinness World Record. Before we get into the interview, I just want to take a second to let you all know that Mike and I just finished up doing a bunch of recording in North Carolina for some Cybertruck content.
Cybertruck Content Announcement
00:00:50
Speaker
So keep an eye on the EV universe YouTube channel over the course of the next week or two. And we will have a bunch more content out there for you to check out. And as always, if you are enjoying the show, please like and subscribe to whatever platform it is you listen to us on. Also, those likes and comments do help us out immensely with the algorithms. Thank you and enjoy the show.
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome to Plug In For More, brought to you by evuniverse.com. EV Universe is your one-stop shop for all things related to the electric vehicle. Here on this podcast, our goal is to educate, inspire, and hopefully make your transition into the electric vehicle marketplace a lot less intimidating. And now, here are your hosts, Mike, Tom, and Bryant.
Kelly's EV Advocacy Journey
00:01:42
Speaker
Kelly and Scott, I really appreciate you joining us to talk with the Tesla Owners Club of Michigan. And I'd really love to know more about what that organization is up to and the mission and what it is you guys are trying to accomplish. So I'm Kelly Sloan. I'm the Secretary of Tesla Owners Club of Michigan. And I've been driving an electric for the past six years. And ever since we got our first electric vehicle,
00:02:06
Speaker
My mission has been to educate people to get them through the flood that I was already hearing in mainstream media. And I knew after a very short amount of time of having our 2018 Tesla Model 3, that what I was hearing was not what a real owner experience was like.
00:02:30
Speaker
I wanted to be sure that people heard it from someone who had lived the EV lifestyle that understood that this is possible. It's enjoyable. The most fun that you're ever going to have in a car. And I wanted to be there to share it. So we started out going to car shows. My husband and I did our car. We only had her for a week.
00:02:55
Speaker
went to our first car show and was followed by a group of young kids running down the street screaming, it's a Tesla. And we have never gotten over that moment. And we're in the we're waiting for our Cybertruck right now, which I know a number of people in your organization already have their Cybertrucks.
00:03:17
Speaker
And we're ready for that. It's a Cybertruck moment. And anybody can run and scream at my vehicle that they want, and I'll stop taking her ride. Yeah, and I know that's been Mike's experience so far, is that he has been somewhat overwhelmed by the attention that he gets driving it. Yeah, welcome to being a rock star. There you go. He can pick whichever one he wants
World Record Light Show Plans
00:03:38
Speaker
to be. He can be Mick Jagger. He can be.
00:03:40
Speaker
Eric Clapton, we'll let him be whoever he wants to be. He can name it. Upcoming this summer, you guys have a meetup planned in Muskegon, Michigan. Correct. And there's a big surprise you're trying to pull off for it and at least give a little bit of dramatics here as we set it up. But what's the big poll you're trying to make here? We are going to set the world record for the Tesla Life Show.
00:04:07
Speaker
We're working with Simon Pollock, who has written most of the world record. He's written most of the current world record light shows. He did it for Finland, South Korea, and now we're going to bring that world record trophy home to the Midwest.
00:04:26
Speaker
And I need 1,105 Teslas to come to Muskegon. We're gonna start lining cars up. We just found out that ideally I thought we'd start lining cars up at seven. Sounds like we're gonna have to start lining cars up at five. And we're gonna have a festival during the day where there will be all kinds of things going on. We've got 15 YouTubers coming in from all over the world.
00:04:53
Speaker
And so that group is, um, going to be on stage all day. Our keynote is Sandy Monroe from Monroe and Associates.
Event Details and Attractions
00:05:02
Speaker
And so, um, I mean, and we've got a great cast. Brian White from Futuraza is our host and moderator for the day, but we're bringing Dr. Scott Walter is coming who's a robotics engineer and very familiar to the YouTube community.
00:05:17
Speaker
Carl Conner from Out of Spec is coming from Colorado. We've got Larry Strandrider coming from Best in Tesla, Jan Vogel from Tesla fix out of Germany. Bearded Tesla guy. I haven't said 15 yet. Chris from Dirty Tesla will be there. And Chris is actually the president of Tesla Owners Club of Michigan. So he has no choice but to be there or otherwise he would get a wicked scowl from me. So we're grateful.
00:05:47
Speaker
And nobody wants to be on my bad side when I'm all amped up. So we are going to have an amazing panel in Muskegon to talk about EVs, the future, engineering, robotics, and
00:06:05
Speaker
And we're welcoming all electric vehicle owners. So I know that you're bringing your Mach-E, which we're very excited about that. My husband is a retired Ford battery electric engineer. And so, and I live not too far from Dearborn, Michigan. So I live in Ford country. And so we have,
00:06:26
Speaker
We have Rivian's coming, which, you know, we'll let Mr. Pokrifka, we'll let him take his bow because his Mario will be there with us as our one tee.
00:06:37
Speaker
So we'll have Teslas, we know we've got Rivian's coming, Maki. I've got a Nissan Leaf that's coming actually from Illinois.
Plaid Day Charity Event
00:06:45
Speaker
We've got people coming from, right now I counted, I have 13 states in the United States that are represented as of today in signups, but two provinces, Nova Scotia and Ontario are both represented coming from Canada.
00:07:02
Speaker
So we're making this an international event on a beautiful downtown Muskegon day. So the event will take place, the festival part, that's what I'll call it, will take place from 10 o'clock in the morning until 5.
00:07:19
Speaker
Then we're going to give everybody to have a couple hours or an hour of break, I guess. And then we're going to start lining cars up and our team will be ready to start getting cars lined up for the light show. The sunset that day will be at 9 27 PM. So we want to have all the cars in place no later than 9 PM.
00:07:41
Speaker
Um, this light show is going to be just absolutely fantastic. Super excited about what it's going to be. We're going to be right on the edge of Lake Michigan. We're going to be, there's an inlet that comes in, it's called Lake Muskegon. So we're going to be writing downtown Muskegon on the water with all of the cars, with the drones up in the air. And, um,
00:08:06
Speaker
It's going to be quite a day. Then the following day on Sunday, we do Plaid Day. And Plaid Day is a limited event where people can sign up to go out and experience, I always say experience the G's.
00:08:22
Speaker
of getting into a plaid, ripping it down the road, Scott's gonna bring out his quad motor R1T. So we're gonna have, I hope somebody has a lucid sapphire. If you have a lucid sapphire and you'd like to come out and show us what you're made of, we're ready. When we get a private road that the sheriff's block off.
00:08:42
Speaker
Um, and we all go out to this. It's a desolate area. The sheriff's department will be out there blocking the road off and we can just rip those cars down the road for a few hours. Um, we're limited. We can only have 125 people at this event. I'm about full right now.
00:09:01
Speaker
But we do this entire event and Plaid Day. Plaid Day is exclusively to raise money for two no-kill animal shelters in Muskegon. We're there to support the community.
00:09:16
Speaker
And if somebody doesn't have an electric vehicle and they want to come to the festival part of the day, we're asking for $10 to walk on the property. And we're going to give $5 of that immediately to the two shelters. And then we're going to have a 50 50 raffle during the day that those, that the, that the charities are running. We're going to, um, we've committed to giving many different parts of the
00:09:44
Speaker
of the funding to the charities. Of course, we have to pay for the event and that's never an expensive thing. But for the plan day, 100% of the proceeds go directly to the charities. So we're asking everybody to pay $20 to come and that $20 will be split evenly between the two no kill animal shelters. Very nice.
00:10:10
Speaker
And all of the information is available at teslamichigan.org forward slash summer dash meetup.
Logistics and Setup Details
00:10:18
Speaker
And if you have questions, you can always come to me at Kelly K E L O I at teslamichigan.org and I will get back with you. Perfect. And I think in all of that, we might've glossed over what day this is occurring on.
00:10:33
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I never said that, did I? So Summer, Scott's laughing at me. Summer meetup is Saturday, June 15th, 2024.
00:10:44
Speaker
The festival day begins at 10 a.m. Oh, there's a charity car wash. I knew I was forgetting something, Tom. So one of the things that we're doing is there's a $20 charity car wash. We've got a crew coming in that's going to be washing cars. And we've made sure that we have power electric power washers that are going to be available to wash, hand wash of your vehicle to make it all beautiful before you go out to show your baby off for the day.
00:11:11
Speaker
And those funds are all going to the charity as well. Gotcha. Now the actual logistics of the light show.
00:11:20
Speaker
is Scott, is that something you can speak to and what actually is happening with it? What we're doing is we had one of our members from the Tesla Owners Club of Michigan is an electronic music producer and he does some DJing and things like that. And he actually created a piece of music for us that we're gonna use. And then we're also gonna be probably tying in a few other things with it too, trying to kind of plus it up
00:11:50
Speaker
a little bit. I mean, you know, I've heard nothing more than for the past three months from Kelly that I want the world record. I want it. So so it's like no pressure or anything along those lines. But as Kelly was talking about earlier, so we have some help coming in from Simon Pollock.
00:12:09
Speaker
She was talking about him earlier, and so he's the guy. I mean, he's the ex-lightshows.io guy. If you want to check out his things or check him out on YouTube. So yeah, I think the biggest thing is, I think the music part is going to be the easy part of the actual light show. It's getting everybody lined up, ready to go in the time that we have to do it.
00:12:35
Speaker
Okay. And forgive my ignorance here, but I think when you're talking about light shows, is it the actual cars that you're anticipating? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So back, uh, gosh, it was two years ago, 20, Marmee was a 2019, 2020 Tesla in the, in the, uh, Christmas update or the end of year update added the ability to have a synchronized, uh, light show or head, you know, lights of the vehicle, um, to music.
00:13:01
Speaker
you know, and then, you know, like the, the X's, they could, you know, flap the, the going doors and they can open, you know, you can waggle the, the windows and the things of that nature. And so, yeah, so we use a piece of software called X lights to actually then sync up music to the, the vehicles. And, and again, it's, you know, the tail lights, the turn signals, the headlights, fogs, things of that nature and synchronize that to the music.
00:13:28
Speaker
That sounds like a lot of fun. I'm excited to see it. Yeah, it's fun. It's definitely fun. It's one of those things where you just kind of, you pour into it a little bit. And, you know, as a funny side joke, I was telling the guy who wrote the one piece of music, I said, man, the first time I heard your song, I loved it. This is awesome. And then I worked on it, you know, with inside the light show or yeah, our X lights software for like five hours is like, dude, I hate your song now. I'm tired of listening to it.
00:13:56
Speaker
I know the feeling I do the editing for the podcast as well as obviously doing the interviews and whatnot. So I guess I could hear in my voice after a while too. So I totally understand the dilemma of that.
00:14:09
Speaker
you're listening to the plug in for more podcast. If you're looking for information on electric vehicles, electric vehicles components or information on how to reduce your carbon footprint, look no further than evuniverse.com. evuniverse.com is your one stop shop for all things related to electric vehicle.
00:14:29
Speaker
Our podcast is typically directed at the person who is either a brand new EV owner or they're expecting that they may purchase an EV in the next three to six months. They're on that cost. They're EV curious, if you will. For this event, what would you say to that person if they're in the Midwest area, if they're in the driving range of coming to Muskegon in June, check this event
Engaging the EV-Curious Community
00:14:52
Speaker
out? What would be the benefit for that person?
00:14:54
Speaker
I think for them, it's more of particularly if they're on the fence to do the EV lifestyle or have just freshly gotten into it. It's just an opportunity to talk with other people who have already gone down part of the path. And it's just that, that they're not honestly reaffirmed that what they did, but it's like,
00:15:17
Speaker
hey look yeah you did this this is great and this is the kind of camaraderie and community that comes around some of this and or for those people who are again still on the fence because it is open to all EVs that ability to say okay well you know for Tesla you might want this or for a Rivian you know you might be able to do this you want that or from a Ford or from the Nissan or you know from Volkswagen whoever
00:15:42
Speaker
Yeah. Again, at the end of the day, each one of these vehicles have their own pluses and minuses and it really comes down to what it is that you want and what better place to come and we're going to have hopefully a lot of these different models or different brands in one spot. Then you can talk to the owner and get a real world take on it instead of a salesperson trying to tell you, oh, this car will drive forever or even some of the salespeople.
00:16:08
Speaker
that maybe aren't as knowledgeable as people who live it. I mean, in my case, Kelly was talking about when she got into the EV space, we have a Tesla in my household and a Rivian. So we have both and we're split household and love it.
00:16:25
Speaker
Well, I think the education part is really huge for us. I mean, we want people to come armed with questions and we want them to talk to people. And you know, if you're a soccer mom and you want to find out, is that vehicle going to give me what I need to run around town, run my errands?
00:16:47
Speaker
What are my benefits going to be with my kids? But also, am I going to be able to get in this vehicle? Am I going to be able to travel? We can talk about charging infrastructure, and we can talk about
00:17:00
Speaker
Um, like from my perspective, Tom, Bert and I have been driving, like I said, we've been driving electric for six years. I can tell you how, how it was in 2018 when we got our first electric vehicle and how things are in 2024. And people always ask, are you afraid? No, I'm not afraid.
00:17:23
Speaker
Cannonball into the lake, it's time to get on board because you are missing out on all the fun, the excitement. We have met the greatest people. I mean, Scott can tell you, I have tortured the Tesla Owners Club of Michigan. Last year we hosted 40 events doing meetups at Superchargers just so I could talk to people.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I would say I would I would cycle it but I would I say tortured is a little harsh. I just I just think you have a very outgoing personality. I bring food down. That's what I do food. So you can come and let me talk to you about a visa and I'll feed you a sandwich give you some chips and a soda or a bottle cold bottle of water, you know, whatever it takes.
00:18:09
Speaker
fair enough. We do whatever we can to make to try and basically get into someone's household into their life so that we can say
00:18:25
Speaker
You know, do we have a similarity? I mean, like I'm an old person, so maybe if you're 20 and you're talking about EVs, maybe I'm not going to have the same experience because I'm not out hitting the streets. But I've got people who do that. I've got Model S plaid drivers who go out on the roads every day to see if there's a Maserati or a ZR7 that wants to, wants to meet them at the next light.
00:18:50
Speaker
And so I become a resource of, you know, if you're interested in racing, if you're interested in power, if you're, whatever you're, you know, if you just want to go slow and you want to take your time and just enjoy, we can meet, we can, we can have you find those people too. Not everybody is like me.
00:19:09
Speaker
that that's for sure.
Grassroots Efforts Against Misinformation
00:19:11
Speaker
Oh, sorry. We're gonna cut that right now. I'm just kidding. That's that's that's gold. Mike. Yeah, there you go. But but I think the other the other side of that as well as I can't remember if Kelly said it or I said it at this point, but it's the it's the EV lifestyle or the going to a more sustainable
00:19:31
Speaker
Future type of thing where you know, even at some of the we do a tesla supercharger takeover. It's not always talking about cars It's talking about hey where you've been where you've driven to or hey, I just got solar panels and not you know And i'm charging my car with the sun. So it's not always about cars. It's more about people talking to people
00:19:51
Speaker
And as a part of that, getting back to the education piece real quick, because obviously that's near and dear to my heart. The idea of sometimes, believe it or not, people, you know, even newer, you were talking about newer people coming into them, and they'll come to a charger, they see something they'll be talking to, and they're more willing to ask you face to face a question than they would on a social media platform. Because, I mean, social media platforms, it's easy to hide behind the screen and not be possibly nice to somebody.
00:20:20
Speaker
But when you're face to face and they come out and they'll ask you, they're like, Hey, this is kind of, this might be a stupid question, but it's, Oh no, let's go take a look at it. And yeah, it's a buried option somewhere in a screen that somebody else had to find. But so we see a lot of that too, at the, at the takeovers or at these other events that we do. And it's, I hear you guys talking about this and I can't tell you how much I agree with you and your assessment of what you're going about and what you're doing. Cause with us with EV universe, you know, we've been at this company now for like two and a half years.
00:20:50
Speaker
reasonably. And the combating of misinformation, and it has to happen on that grassroots level. Because trying to do anything mainstream is just met with resistance. Yeah. And again, a lot of times when you're talking with people at these events, even if they're non-EV owners, it's interesting because you find out what the rest of the
00:21:16
Speaker
the other community is talking about. Obviously, you know, within the EV community, you have a you kind of everybody's I don't want to say a level playing field or they kind of this, you know, they they understand some of the things that are going on. So but you always hear a lot of the same fud that comes back because they're just easy talking points against
Community Reactions to Teslas
00:21:34
Speaker
I mean, we were just at an event a week or so ago and a nice high-powered vehicle from a big three manufacturer won't go any deeper than that. Thought it important that when he started up the car that his foot was all the way down the accelerator and took out of the parking lot with the loudest noise you ever heard on the planet. Just because he had glass packs in it and thought that he had to show us.
00:22:01
Speaker
We all just kind of sat there and the smell, you know, that's the other thing. Like for a lot of us, we're not used to that exhaust and we were all like, wow. But we've had crazy stuff happen, Tom. We've been on an EV drive.
00:22:16
Speaker
and we had a guy, I don't remember where were we, Scott, and there's guys driving down the road, and we were in a line of Teslas. We must have been in Ann Arbor. It was the Tunnel of Freedom? The Tunnel of Freedom. Out of this car that had no muffler on it, it was so loud. I mean, it was like 80 Malibu or something. I mean, it was a really old car, and the guys got his thumb out the window, giving us a thumbs down, and we're like, you know what? Come and talk to us. Don't be a hater.
00:22:46
Speaker
You want to come? I mean, I've driven all across the state of Michigan because somebody's had an interest. I have a 2020 Model Y. My husband has a 2018 Model 3. And somebody wanted to see a Model Y, and they were about two hours. And I got in my car and drove up there in an evening and let the person drive my car. I've probably let hundreds of people drive my Model Y just to experience it. I mean, we really believe that butts and seats
00:23:15
Speaker
Now me, of course, and Scott has the same thing. You know, of course he's a man and his wife is a woman. And guess what? She looks at stuff different than I do. My husband is a nerd engineer, so he gets in and he wants to talk about, let me show you my spreadsheet of every single charge I've ever put in the car and exactly how many kilowatts I got and how much it costs. And I'm like, dude,
00:23:42
Speaker
Let me get them in my car. Let me show them how the car farts. Let me show them how I can show them romance mode. Let me show him. Let me show him. He has a long range single motor 2018 Model 3. And I have a model wide performance 2020. So I get him in my car and I say, put your head back because we're going to rock this bad boy. I mean, I used to migrate ice cars back in the 80s.
Enthusiasm for Tesla Performance
00:24:09
Speaker
This for me, it was like super exciting to get the instant, you know, I didn't have to wait for four barrels of a carburetor to open up for me to be jetting down the road. All I have to do is think about it and we're flying. Very cool. So that's the kind of stuff that, you know, it takes both sides of the, both, it takes both sides to bring balance. That's what my husband always says. So credit to him. It's bullshit, but okay, whatever Bert.
00:24:38
Speaker
And you know, you got, somebody has to have like a little bit of energy. Somebody's got to amp it up. Oh, well, I mean, like, and I think some of it too, like there's always like, there's like people are in camps. Like if you're wanting to be staunch against EVs, like you have to be staunch opposed to all of them, which I think a lot of people associate EVs with like, maybe I don't want to pick on like a Nissan Leaf or even like a Prius. Like those aren't exactly vehicles that are inspiring.
00:25:07
Speaker
for an enthusiast. But I think both things can be true. You can like a fancy gas car and like EVs. They're not mutually exclusive. Absolutely. But if you want to hear about it, if you're interested in what... If you can put a bias that you have aside and you just are willing to learn about what it's like to...
00:25:31
Speaker
I am never going to be a rich person, but I'd love for a moment to be able to drool in it. You know what I mean? I think that it's really important that we give people an opportunity to validate their questions, not make them feel like they're stupid because they're just not. I mean, every question is valid. I mean, people, and like you said, Tom, people will say, well, I've got a stupid question. There is no stupid question.
00:26:00
Speaker
It's something that you're pondering and I mean the questions have changed significantly over the last six years when we first
00:26:10
Speaker
When we first got the Model 3, people would say, where do you put the gas? Well, this is all electric. You're kidding me. Well, where do you plug it in? And we don't get those kind of questions anymore. How far will it go? Did you go far away? I mean, Bert and I, we were at an event in the upper thumb of Michigan last year when Scott and Katrina were there.
Upcoming EV Picnic Details
00:26:36
Speaker
And we stopped at a Home Depot. I needed to get garbage bags because we have what's called the adaptive supercharger program in Michigan. And we put garbage cans at superchargers. And then we have teams that go in and clean up, you know, sweep up the grounds and pick up garbage and just try and make it presentable and respectable for people who are going to charge.
00:27:02
Speaker
And anyway, we were in the line and I had my Tesla owners club jacket on and the young lady who was checking us out at the store, she looks at us and she goes, yeah. She goes, really sorry that you have that electric vehicle. She goes, you know, you can't drive it in the winter.
00:27:23
Speaker
Excuse me, we had hit our model three for three years. At that time, I said, we've been driving electric for three years. And I said, when we got it, my husband thought he was going to leave it in the garage because she was going to be his pretty pony. And I said, after the first ice storm, he was still, it was before he retired from Ford. He got her out of the garage and she never went back in the garage again. He drove her to work every single day. So I'm like, yeah, you can drive him in the winter. She goes, no, the battery doesn't work in the winter.
00:27:53
Speaker
I'm like, sweetheart, I'm just telling you. Battery works in the winter, I promise you. We want to be a guide. We want to be an answer. We want to be truth about what, and my truth is not necessarily someone else's truth. So someone can talk to me and they're going to get the Kelly version of driving an electric vehicle.
00:28:18
Speaker
And then I'll turn, I'll turn over and talk to me and I'll, I'll give him, and I'll give him the, my perspective. It is a perspective, but I mean, again, I always tell people, I, I learned to drive in a one ton dump, one ton dump truck. That doesn't mean that I want, I want to be that my daily driver. I didn't hate sedans.
00:28:37
Speaker
So we would invite everyone to visit teslamichigan.org. On our website, we have events. If you are a Tesla owner, we do have a Facebook page where you can ask to officially join. We don't have
00:28:53
Speaker
uh membership on the on the website but on a facebook page you can officially join the club and be part of um you know where the events are posted our website will have an events page very soon um may 11th at the lower here on metro park in metropolitan detroit we are having an ev picnic i've hosted this this is my third year hosting it
00:29:18
Speaker
Beautiful venue, was on the phone with them today and we did it in conjunction with the blooming of the American redbud trees in the parks. It's a gorgeous drive through there.
00:29:33
Speaker
Um, talk to the director of the nature center there today. And unfortunately the trees are three weeks ahead of time. So the trees are peaking right now. So when we're there, they're just going to be green leaves. They're not going to be the beautiful purple blooms, but we're still going to do an emission free drive through the park just to enjoy a beautiful day. Great.
Anticipation for the Meetup Event
00:29:56
Speaker
Well, Kelly and Scott, it's been an absolute joy talking with you, and we look forward to seeing you and meeting in person at the meetup event. June 15th, and you in Muskegon. Fantastic. Thanks, Tom. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to plug in for more. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. In the meantime, check out the one-stop EV Marketplace, evuniverse.com. Until next time.