100,000 Mile LEAF!

December 16, 2013 will go down as a banner week for the Nissan LEAF. Not only did Nissan sell its 40,000th LEAF sometime last weekend, but it also heralded the first American LEAF to exceed 100,000 miles by none other than WA's own Steve Marsh.

He pulled into the Tumwater DCFC shortly after 9 AM with exactly (well exact a mile increments can be) 100,000 miles on the odometer achieving the feat in just over 30 months of ownership.

On hand was WA State Governor Jay Inslee,  Erik Gottfried; Director, Electric Vehicle Sales & Marketing,  Tonia Buell; WA Manager of West Coast Electric Highway and Project Development for WSDOT among many others. And (the important people!) as requested, LEAFers were asked to come display their cars

       Pictured (l to r) is Seattle LEAF owners Ryan Wallace (in blue) John Harris and Dr. Thomas Smith; the world renowned author of WSDOT's Hybrid Vehicle and Alternative Fuel Report. Notice the patriotic arrangement of our LEAFs?

The festivities started in earnest with Lynn Peterson (a fellow LEAFer!) WA Transportation Secretary introducing Erik Gottfried who is Director, EV Sales & Marketing for Nissan based in TN. who awarded Steve a plaque

   

Steve's Plaque color matched to his LEAF

Bill Taylor, owner of Taylor Shellfish Farms also spoke acknowledging Steve's issues getting back and forth to work and was more than happy to install the charging station at the office. It has worked out so well that he has installed another charging station at one of their harvesting beds farther up the coast.  WTG Bill!!

Then it was WA Governor Jay Inslee's turn at the podium. Inslee has been a strong advocate for EV adoption in the state and also supports distributed energy storage .  He announced support for creating and completing an East/West charging corridor to complement the North/South corridor installed by the West Coast Green Highway Program, which was one day before his release of his supplementary budget proposal.  He also awarded Steve the honor of "Washingtonian of the Day"

Steve was also given a chance to speak and said something that I had not thought of but is very much true when talking about the time waiting while his LEAF was charging, he related reading a story in the paper about people who waited several hours to buy gas for $1 a gallon during a special promotion. Compared to his previous car that got over 30 MPG, he was paying 85 cents a gallon equivalent in his LEAF so he was outdoing the promotion!

All in all, I had a great time. Met some great people, put some faces to names and all that kinda stuff! Lets hope that Steve's achievement sheds more light on EVs and generates more interest in creating the legislation to allow them to flourish.

Pictured (l to r) Lynn Peterson, Bill Taylor, Erik Gottfried, Gov. Jay Inslee, and Steve