Today I attended the National Drive Electric Week event at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA, today. I arrived just in time to get in on the Guinness World Record Attempt for the largest EV parade ever. My understanding was there there were 507 vehicles in the parade and that beat whatever the old record was. Fortunately, they allowed our small group of motorcycle riders to ride near the front of the parade. I counted about 16 motorcycles and four bicycles in our two-wheel group. The rest of the vehicles in the parade were cars, mostly Leafs. It took over an hour for all of the cars to participate in the parade after we motorcyclists, near the front of the line, returned.
Lightning had their 218 model on display, while they also displayed a red bike which is a pre-"production" "commuter" model. This bike did not have a price or even an official name yet. It looks like Lightning is still producing the hand-built 218 to order with a large deposit, while their "commuter" model appears to be a work in progress.
One funny thing that happened is that I found a 120V outlet on the side of a utility shed in the parking lot. So I plugged in to charge up my bike for the ride back home. After a couple of hours charging, some dim bulb with a Leaf parked next to me and plugged in his Level 1 charging system into the same outlet that I was using. Naturally, that move blew the breaker for the entire building, also knocking off charging for the car that was parked along the other side of the building and charging from an outlet on the adjacent wall. Needless to say, I wasn't happy, but at least the 20% increase in battery charge that I did receive allowed me to ride the 60 miles back home along Skyline Boulevard and back into the Pacifica fog.
Besides Zero and Lightning, all of the major car brands and the usual weird odds and ends, including a prototype electric school bus, were to be found at the event. Terry was there also. He mentioned that he is now living in Santa Cruz, no doubt so that he can be close to the Zero factory should he need to make any additional modification or facilitate repairs. I posted photos on elmoto.net.
