Our visit at Tesla Motors in Los Angeles

Hi friends,

Greetings from Los Angeles! Here's our latest update:

Yesterday we spent the day at the San Diego Zoo, with passes given to us from some generous UU folks there. The zoo was fantastic and the kids were wide-eyed the whole time! Last night Carrick and I gave a presentation at the First UU Church in San Diego to a fun crowd and enjoyed visiting and some yummy vegan food before and after.

Today we did a lot of video work, starting at the Rainbow Material Recovery Facility in Huntington Beach outside of Los Angeles. We got the grand tour of the facility where they take all residential and commercial trash from the area and sort everything with machines and manually to pull out all the recycling and food waste. The state of California passed a law that waste haulers had to reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill by 50% and the sorting facilities were the way to do it. Now they are considering upping it to 75% and eventually 100%! Also interesting was that in Massachusetts our waste disposal is about 4 times more expensive than here, so switching to this system would be very profitable.



Next stop was at the Tesla showroom in Los Angeles, to interview Chelsea Sexton, who some of you might know as the star of the movie 'Who Killed the Electric Car?'. That documentary came out several years ago and profiled the rise and fall of GM's electric car from the 1990s, and Chelsea was a salesperson for that car who moved on to become a big advocate for electric cars in government and industry. Carrick talked to Chelsea about electric cars and their benefits, and their role in the future of the auto industry.

It turns out that Chelsea's husband Bob is the service manager at Tesla Motors, which makes the all-electric Tesla Roadster and upcoming all-electric sedan. Bob took Carrick and me out for a ride in a roadster and we were both absolutely blown away. That is one incredible ride - the acceleration is just unbelievable! It's like a high-speed roller coaster!

We have two reader questions today:
Question: This trips focus is to help educate the youth of America about Green living and Technology. How does that change your filming style, your eye for content, knowing your goal audience will be children?
Answer: Sometimes I have to remind the people we are interviewing to keep the answers general and not get too technical. Some of the people we've filmed so far are on the engineering end and it's easy for them to get too technical. What I'm trying to do is make 5-minute videos that provide a general overview that would be interesting for kids, but also for adults too. Our Holy Name wind turbine video is a good example of that.

Question: A humorous road anecdote?
Answer: One funny thing that comes to mind is when we were driving through Mississippi. We pulled off the highway to get something out of the cargo carrier on the roof, which has two little padlocks to keep it secure. I pulled out what we needed and left the set of keys on the roof and drove off down the highway, which to our horror and amazement we found somehow wedged into the roof frame! What are the chances, really?

More filming tomorrow in Los Angeles, with more stories to tell I'm sure.

Be well,
Colin
www.OurRenewableNation.org

New Interview: Chelsea Sexton

I have a few additions and subtractions to make this week on our destination list.

I'm excited to announce our most recent addition, Chelsea Sexton, who starred in the 2006 documentary, 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' Chelsea is a major industry advocate for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles and will speak with us about the future of auto industry and the role that plug-in cars will play. Until recently she has served as the Executive Director of Plug In America, a coalition of individuals and organizations that advocates for the preservation and manufacture of plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and electric vehicles.

We've also removed several destinations from the list, including our stops in Canada. We had planned on spending a week in Toronto on our return leg before going home, but $400 in passport fees is much more than I anticipated. The two stops we had set up were Zenn Motors, which currently makes low-speed electric vehicles, and Wildflower Farms, which makes Eco-Lawn grass seed. This will allow us to spend more time in a few cities in the U.S., including Austin, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I also decided to take General Motors off the list - we were going to visit Detroit and make a video profile of the Chevy Volt. I tried many avenues of communication without success - I guess they're busy trying to stay out of bankruptcy. It works out much better to interview Chelsea Sexton, who can provide a great industry perspective on electric vehicles, plus if you've seen 'Who Killed the Electric Car?' then you can appreciate the irony of my replacing the GM interview with Chelsea.

Carrick and I are speaking on Monday at Bancroft School, a private school in Worcester, where we'll be speaking in the auditorium to grades 3-8. It will be our biggest crowd yet! I'm still working on being comfortable speaking to a room of a few hundred kids, but fortunately Carrick's got my back.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Be well,

Colin