Party at the River

Thursday we were invited to and attended the volunteer celebration for Keep the Midlands Beautiful at Riverfront Park. They had food, music, giveaways and a good time was had by all.

This was the first time my car had ever gone any real distance off the beaten path there’s a picture where you can see on the GPS that the car was actually in the river, we got the vehicles there by using the footpath.

The winner of the grand prize, an electric lawn mower, was a young woman who could barely see over the handlebar, everyone laughed when she stepped forward to claim her prize.

Midlands Honda gave away prize bags, and numerous hats and T-Shirts.

You can see the grand prize the electric mower just below the stage.

I had the pleasure of answering questions about hybrids in general, the Honda Hybrids, and light hypermiling. I had to opportunity to share my trip log as proof that not only can hybrids achieve their EPA fuel economy ratings but they can also exceed them by a fair margin with a little attention to how hard you’re pushing with that right foot.

SCE&G had a hybrid that they converted with the Hymotion kit, they didn’t know about any of the hacks one of the CleanMPG members had to do to consistently achieve first just the 100 miles per gallon they advertise, then later to see what it was really capable of.

There isn’t anything wrong with the kit, but the base vehicle was not designed to be a plug-in hybrid. It needs all sorts of hacks to perform as a range extended plug in electric vehicle otherwise, it is just a hybrid with an expensive extra battery pack and a plug, not worth the thousands extra in cost.

When either one of the major automakers or a company that does something more than add more batteries to an existing hybrid makes a plug-in we’ll see a car with performance worth the extra cost. I liked that they installed an electric meter in the car, most of these conversion don’t keep one onboard and if they do use one, it is closer to the wall socket than the car.

Here at my exit you can see the footbridge I used to get to the amphitheater on the river. If you look at the GPS screen, it correctly shows me in the middle of the river on a bridge to nowhere. I thought that was pretty funny, I call the picture of the navigation screen, “Off Route”. A great time was had by all and I thank KMB for inviting us back this year.

As usual, the photo gallery follows my signature.