Fully Charged Live!

The Fully Charged Youtube program came to Austin for a live event featuring presentations, panel discussions, displays, and vendors all focussed on electric vehicles and renewable energy. They booked the event center at the Circuit of the Americas race track south of the airport. The Electric Auto Association organized a display area for EV owners to show their cars and talk about the EV experience.

I brought my MG and Porsche conversions, but needed to rent a U-Haul auto transport to get them down there and back home again. The comfortable range on both cars is about ten miles short of a round trip. My son loaned me his Jeep as a tow vehicle and it all went like clockwork. Thanks, Freddy!

Here we are all set up and ready for the show to start. My friend Stan Cloyd drove his Tesla Model 3 in from Phoenix and stayed with us over the weekend. That's his blue Model 3 next to my Porsche. He has an insane sparky vinyl wrap that really makes his car stand out.




We had two thirds of the non-commercial conversions in the show and judging by the constant stream of people, there is still interest in converting classics to electric power. The track was open for testing, and there was constant roar from the racers. It made conversation a bit of a challenge, but I printed up spec sheets and flyers on both cars so I didn't have to explain the basics.

My friends Marc Davis of Moment Motors and Michael Bream of EV West had professional conversions on display in the vendor area.

Moment Motors had a number of beautiful conversions on display

Gorgeous Cobra Replica with dual Hyper9
motors from Moment Motors

Awesome Porsche conversion from EV West

I got to say hello and shake hands with Robert Llewellyn, host of Fully Charged, during the setup day. We met in front of the Rivian display where he was posing with their new EV pickup/SUV. Unfortunately, he was under the weather and flew back to the UK that night, missing most of his own event. Hope he's feeling better soon. Despite his illness, he was very gracious and friendly.

The show opened at 10:00am on Saturday and people were lining up for admission an hour before. I heard that the show was sold out with around 4000 attendees. Pretty good for the inaugural event on this side of the Atlantic.





The presentations inside the conference center were packed and live streamed on Youtube.



The crowds outside were equally healthy. This is the Rivian display.



In the conference hall was a Porsche Taycan Turbo. It's a breathtaking work of automotive art.



Also indoors was a very rare GM EV1, the car immortalized in the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car?" This one is an inoperable model on loan from a museum.



Audi had number of their new e-tron models available for rides, as did Chevy with a fleet of Bolts.

The Electric Auto Association also organized ride-alongs with private owners, as well as a shuttle service to move attendees from the parking lots to the conference center. The ride-along and shuttle volunteers were mostly Tesla folks, so the silence of that operation was in stark contrast to the noise on the track.

The weather was spectacular all weekend and the event organization was first rate. I was happy to contribute in a small way and hope this becomes a recurring event. I had a great time!

I was so busy that I didn't get a lot of photos, so many of the pictures on this page were borrowed from Robert Llewellyn's Twitter feed. Thanks Robert, wonderful show!