Most road rallies start with vroooooming engines.
But electric vehicles are silent. So when 1st Selectman Jim Marpe and Westport Electric Car Club president Leo Cirino waved checkered flags to begin this morning’s 2nd annual Electric Car rally at the Saugatuck train station, engines were very, very quiet.
The air was filled instead with music, and the excitement of a much more environmentally intelligent future.
1st selectman Jim Marpe sends the Downunder electric car on its way. Earlier this year, Marpe drove Robin Tauck’s Tesla for a week. He loved it.
EV owners are a proud, enthusiastic, sometimes proselytizing bunch.
They, their co-pilots and hangers-on munched on free muffins from Steam. They discussed “range anxiety,” and shared charging tips.
Robin Tauck, Robert Brickley and their Teslas.
They studied 4 pages of intentionally vague directions, for their 40-mile jaunt through Fairfield County.
And then they were off.
Very, very quietly.
Members of Staples High School’s Electric Car Club pile into a small, environmentally friendly vehicle.
New York Times automobile writer (and Staples graduate) Jim Motavalli talks with a charging vendor in the Saugatuck station parking lot.
Dkey Oster plays outside Steam, before today’s Electric Car road rally. The popular coffee shop provided free coffee, muffins and bagels all morning long.
