Featured Classics to New-tech

The Kia Niro PHEV has a charging port on the front fender in addition to the rear gas fill door that only gets opened for another nine gallons of gas about four or five times a year. (Courtesy photo)

Russ Lanoie

Classic old muscle cars and very new electric cars came together at the EV and Classic Car Expo presented by the Tamworth Energy Committee at Club Motorsports in Tamworth, NH on Sunday, May 5. The event helped raise awareness of EVs (electric vehicles) and PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles).

Vehicles ranged from a vintage 1929 Model T Ford truck to a Tesla Cyber truck. There were about twenty-five private- and dealer-owned full EVs and plug-in-hybrid PHEVs including several Teslas, Chevy Bolts, Ford Lightnings, a Volkswagen, a Hyundai, a Mustang, Subaru Solteras, a Kia Niro and a Polestar. At the other end of the lineup were several custom hot rods and older land yachts that lost their popularity with the oil shortages of the early 70s.

Club Motorsports is a country club for enthusiasts of vintage and performance cars and motorcycles at the edge of New Hampshire’s White Mountains in Tamworth featuring a 2.5-mile paved track with 15 turns and an elevation change of 250 feet on hundreds of rolling, wooded acres. Many visitors to the event got a chance to ride or drive many of the vehicles around a smaller portion of the track early in the morning and then on the main track after nearby church services were done because many of the internal combustion engine cars are not as quiet as the new EVs!

KO/GO is a New Hampshire company offering mobile charging following the AAA model of road service for those stranded with a dead battery. (Courtesy photo)

The Tamworth Energy Committee launched in early 2023 with three members whose first project was researching community power options. The Community Power Coalition (CPCNH) was unanimously endorsed by the Select Board, leaving the choice of a specific entity until the idea of community power was passed overwhelmingly by the March 2024 town meeting.  In the fall of 2023, the committee hosted a button-up workshop to help families reduce power and heating costs through a wide variety of energy efficiency measures. The energy committee also worked with the Cook Library, the town offices and the Tamworth Community Nurses on supporting efforts for energy saving measures, shifts to renewables, and development of an EV charging station and also investigated a possible link for municipal buildings with a large-scale solar array built somewhere in the Eversource territory.

Event participant Howie Wemyss, former manager of the Mt. Washington Auto Road and a long-time proponent of EVs, explained how he was able to drive his Swedish Polestar EV coast to coast with no problem finding charging stations simply by planning ahead. Russ Lanoie, who has written for Green Energy Times about his Kia Niro plug-in hybrid (PHEV) spent the morning promoting PHEVs as the perfect transition vehicle, especially for those in the North Country who suffer from range anxiety. PHEVs have a smaller battery than full EVs and a gas engine that takes over when the battery is drawn down to 25% to leave enough juice for emergency acceleration together with the engine. Participants recognized that this type of vehicle with its over 500-mile combined gas and electric range makes sense right now.

The new Tesla Cybertruck looks much the same whether it is coming or going turned lots of heads. (Courtesty photo)

For those considering the possibility of being stranded with a discharged EV battery in the North Country, a new service was introduced at the expo. KO/GO is a New Hampshire company offering mobile charging following the AAA model of road service for those stranded with a dead battery. KO/GO has also very recently opened a grid-tied charging station on the heavily tourist travelled Rt. 16 in Ossipee, NH.

There were many smiling faces as visitors to the event existed the vehicles that they were able to test drive and, in spite of a tiny bit of rain, the event was a great success.

Russ Lanoie is a contributing writer and distributor for G.E.T. Lanoie is a long-time solar proponent in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and operated his Alternative Systems business in the 1970s—80s selling solar hot water systems, composting toilets and Window Quilts®. He lives in a passive solar home which has had Daystar solar hot water for forty years and 11kW of PVs on his barn since 2015. www.RuralHomeTech.com.

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