A little more than a month after Peterborough introduced charging stations for electric vehicles in the Riverwalk parking lot, visitors to the First Friday event spotlighting downtown merchants May 6 can learn more about the stations, get information about electric vehicles from some of the cars’ owners and take a test drive if they would like.
The Drive Electric Expo will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. Organizer DoriDrachman, a member of Peterborough Energy Committee and a leader of the Peterborough Renewable Energy Planning (PREP) team, said the event is partly a celebration of having the chargers.
“We are the first public chargers east of Keene and west of Milford,” she said. “There was a dead zone to fill, and we’re filling it.”
The other piece of the event, Drachman said, is to encourage people to get electric vehicles. Eight cars will be on display, including Chevy Bolts, a Nissan Leaf, a plug-in hybrid and a Honda Clarity. The owners of a Tesla Model 3, a Tesla Model Y and a Chevy Bolt are offering their vehicles for test drives. There will also be information tables by event sponsors Drive Electric NH and Monadnock Sustainability Hub, and cake will be served.
“We’re hoping this will not be the last expo, and we’ll be able to invite dealers” to future events. Drachman said. “There’s a lot more EVs coming on the market.”
Energy Committee Chair Emily Manns noted that Toyota and Subaru both have electric vehicles coming out – the companies worked together, so the models are similar – meaning there will be more opportunities for people looking to buy new cars in the next couple years to pursue electric vehicles.
“They’re coming fast,” she said.
Manns came up with the idea for an expo during First Friday when she and Drachman were trying to find a date, and Drachman said people can come to the expo and then visit the merchants on First Friday, or vice versa.
“It we talk to 30 people, we’d be doing great,” Drachman said.
Manns said the original plan was to hold the expo in June, but it got a lot of support from Energy Committee members and volunteers and they were able to hold it in May.
“Everybody liked the idea,” she said.
According to Manns, the goals of the expo are to get people interested in electric vehicles, get people to download the ChargeLab app needed to use the chargers and be confident using them. The charge is $1.50 an hour, but only for the time used, so fractions of hours are charged accordingly.
“EV users pay maybe a little bit more than they pay at home, but it’s still a fair rate,” she said.