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On a cloudy recent Saturday in Murrysville, a handful of electric vehicle enthusiasts gathered in a parking lot to show off and discuss their batterypowered cars.
Hosted by the Three Rivers EVA, a chapter of the Electric Auto Association, the meeting occurs every third Saturday throughout the summer in the parking lot of Laird Hall, a social hall owned by the First Presbyterian
Church of Murrysville. The next one is this coming Saturday.
On display at the last one were cars from major manufacturers such as General Motors, BMW and Mitsubishi, as well as Tesla, the company owned by business magnate Elon Musk.
Although the participants came from different parts of the region and drove different vehicles, they all purchased them for the same reasons: to save money by ditching gasoline, concerns for the environment and an interest in
modern mechanics.
Scott Spencer, 42, of Coraopolis, said he first caught wind of electric vehicles over 20 years ago at a car show and saw a Chevrolet S10 pickup truck converted to use battery power.
“I’m like, ‘You don’t pay for gas at all?’ ” he recalls asking the owner. “And he goes, ‘Nope.’ And I went, ‘Oh, yeah. If I don’t have to pay for gas ...’”
In June, he bought his first Tesla —a brand new Model 3 Long Range — for $39,000 after selling his Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid that has both an electric motor and an internal combustion gas engine.
The upgrade has been significant from the Volt, he said, as he now no longer has to pay for gas, emissions inspections or other upkeep that would be required in a car with a combustion engine.
For 70-year-old Bill Smith, of the South Hills, automobiles have been a lifelong interest. He got his first car at age 16: a 1949 Ford that he bought for $75.
His older brother also was in an auto club when they were growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they and their friends would work on different project cars. Being in that environment was his introduction to “a little
speed” and the excitement that brought, he said.
“Needless to say, there was a lot around me with an interest in all things mechanical but especially cars,” he said.
Around 1972, he saw an article in Mother Earth News magazine about a car that someone had converted into an early version of a hybrid. “That was like, ‘That’s cool,’ ” he said. “Again, it’s another mechanical thing, another way to do something different.”
Environmentalism was “always” in the back of his mind as his interest in vehicles grew, he said, focusing on good gas mileage and regularly tuning his cars to make them perform as well as possible even before he began driving electric cars.
“Yeah, it’s obvious and it’s been obvious for 20, 30 years at least — [environmental] things are not getting any better, so, yeah, whatever I can do to keep my butt clean, so to speak.”
Murrysville couple Jon and Bonnie Belak, the respective president and treasurer of Three Rivers EVA, were sporting their two electric cars at the meeting: a 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV and a 2016 BMW i3, with the latter being the 30th electric vehicle they’ve owned among cars, bikes and scooters.
One perk, they both said, is how inexpensive the cars are to run. “We charge two cars at home, and it costs less for us to charge those two cars all year than it does to run our air conditioner in the summer,” Mr. Belak said. The BMW costs about $1.50 to charge, and it can run off of that for about a week with just typical driving around town.
“Everybody thinks that electric cars are only for the rich, and you can’t afford them,” he said. “They start at four grand anymore” for used models.
Over the weekend of Sept. 17, the group will be heading to the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, the club’s biggest event of the year. Mr. Belak said he expects that every major electric car on the market will be displayed at the show.