Announcing the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention EVCCON

We mentioned the possibility of a fall event for viewers/electric vehicle builders here in Cape Girardeau during our last show.

Things have picked up on this front a bit. We got several e-mails from people wanting to cast it in stone NOW and expressed their intention to come. I've e-mailed a couple of potential speakers and have had NO declines surprisingly. I'm guessing the concept of a gathering is a little bit pregnant at this point.

We're going to have it here in Cape Girardeau Missouri September 21 - 25th. This is my favorite time of year in Cape as the summer heat has left and the fall weather is generally gorgeous at this time. Cape Girardeau is located on Interstate Highway 55, 110 miles south of St. Louis Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi River. It is a very central lcoation to the U.S.

Wednesday, 21 September will be arrival day. We'll have a welcoming reception at our shop at 601 Morgan Oak Street, Cape Girardeau MO 63703 if you want to Google Map it. We'll have drinks and appetizers, maybe some music, and let everybody take a look at the facility.

Thursday 22 September we'll have breakfast at Patty Lou's diner across the street.

At 8:30 we'll start classes till 12:30.

12:30 to 1:30 We'll have a catered lunch in the shop.
1:30 to 4:30 we'll have classes again.
4:30 we'll take a drive in electric cars through some of our backcountry winding roads just north of town where I test drive a lot. This is winding hilly blacktop through some beautiful country - particularly in late September.
7:00 PM I'll probably have a barbecue bonfire in my backyard overlooking the river - 14 Morgan Oak Street. Probably have some sort of music going. Beer. Soda. WHiskey tastings from the distillery.

Friday September 23rd
Breakfast at Patty Louis's diner.
8:30 - 12:30 classes
12:30 - 1:30 catered lunch in shop.
1:30 - 4:30 classes. Maybe play with the test bench. Answer some questions about our cars.
4:30. Repeat the drive for those without a ride the previous day. Probably screen a movie for the rest at the shop. Revenge of the Electric Car should be out by then.
7:00 Dinner at Port of Cape - local barbecue and bar. Very inexpensive and Fried Catfish on Friday nights. All you can eat as I recall.

Saturday is kind of up in the air at this point. During the day I had planned classes and so forth just like Firday. But we've had so many already talking about bringing a car, I'm thinking rather to open it to hte public and actually have a car show. Where is kind of a function of how many cars we wind up with. But if there are a few, I thought we'd spend most of the day with each person taking 30 minutes to show his car and tell us about the build process. If there are a LOT, we'll take AC Braise Arena and just have an indoor electric car show.

As it is shaping up that a number of people are talking of bringing their cars, I was thinking Saturday afternoon late/early evening we'd do a parade about town - down Broadway and Main Street. I should know in time to make arrangements with the local constabulary and permits and so forth.

Saturday night, I'm picturing formal wine dinner and some comments for the event at Celebrations Restuarant. Great food and quite upscale. I'll open the cellar and provide the wine. I've got pretty good wine actually.

Sunday is departure day. For those with early flights, fly. For those with later, I thought we'd take another about 17 mile drive through the winding back country blacktop roads south of Cape to the River Ridge winery. Jerry is a hoot there. He makes really bad wine but really thinks its great and he loves doing it. It's very picturesque and he does have a great lunch. Probably some closing comments there. And then off to your respective aircraft.

Speakers who have accepted so far:

George Hamstra - Netgain
Ryon Bohm - Netgain Drives
Wayne - Alexander - EVBlue Conversions - bringing a car.
Sebastien Bourgious - EVNetics Soliton. - bringing a Jaguar or Porsche.
MOI but of course. My cars are here and hopefully the Elescalade will be nearly completed.


We've had some already agree to come and bring cars. Most notably:

Duane Ball anbd Scott Smith. Did the Spyder we now own. Currently working on a gorgeous and very unusual Chuck Beck Porsche 904 Replica with Warp 11, Soliton1 and CALB cells.

Tim Catellier - BMW Z3 featured on EVTV.

Eric Kriss, Kriss Motors. - an Electric Porsche Speedster Replica and producer of of CARBON FOOTPRINT - SUPERHERO - THE MOVIE. This convention was Eric's suggestion originally.

Nathan Knappenburger Illuminati Motor Works Bringing SEVEN, the Xprize contest vehicle.

Simon Wilkinson has indicated he's coming from New Zealand - not bringing a car though I suspect.

We have decided to call it the EVTV Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention. EVCCON.

Registration for the event is $595 per person.

We will probably discount that to $400 for early registrants prior to 1 July as this helps us with our planning purposes.

I've decided to do something very odd, at least with the first EVCCON. We've already had several agree to bring very nice cars. Shipping or trailering them is doable, but a signficant expense. So we're going to WAIVE registration for those bringing cars. It has to be a CAR, not a bicycle or skateboard, and it has to be Lithium technology powered - no lead sleds, to qualify for waived registration. If you have something unusual, I'll listen to exceptions on the technicals here. But I really don't do lead. And we'll waive two people on a car. Speakers are my guest obviously.

At this point, I can't tell what it will result in. I had kind of had this going for 20 people in my mind, but we're at 20 now as best I can count. We have a number of other speaker invitations out, but I'll not mention them until I get at least a preliminary ok that they will come. If you have ideas for speakers you'd like to hear, they won't shoot me for asking. ANd I'll ask. All they can do is tell us we are little and ugly and our mother dresses us funny and that they don't want to come. First time I've heard THAT I'll assure you.

The topic of the convention is going to center around electric vehicle design obviously. We will welcome engineers and workers from OEMs and Universities, but this is not going to be a Volt/Leaf show or really about how cool electric cars are. They are cool. But that's not a reason for a convention. This is going to be about building them and the design choices made in doing that. For Builders/converters basically.

If we get enough cars involved, we'll probably open to the public for a few hours on Saturday and maybe have a parade. if that looks like where it is going, I'll saturate the local media and we'll get a crowd for both. But it's not really for the public or what this is about. It will give our attendees a little work presenting and explaining their cars, part of our mission.

So that's the thinking at the moment. Right now it's all graven in Jello and I can change lots of things, so if you have suggestions I'm all ears. Yes, we'll try to be safe but I really don't want to hear safety suggestions on this one.

We'll throw it out and see what the reaction is. I plan on beating up the contest winner and making them come anyway to tell everyone about their plans for the pile of components.

Jack Rickard