“Interested in a test drive?” – with MEVA team at the Green Fair 2026

For many people, one of the most meaningful ways to contribute to the community is through volunteering — offering your time and energy to causes you care about.

For us, Moni and Dan, sharing the benefits of electric mobility has become a long-term commitment. It’s part of how we think about the legacy we leave behind for future generations, as temporary gardeners of this planet. And among all the ways to explain why switching from hydrocarbons to cleaner energy makes sense — from reducing emissions and noise in crowded cities, to saving money, to the sheer joy of driving electric — I’m convinced that test drives remain the most persuasive.

If you’ve never driven an EV, it’s hard to imagine how smooth, quiet, and effortless it feels to move using energy from the sun instead of gasoline.

MEVA at the Ann Arbor Green Fair 2026

With that in mind, on Friday, September 18, we signed up to help at the annual Green Fair — Ann Arbor’s celebration of sustainability, held right in the heart of this university town close to Motor City, our home.

Moni spent the afternoon at the MEVA (Michigan Electric Vehicle Alliance) booth, chatting with visitors about electric mobility and sharing insights from eight years of EV driving.

I was stationed in the nearby parking lot with our veteran 2018 Tesla Model 3 LR rwd with over 126.000 miles — offering test drives alongside three other volunteers driving a Chevrolet Bolt, Chevrolet Equinox, and Kia EV9.

At first, we wondered whether four cars would be enough to meet the demand.

To our surprise — and delight — we managed to offer rides without any waiting lines. The reason? Most visitors were already EV owners. They stopped by not to try an EV for the first time, but to share stories about their own electric cars.

How is that possible, especially in a political climate that often feels hostile to electrification and pollution reduction? People mentioned two main reasons:

• The rising cost of gasoline;
• The EV purchase incentive offered by the City.

Green Fair 2026 in pictures

Good electric‑mobility habits start early, and school buses play a major role — not just by cutting emissions, but by teaching students (and maybe their parents too?) what cleaner transportation looks like.

The local energy utility is all‑in on electric mobility, bringing a fully electric outreach caravan to nearly every event aimed at cutting fossil‑fuel emissions.

A touch of humor always helps when spreading the word about electric mobility.

While the test‑drive area was busy with cars coming and going, the MEVA volunteers over on ‘electric avenue’ were trying to invite people for a quick EV drive only to hear the same cheerful reply again and again: „Thanks, we know what it’s like, we have one too!„

For our technical oriented friends

ZERO motorcycle