SF Bay Area: Green Drive Expo 9/15/12

So, is this an alternating year thing?

Last year, I was in the area but went sailing instead...you're not going this year...how about next year?

 

Got an email from AltCarExpo that RAV4 EV will be available for test drive. If you're in the L.A. area, check out ACE instead of driving half a day to GDE.

 

Ill be there!

 

So who made it out after all? I arrived around 4.30 pm.

Impressions:
–RAV4 EV is quite nice. There's a definite difference between the regular and sport driving modes.
–CODA is unbelievably cheap. I understand their thinking – they believe it's more worthwhile to put more of the price into the propulsion system rather than a nice interior, but you're still plunking down $28k after all the rebates and you get a car that just screams CHEAP everywhere. Not even an auto up/down driver's window?? It's like a Chevy Aveo…which costs nearly $30k.
–Avalon Hybrid is nice. But no fold-down rear seats. What?? No fold-down seats in 2012? In such an expensive car, basically the Toyota Lexus?

And, of course, the same as last year: guys, please make the test-drive course longer. The entire course is 1 mile long. The longest distance between two stopping points (stop signs) is 0.3 miles. That's just insane. I can see it being justified when there are long lines, but when I'm the only guy there? There are pretty easy ways to extend it to 2 or 3 miles and make it much more interesting. As it stands, the most interesting part for me is flooring the car as soon as I get out of the parking lot.

One final thing: did anyone figure out what to do with the flash drive they gave us? When I inserted it into my Mac, it showed no files. I fired up a virtual machine and saw a ton of folders with gibberish names. What was actually supposed to be on there?