If you think that going green in transportation is like doing acupuncture you’re wrong. If you think driving clean is like tasting nasty medicine you’re wrong again. If you think by going to an electric vehicle you can say good-bye to tinkering in your garage with your hot rod, you are wrong one more time. I bet you didn’t think you would ever be happy about being wrong about anything. Let me tell you, you’re going to be happy about being wrong about this.
For the last 9 years the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington, DC, together with the National Electric Drag Racing Association have been putting together a show in Hagerstown, Maryland of what insaniac, electric gear heads, scientists and engineering departments can put together in their garages.
In the past we have had Brigham Young University’s ultra-capacitor powered EV1, West Virginia University’s Electric Lightning Formula car, Shawn Lawless’s Orange Juice dragster and much more. There is no way to fully describe the event. It’s like mad scientist meets speed obsessed automotive engineers. You just have to come and see it.
The Power of DC combines two days of intense electric vehicle racing exhilaration, which includes an autocross event on Saturday June 5, 2010, followed by drag racing at the Mason-Dixon Dragway on Sunday June 6. The autocross is set up, monitored and sanctioned by the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America), while the drag race is sanctioned by the NEDRA (National Electric Drag Racing Association). Records will be set, trophies will be awarded for the winners and prizes will be raffled off for fans how come to the event.
The Power of DC has become a premier racing event garnering national and international attention. In 2005 the Discovery Channel of Canada did a long segment on the event. In 2008 Planet Green devoted a lengthy report entire on the Power of DC. Check it out at this link http://www.youtube.com/...
The Discovery Channel, Speed Channel as well as the local NBC affiliate, channel 25. ABC News spent the entire day there with a full crew with one of their top reporters, but after spending all that time with us they didn’t run anything on the event. At our last event, Power of DC 2009, we had CNN, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and more. The local newspaper picked up the story at the autocross and the event received a large photo of a red Tesla Roadster across the front page above the fold of its section.
The media attention has been building every year and this June’s event is set to attract the most attention in our 10 year history. How can we say this? Because this year, some of the most famous racers from across the country have already promised that they will be coming to the race. Jeff Disinger’s Predator drag bike has been putting down times in practice runs pretty close to those of the Killacycle, and would have probably set a record at the last Power of DC if he hadn’t blown a motor two days before the race. Drag racer extraordinaire Shawn Lawless will be back with his drag bike AGNuS, his full rail dragster Juiced Up and a record braking Junior Dragster whose records this time will be officially recognized because of rule changes adopted by the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA). Another reason we believe that the Power of DC #10 will be the biggest and best EV racing event ever is that competition among university engineering departments has been heating up of late. West Virginia, James Madison and Brigham Young Universities have all brought vehicles in the past and James Madison and Brigham Young both went home with NEDRA records. I am sure that the students and professors are all itching to be at the event again.
Don’t get me wrong. It is really great that the colleges and universities have found the event, but they aren’t the only schools that will be participating at the Power of DC. High schools have been coming to the event from the very first year. Miramar High School has been bringing teenager built electric dragsters for years and this June they will be joined by several other high schools. With NEDRA establishing special categories for high school entrants we should see a high school or two take home a record from the event.
OK. So you can see that this event is big and getting bigger and you can see that it attracts a lot of media attention. This creates a problem for us because big events like this one cost money to run, but it also represents an opportunity for organizations looking to get attention that an event like this generate. By becoming a sponsor of Power of DC you not only get associated with an event that will have local, national and even international media attention, but electric vehicles are considered really green. And we all know that green is really, really in these days. Becoming a sponsor of the Power of DC is easy. Just visit our sponsor page (http://www.powerofdc.com/sponsors.html) at our website.
Chip Gribben is the event organizer and can be reached at 301-490-0657, on his cell at 240-687-1678 or email him at futurev@radix.net. You can communicate with me at joelado@yahoo.com. Please put Power of DC Sponsor in the subject line. Thank you.