In the heart of midtown Atlanta, a group of electric car enthusiasts gathered in a back room at Manuel’s Tavern for a meeting last month.
It’s called the EV Club of the South, or EVCotS, and the group has been gathering to talk about the future of electric cars in Georgia since 1999. Their mission is to share information between consumers, policymakers and manufacturers to make electric cars more accessible.
Longtime EVCotS members such as Alan Shedd were involved with electric cars long before the club was founded.
“I’ve been messing around with electric cars since the 1970s,” he said. “You know, I started designing and building them and then ultimately, bought a factory-built electric vehicle much later. The first one I drove for any length of time was a Toyota Prius that we modified, to make it a plug-in hybrid.”
In 2011 electric cars became commercially available. Now casual consumers can purchase fully electric vehicles from dealerships or online. EVCotS member Don Francis remembers the switch distinctly.