BeeKind
Well-known member
- First Name
- Jim
- Joined
- Mar 1, 2024
- Threads
- 4
- Messages
- 86
- Reaction score
- 105
- Location
- Long Island, NY
- Vehicles
- '23 F150 Lightning, '23 Ioniq 5
- Thread starter
- #1
Hi all - We're looking for a preliminary show of hands. A few of us "organizers" are trying to get a sense of who may be willing to help out with disaster relief in the continental US. Ultimately our "hook" is going to be exportable power. The loose idea is going to be as we scale electrification and exportable power becomes more prevalent, there's going going to be a period where people like us have the ability to ease recovery efforts.
An F150 Powerboost or Lightning with any configuration of ProPower coming in with fuel to a large region without both could have a very positive impact on peoples lives and potentially even save some. Right now we're trying to get a show of hands, just a general sense of the amount of people that may be interested in queuing up ahead of time. We do expect for more people to volunteer when an emergency arrives as is often the case.
Ultimately we want the do-gooders to not be burdened with costs and I've personally been involved with "cause marketing" for over 20 years. Essentially you convince big brands to shift part of their PR budget to a worthy cause in exchange for nabbing good press for them. It's a win/win/win as the employees at these brands are just like us, people who want to do good and would rather spend it here than on a a-list spokesperson.
To that end I've reached out to a number of OEMs and organizations and have gotten tentative interest. Ford replied that they're working with Team Rubicon on relief efforts and there could potentially be something there. Team Rubicon told me that they're already using these solutions to power their operations. We don't plan to form an organization ourselves but rather hook up with NGOs already doing good work on the ground. It repeatedly comes up that many people like working with the Red Cross or Salvation Army and absolutely! Whomever is willing to work with and deploy with us in the given area. Our goals are helping people in time of need and demonstrating the benefits of our beefy inverters which most garages can demand over the coming years.
Every situation is different but a common denominator is after hurricanes, regions are without electricity and are depleted of fuel with inability to replenish. Ultimately as a group we will coordinate all logistics around bringing in the ability to generate, store and provide reliable electricity. If there's an 85-year old person on dialysis that needs that and AC to run and the local hospital is already over-saturated? That's a big deal! Perhaps they need us to run a command center. We raise our hands and say "we have these vehicles, these supplies, and can provide this many AC circuits at these currents for these periods of time" and let the organization tell us where to go.
As F150 owners expect to have your bed used or to be pulling something. As Lightning owners, likely that's going to mean some kind of generator and fossil fuel. In the background we will collect media to push to social media and traditional news outlets demonstrating the flexibility that hybrid and BEV drive-trains bring
not only to every day life but in emergencies.
We've already made a thread on the Ioniq forums and looks like we'll be able to get a few of those to show up for a first time. Let's show them up and bring them generators and fuel to keep them topped off when they arrive
Really excited about this guys, in DMs and even with the initial interest generated, I think we have the ability to do some good and generate some headlines already! There's a small chance we deploy something for Beryl but we're definitely aiming more for a "next time." This scales to whatever size we want it to be and the need will definitely be there.
Unrelated PSA: Always use a tarp when using oversized buckets to move Earth.
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