In its 15-year history, the Northampton East Automotive Team Electric Vehicle Rally has become a premier event, its founder, Harold Miller said.
On November 4 and November 5 that tradition continues with the fifteenth running of the event at the North Carolina Center for Automotive Research off Highway 46 just outside Garysburg.
“Our high school is considered one of the top in the electric car technology,” Miller said. “They come from all over — the Governors School of Virginia, Appalachian State University — it has grown a lot more than I thought it would.”
That the rally will be held at the burgeoning NCCAR is a plus, Miller said. “It's ideal for electric car charging.”
The first efforts by the school to start an electric vehicle have continually leap frogged each year. “It's really making headway,” Miller said. “It is now leaps and bounds ahead of when it first started. It was almost a laughing thing. Now it's a matter of time before gas cars will be a thing of the past.”
The rally is being touted at the state fair by the Northampton 4-H Club, Miller said.
The rally will also give the public a chance to see the Chevrolet Volt, of which a demo is available at White Motors in Roanoke Rapids to test drive. “They're already selling them left and right,” said Miller, who believes the company should have never discontinued the EV1, Chevrolet's first electric vehicle available only through a lease agreement in California. “We lost a great chance. I don't think the slowdown in the economy would have been as bad if they had jumped on it.”
Fred Rice, general manager at White, said the rally is a way to display the Volt. “I think it's what is needed to show the public this is not an anomaly, that they're here to stay. It says this technology is not going away.”
Thomas Pope, automotive instructor at the school, said the event opens at 8:30 a.m. with registration going through 9:30 a.m.
The students will go through a safety meeting and the 4-H club will host a mandatory meeting about electricity and conservation.
There will be a pit crew competition and then after lunch there will be a troubleshooting competition in which teams of two try to discover the problem with a malfunctioning golf cart. There will also be an obstacle course challenge and an acceleration event.
On Saturday, after an 8:30 a.m. check-in the range event begins with the cars following a police car at 35 miles per hour around the track, the police car increasing its speed in increments. The car that wins is the last to run out of electricity.
Competing schools this year include Weaver Academy of Greensboro; Northern Vance High School of Henderson; Topsail High School of Hampstead; Governors School of Virginia; Dudley High School of Greensboro; Northampton East and West Wilkes High School of Miller's Creek.
Topsail, Pope said, is the biggest budgeted EV high school program to participate, using lithium batteries for its vehicle.
Appalachian will bring their cars, as well as several other colleges and an EV club from Burlington.
Pope is in his second full year in the program and was a student of Miller. The school maintains three electric vehicles, including an S-10 pickup, and Shocker, which still holds the national title for range. “It will go further than the Leaf or Volt, of course, to their credit they've got radios and air conditioning.”
Pope said the school is still looking for donations to help defray the expenses of the rally. For more information call him at 252-578-2848 or mail a check payable to the Northampton County Education Foundation, marked to the attention of the automotive department, 750 NCHS-E Road, Conway, NC 27820.
