You Nearly Missed: Fully Charged LIVE cruises into town

by V. S. Wells on September 7th, 2023 at 4:17 PM

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The Georgia Straight is a proud media partner of Fully Charged LIVE

Want to test out 40 electric cars, check out locally-made electric trikes, or learn how to save money by electrifying your home? You’re in luck—Fully Charged LIVE is bringing all those things and more to Vancouver this weekend, for the only Canadian stop on the company’s electric vehicle convention tour.

Fully Charged LIVE (which yes, is always in caps, and yes, always feels like yelling) is the in-person version of the wildly successful education and technology network, Fully Charged, which includes two YouTube channels, a podcast, and online resources dedicated to electric cars, clean tech, and home energy solutions.

It was founded by Robert Llewellyn, who may be best-known for fronting the one-million-subscriber-strong channel, but who I (Britishly) recognize from playing Kryten in Red Dwarf and presenting the bonkers mechanical challenge TV show Scrapheap Challenge. Two decades later, he’s still getting excited over engines—though these ones burn way less stuff.

Llewellyn first ventured into electric vehicles (EVs) over a decade ago, telling the Straight earlier this summer that he was “a brave early adopter, or a complete idiot.” Since then, technology has come on leaps and bounds—but EVs still face challenges around cost, uptake, charging availability, and mineral supply chains, so the innovation is far from over.

Llewellyn is joined at the convention by other hosts and contributors to Fully Charged, including Helen Czerski, Jack Scarlett, Ricky Roy, Imogen Pierce, and Dan Caesar. There are panels aplenty, including talks on creating your own YouTube content, persuading your friends to switch to renewables, or recognizing greenwashing.

If you’re like me and can’t drive, there’s still plenty to see. Electric micro-mobility vehicles like e-bikes, e-scooters, e-skateboards, and e-unicycles are all up for testing. Burnaby’s own Joule Motorcycles will show off their first full-sized e-motorbike, and infrastructure nerds can get deep into electric commercial vehicles.

Fully Charged LIVE aims to inspire attendees to ease off the combustion, with its call to #StopBurningStuff. Unless you’re making s’mores…then it’s probably fine.