THE TEVA STORY
The original Tucson Electric Vehicle Association - or TEVA - came together in the 1990s and disbanded just a few years later, concurrent with the first wave of limited edition, commercially available EVs. A reincarnation of the original organization was formed around 2006 and was known for a few years as TEVA2. The emphasis during this period was on converting gasoline cars to electric power. By late 2011, a new generation of manufactured electric cars began to become available, affordable and plentiful. The club began to grow and participate in more public events. We dropped the "2" from our name and reverted back to the original TEVA moniker in mid 2013.
Some of our membership base has been with us since the very beginning. Some drifted away for a few years and have come back. We are still very interested in home-made vehicle conversions and welcome our members to innovate in this way. But most of the membership growth in recent years has come from individuals who are driving late model factory-made electric cars: everything from spartan compacts to high performance luxury models.
We're also a resource for those who don't yet own an EV and want to know more about them. In addition to advocating for intelligently-configured public charging infrastructure, we work with local, regional and state government entities, encouraging them to adopt EVs into their portfolios. This includes everything from fleet passenger vehicles to much larger ones, such as electric buses and even electric garbage trucks.
There's an obvious synergy between EVs and renewable energy sources, especially with solar PV here in southern Arizona. Many of our members also have solar panels on their rooftops and are, increasingly, "driving on sunshine." There's a two-fold benefit here: both an environmentally positive one and a desire to use energy that is independent from a potentially volatile international petroleum market.
A couple of decades on, we're just getting started. EVs represent about only a single percentage point of private vehicle fleet in Arizona as of early 2017, but that's changing fast. We expect exponential growth in both EV adoption and TEVA membership over the next few years. We hope you'll join us in our mission.