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Recap: The 5th Annual EV Car Club Supercharged Cruise-In

Today, we’re taking you to MTE’s 5th Annual EV Car Club Supercharged Cruise-In, held September 12 at the Rivian in Franklin.

It was a day filled with energy, excitement and community. From EV test drives and great coffee to conversations with fellow EV enthusiasts, there was something for everyone. And, of course, we had the chance to catch up with some of our EV Car Club members and check out their rides. We also hear from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation on some of their latest initiatives.

MTE's Electric Vehicle Programs & Educational Resources

• https://mte.com/DriveEV — Hub for all things electric vehicles at MTE
• https://mte.com/EVCarClub — MTE-sponsored car club for EV owners and enthusiasts interested in building a community in Middle Tennessee
• https://mte.com/EVReady — $50 incentive for MTE members or homebuilders installing level 2 chargers at their homes

Copyright 2026 Middle Tennessee Electric

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Hi, everyone, my name is Heidi Zeimer with Middle Tennessee Electric.

Welcome to the Plugged in podcast where we bring good energy to every conversation.

Today I'm at our fifth annual EV Car Club, Supercharged Cruise in at Rivian Franklin.

A little bit about our EV car club.

If you're not familiar, we are a car club for our members.

You don't have to have an EV to be a part of it, but it's just a place where if you're looking for a community, if you're enthusiastic about any type of car, we would love to have you be a part of our community.

This is an event that we do every year throughout the different counties that we serve.

And today, like I said, we're at Rivian Franklin.

We have some live music, we have specialty coffee from local vendors and opportunities to test drive some really cool Rivians, including the Rivian R2.

So today we're going to walk around and talk to a few different EV car club members, kind of explore their vehicle, some fun things, some fun features about their vehicles, and just let them tell the story about their experience being an EV owner.

I'm Dave Harrell.

I live in Lebanon with my wife and we have two EVs in our family.

This truck behind us and then she's got a mini ev.

Many countrymen.

I love my truck.

I really do.

It's the Denali Max range, which means if I charge it to 100%, I got about 470 miles of range.

I love seeing all the new things that come out and just we're pretty committed.

I don't see us going back to a nice vehicle and so like seeing.

I'm always thinking about what's my next vehicle and I enjoy just seeing everybody else's rides out here and sharing mine for people who aren't, who haven't seen them.

Do your research, make sure you're doing getting the right one.

But there's, there's one for everybody out there.

I, I am convinced.

I do a lot of travel, so this range really helps me and it's.

There's so much fun to drive.

But my wife was driving from Lebanon to downtown Nashville every day and putting too many miles on her vehicle.

So she, we got her an EV and just to commute and it was great.

I am awfully proud to be a member of mte.

My parents were in Nashville during COVID and during the last ice storm and they went about four days without electricity and they weren't even in the worst hit parts.

And I have a son who lives in another county and is not on Middle Tennessee Electric.

And I was just so impressed with how great a job everyone did at Middle Tennessee Electric on Facebook or wherever, keeping us posted as to where the outages were.

We never lost electricity, but we knew who had and how long they were out.

And it was just hardly any at all.

So it was really good unless you were down here in the Fairview area.

And nothing you can do about that geography.

That storm obviously hit worse there.

But y' all did a great job.

I got our buddy Philip Price to do a home audit for me a few years ago and that saved us some money.

And then taking advantage of the rate plan for the EV cars.

Not just for EVs, but it's really beneficial for EVs and also the incentive for the home charger, the level two charger at home.

So all of that helps.

Mike Acre.

Okay.

This is a premium package.

The standard package, if I remember, had a range of about 320.

Okay.

Fully charged.

And this one being premium is supposed to be about 370, which don't sound like a lot, but 50 miles in them.

And then.

Oh, the premium one had a different motor in it than the standard.

Okay.

So this one's quicker than the standard model is.

We had a BMW 5 Series and it runs on premium fuel.

Okay.

Yeah, that was one factor in this thing.

This don't take any fuel.

And the big thing with these, you really have to do at home charging.

Now granted, Tesla has the most chargers out there of any of the.

When I was looking at the Rivian's a little bit ago, and they don't have very many chargers out there.

They can use a Tesla charger, but it costs more money.

See these, you just hook to a Tesla charger and you get the best rate because it's a Tesla.

So that was one of the issues, the fact that we knew the charging infrastructure was out there for.

So that made a big deal too.

Whereas a lot of the rest of them still don't.

The Fords, the Rivians, the rest of them, they really don't have the.

Now you can charge at them, but cost you more money.

Well, when I talked to Middle Tennessee, okay, we talked about what they call the night charge rate.

I think it is something like that.

It's less than the daily rate, which makes it.

Because you got to charge from like 10 to 4 in the morning, which is fine because that's all this thing needs.

Yeah, so that works out fine.

So it saves a fair amount of money doing it that way.

Most of my career I was out west and when I retired, come here at the time I was at Hoover Dam, I was like an engineering director type person.

Anyway, long story.

And I said, even then, which has been almost 20 years now, the lecture rates out there were almost triple what they are here.

So I said, guys, you just don't know.

They said, really?

I said, yeah, really.

I said, I have a few friends that's still out there and I know what they're paying for electric bills.

I said, don't be complaining about your electric bill.

I said, you got one of the lowest rates in the country.

Out west, you don't have that.

You do in certain parts, but not where we were.

Las Vegas area was high.

You don't have to make a profit.

You just got to make enough to keep facilities up.

I mean, you got to make enough to keep everything running.

And that's basically what, what you're doing.

So you're not making that profit on top of that, like a commercial facility would have to.

Okay, well, I'm Caitlin Yauck.

I am a grants program coordinator with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Office of Energy Programs.

I also co Direct 1 of 2 Clean Cities Communities Coalitions in Tennessee, the MiddleWest Tennessee Clean fuels Coalition.

We support all alternative fuels from a fuel agnostic standpoint.

And we're here today with MTE, EV Car Club and Rivian, supporting EVs and kind of giving education and outreach and supporting some of our funding projects as well.

We're.

We've been doing a lot of different work in the field for quite some time.

We actually manage our Fast Charge Tennessee network and that was in partnership with Tennessee Valley Authority TVA.

We've been putting fast chargers every 50 miles on alternative fuel corridors.

MTE actually has three of our fast Charge Tennessee sites.

And so we're really excited to get to continue that partnership.

So in our role with both the state energy office and our Middle West Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition, we've been supporting our Second Life mobile charging station initiative, the SMART Project, along with Tennessee Tech in UTK as well.

This is taking Second Life batteries.

So after they've lived their useful life in an ev, taking those batteries and finding a use case for them to utilize before they go to recycling and reprocessing.

So in this we have Nissan Leaf batteries charging and actually this for lightning right now and to give kind of roadside assistance.

So it's mobile and it's lives in this trailer and can dispatch for emergency situations along evacuation routes or if there's an event that needs assistance with charging or even roadside assistance as well, there's a couple different mobile charging station setups and designs that this project has helped create.

There's a level 2 solar canopy charger.

We've deployed that at a couple different state parks to demonstrate there.

We also have a DC fast charging rolling cart.

So it's a little bit smaller, a little bit more agile, has a little bit less capacity, but still very useful especially in the roadside assistance aspect.

So we're really excited to get to continue that.

It's a joint tdec, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and US Department of Energy funded project, so we're really happy to have all of our project partners there.

And then Nissan as well has donated some of their batteries.

This is more of a pilot research and development and then pilot demonstration project.

So through that pilot we have organize sort of a charging as a service roadside assistance program, but it is very limited in its scope and project area as well since it actually relies on TTU students to come and help administer that as well.

So that is definitely something that we're looking into and kind of expanding and one of the use cases that we're considering as well.

So thanks for tuning in today.

If you want to learn more about the EV Car Club or be a part of it, you can visit mte.com drive for more information about MTE, visit mte.com if you have questions or if there's a topic you'd like us to feature on the podcast, please email [email protected] until next time, stay connected, take care and keep bringing good energy.