The CSUN Institute for Sustainability hosted the third annual EV Car Show on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The cars were lined up on the corner of Lindley Ave and Vincennes St. next to the University Student Union.

Students learned about electric vehicles at the event and had the opportunity to test drive them.

The Institute for Sustainability often holds events such as the CSUN G.A.R.D.E.N. Tours located at the garden by Student Housing, and the Hydroponics Food Farm Tours by the USU. Their website also has several guides on how to become more sustainable through food, purchasing and energy.

“One of the ways we engage the campus community and sustainability is mainly through hosting events,” said Sarah Johnson, the acting director at the Institute for Sustainability. “The Dean of the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Dean Searcy, is a car enthusiast and this is actually his brainchild.”

The vendors present at the event included Chargie, which provides car chargers to CSUN, Porsche Woodland Hills, which provided donuts from Blinkie’s Donuts, Galpin Motors, ONEgeneration and Lucid.

In addition to the vendors, the music was provided by Solar DJs, and the artist was named SYCONS, L.A’s sustainable DJs who use laptops, turntables and digital audio mixers that are powered by solar power.

Galpin Motors provided their Ford F350 truck and Ford Mustang Mach-E, Volvo EX30 and EX90, Volkswagen ID.4 electric vehicle and Lucid provided their luxury Lucid Air car for test drives.

Porsche Woodland Hills provided Taycan cars for the launch control experience, which was the most popular of the event.

The Porsche Taycan Launch Control Experience consisted of a ride along with a professional driver demonstrating the acceleration power of the Porsche Taycan car. The acceleration experience included going from 0 to 60 mph in 3 seconds. The 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S and 2021 Taycan GTS Sport Turismo were both available.

Aliyah Mendoza, a psychology major at CSUN, rode in the Porsche Taycan and gave her opinion.

”It was such a good experience. It was just really fun to be inside the car and see the views,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza shared she will look for an electric vehicle when purchasing a car in the future.

Derek Reeves, the marketing manager for Chargie, said they are trying to change the stigma around electric vehicles.

“I think we’re just trying to connect with the students, the faculty and the community around CSUN and introduce ourselves, and grow an opinion about EVs,” Reeves said. “There’s so much stigmatization about them and negative feelings here and there.”

When asked what is the best thing about being able to provide the chargers to CSUN students, he said giving back to the community and bettering the world with green technology.

The panel discussion about careers in the EV industry at noon featured Bisi Ezerioha, CEO and Chief Engineer of Bisimoto Engineering; Michele Palmer, Technical Champion at Galpin Motors; Scott Stanley, General Manager at Porsche Woodland Hills; and Tracy Chou, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Chargie. Johnson was the moderator for this event.

Students, employees and event goers gathered in the seminar room at the Sustainability Center to listen to the panelists talk about careers, the future of electric vehicles and how they got started in the areas of technology, cars and media.

Correction: A previous version of this article conflated Tracy Chou’s official job title with her description of what she does for a living. The article stated she is the product manager at B2B tech, when she is actually the Senior Vice President of Product Management at Chargie.