World PLEV Day, July 10!

[travsformation]

Hi everyone,

I haven’t been active in the forum at all the past few weeks—a lot of work. And I’ve been helping the folks from the Spanish non-profit platform “I Wheel Survive” with an initiative of theirs (or ours, now that I’ve joined the team 😊) to petition the UN to create “World PLEV Day” on July 10 (birth date of Nikola Tesla 😉)

For now, this would be a symbolic victory, so to speak, to help garner some form of official recognition of the benefits of PLEVs, especially in large cities, and gradually create awareness and hopefully improve their standing/promote their use. As many of you know, in some countries EUCs are banned altogether; in others, strict limitations apply, and in others, we’re in somewhat of a legal limbo. On the flip side of the coin, some cities are actually proposing municipal subsidies to cover up to 50% of the purchase of new PLEVs (e-scooters, EUCs, etc.), to incentivize personal mobility / micro-mobility as a safer transportation alternative in terms of COVID-19 contagion.

I think it’s important for this initiative to be on a global scale, because while regulations don’t affect different countries in the same way (you guys in the US don’t know how good you have it!), recognition from an international institution would help create awareness of their benefits, from reduced emissions in cities (pollution hotspots), cheaper and more energy-efficient transportation, better cost of ownership and cost-per-mile, convenient, easily-storage personal transportation devices, etc., and having international support (or at least acceptance/acknowledgement of existence and benefits) would at least serve as a framework to work on in the future, if/when detrimental PLEV laws are put into place. Not to mention that the environmental benefits of the emission-reduction are, after all, are global.

We’re on a tight schedule, but for now we’ve set up a petition on change.org and finally got around to setting up the website: worldPLEVday.org.

The idea is for people or self-organize in their respective countries and hold marches / group rides in their cities/towns, whether it’s Barcelona, Paris, Ontario or NYC. Here in Spain we’ll be holding simultaneous demonstrations/group rides in all major cities from 6 to 8 PM on July 10. The ideal would be for people in all corners of the globe to do the same. It would be awesome to have footage of massive group rides from every corner of the earth flooding social networks! To incentivize multimedia creation, we’ve organized a micro-video contest on Instagram—the prize is a KS14D! (I'm not naming the sponsor because this post has no commercial interest--this initiative is not for profit!). Being able to make a montage at the end of the day, with videos from group rides from all around the world, would be awesome! With more “sponsors”, willing to donate something for the prizes (quick charger, helmet, whatever) we could also offer up more prizes. Might eWheels (@Jason McNeil) be interested in participating?  And GoPro? (@Jon Stern)

How can you help?

• Sign the petition: http://chng.it/pYXSzKKWCx (I finally got around to translating it to English; we just launched it but it looks like it’s gaining traction quickly! 😃)
   
• Check out the info on the site http://worldPLEVday.org , including the manifesto, which contains more info than I have time to lay out here.
   
• Just spread the word. If there are local rider associations in your city/area (EUCs, e-scooters, esk8, any PLEV!), or just casual groups (Whatsapp, Telegram) that get together for group rides, please pass on the info to them. And since EUCs are still pretty niche, if we can get boosted-board and e-scooter riders on board, that would really help out! 🙏
   
• If you’re on Instagram, follow @iwheelsurvive and/or the hashtag #worldPLEVday to stay up-to-date on what’s going on with the initiative (not self-promotion, just mentioning it because I can't keep up with all English-language communication on my own). 
   
• If you’re a well-known Youtuber, anything you can do to help spread the word would be extremely useful and we’d be very grateful for your help! Whether you just drop a mention in one of your videos, or on an Instagram post…anything to help this gain traction! A few big names have already agreed to live interviews on Instagram/Youtube (to those tagged here who have already been contacted/agreed to participate, excuse me, I’m in a bit of a hurry today). And sorry for the shameless tagging, don’t mean to spam anyone, but really want this initiative to take off and we need as much international support as we can get! (Tagging Youtubers, distributors, you-name-it): @Marty Backe @Mike Sacristan @Hsiang @houseofjob @Flyboy10 @Alien Rides @Kuji Rolls @The Fat Unicyclist @Seba @Jack King Song(I know I've left a lot of people out but I should have set off by now and need to run; feel free to tag anyone I've missed!)

 Will try to keep this post updated and pass on all new info as it comes out, but am setting off on a several-day expedition on my 16X today so my reply times might be a little slow. Feel free to PM me if I fail to reply, I haven't checked the forum in a few days and I already have 161 notifications so it's hard to keep up...since I get notified of PMs by email. 

Hope you’re all enjoying the riding season! More info soon! 😊  

 And again, sorry if this comes through as spam, it's not my intention at all. I'm just really excited about this initiative, a global EUC (and other PLEV) march would be awesome! 

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by travsformation

[Alien Rides]

Love the idea and happy to help support however I can. I'm a bit skeptical that we'll ever get an official day, but having a widely organized PLEV group day would be fun. For example, I'm not familiar of any worldwide biking days, but many places have a bike to work day. Let's do what we can to keep promoting LPEVs!