Volunteer EV Coach Spotlight: Nigel Zeid

Volunteer EV Coach Spotlight: Nigel Zeid

Nigel Zeid, for­mer EV Ambas­sador for Boul­der Nis­san, is start­ing a new chap­ter in his elec­tric vehi­cle (EV) expe­ri­ence as an inde­pen­dent EV Edu­ca­tor. Pri­or to his cur­rent role, Nigel did exten­sive out­reach and edu­ca­tion for Boul­der Nis­san to increase con­sumer aware­ness of EVs and encour­age peo­ple to switch to elec­tric. Much of this out­reach involved attend­ing dif­fer­ent types of events where Nigel would talk with dri­vers and edu­cate them about EVs and their ben­e­fits. He even start­ed mak­ing infor­ma­tion­al cards to give out explain­ing the impact of CO2 emis­sions from vehi­cles to fur­ther increase the public’s under­stand­ing. When Nigel first start­ed work­ing at Nis­san, there was no one to teach him any­thing about EVs so he hopes to be the resource he wish­es he had for oth­ers want­i­ng to learn. 

Nigel is extreme­ly pas­sion­ate about EV edu­ca­tion and though he enjoyed his job at Nis­san, he had a strong desire to keep up with the EV mar­ket more close­ly and work hard­er to increase aware­ness, which is why he decid­ed to become an inde­pen­dent EV Educator. 

Since start­ing his new role in May, Nigel has real­ized that there is a huge pop­u­la­tion of peo­ple that need a bet­ter under­stand­ing of EVs and that many deal­er­ships and man­u­fac­tur­ers need bet­ter EV train­ing to inter­act with their cus­tomers. A lot of his work involves out­reach for peo­ple, fleets, and man­u­fac­tur­ers – his first project in his new posi­tion was to cre­ate an EV train­ing video for GM. He is look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the Dri­ve Elec­tric Col­orado team to increase deal­er edu­ca­tion and hopes to use the knowl­edge he has accu­mu­lat­ed over the years to increase con­sumer and fleet under­stand­ing of EVs. 

Nigel’s pas­sion for EVs comes in many forms. The vehi­cles them­selves are fun to dri­ve and he loves con­nect­ing with peo­ple. His favorite part of the job is get­ting into an EV with some­one who’s nev­er dri­ven one before and says it “makes dri­ving a joy again”. Nigel’s first expe­ri­ence with an EV was in 2009 when he worked with Tes­la and got the chance to dri­ve a Tes­la Road­ster. He recalls expe­ri­enc­ing the supe­ri­or accel­er­a­tion for the first time and how excit­ing that was. Elec­tric vehi­cles were such an inter­est­ing con­cept to him at that time, and after he was done work­ing with Tes­la, he went back to work for Nis­san just in time for them to announce the Nis­san LEAF. 

Nigel under­stands the impor­tance of visu­al­iza­tion when it comes to under­stand­ing con­cepts, so he also cre­at­ed visu­al mod­els like the CO2 cube equiv­a­lent (rep­re­sent­ing one gal­lon of gas burned) to help him effec­tive­ly edu­cate peo­ple. He also has a yoga ball that he pumps up to 30.5” in diam­e­ter that rep­re­sents one pound of CO2 – burn­ing one gal­lon of gas pro­duces nine­teen of these yoga balls. Nigel believes phys­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion is impor­tant to help peo­ple tru­ly under­stand the impact of pol­lu­tion and why elec­tric cars are bet­ter for the environment. 

As a vol­un­teer EV Coach for Dri­ve Elec­tric Col­orado, Nigel’s exper­tise can help increase our impact on the com­mu­ni­ty and EV adop­tion. Nigel is the “go-to” guy when it comes to EVs and nev­er miss­es an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with and edu­cate oth­ers. He has made many long-last­ing rela­tion­ships with peo­ple and hopes to bring new con­nec­tions to Dri­ve Elec­tric Col­orado. The next few years are piv­otal, accord­ing to Nigel, and his vision is to have every­one be so edu­cat­ed about EVs in the next five years that he won’t need his job anymore. 

“Being a vol­un­teer EV coach and work­ing with Dri­ve Elec­tric Col­orado is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for me to edu­cate oth­ers about elec­tric vehi­cles,” said Nigel. “Edu­cat­ing and con­nect­ing with peo­ple helps to pol­li­nate the idea of EVs – it’s all about hav­ing a conversation!” 

Not only is Nigel an advo­cate for EVs, he’s also an own­er! He bought his first EV, a Nis­san LEAF, in 2012 and loves the fea­tures and sim­plic­i­ty of the vehi­cle. Oth­er mod­els he’s inter­est­ed in are the Kia Soul, Canoo, and VW ID.Buzz.