A trip to the BAR

Part of registering an EV conversion is having your car inspected by a Referee. They aren't checking your work or to validate if the car is "road worthy" they just look under the hood to see if they can spot an ICE hiding somewhere.

I called the number listed on the DMV web page and made an appointment. The closest location was at a college campus about 11 miles away with most of it up hill. I decided to not take any chances and tow the car.

I found a flat street within a mile of the college to disengage the car from the tow vehicle and drive it into the college. There was a lot of construction going on and the signs that were to guide me to the shop were less than obvious.

The referee was waiting for me in the college parking lot, and pointed me down to his shop. He was obviously a car guy and thought the Miata was really cool. He said it sounded like a big RC Car.

I gave a quick tour to him and a couple of his helpers/students who collected from the nearby shop bays. After a long discussion about estimated miles/gallon - "if it doesn't use gas than how can you say it gets an 80 mpg equivalent?" the crowd dispersed. I'll try to stay away from math next time...
One of the other student started telling me he is working on a hydrogen fuel cell project. I started to ask him if it was true that it took 4 times the energy - but decided not to press my luck.

At any rate, I signed a number of $0 estimates similar to a working garage (except for the $0 part) and they looked, but could not find an ICE hidden anywhere.
While my certificate was being printed, the next appoitnment drove up - a RX8 that evidently had evidently too loud of an exhaust note. The referee told the RX8 owner to look at my car, which seemed to puzzle him a bit.

With the certificate in hand, I made my exit, chirping the tires.