This Pierce County mayor is so bullish on electric vehicles he’s hosting an EV festival
There’s no mistaking the mayor of Steilacoom. For the past two weeks, Dick Muri has been driving a red Tesla Cybertruck around his small Pierce County town. It’s not his first electric vehicle — he has two others in his garage.
Muri, a former Republican state Representative, will happily extol the virtues of electric vehicle ownership to anyone who’ll listen. And listen they have, he says, taking credit for about 50 friends and family who now drive full EVs or plug-in hybrid EVs.
He’s so bullish on vehicle electrification he’s organizing his 11th National Drive Electric Steilacoom Festival this Sunday in downtown Steilacoom.
Muri doesn’t want to preach to the choir. Instead, he wants the doubters, the skeptics, his fellow Republicans to come check out more than 50 privately owned EVs. There will be no salesmen.
“These are all owners who are going to tell you why they love the vehicle that they drive,” he said.
Going mainstream
Muri, a retired Retired Air Force Lt. Colonel, got his first EV, a Nissan LEAF, in 2013. The following year, he held his first EV festival at Sunnyside Beach Park. The festival became so popular it eventually moved to downtown Steilacoom. Last year there were 43 different models present at the festival.
But, Muri said, the festival has a planned obsolescence because EVs, once oddities, are now mainstream.
“I’ll stop doing it when it becomes boring,” he said.
He estimates it’ll take 50 years for the U.S. to go fully EV, save for a few classics still running on gasoline.
But that prediction was tempered Wednesday by Ford Motor’s announcement that it is canceling plans for a large electric sport-utility vehicle. It’s just the latest news in an industry-wide rollback of EV investment resulting from high prices and lack of charging stations that are spooking potential customers back to fossil fuel even as range anxiety subsides.
Even Tesla, with its large network of charging stations, has had to offer deep discounts on its models. But that price drop is what drove Muri to buy a Tesla Model Y, he said.
Good for the planet
It was a 2013 appointment to a state legislature transportation committee that first sparked Muri’s interest in EVs. They just made sense, he said.
Muri knows there are plenty of EV holdouts, particularly in his party, but they’re coming around, he said.
“I give a lot of credit to Elon Musk, who, for the first time in his life, will be voting Republican,” he said.
Ultimately, though, Muri says EVs shouldn’t be a political issue. They make sense from a personal financial perspective and an environmental angle.
It’s cheaper for him to charge his three EVs than to pay for gas. He has a solar array on his roof that helps to defer costs. But even those without solar power will see fuel savings.
“We have some of the highest gas prices in the nation and some of the lowest electric rates in the nation,” he said.
Charging and costs
A typical EV sedan can travel four miles per kilowatt hour of battery power, Muri said. With local power rates, that works out to 2.5 to 3.5 cents per mile to charge. His Cybertruck and Model Y both have a range of 330 miles, but the truck has a bigger battery to accommodate its extra weight.
Muri estimates he spent $500 worth of electricity in 2023 to drive 20,000 miles.
For consumers, charging times vary depending on outlet level. Muri’s Cybertruck’s battery has 123 kilowatt hours of storage, which would take three days to charge with a level 1 (120 volt) outlet, he said.
Instead, he has a level 2 (240 volt) charger, which takes 20 hours to fully energize the truck if it’s completely drained. Chargers run $300-500 and installation is around $500, depending on existing wiring, he said.
Good for the planet
“I don’t like the fact that we import oil or that the world seems to go to war over oil or energy,” Muri said. “I think a country that is energy independent is a stronger country, but it’s also the noise, water and air pollution locally that is a concern to me.”
Gone are the days when electricity was so cheap, Pacific Northwesterners didn’t bother building houses with insulation. Still, the region’s numerous hydroelectric dams make for a greener, cheaper electric power source.
In addition to tailpipe emissions, gas-powered engines leak oil, which eventually makes its way into the Puget Sound, he said.
While some environmentalists contend that the resources needed for EV battery production spoil their green image, Muri contends that the batteries can be recycled when cars reach the end of their lives — something that hasn’t happened yet at scale due to the general youthfulness of America’s EV fleet.
“We as Americans need to do what’s in our national self-interest, both from our energy independence, but also from our standard of living,” he said. “It’s nicer when you have cleaner air, cleaner water, and even less noise.”
Cybertruck
Love it or hate it, stepping into a Cybertruck is like taking a leap into the future. Muri presses a button to open the door. A passenger immediately notices something missing: a dashboard. Instead, all information is displayed on the truck’s digital screen. He touches the screen to shift the truck from park to drive.
On the road, Muri rarely has to step on the brake. The car slows and stops on its own when he lifts his foot. It took “about five minutes” to adjust to one-pedal driving, he said. Other drivers have reported that the sudden deceleration can be jarring for passengers.
The truck’s cameras generate graphic illustrations of cars and trucks the Cybertruck encounters on the road or parked on the street. A beat-up yard service truck parked on a street near Muri’s home became a spiffy delivery truck on the screen as it passes by.
If it all seems too much, all it takes is one grandchild to bring Muri back to earth. One grandchild learned to program his Cybertruck to make an unflattering sound when it turns off.
“Every 10-year-old in this nation knows Teslas make a fart noise,” he said.
If you go
What: 11th annual National Drive Electric Steilacoom festival
When: 4-7 p.m. Aug. 25.
Where: 1617 Lafayette St. (downtown Steilacoom).
Cost: Free
Information: driveelectricweek.org/event?eventid=4416
