https://imgur.com/Y15jiZO
Gary loved to eat out with a group of friends at a buffet restaurant that would let us sit around and chat for hours. He invited anyone on MNL interested in meeting up for breakfast in Southern California to get together at a Home Town Buffet in Santa Ana and talk and learn about the Nissan Leaf when it was the first BEV of the modern era. Members came from as far away as San Diego to the south, Santa Monica to the west, Sunland and Palmdale to the north and Claremont and the San Bernardino mountains to the east. So this was truly a Southern California Leaf group. As 91040 mentioned, Gary attracted an enthusiastic group starting in August 2010, months before any Leafs had been delivered. Early on, Gary and other engineers in the group taught us about EVSEs, charging dynamics, NEMA plug standards and a lot more. A hot topic at the time was our expected delivery dates, mostly in early 2011 for those quick enough to get their $100 deposits in to Nissan quickest.
Soon, we started receiving our cars and showing them off in the HTB parking lot, and gave a lot of test drives and rides. Gary and one of his engineer buddies from the group connected a laptop to the OBDII port of Gary's Leaf and started trying to decipher the data flowing out of it. They soon identified a data type that acted like a measure of battery charge, topping out at 293 and dropping toward zero as the car's range dropped. Over breakfast, one of our more witty members (91040) insisted that this new and very useful data type needed a name, since it had no inherent units. Since Gary was instrumental in its discovery, it was decided to call it the GID.
One of Gary's outstanding qualities was his generosity and his exuberant interest in helping others and sharing his knowledge. True to form when it came to helping Leaf owners to display more helpful data on their cars' batteries' status, Gary designed the GID meter. This was a small meter box that could be plugged into the OBDII port on the Leaf and had a display that could be toggled to show the GIDs remaining, as well as some other quantities such as battery temperature. Using his outstanding building skills, Gary started building and selling the GID meters out of his Laguna Hills home, and they were in high demand. Eventually, the LeafSpy app was created, and while it offered vastly more data in a much more usable form, the GID remained central to its function and is forever named for one of its discoverers (well, discovered after Nissan invented it).
Gary never stopped enthusiastically welcoming more and more EV enthusiasts to the breakfast meetings, and they became a twice-a-month event, shifting to different restaurants to allow easier travel for various members. When Chris Howell from Palmdale created his own EVSE as a project, he conferred with Gary and other group members and created Open EVSE. Chris even hosted an EVSE build party at one member's warehouse space, and several members walked away with a good start to making their own EVSEs. Tony Williams from San Diego came to the meeting often to talk tech with Gary and other mentors, and he became very involved in EV charging, eventually starting his own successful company. EDIT: Back in about 2012, Gary brought along a young neighbor, Jeremy Whaling, a recent EE graduate from UC Irvine, who was excited by the idea of driving an EV. Jeremy absolutely soaked up the mentorship over many breakfasts and fast forward a few years and he was driving a Leaf, added a Brusa charger, was working for CAL ISO and then Honda and now he represents EVgo strongly at trade shows etc.
As more EVs from different manufacturers became available, members added to their fleets or traded their Leafs for other EVs, and the group became the Southern California EV group. But many members came back in their original 2011 Leafs, most with updated batteries, and some still drive them today.
To all who knew Gary and who benefited from his good humor, his welcoming spirit, his generosity, his detailed and vast knowledge and his friendship, he will be missed, and very much appreciated. When Covid hit and buffet restaurants closed, Gary immediately looked for a medium to continue the friendly conversation. His core group of friends who stayed in close touch with him over Zoom from early 2020 through his brave fight against prostate cancer will miss him and never forget him. He would have celebrated his 81st birthday on February 8.