EV Fest 2026: Walking the 8th Annual in Long Beach

Eight years in, and EV Fest still keeps outgrowing itself. This year’s EV Fest 2026, the 8th annual, took over Long Beach with more cars and a lot more variety than I remembered, rows and rows of wrapped Teslas, Lucid Gravitys, Rivians, Mach-Es, and even a VW ID.Buzz sitting in the mix. I drove down for the day, shot the breeze with a bunch of owners, and rolled home having burned through 100.4 kWh. Here is everything worth seeing.

I missed last year because I was overseas, so I had some catching up to do. Walking in, the first thing that hit me was the scale. Whole aisles of Mustang Mach-Es, a Ford club, a Mach-E club, Rivian clubs rolling deep, a few GMCs, and Teslas everywhere you looked. If you saw the 2024 turnout, this year felt like a level up.

This year’s EV Fest brought out the biggest variety yet

What I love about this event is that it is not just one badge. You get Ford owners parked next to Lucid owners parked next to Rivian people, and everybody is trading notes. The Mach-E lineup alone ran deep, blues and silvers and a dark green all lined up in a row.

That mix is the whole point. It is easy to get tunnel vision on your own car, and a day like this pulls you right out of it.

The wraps were the real showstoppers

The builds are where EV Fest earns its reputation. I kept walking toward cars just because of the color. One Model Y had a full purple floral wrap with little trees and branches worked into it, parked right next to a pack of bright green Teslas.

Then there were the widebody builds and the two-tone jobs. A red and black split-design Model 3 stopped me, and a custom green Model X had its falcon-wing doors and trunk wide open, showing off the tan interior.

Here is the thing about wraps at a show like this. You get to see the risky ideas actually pulled off, the stuff you would never commit to on your own daily. Half the fun is deciding which build you would copy onto your own car.

The Lucid section pulled the biggest crowd

I had been waiting on this one. The Lucid section had a purple Air sedan and a khaki Lucid Gravity with mobile service branding, all brought out by a Lucid owners group. I had already checked the Gravity out at the dealership, but seeing a row of them in the wild is different. One of the Lucids had this wild green finish that shifted to blue depending on the angle. I honestly wondered if my camera was messing with it, but no, it really does that in person.

I talked to one owner who told me he had traded in a Cybertruck to get his. I ain’t mad at that at all. If you want the specs straight from the source, Lucid lays them out on the Gravity page. The interior packaging is the part that keeps pulling me back, and yes, you know how I feel about anything that leans minivan-practical.

The official Tesla Model Y Canopy I finally saw in person

This one I had wondered about for a while. There was the official Tesla Model Y Canopy set up, and I got to see exactly how it works. There are little support stands, and the whole thing just clamps onto the existing strut of the trunk, then sections out and clips to the rear wheel well fairing. My buddy David and I had been hopping tent to tent all afternoon looking for shade, so this was right up our alley.

We guessed it stretched out around 10 to 12 feet, about as tall as a basketball rim. I have seen aftermarket versions that look nearly identical, and some of those add walls, but this was the official one with the Tesla logo on it. The one at the show was the canopy for the 2020 to 2024 Model Y, and Tesla also makes a version sized for the new Juniper Model Y. First time I had seen it in person, and it lives up to the hype for event days.

What EV Fest 2026 cost me on the drive home

Now for the part y’all always ask about. It was a long day. I was up at 4 in the morning because we had mass at 6:30, so I left the house by 5, dropped the family at Crystal Cove for the beach, then peeled off to Long Beach on my own. The sun came out, I was in a black shirt, and I was cooking by the afternoon. Worth it though, because I got to meet a bunch of you who came up to say hi, plus friends who drove all the way down from Vegas.

Rolling home at 53 percent state of charge, I put the totals up on the screen. My guess in the moment was over 200 miles and somewhere around 480 to 500 Wh/mi. The actual numbers came in at 232.6 miles driven, 100.4 kWh used, and an average of 431.6 Wh/mi over 5 hours and 35 minutes of drive time. So I was right on the distance and a good bit too pessimistic on the efficiency, which I will take.

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I got a few owners on camera too, just catching up and hearing their honest takes on living with different EVs. Not a full EV Confessions episode, more like shooting the breeze between the rows. That is the real reason I keep coming back to this one.

Which of these builds would you actually daily? Drop your thoughts below, and let me know if my efficiency guess was closer than yours.