Electric Vanagon

OK Want to See Some Godlike EV Conversion Video Right Here Right Now?

2012-01-17T23:23:00.001-05:00

Wow ow wow so we break the hiatus for a little bit just to hook you all up with what is going down with our friends over at Amp Revolt. This filmic snippet goes out in particular to the subset of participants in BCR workshops over the years who plaintively expressed the wish that they could have been around for the "de-fossilizing" of the vehicle (= removal of internal combustion engine, exhaust system & all those freaking fluids).

You asked -- we give you the process. Watch and enjoy; send your kudos to Brandon Hollinger for the videography & awesome soundtrack. We at Bucks County Renewables heartily endorse the central instructive message of this video, which is that teamwork rules. At every point in your build, having a buddy will make a difference. Together we're godlike, dudes!

Congrats to Brandon, Kudos to John, and Hiatus

2011-10-23T01:30:00.000-04:00

Panorama photo of EV's on display at the 1st annual Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention held in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Sept 21-25

This is a belated and sadly abbreviated celebration of Brandon Hollinger's win of the EVCCON and our friend John Yecker's attendance of the entire event with his 93 Ranger. (He did respectably in the drag race and had his truck written up at Gas2.org)! John sent me a bunch of pictures and I really wanted to interview him about the experience before it all got too old -- but most of October has gone by and the time has come to regretfully give up on that even though it sounds like the Best Time in the World.)

Tee hee this is the photo that accompanied the 8/17 announcement of the EVCCON at Autobloggreen and it is worth the read

There were other features I really wanted to share, too. I wanted to follow up and get photos of those practically-new Dodge Colts EV twins for sale in Ohio and Florida. I wanted to post my own interview with the guy who drives his electric Saturn Vue to the best local coffee shop for miles around, Rojo's Roastery in Lambertville, most weekends -- stupidly I never managed to connect with him in person myself, though back in April I did hook him up with the reporter from the Newtown Patch who did that nice write-up.

Maybe I will still get the chance to meet Dr. Oppenheimer -- Rojo's is just a jaunt down the river in the electric Miata and there may be some fine fall weekends left on which to give it a try. Maybe I will eventually find the time to finish the post I've been working on that (with Jack Rickard's help, thanks dude) connects the grassroots EV-building effort I've been privileged to be a part of for the last 5 years to the 99% movement and throws in a little basic Marx to boot ... it was going to be an Olympic-class relevancy event! But for now, external events dictate that I take a hiatus from Bucks County Renewables and minimize posting on this blog.

Alert readers will have noticed that I haven't been promoting that 10/22 mini-workshop that I was talking about earlier in the summer; alas! my association with the Green Jobs Academy has been formally concluded and I declined their offer of an instructor contract for that mini-workshop in September. I also made the decision that promoting EV's has to be shelved for the moment in favor of nurturing my growing little Montessori school in Frenchtown NJ, which happens to be my actual paid job at the moment.

I have truly loved presenting talks & mini-workshops and overseeing three full-fledged hands-on conversions over the last 5 years. I've talked to hundreds of people, formed ongoing friendships with some of them, had a blast, learned a lot (not just about electric vehicles but about founding a non-profit, making slide-shows & presentations, handling budgets & spreadsheets, fundraising, writing grants, administration, leadership, delegation, and building an effective team). I am drawing on every one of those skills in my professional life and I am so grateful for all the training I got doing this for fun for all these years! I'm sorry to have to lay it down now and I hope to find the time on occasion to post to the blog.

For all the warmth and acceptance and amazing support of the members of the EEVC and the many other EV drivers and advocates I've met, for the wonderful students in our hands-on workshops who safely and joyfully worked together to build the e-Van and our Red Hot little Miata, and for the many cherished collaborators I've had the pleasure of working with and learning from -- I am truly thankful.

J.

Buses by the Depot 2011: Vanagons Turn Me On

2011-10-05T19:06:00.003-04:00

Okay, it's been implied once or twice before on this blog but I thought I would come right out and give this post that full-on confessional headline. Of course there's a lot of appealing Volkswagen design on display in the multi-era bus panorama above but Vanagons ... ohhhhhh ... gimme a bunch of them parked all together and watch me get too squirmy and distracted to take my own pictures (this one swiped from BbtD 2010).

So I love displaying the e-Van at EV-specific shows, but I have to say that bringing it to Buses by the Depot 2011 this past weekend may have been my best idea ever. Everyone there was a fellow fetishist. Naturally, we had fun!

BbtD is an annual campout lovingly hosted by The Bus Depot in Green Lane, PA -- a nationally-known source for quality, affordable VW van parts. Ron Salmon and his staff (good people all) have been organizing this campout in conjunction with a warehouse sale for several years now. (I hit that sale & bought a shade canopy that clips onto any vehicle, EV display folks take note!)

Miraculously, the campout is held just 15 miles from North Montco Tech, so I was able to drive the e-Van there instead of being ignominiously (and fossil-fuelishly) towed. It's the first time I've driven it to a show since 2007! Must admit I was a little nervous en route; ever since we upgraded to 144 volts in 2009 our fuel gauge has not worked, so I had to have faith in Saint Bill when he reassured me that I would make it the distance.

I did, though not without some entertaining Little Miss Sunshine-esque moments, like the one early on where my 9-year-old daughter remarked from the back seat that the combination of my little moans of anxiety and the occasional grinding noise as I gradually got back into practice shifting gears without a clutch in actual traffic were making her a little nervous, and just at that moment I accelerated out of a stoplight and the side door slid all the way open with that solid Volkswagen thunk! Eek! "Don't worry sweetie, look, there's another red light coming up right here! Hold on to all that camping gear okay?!!"

I hopped out, ran around to slam the door shut & lock it, scrambled back into my seat in time for the light and we had no further really interesting adventures though my heartrate did not truly subside till I was parked at my campsite.

After that it was just straight up fun: talking to tons of people about the e-Van, ogling their buses in turn & sharing a delicious potluck dinner. One of the best features of this campout is the communal meal on Saturday. I was too busy eating to take pictures but Brendan did take one of me and his dad in front of the e-Van, which is basically my only documentation that it was there:

My friends Clark (red) & John (yellow) were there with their sweet pop-tops and unexpectedly I reunited with my long-lost pal Danno, who used to work on my first Vanagon and whom I haven't seen for years. Danno's been living in his Vanno for the last year & it has some sweet mods that I wish I had taken pictures of, though of course they would have had nothing to do with electric vehicles.

Next post I will return to EV-specific and very exciting news, I promise! In the meantime here is a photo of the secret reason I am in Vanagon heaven right now:


I own this silver Syncro everybody! It doesn't run now but soon it will because St Clark is on the job!

Click on the photo to hear/see "Vanagon Song: Explicit Lyrics" on the Susquehanna Valley Vanagon Club website, a fabulous video but emphatically NSFW or Small Children's Ears unless you want your toddlers warbling "I drive a motherf***ing vanagon" in front of your inlaws by Thanksgiving.

Electric Dodge Colt Update: Long-Lost Siblings Found For Sale, Running & in Great Condition

2011-09-27T01:56:00.333-04:00

This week I learned a lot about the provenance of the Electric Colt pictured above!

Folks who have seen my "History & Advantages of EV's" presentation know that it begins with a little story about how back in April of 2006, I showed Matt an ad in a Quaker (Friends) newsletter for a used EV for sale and within a couple of weeks we were the innocent and proud new owners of the Electric Colt. We had no idea what it was gonna get us into.

Matt got busy learning all about EV's by working on one, and I got busy learning why EV's were so great and making a little movie on the topic which of course featured the Colt. My daughter's friend Corday, who was 12 or 13 at the time, shot the footage for me (it was her family's video camera) and Matt narrated the test drive; then I taught myself Moviemaker and found a lot of images on the internet and thrillingly got to use one of those headset microphones in order to record the voice-over that little 6-minute piece, the basis for the History & Advantages talk I give to this day. (Now my talks are longer & even better because story-telling performances lend themselves to artful improvisation.) The film was made for & debuted at the 2nd annual PA Energy Festival in 2006.

At the Energy Fest of course I had a nonstop blast (replicated on the 3rd weekend of September every year since) talking to people face-to-face about electric cars! Oh my gosh that turned out to be the most fun thing in the world, even better than making movies about them! It was at Energy Fest 2006 that I met my very first fellow EV-driver, Don Barry, who came to our booth to tell me about the 1993 Nissan pick-up he converted in 1999 and had been driving ever since. (He brought it to the EV-ent in Macungie in April 2011 and I finally got to see it!)

In the fall of 2006 I also hadn't seen Who Killed the Electric Car yet, but it was released over the summer, and just reading about it in detail had galvanized me into action. Immediately after Energy Fest I contacted Mike Parker on the West Coast and then Bill Kirkpatrick at the North Montco Technical Career Center, and launched the months of planning & attempted fundraising in aid of our workshop dream. None of the fundraising efforts came through (except for $350 from Whole Foods for sandwiches for our participants, not much of a payoff for six months' worth of work!), but a financial gift from my father-in-law Tom Perkins gave Bucks County Renewables the funds it needed to put on our first workshop and successfully (anyone who was there would testify miraculously) convert our 1985 Volkswagen Vanagon into the e-Van.

So that was our first workshop funding stream! And the little Colt that started it all was somewhat neglected once the e-Van rolled in August, 2007. More than somewhat -- I confess that it sat unsheltered in our driveway while its car cover resided dry & safe in our basement for several years. We at Bucks County Renewables do not wish to endorse or promote such behavior. We can assure you that it attracts karma (but that's another post).

The tender-hearted among you will be relieved to learn that the Colt has been safely sheltered indoors at NMTCC since we moved it there in anticipation of a spring workshop in 2010 that never materialized. (No funding stream!) Saint Bill and his elves get to play with it occasionally. Meanwhile when suddenly a funding stream in the form of a financial gift from my parents presented itself -- plus winning a set of batteries -- allowed us to proceed with the 2011 workshop we snubbed the Colt dreadfully in favor of pulling the engine out of a running 1990 Miata. Oh dear, little Colt, you must have lost hope! But never fear!

In the last week I've been researching your provenance pursuant to establishing your value and perhaps seeking to donate you as a project vehicle. I've been in contact with your original owner Anne Moore on and off since we bought you; she and her husband Tom were active members of the Eastern Electric Vehicle Club beginning in 1991.

Anne has continued to serve the club since Tom's vibrant passing in 2008 by mailing out the paper newsletter monthly without fail. All EEVC members know her handwriting on the little post-it notes that remind us annually when we're due for renewal! I get a Christmas card from her every year, and was delighted to have the opportunity last week to call her and report that, after years of finding no similar Dodge Colt to ours on the internet, I had suddenly stumbled across one in mint condition -- only 510 miles on the odometer -- for sale on Craigslist for $8600. (Yes this was synchronistic -- that is how we roll here.)

The ad has now expired but I hope to post details & photos shortly! I got in touch with the gentleman who has the Colt on offer right away and learned that he actually has a 2nd one for sale in Sebring, FL where the vehicles were originally converted. I had known all along that these conversions happened in Florida and that there were several of them; I have, I now realize somewhat thoughtlessly, repeated the understanding I have that ten of them were converted all at once in a mini-fleet endeavor.

Both Anne & the Gentleman With Two Running Colt EV's were vague about the total number that were converted and I still don't know that for sure. But until I spoke with these two other Electric Colt owners and then did a little internet research, I didn't fully grasp that you, little Colt, were converted in at Sebring Auto Cycle in Sebring, FL, in the very same location where all CitiCars and ComutaCars were built -- and where a gathering of Citi-Cars will be occurring Oct 13-20th in conjunction with Sebring FL's 100th anniversary. My goodness!

Remember these?! I hope so ... what I really am curious about if you're reading this long caption is what is that vehicle in the background of this shot, it's not an EV.*

In 1991-2 the original Citi & Comuta-Car business in FL, now known as Sebring Auto Cycle, was owned by a gentleman named Jim Tervort. After buying the remaining assets of the Comuta-Car company along with a consortium of employees, he designed & manufactured one last original vehicle, a 3-wheeled EV called the Zzipper.

Anne & Tom bought a Zzipper from Jim and struggled fondly with it for a while before replacing it with the Colt (converting these Colts was apparently Sebring Auto Cycle's last gasp, and it may have been financed by Chrysler -- I can't find the darn link that told me that!).

Sidebar for frenzied EV history buffs like myself: the Zzipper was freaking nifty; in addition to being charged by a plug, it was designed to charge while being towed behind an RV and then used to freewheel around efficiently while the RV stayed put! So clever! You can read all about it here on the original Triton brochure (it got renamed later) and see one that is still preserved by Dennis Merritt here.

Sidebar for frenzied 3-wheeler buffs: a nice roundup of optimal urban commuter vehicles from endless-sphere.com's Electric Vehicle Technology Forum

Back to our story: The Moores hoped to utilize their Zzipper on more than on just occasional camping outings. The one they bought from Jim Tervort was the first imported north. It had to be heavily modded for PA streets and winters; Anne laughingly relates that Tom wound up staying in FL for months helping rebuild it as Jim feverishly re-designed the vehicle! Their adventures in their quirky little 3-wheeler were amusingly and honestly chronicled in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Feb 26, 1992 (Anne and the members of the EEVC have even more stories about its unsuitability).

Soon after that Inquirer article ran, the Moores traded the Zzipper in for the Electric Colt and achieved thier goal of a ZEV daily driver. It burned through the original motor in 1998 and in 2002 was still getting 40 miles on a charge. By this time they had racked up 18,000 miles on our Colt, using it to shop, run errands and live daily life in their Main Line community of Wayne, PA. When they moved into a Quaker retirement community in West Chester they passed it on to their nephew Tom Hoopes -- then working for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, for which I had volunteered for years on behalf of the Friends Peace Committee.

Anne hasn't seen me speak, so she doesn't know that when I am giving talks promoting EV's I have a slide where I always point out the "WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER" bumper sticker on the Colt (there when we got it) and the "PEACE ON EARTH" graffiti which was still festooning the Vanagon while it was on the lift waiting to be converted. (Turns out tempera paint is a very longlasting medium!) In my mind, the Colt and the e-Van (originally named "die Sprite" but known by the kids at my children's Friends School as "the Peacewagon") have always been deeply connected by their roots in the notion that the car you drive every day can be a mindful, political choice and part of a daily practice of nonviolence. A way not to participate in the craziness.

Back in March 2005, when die Sprite was still running as an ICE vehicle and I seriously did not know that there was such a thing as an electric car, I painted my message of peace on the side and headed off to a peace rally & walk from Lambertville, NJ to New Hope PA in observation of the second anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I was amazed at what a durable medium tempera paint turned out to be -- it simply lasted and lasted, and was still clearly visible when the van went up on the lift on July 30, 2007. I washed it off in case the press came to our roll-out but they didn't.

The Second Gulf War, alas, outlasted the Peacewagon's message. By some definitions it continues to this day: eight and a half years and $9.5 billion later, as of June this year 44,000 U.S. troops were still stationed in the ruins of one of the oldest civilizations on earth. How many deaths and how many gallons of oil turned into pollution or single-use, throwaway containers later, what a waste it's been.

The Second Gulf War outlasted the organized peace movement too. As the war went on and on (and Afghanistan was added to the front) protests dwindled. I remember that 2nd year rally as being invigorated, the 3rd year dispirited, maybe I skipped the 4th and by the time the 5th anniversary rolled around MoveOn.org, which started as a peace network, had become an organized focus for Obama's election and there were no more peace rallies to be found. The war had become nearly invisible, a strangely unacknowledged, uncompromising drain on our country's resources, strangely absent from the table of the election just as it had been in 2004.

In the huh-nothing-changed-that-much Democratic regime activism has not disappeared; it's not even underground, but it has become engaged with building community, instead of mobilizing protest. The explosive growth in farmer's markets, buy-local movements, co-operative agricultural arrangements like CSA's and grass-roots educational efforts signal that the organizing spirit is still there, focused on where we can make a difference.

One by one, each one teach one, we can create thriving communities. And we can grow ourselves, because it turns out that love leads to learning and learning leads to unexpected new things.

5 years ago Matt wanted to play with an EV, I thought having one would be a great way to act for peace every day, and we both thought it would be cool to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

In the intervening half-decade I've sponsored three hands-on EV conversion workshops, exhibited and talked about EV's in a variety of venues, been called by reporters and asked to write articles, gotten to play with designing all kinds of promotional materials, learned how to write a budget and a grant proposal, overseen the development of a formal written curriculum, and engaged in a formal joint venture with the Green Jobs Academy of Bucks County Community College. Quite a journey was launched when I first started noodling around with the Bucks County Renewables logo!

you gotta have a logo if you have a dream

Along the way the automobile-driving public in the U.S. has obviously become aware of EV's in a new way so I think we at Bucks County Renewables can pat ourselves on the back for having fulfilled our mission to promote EV's as a solution to our cultural dependence on fossil fuels and to help jump-start systematic instruction in our local high schools & community colleges!

Acquiring the Colt led to the two running EV's we proudly possess now. First, die Sprite -- first reborn as a fully battery-electric vehicle, now finally ready to step out in roadworthy fashion and drive to a Volkswagen Van campout this weekend in Green Lane PA after being showcased at the PA Energy Fest just recently. Second, the Red Hot 50-mile Electric Miata converted this summer, which has finally achieved the original goal Matt & I had along: an electric car that would comfortably accomplish a 30-mile round-trip commute in the evening, with no time to charge back up. Who-hoo!

Acquiring the Colt also led to an incredible amount of fun, including getting to test-drive a Tesla and Ken's mini-E (sorry I was such a wimp, Ken), talk about EV's with a beer in one hand and a clicker in the other at Green Drinks, stay overnight in a solar-powered cottage in the Poconos and tour a geodesic greenhouse, see a demonstration of Nikola Tesla's historic coil energized at midnight on Independence Mall, camp and hang out around the bonfire at one fantastic Energy Fest after another, and connect with so many wonderful people that 160+ blogposts haven't begun to be able to capture them all.

Finally, acquiring the Colt led me, just last week, to speak with two of the original adopters who bought an Electric Colt of their own when it was first rolling out -- all fresh & shiny & full of hope in 1992 -- of the same workshop that previously brought forth the Comuta-Car and the Citi-Car, examples of which I have seen many times on display at shows without knowing that our cars were connected.

I was so surprised to learn that my EV passion was originally stimulated by a vehicle with an actual pedigree: one built in Sebring FL, on the successive foundations of dreams for real choice and real change, a business that began in the 1970's and passed through several owners before the Colt was created and -- much later -- came into our hands.

The whole experience has rendered me even more historically-minded and long-winded than usual on this blog, for which I will not apologize because I had so much fun writing this review of the entire past 5 years and I am sure that if you followed all the way through you also did not mind!

Stay tuned for news of the e-Van's outing this weekend, doubtless also super-educational.

* If you stuck through this whole long blogpost to the point of reading this footnote & still have an appetite for more, click on that photo from the Deer Lodge MT Automobile Museum. You will land on the (fairly current) blog of the senior citizen who posted this photo along the way while she's endeavoring to kayak in all 50 states -- oh my -- long caption, but worth clicking thru if you stuck it out, she does sketches for gas money and is kinda amazing! And don't forget to let me know if you too think that might be an Austin Taxi.

We Built a 50-mile EV!! & Energy Fest Report

2011-09-19T11:20:00.140-04:00

So this weekend was the Miata's first long-distance road test. Since Kempton is approximately 50 miles away, at the absolute maximum of our calculated range, we were nervous about doing the entire trip in one shot. We opted to play it safe, and staged the car overnight with friends, who were happy to share a buck and a half's worth of their electricity in addition to beers & dinner! Of course they also had to check the car out ... that's okay, Matt loves to talk about the Miata as much as I do!

Our numbers on battery discharge & amp hours consumed on the two 30-mile legs on the way to Kempton were so encouraging that Matt decided to drive it directly home to Ottsville on Sunday. He found a route that was only 46 miles, including almost 15 miles on I-78 (he went no faster than the legal 55 since he was maximizing range). The odometer read 45.8 miles when he arrived, with 27.9% remaining on the batteries -- well within the recommended discharge limit!*

*Despite the formulas we were looking at on the last day of class which indicated that depth-of-discharge was not an issue with lithium-ion batteries, we have learned that in fact they do appreciate being drained no more than 80%. (I understand, however, that they are are more tolerant of the occasional max-out than lead-acid batteries are.)

On the basis of this real-world range test, we can calculate that our Miata has a projected range of 63 miles. 80% of 63 miles of total range yields an effective daily range of just over 50 miles, which was Brandon's original projected performance for the vehicle and far exceeds our actual requirement of a 30-mile commute. I can't tell you how thrilled I am (already wrote to all our workshop participants to share the great news with them directly)! Since almost a quarter of this drive took place @ 55 mph and the terrain featured quite a few Appalachian foothills, I am sure we are going to be able to rack up an impressive # of laps on Penn State's test track at the 21st Century Automotive Challenge next May. Can't wait to get out there and get some really solid data on our efficiency & range.

Confirming the Miata's status as a true 50-mile EV was the icing on the cake of a fantastic weekend. Bill & I had a wonderful time at the Energy Fest. I gave 3 well-attended History & Advantages lectures and as usual our 3-hour conversion overview was made available to Fest attenders for a fee of $15. The highlight of that workshop, of course, is our incredible panel of real-world EV drivers and builders who come to share their experiences & knowledge of the topic. BCR contributes half the proceeds of this workshop to the Eastern Electric Vehicle Club and this year we were able to make a donation of $75 (Ollie, I owe you $15).

Displaying the Miata and the e-Van (as well as Bill's go-kart) side-by-side was just tremendous fun. I spent hours talking to folks and answering questions about the cars.

We proudly drove our 2 vehicles in the new EV parade & mainstage review that was held all 3 days of the Festival. And of course, we loved catching up with our friends in the Transportation Tent area, the visitors & vendors & volunteers who return year after year to the Fest, and meeting lots of great new people as well (including the Sustainable Living Roadshow who are a completely awesome crew of human beings)

We were particularly delighted to get to see some workshop alumni: Ralph Opitz, Jack Waitz & his wife Caroline and Dan Gallagher & his family all came by to share/admire/fondle the Miata they built this summer. Lynn McConville from the 2007 & 2009 workshops also came by to catch up; she was on the way to give her own presentation this year on Power Up Gambia, the solar power project for healthcare facilities that she has been working for. It was wonderful to see Ralph, Jack, Dan & Lynn again as well as Rich Vasko from the fall mini-workshop at Green Jobs Academy and many familiar faces from the Macungie EV-ents of the last 3 years. Apparently electric cars help build community, instead of isolating us from our neighbors and friends ... think that thought deserves a longer post some other time!

In the meantime, here's a pic of our dusty little champ charging up again at home after her 46 mile haul from Kempton.

Miata & e-Van Update, Plus Final Energy Fest Plug

2011-09-13T00:27:00.002-04:00

Maybe I'll plug the Energy Fest first. It's just days away, and I'm belatedly realizing that I never posted my own speaking schedule in Kempton this weekend! (So much for being a self-promoting machine here on this blog.) If you're an Energy Fest virgin it would be wise to take an advance peek at the amazing roster of informative sessions available there from 10 am - 4 pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Talks go on all day in the Renewable Energy, Sustainable Living, Environmental/Social Justice, Green Building & Transportation Tents!

The laughably cheap entrance fee of $10 yields the aforementioned ton of info freely given, a few workshops with modest additional fees, over a hundred exhibitor booths, delicious food, and a sustainable ethic: everywhere a trash can might be, there are compost/recycling/landfill bins instead. You will be amazed at how low-impact even a large gathering of people can be. There's also fun stuff like music, yoga, & children's activities, plus extremely cheap camping ($15). It's a beautiful setting -- outdoors, but all the vendor & lecture areas are protected by large tents in case of rain -- in the foothills of one of the closest sections of the PA Appalachians. Kempton is also the location of Hawk Mountain if you want to combine the Fest with an educational side-tour to learn about the magnificent spectacle of raptor migration.

I get a fair number of emails from national "green expo" groups inviting Bucks County Renewables to purchase an exhibit booth at the indoor, air-conditioned conference center they've booked in my area for their particular tour. That's not what the Energy Fest is like at all. Sponsored by the MAREA, a truly grassroots and entirely volunteer organization located in Berks County, it's a genuine effort to educate on a local scale, to gather and disseminate the results of hundreds of people's labors, research, and passion over one glorious weekend, and so it is infused with a spirit of communal effort & shared fun that is gonna be missing from any corporate-sponsored, profit-making endeavor. Obviously it would be crazy for you not to come!

Friday, Saturday & Sunday mornings I'll be speaking at 10 am in Tent 7 (details here - lecture T1) and on Saturday afternoon from 1:00 - 4:00 I'll be there too, presenting an overview of the process of building your own quiet, environmentally sound EV's, including system options and conversion steps. This workshop includes a Q&A session with a panel of current EV owners, giving the opportunity to hear about a range of real-world experiences. Bucks County Renewables donates half the gate to the Eastern Electric Vehicle Club, many of whose members have been mainstays of the Transportation Tent since its inception at the Festival in 2007. I can't link to the workshop description for some reason, and you can't register online in any event, so just ask about it when you purchase your admission if you're interested. In the meantime, here is a link to check out a few of the converted and production EV's and other alt-fuel vehicles that will be on display this weekend!

And that tasty preview is by no means complete because our newly-converted Miata will be joining the e-Van on display this year, and I am so excited because it looks like we are going to get to DRIVE it there! I have to back up a little bit cause when I last posted the DC-DC converter (our 2nd!) was still on the fritz and Brandon had zoomed in from Lancaster to do a consult.

Brandon thought the problem might be in the mini-Anderson connectors. Some of the pins may have been loose inside. Bill on the other hand thinks there may have been a loose connection on the hard-wired side. Just in case he fixed both issues, eliminating the Anderson connectors entirely from the circuit and tightening the double-nut connections on the other side. So far our loaner DC-DC converter is functioning fine although it did mysteriously blow an inline fuse on Bill when he first tested it.

All these problems with charging the 12-volt battery have Bill wanting to have a dashboard monitor for it in the future! He picked up a whole other Miata cluster at the local junkyard and rigged up a state-of-charge gauge in it, but installing that baby is going to have to wait till after the Festival. Bill reports that getting in the new horn took long enough. It turns out the Miata horn is one elaborate assembly!

Look what he had to replace to allow us to go beep-beep again ... Meanwhile the e-Van's been prettied up in preparation for the Energy Fest; on Saturday I helped Bill take apart the plexiglass enclosures for the batteries and clean them all off. Yuk, lead-acid batteries can get gross.

While I was cleaning batteries in the passenger compartment I admired the new 1500w ceramic element heater under the seat where the batteries used to be! A snazzy duct has been cut in the old steel box and the heater is tucked inside.

MAZDA FIRST DISTANCE RUN REPORT:

So tonight we brought the Mazda home from Bill's place to ours, a total of 21.9 miles. The battery pack was reduced by 58.2 %. That suggests a total range of 50 miles and an effective one of 40 (80% discharge being recommended for lithium batteries during normal use. We won't plan to make it directly to Kempton unless the Miata's projected performance picks up over the week (it's a 50-mile trip) but we do have a proposed itinerary that would allow us to charge it up at a friend's house on the way, so stay tuned for that adventure!

11 Days Til PA Energy Fest! Updates & a bit of a Rant

2011-09-06T00:28:00.003-04:00

Okay, so some years it has been a challenge just arranging to get one EV out to the PA Energy Fest's Alternative Transportation Tent -- this year we have two! Saint Bill has been very busy making sure both the e-Van and our red-hot newly-converted Miata are ready to go ... including adding some informative bling ..

In addition to its lovely new magnet sign the e-Van has a working controller in it and is totally good to go. Bill has been plowing through mechanical fixes on the Miata down to the last detail (horn, airbag light, new gear shift boot) and the charger has been relocated from its original nifty concealed spot behind the seats to one that makes it possible to monitor the apparently-more-important-than-we-thought LED readouts. It now resides in the trunk along with the spare tire.

Our biggest issue -- the last driveability tweak for the Miata before it can hit the road -- is the DC-DC converter. Happily John Yecker has generously loaned us an old one of his, which will be brought by Brandon "Yes I Do Provide Technical Support for my Designs" Hollinger tomorrow. (I just got a text from the gentleman in question reporting that the original electric Miata that he built made it today from Lancaster to Philadelphia, a 75-mile trip with real highway involved, with 27% of charge remaining. Since his car is the older cousin to our newly-built 50-mile car, we are bursting with family pride here.)

Speaking of being able to go 75 miles between major cities on between, say, a buck-fifty and three dollars' worth of electricity depending on where you live, in a car that you can basically build (and therefore fix) yourself, and which you fuel at your house, thereby immediately liberating yourself from enslavement to

a) foreign oil
b) domestic auto manufacturers & their dealerships
c) all the gas pumps: the kind with televisions blaring pseudo-news and advertising & the more run-down, less-automated sort where you have to line up behind lottery addicts in order to pay at least twice as much for every mile
d) oil changes, exhaust repairs, replacing ruptured hoses & leaky gaskets & all that other stuff that wears out or (alarmingly & generally expensively) suddenly breaks in your average internal combustion engine, at least in my experience
e) guilt over really wanting to drive a car with extremely rapid acceleration, which is obviously fun, especially when you are faster out of the tollbooth/starting lane than like basically ALL gas cars on account of how electric motors have instant torque and that growly sound you hear when an ICE is trying to rev up super fast is the sound of it attempting to suck its way up the torque curve. See you later sucker!

Anyway SPEAKING OF ALL THAT, this week a friend of mine tried unsuccessfully to lure me into commenting on a Facebook thread by emailing me the following:

Care to respond to this?

Dans La Lune

The shocking truth about electric cars

www.theglobeandmail.com

Please don’t blame me for this splash of cold water. Blame the greens

4 minutes ago · ·

- Now you've done it. I have to sic Jenny on you. She is not on FB, tho, so it might take a while....
  2 seconds ago
  
  Jenny Responds (A Lot More Than 2 Seconds Later):
  
  I'm not especially tempted to engage in internet squabble on this topic, & you know why? It's not just because I avoid pointless conflict on the grounds that is addictive (much like high-fructose corn syrup & Facebook), it's because I am totally for viral social media republishing of opinion pieces abjuring people to stay away from EV's because they are some kind of green scam. Go right ahead, folks! Object! Foam at the mouth! Buy a Hummer, or propagate the notion that it's more environmentally sound than a Prius! Use up all the fossil fuel already, ladies & gentlemen-- it's blindingly obvious that it will be easier to change our ways once the intoxicatingly energy-dense stuff is totally gone. Please help yourselves to more oil. It would be a public service.
  
  Meanwhile me and a few of my friends will be driving around in EV's saving money on gas. Who knows whether the dying dollar will persist into the post-petroleum era (maybe we will end up rich in carbon-credits who knows, it's possible) but I speculate that with a considerable amount of actual cash unspent on turning valuable oil into pollution in order to commute 30-100 miles per day 5 days a week, accumulation of savings will permit our not-at-all-hypothetical cadre of actual present-day EV drivers to acquire what is known in the social sciences as "an economic advantage" over the folks who, well past the tipping point, maintain a desperate grip on the steering wheels of their precious ICEmobiles. In the not-too-distant future gas prices may double & cities may begin to levy pollution/mpg tolls, but I'm sure there will be some drivers who'll hang on till they're practically bankrupt rather than succumb to the EV-il tide.
  
  But many of the present-day haters will probably end up buying an electric car. And because we, the smug & thrifty-when-it-counted greens, will at that point be super-rich in dollars or carbon-credits or social capital or what have you, we will all be zipping happily around in fabulously satisfying high-tech & very very fast electric sports cars with awesome range & power. The likes of Margaret Wente and her propagators will be reduced to shooting us envious glances from their poorly-constructed, unaesthetically-designed, economical but unfortunately kind of crappy EV imported from India or China or some other crowded country with an eye on the US market for tiny, cheap electric cars. Too bad they are so tiny their range is limited and you really have to eke out those miles! Goodbye fun driving, watch your acceleration!
  
  To sum up, my prediction for the future is that the current anti-EV opinionmongers will mostly end up driving little electric shitbuckets because that will be all they can afford, while we here at Bucks County Renewables and our friends who hold the long view will be a) super-rich and b) driving futuristic electric cars of such awesomeness that they will make the Tesla seem both dowdy and underpowered. We must try not to regard our defeated opponents pityingly; nor should we gloat, even though this whole outcome will secretly be very satisfying. Zooming out of tollbooths well ahead of them with that slight I-was-an-early-EV-adopter grin on your face is permissible, of course.

Last Call for EVTV Voting Today - & EV News Roundup (at last)

2011-08-31T12:05:00.003-04:00

I just got this video link today and am hastening to post it -- it's the very last call for EVTV voting for Brandon Hollinger's London Taxi project! Yes that is a glimpse of our Red Hot Miata EV (for which Brandon did the design and pre-workshop build): our instructor Bill Kirkpatrick is putting it through its paces while I'm filming & giggling.

EV & Industry News

A Ten-Second Camaro Promotes Electric Drag Racing (Green Car Report)

Electric Car Goes 1,000 Miles on a Single Charge, Breaks World Record (Treehugger)

Lightning Becomes First Electric Motorcycle to Top 200 MPH (EV World)

Bluebird Electric Aims for 500 MPH Record (Wales Online)

Students aim for 400mph electric land speed goal for Buckeye Bullet 3 (GizMag)

The EV Hater's Guide to Hating EVs (EVWorld)

US National Security Experts Weigh in on Electric Transportation (Automotive News, via CNet)

Europe’s Incentive Plans for Spurring E.V. Sales (NY Times)

EV Profiler ends guesswork for plug-in car shopper (CNet)

BMW Electric Car Study Makes Surprising Findings (BusinessGreen)

Hybrid News

Ford, Toyota Plan Collaboration on New Hybrid Drive (EV World)

Plug-in Prius half as thirsty (Yahoo News)

Five Things You Shouldn't Do To A Toyota Prius...Ever (Green Car Report)

Battery Technology & Development

Lithium Demand By 2025 Will Require 181K Tons Carbonate (Mining Weekly)

The Lithium Battery Recycling Challenge (Waste Management)

GM Selects A123 Nanophosphate Batteries For Future Electric Vehicles (EV World)

New solid-state compound beats old school lithium-ion batteries (Ars Technica)

Scientists Build Battery in a Nanowire: Hybrid Energy Storage Device Is as Small as It Can Possibly Get (Science Daily)

Japanese researchers can deliver power to your wheels by radio (Autobloggreeen)

In Wider-Ranging Renewable Energy News & Development

Gasoline demand falls to 10-year low in July (AutoblogGreen)

Hybrid Solar System Makes Rooftop Hydrogen (Science Daily)

For the military clean energy saves lives (CNN Money)

12 Green Groups Push for End to Oil Industry Tax Breaks (Ecopolitology)

Enel Green Power Receives Approval for North America's First Renewable Hybrid Power Plant

(Energy Boom)

EV's Are Not the Only Answer to Our Transportation Problems

Local Colorado Brewery Transports Kegs via Tricycle (Treehugger)

Artisan Pickles Delivered by Cargo Bike (Treehugger)

Inexpensive Truck Aero-Tweak Could Save 1.5 Billion Gallons of Diesel Each Year (Treehugger)

Slide To The Train (Popup City)

A Greener Way To Get Into Space: The Bloon (Treehugger)

Solar Roadways Get $750,000 For Bigger Prototype; Maybe It's Not So Crazy After All (Treehugger)

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Americans Have No Car, No Access To Transit

(Treehugger)

Podcars Can Help Us Build Car-Free Cities, Says PRT Expert (Treehugger)

Smart to Put Electric Bicycle Into Production (Motorward)

Today I Got To Test-Drive a Nissan Leaf! FINALLY!

2011-08-14T22:47:00.002-04:00

But first -- I have been delinquent in linking to this excellent write-up of our recently concluded 2011 EV conversion workshop which appeared in the online venue Bucks Local News! I also have to admit I have been slacking even more than usual so I am way behind on post-workshop mop-up. While the parts I was responsible for (publishing the final costs of the conversion; making an EVAlbum page for our newly-created Miata EV; and post-workshop publicity beyond the awesome efforts of the PR angels at Bucks Community College) have languished, Saint Bill has been dedicatedly plowing through the mechanical issues that surfaced during the Miata's ICE-to-EV transition.

I paid a visit to our little red-hot LiFe baby this weekend and she runs backwards and forwards, shifts smoothly, brakes silently on her yummy new high-performance brakes, and furthermore is sporting a brand-new alignment. (Bill says the folks at North Penn Mazda were incredibly helpful in diagnosing and fixing the hard-shift-into-reverse issue.)

Just a few EV tweaks left (including replacing a defective DC-to-DC converter, sigh) and then we will be inspectable and on the road -- we hope in time to establish some real-world kilowatt-crunching and range-tabulating data before we bring the Miata for display at the PA Energy Fest in September!

Okay, now I will tell you all about FINALLY getting to test-drive a Nissan Leaf.

This story really begins on Earth Day, 2010. On that date Nissan opened up reservations for the Leaf, and we here at Bucks County Renewables ponied up $99 to reserve one. We knew they would not be appearing exactly soon in PA, but we were quite sincere in our hopes of landing one of the first production electric vehicles available. It was going to be red. Sniffle, I really believed it would be here in a year.

Well, over a year has elapsed with little communication from Nissan to us personally as prospective, paid-to-show-we-were-interested buyers.

Then I got even grumpier on behalf of interested buyers everywhere in the confluence of the PA and NY and DC markets when our little ad-hoc group of organizers (led by the fearless Anna) of the EV-ent in Macungie couldn't manage to pry a Leaf out of corporate Nissan for display at our show back at the end of April of this year. We went right to the top, with emails, phone messages, & two actual conversations with the director of electric vehicle marketing for Nissan USA.

We argued with our usual charm and verve that an established all-EV show in the aforementioned confluence of markets would be a logical place to display the first pure EV on the market that actually functions as a family car (as opposed to the Tesla and the mini-E -- the 2-seaters we had on display in 2010). Like, please show us you are serious about marketing electric vehicles folks! We did not ask them for money or test drives anything -- just a Leaf for our EV-ent attenders to ogle.

How is it that we were not irresistible, Nissan

Admittedly there is a huge grin on my face in the actual photo at the top of this post, captured when we finally got our hands on the wheel of a Leaf earlier today, but here is Anna looking more thoughtful maybe she is reflecting on the months it took us to get behind the wheel of this thing ...

Back in March & April all our persuasive efforts with the very tippy-top electric vehicle marketing person at Nissan North America in the end yielded the only sorta helpful "Well there's a guy in New Jersey who works for us who has a private one, maybe he'll be willing to bring it." And then it turned out he had a schedule conflict. So all of us were disappointed and made irl faces like this :-( and in my case at least began making ominous and public mutterings about buying a Ford Focus EV instead because in my opinion (and I have many) maybe Nissan was not serious about marketing this car. From a consumer perspective -- and admittedly I am a notoriously hard-to-please customer, but really dudes -- I am no longer serious about buying a Leaf unless some Nissan rep drives it up to my door and makes me feel like they want to sell it to me and not the other way around.

But! It's not like I was gonna boycott the opportunity to take a test drive when Nissan FINALLY brought its "drive electric" tour to Philadelphia, so when our fearless leader Anna hipped me to this morning's test drive opportunity of course I signed up right away, along with Phil Jones, who serves with Anna on the board of the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association and annually coordinates the Transportation Tent at Energy Fest.


Phil Jones & Anna DiGate of the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association after Leaf test-drive

This was the third day of a 3-day event. It was a very wet Sunday morning in Philadelphia and actually there were more people in attendance than this desolate-looking scene indicates:

Under the tents there were all kinds of cut-outs and blow-ups and videos of the car in motion and also and a "what locations are w/in your 100-mile range" map/calculator toy -- but that's all available on the Leaf website. I only photographed the above to remind myself how cheap our electricity is where I am in Bucks County (we are still paying less than 9 cents a kilowatt-hour). Note the small print: price advantage holds even if gasoline drops below $1.10 a gallon. That is one smug statistic!

This display featured the "in-home" J1772 charger which is hard-wired to your 240-v outlet. The Leaf also has a regular 120-volt inlet for use with ordinary household extension cords. Our tour rep was pretty clear that Level II opportunity charging at (e.g.) Walgreens, which just bought a bunch of these stations, was not going to be a real need for EV drivers: "We don't expect you to be spending 5-7 hours at the drug store of course! Most drivers will charge up exclusively at home."

Kudos to Nissan for stressing this. On the other hand, every single rep we spoke to had been hired on specifically to put on the "Drive Electric" tour -- there were no Nissan engineers or even salespeople in evidence, just event specialists who were basically free-lancing. There was no question they had been well-trained by corporate Nissan for basic show-and-tell, but they did not understand the car in depth, and that was a little disappointing for folks like us who already have a pretty extensive knowledge of the vehicle or of EV's in general; several times I heard tour reps run up against questions they simply could not answer. ("Why is there a battery temperature gauge?" "Is the make-an-annoying-noise-to-protect-blind-pedestrians button truly an option as indicated by the turn-off button, or is the whine/beep legally mandatory?")

And my review of the behind-the-wheel experience? This car is definitely more nimble & fun to drive than the Chevy Volt, esp in non-eco mode; after much quizzing of the event rep I finally gleaned that the more efficient eco-mode basically resets the throttle calibration and forces leadfoots like me to accelerate more slowly.

Eco-mode was more than adequate for city streets of course, but our event rep admitted that driving in it was a bit of a snooze and I much preferred the acceleration and cornering in non-eco mode, sigh. The very availability of a choice between efficiency & power made me reflect on the fact that both the Volt and the Leaf are examples of contemporary "drive-by-wire" technology with a great deal of onboard computer-controlled communication. Nissan has done a better job of making its Leaf optionally behave like what I still think of as a "real" car piloted by humans (you can even turn off the ABS!) but its basic impenetrability even to someone like me who has managed to learn a thing or two about EV's during the last 5 years made me leave this sales event feeling, you know what? I'm excited about production EV's and I know lots of people who will want to buy one, but I think I will stick with the build-it-yourself guys, because they are totally fun to talk to and will always give you the time of day. Unlike, for example, corporate Nissan.

FOR EXAMPLE EVERYBODY:

Oddly just as we were leaving the expo area, we came across the Popular Science tent (nominally part of the official festivities). This tent was actually staffed by a person who made the thing he was talking about. First I met the machine:

a converted electric Polaris ATV range-extended by a rather amazingly tidy and user-friendly configuration in the rear cargo area into a series diesel hybrid, extending its range exponentially from pure EV and increasing its viability as a deep-woods camping vehicle.

Cool homebrewed diesel-electric hybrid I got to see, oddly enough, while test-driving a Nissan Leaf

Only gradually did I realize I was talking to the guy who actually designed and built this conversion, a long-time staff photographer for Popular Science who has been described elsewhere on the internet as PopSci's "staff photographer/mad scientist."

John Carnett opens up the control panel that allows operators to dictate whether the diesel-hybrid motor uses EV power preferentially or vice-versa en route to its backcountry destination, where the vehicle can also serve as an onsite source of electric power.

John had a ton of other fun and cool projects, mostly in the green building line, and Anna and I totally endeavored to recruit him, plus his sidekick & editor Doug who was on the scene & obviously a fan & fomenter of amazing DIY projects, for the PA Energy Fest. C'mon Popular Science (not to mention corporate Nissan), join the fun!

The Nissan event was located right in Northern Liberties so after we escaped from the fascinating Popular Science tent we waltzed right down the street for Sunday brunch at the Standard Tap. This is relevant because EVs are totally local and so is a restaurant tbat features delicious heirloom tomatoes, in-season produce & exclusively locally-brewed beers on tap. Oh Standard Tap you were already my favorite restaurant in the world based on dinner the other night, and then there was a pickled asparagus spear in my Bloody Mary this morning. Obviously a stretch to firmly relate topically to this blog but like electric vehicles and the fun people who love them Standard Tap is totally awesome.

2011 Workshop - Day Six, July 30

2011-07-31T15:54:00.005-04:00

THE ELECTRIFYING CONCLUSION

to our 6-day hands-on EV conversion workshop

started out with desk time of course! Sadly we had to announce that one of our students had to leave unexpectedly to attend to a family medical emergency and would miss the last day of the workshop. We all extend best wishes to Chris & his family.

Look at Bill's arm muscles even when he is just waving his hands around in the air explaining final checkout procedures and establishing the morning agenda!

There were a few trivial things everybody was itching to finish up on the car before we could spin the wheels. During the morning we also hoped to include a brief lecture by Glenn on electrical calculations/relationships and some time to cover resources in calculating for range, motor size & battery pack, but those activities wound up happening in the afternoon and I didn't get to document either because I was on a crucial supply run for coffee -- our only emergency material need of the day except for some optional WD-40!

I wish I had audio of the harmonious buzz of voices that I was hearing when I snapped this shot of everybody under the Miata animatedly discussing plans with their respective break-out groups.

In the purely automotive department, the transmission needed to be refilled with gear oil

and the standard underbody shield had to be reinstalled.

That is the grooved dark panel being installed above; the underbody shield was then extended with a sheet of corrugated polyethylene, nicely lit by the hanging light in the arty photo below.

Jack came up with the idea & donated the materials for this solution as well as neatly executing it. Extending the underbody will not only protect the motor from road-splash and grit but will also improve aerodynamics and thus increase range slightly. Every little bit helps: this goes true for maximizing range and success in group projects!

Our (now fully-wired) charger is located under the panel behind the seats, and the peninsular covering piece above is somewhat raised, creating vents which will permit cooling air to circulate around it. If we want to cover it with the usual mat we would have to come up with another venting solution, but I kind of like the chromey futuristic look of the naked rear shelf at the moment. At this point of course we were all focused on rolling and not on aesthetics or cooling questions!

Here we are all grouped up to watch some voltage testing -- Ralph is holding a protective sheet of plexiglas for the batteries. Again, we can roll without the tweaks but we are lining them up for the future -- our Miata will, after all, be a show vehicle as well as a daily driver. Expect to see it on display at the Energy Fest in Kempton PA in September!

I just really loved all the teamwork: look, here are two people with their hands on one voltmeter, and not because either one of them is just learning how to measure voltage -- they are sharing the experience of taking the necessary readings to make sure our high-voltage wiring is correct all through the series. A systematic check of all connections is required before we close the circuit.

Teamwork was also happening in the rear, where we needed to plug the hole in the trunk that used to carry the fuel line -- obviously this was not necessary to roll, but it IS necessary to protect our trunk battery pack from moisture by covering this larger hole (we will caulk around the battery box later).

In the front it was time to wire up the Soliton Jr controller to the laptop and start calibrating for the final high-voltage connections! The car was built to this precise point, but did not pass its run test in Lancaster last Thursday (my that seems like a long time ago). So even though Bill & I got to see it all put together once before and knew all our components would fit, I have yet to see the system prove itself and make the car go.

I am going to admit that at this point I had a little stab of anxiety that just like on our 7/21 test the wheels would once again not spin once we hooked up the high voltage cabling, and we would be struggling with little blinking red and green lights on the controller for the entire rest of the day and Not Roll. I had to go out into the parking lot and chant "om nama shivaya" for a while until I felt better.

Owing to having to go outside to ground & center I forget what Jack was exactly up to here when I came back in. All the green lights on the BMS are lit (this is just the 'on' signal as the batteries are not charging at the moment).

Dan is making another voltage check. We have an issue, it seems; our controller is giving us the message that the 12v auxiliary battery is under-charged. We will not be able to close our connection and spin wheels without it.

The rear-hole plugging project was progressing nicely. Ben & Grant have engineered a truly elegant sollution and are happily installing it together. Note the stylish light blue rubber mat covering the old fuel line hole.

The owner of this hand was kneeling in the driver's seat of the Miata to ratchet the final bolts in. This was extremely entertaining to watch in person.

Meanwhile the 12 v battery attained a normal charge so we could clear that error from the controller ..

after some RTFM'ing.

These changes along with some throttle calibration should give us the literal green light to spin the wheels ... and they did!

It was just before noon when Julie got in to turn the key and press on the pedal -- and the wheels spun! Forwards and backwards!

OH MY GOSH WE PASSED OUR RUN TEST BEFORE LUNCH - that is a record for our workshops and I almost died of happiness right on the spot. Okay that is an exaggeration but I did cry a little bit with relief.

I got back from lunch late on account of the aforementioned coffee run, only to find that this was the class that just would not quit solving problems! After the postponed lecture from Glenn, instead of wanting to roll out the car immediately they were all about "We want to calibrate the minimum and maximum throttle with this nifty controller interface" and "We want to hook up the tachometer" and "We want to check out the BMS during charging and see if it really balances the cells." SO it was back to the laptop and the voltmeters and the little blinking green lights for a little while before we took the car off the lift.

Brandon texted me right after our initial failed run test, "Soliton has great reputation for ease of setting adjustments." (I think just getting & understanding this text about my controller qualifies me as half-geek.) Of course, it's wise to investigate further when someone references reputation -- you don't know anything till you ask what their source was. (Sometimes it was a salesman/corporate shill, or perhaps just some clueless person with no actual experience of their own either.)

Well, I had occasion to witness quite a few setting adjustments on this controller today, and it actually was easy. Now, Soliton's reputation is not just reputation: it is fact.

It is totally slick to be able to troubleshoot your own controller using a web browser and without requiring internet access (we did not have wireless in the shop). You just need an RJ-45 cable and you wind up communicating directly with the controller's CPU. Because you're working thru a familiar browser there's no program to download or new interface to learn. Needless to say, from an EV driver's point of view this set-up is far superior to having to box up an essential drive component like the e-Van's Curtis controller and mail it off for adjustment to somebody else who can tinker with the MOSFETs and diodes! Self-diagnosis & adjustment = more actual driving time!

So this is a blissfully simple-sounding set-up, and I also can testify that it completely worked the very first time we tried it. Furthermore, one of the things Richard & Grant first did with it (calibrating the throttle) was exactly what most excellent technical consultant Christian Ruoff had immediately recommended when Brandon inquired about our no-run scenario on 7/21. Christian also offered to be available for phone help in the evening if needed. We were about to take the car back apart so we didn't take him up on that ;-)

Some of our other kit components for this build arrived mislabeled, poorly documented, or with mismatched parts that rendered them effectively broken. Not so our Soliton Jr. controller. Thanks EVKinetics, this is what I call a quality and well-supported product, and hey some of you other suppliers: we are fans of competence here at Bucks County Renewables so level up!

After this there was kind of a blur of activity around tachometer, charger, and ampmeter, and I frankly started to lose track because I was so excited to get the car rolling.

Ralph and Dave are investigating the E-Xpert Pro ammeter/state of charge gauge. It was successfully wired up so we can monitor pack amp-hours remaining as well as state of draw and also some other goodies which I have not fully investigated.

Rich stripping cable to hook the original tach up to our controller. Once wired, all he & Dan had to do was tap on the laptop some more to tell it, "Hey, Soliton, Jr, accept 4 pulses from output 1 in order to read the tach wire going to the motor." Then came the spin test & lo and behold -- factory tach is now registering the motor's RPM's! I overheard someone explaining that this would have been more difficult with a digital tachometer, & I'm not sure if the later model Miatas gave up the analog or not, so this might affect the ease of this set-up, which anyway our team made look easy and the results were pretty rad.

Okay, everybody in the class is now clustered around the back of the car because the last little red lights on the BMS have winked out.

Our lithium-ion cells are balanced and it't time to roll the car off the lift and let it hit the road for the first time as an electric vehicle.

WE ROLLED!

Everybody got to drive it (except Chris Gillespie from the Green Jobs Academy -- and after she came out to join us and took tons of video and stills of everybody behind the wheel!). I'll post the link when those go up on the GJA website and we definitely owe Chris (a Miata owner herself) a test drive as soon as possible!

I want to express my thanks once again to Chris & Ira, our administrative supervisors and warm supporters at GJA & Bucks County Community College -- it is owing to their belief in this program that we ran with 10 students and were able to have such a blast.

Gratitude is also in order to Brandon Hollinger of BH Electrics for preparing the kit. He was so sad that work conflicts prevented him from being there in person and sends warm congratulations to everybody for a successful build.

After regrouping for distribution of certificates of completion, thanks, and farewells, we dismissed class fifty minutes early (a workshop record). Bill and I were done removing every trace of the last week's activity from our classroom by just a little after our official end-of-day at 4.

But we didn't leave quite yet ...

The Miata appeared to have a significant driving problem following conversion; on the white board notes for the afternoon you might have noticed that we were having problems with the shift not staying in reverse. We knew the wheels would spin backwards, but the back-up lights did not work on the lift and we couldn't get into reverse at all on the test drive. The transmission worked fine before removal of the clutch -- we drove this car as an ICE for a few months prior to defossilization. So this sudden problem was really bugging Mr K.

As is his way, he magically fixed it.

And then he played.

Thank you, Bill.

2011 Workshop - Day Five, July 29

2011-07-30T01:50:00.000-04:00

We had an incredibly full day today, packed with information & work.

We began with an introduction to our visitor John Yecker, who had driven his converted electric vehicle the 'Blue' Ranger 79 miles (many of them highway) from his home in Lancaster PA to join us. This is just about the limit of his range -- he spent the day with us, and by the end of class his batteries were fully recharged and ready for the drive back!

John's Ranger (photos farther down in the post -- we gathered around it later in the day) is his daily driver. When Bill & I met John at last year's Energy Fest he had just recently converted it. Recently he replaced his lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion and upgraded his controller and a few other components. He is thrilled with the results, and we were thrilled that he came to visit (even though he didn't quite break his range record). We knew he would be a wonderful resource for this group -- he knows a ton and he is incredibly good at explaining it in a way that even people like me can understand while also being able to engage the more technically-minded.

Owing to yesterday's postponement we had two visiting speakers today -- Larry Frakes of Keystone Charge gave a slide show on the state of the fledgling EVSE industry. He was both entertaining and knowledgeable and I learned a lot! Keystone Charge is a Harleysville-based start-up but Larry came all the way from Harrisburg to share his time and demonstrate the new J1772 standard charging connector.

I was sad that he didn't pass it around for everybody to handle but he had to scootch out and there was work to be done in any event -- lots of work!

I had another box to ceremoniously open & unpack in front of everybody -- this one was from Brandon and contained the installation manual prepared by Bob Batson of EVAmerica for our entire kit. It was pretty funny that it arrived on the 2nd to last day of the workshop! We then debriefed on the various tasks accomplished yesterday. Everybody knew exactly what they wanted to get going on so we quickly broke back into hands-on for the rest of the morning.

Ralph and Jack were raring to finish off the front battery boxes so that pack of batteries could be loaded and secured!

The rear trunk only needed two more holes drilled. Bill had assigned Chris to help with securing the front batteries because the solution in the rear had been so elegantly executed. Dan was raring to take a closer look at the battery management system once they were done!

A battery management system, or BMS, is a computerized monitoring device to make sure that lithium cells are balanced during charging and give information about their performance under load. (Elite Power Solutions, which manufactured ours, calls it an Energy Management System.) I had turned up the manual EPS sent me in my old email the night before and printed it out, but when I say Dan was raring to get working on it I'm not kidding -- he had found the manual on the company website and brought in a copy of his own!

Richard couldn't work on the front battery wiring until the batteries were loaded so he took advantage of the time to ask John lots of questions. I know for a fact that in this picture they are discussing impedance.

Then they both joined with Dan to ponder the manual which came with the BMS. Apparently there have been some design changes to the finished system that made the photos not match up with the materials we had in the kit, but they solved that issue (only to encounter other challenges).

Ben and Julie are preparing screw-and-washer sets for wiring the terminal interconnects and the BMS chips to the batteries.

The finished single battery hold-down in the rear -- there is a similar black bracket on the other side.

Bill and Dave are cutting the threaded bolts that will secure the front batteries into their box (the rear one has a similar set up).

With the charger installation complete, Grant joined John & Dan in pondering the BMS

while Ben took all those pre-made bolt & washer sets and started installing the BMS chips on the back batteries. Yes there were a number of jokes about the amount of screwing that went on during this workshop.

This is an unfortunately blurry picture of Chris bending steel with his bare hands! Note also all the tidy split-loom tubing and zipties bundling up the low-voltage wiring thanks to Glenn!

and here AT LAST are the rear batteries in the box (they somehow appeared there magically w/out me taking a picture) and the very sweet threaded-rod bolts that run along the top groove of the batteries to lock the strapped pack into place.

I had the usual trouble getting everybody to stop working and go eat lunch.

When we got back from lunch we went to meet John's 'Blue' Ranger, charging up on 240v in the body shop.

John discussed his decision to run without a BMS on his lithium pack. There are differences of opinion in the EV world as to whether a BMS is worth the investment.

John had a couple of neat safety features under the hood of his EV. One was the impact switch on the left, which cuts off power in the event of a collision. The one below hasn't been installed yet -- it is a manual disconnect for the Anderson connectors, which are the large red clips barely visible behind the red knob of the lever. As normally configured Anderson connectors require two hands to separate -- John has taped one side down in order to make it easier, but the lever is a much more elegant solution and far more intuitive for first responders.

Back in the classroom we continued hearing about matters BMS-related, first from John & then from Dan, who reported on what the team had learned during their time spent puzzling over hte manual (plus two phone calls to the friendly engineer from EPS for technical support). The conclusion was that the BMS would not work with our battery layout as it required a certain configuration of batteries. We were lacking a cable long enough to accommodate our split pack, and the spacing of plugs on the ribbon cable made it not possible to wire them in series.

At first I thought to my horror that we would just have to unscrew all those little chips that Ben had been working on! Upon further discussion, however, our intrepid & unstoppable BMS team announced that we would still get some of the balancing benefits for our cells even if the ribbon cable wasn't wired, so installation of the BMS chips proceeded.

Dave & Richard sharing online resources

Ralph, Dan & Glenn made up a goop & screw assembly team (afterwards it turned out Julie had to undo & rescrew their connections to make up for a missed step).

Our poor terminal bolt holes were beginning to show signs of strain from all the assembly and disassembly and stripping inside. Dave taught everybody this clever little fix of stuffing them with a few strands of copper from the interior of one of our high-voltage cables, he called it making your own helicoil inserts.

I asked Dan what he was doing as I took this shot and he said, "Making a little cable." He really wants to wire up at least a few of the batteries to the BMS so we can all take a look-see and he thinks he can muster up a work-around that will accomplish that.

Julie got to use a low-torque wrench to put the brand-new low-rolling resistance tires on and she loved it, too. Bill also had her re-install the center console between the seats in the Miata so the interior is looking a lot more put-together.

Dan and John designing our partial BMS.

By the time we debriefed at the end of the day the back battery box was completely wired except for the high voltage connections. We are starting out tomorrow quite close to our goal: a rolling EV! I confessed to somebody today that we were farther ahead than we'd ever been before on the last day of the workshop, as recorded for posterity in 2007 and 2009. Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow!

2011 Workshop - Day Four, July 28

2011-07-29T02:09:00.001-04:00

This is the announcement I made up on January 14, 2011 for the class that is happening right now, folks! I wrote my first email to the Green Jobs Academy in January 2010 (it would be four months and a few more emails before our first meeting with them) so really this project has been in the works for a year and a half. Needless to say Bill & I are both thrilled to be actually in the auto lab working on the car!

Today was magnificently full of steady work & rapid progress combined with surprising challenges & rising to the occasion. We began class as usual with a review of the reading & some discussion, but then I got everybody to watch me open up our charger, which had been delivered the day before to my house. After removing the packaging I encountered surprising challenge #1:

Alarmingly, the label of the charger indicated that EVnetics had sent us entirely the wrong component. I noticed that it was marked 120 volts and Grant went further into the small print to point out that it was also for lead-acid batteries. We have a 144V system and lithium-ion batteries.

Upon closer examination, it appeared that the original label was a reused one that had been stuck on after the fact (I forget who made that observation). The manufacturing data indicated we had the correct charger for our needs and could go ahead with the install.

Somehow during the course of these discoveries we also had a great group brainstorming session and came up with 3 or 4 different ways to prevent a driver from pulling out while still plugged in to house current, all of which were pretty cool. After that a few folks quickly gravitated around the charger project while everybody else knew exactly what they wanted to get going on so we broke for hands-on without more ado.

Shortly the charger work group encountered surprising challenge #2: the Anderson connectors for the wiring were missing terminals in one half of the mount. Fortunately we have some of the necessary terminals left over from the DC-DC converter so we could work around this!

I got shots of everybody doing hands-on but Dave today for some reason, so I will note here that he is one of our discussion mainstays as he has done a lot of online research already and is invariably familiar with the websites and resources we mention. He and Dan both attended the Macungie EV-ent in April and have also been to the annual Energy Fest in Kempton to see EV's on display, in contrast to Richard who reports that his one previous exposure to the real thing consisted of being passed by a RAV-4 EV on the highway in Florida once!

Here is a somewhat ragged photographic documentation of the day: some of the time my camera batteries were charging (blush) and some of it I was visiting an electric supply shop (for possible inlet charging plugs), a welding shop (for a new gas canister) and a hardware store (for bolts, about which much more shortly). I was a very hardworking gofer today but I had Glenn's company during the first run so I got to be on a team too which was nice & very much the theme of the day!

This is I think a very arty photograph indeed of Jack's elbow and the beginnings of the new angle iron supports running under the front battery boxes. (It was even artier when I had it sideways instead of up-and-down.)

Rich & Julie peaceably and happily gooping and installing interconnects -- they really do like to work together and they do it incredibly well! Their assembly line approach was efficient and they made short work of the interconnects that can be done while the front box is being worked on. (Some of them will have to wait till the batteries go in the box.)

Once done with the front batt connections R&J had time to chime in on a group discussion around the trashcan concerning a surprising challenge with the connectors for the high-voltage cables, which are difficult to situate securely without making them difficult to disconnect for battery replacement/maintenance. Disassembling them this time around required a screwdriver levered between the existing washer and the terminal, and Bill would like to avoid that in the future.

Here Glenn, Rich & Julie & Bill are having an amazingly extended conversation about some very tiny but crucial bits of hardware. That's what it comes down to here in Real World EV-Building Land! I know this because in my supply runs yesterday and today I spent at least 45 minutes in two separate hardware stores seeking out tiny but crucial etc.

Yesterday I just wanted one piece of all-thread plus two nuts that would fit it, and today I was in search of two button-head socket bolts to lower the profile of the existing motor mount bolts. During both trips it took two store employees and a lot of head-scratching before I could cash out with the desired items, and I was not in a big box store dealing with some hapless non-starter in the bolt department either -- today I had old experienced guys squinting at threads and deciding together that a lot of the bolts in their box were actually defective, and then patiently testing them all till they found one that worked in the size I needed. I got a lot of service for the five bucks I spent at Sears Hardware today!

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself since there are still a few pix of the morning work session and gofering was after lunch. While Jack & Chris front battery racks were being worked on Ben & Dan were also assembly-lining the goop-and-screw-down-interconnect process on the previously installed rear batts. Teamwork really gets things done fast.

Course some jobs are solo -- Jack is drilling mounting holes for the front battery box support here.

Richard, Ralph & Chris consulting further on those high-voltage cable interconnects. Chris is blurry because I missed the shot where he had his hand on the cable too.

Bill is using a power grinder to put a lip on a screw, which was the work-around arrived at by the discussion around the trashcan. Look at his arm muscles!

Richard pointed out that we still had a spot in the car where wiring was going through metal and required a rubber grommet for protection. I think this got taken care of today but I'm going to have to wait for the debriefing tomorrow to know for sure.

We were supposed to have an afternoon presentation by a representative of Keystone Charger, but he had a medical emergency and his sub asked to be rescheduled for tomorrow morning. Instead the class moved eagerly back into work groups immediately after lunch. I was on the aforementioned supply run for a big chunk of the p.m. session and by the time I came back the charger had been cleverly located in the space between the front seats and the trunk and nearly all wired up. Above, Grant is making some final adjustments

with help from Ben, Jack & Chris -- I told you teamwork was the theme!

These were the early afternoon assignments as written. Sometimes I have to laugh at how detailed & yet sketchy our structure is! It seems to be working great though!

2011 Workshop - Day Three, July 27

2011-07-28T01:39:00.003-04:00

Lots of photos and little time left before I must sleep, so let's see how quickly I can zip thru the events of Day Three for you -- it really flew by in real life too!

We opened with lecture. Here Bill is discussing some of the tools we will use & standard safety precautions. We also reviewed the assigned reading on controllers and the wiring done yesterday on our controller as well as the other jobs completed on Day Two.

Then it was to work! Here Dave, Dan & Chris are grinding and then cutting the extra supports for the rear battery.

Must include a close-up of Dan in order to show his most excellent t-shirt: "BREAK THE CHAINS - SHOP AT INDEPENDENT STORES" I was glad I'd switched this morning to coffee from my favorite local bakery. I had to resort to Dunkin' Donuts on Monday when my shop is closed & Tuesday when it turned out my shop brews it boxes fresh & I couldn't just waltz in and pick one up. All rectified, I have placed my order with Crossroads Bakeshop for the rest of the workshop! So far I've managed to stay out of any big box stores and picked up all our needed supplies at a local hardware store & electric supply company. This makes me happy because EV's are all about staying local & being independent!

Ralph gets a lesson from Bill on using the grinder to cut thru some angle iron for the front box supports (we couldn't get into the machine shop to use the cut-off saw). St. Bill always sez: we can work around this!

After lunch Dan Monroe of the EEVC joined the class. Yes, here's the guy who sends me all those great EV news round-ups! (There is one waiting sadly in my inbox for me to post right now but I am not gonna get around to it for a while I'm afraid.) Dan's 1997 Saturn build is well underway and his pile of show-and-tell components has diminished accordingly, but as you can see he was still able to load up the table with goodies! He reviewed the selections he made for his conversion with the class -- you can get some of the highlights (plus sources) on his EV Album page.

Judging by the number of questions during & after & everybody's close inspection of the materials this was an extremely valuable experience for our would-be converters -- just like I knew it would be. Thanks a million for generously sharing your time & knowledge with us, Dan.

Things moved very fast during the afternoon work session -- a little too fast, as it turned out. Here Jack is watching Ralph tweak the battery box with power sheet metal shears - he is creating more clearance for the hood latch.

Ben is singing "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail."

EV's may be quiet but building one is not -- especially not when you're banging metal battery boxes into place!

Next Jack & Ralph removed the front battery box to install the angle iron support beneath it.

Meanwhile Julie was removing the wheels (we are taking this opportunity to install new low-rolling resistance tires on the Miata -- the existing set would have failed inspection). Julie and her husband Richard are taking the class together; she is the one with the car expertise & he is interested in the electronics aspect, so they are a complementary team. Although she has done quite a bit of automotive work this was Julie's first introduction to the air impact wrench, which she announced was an amazing tool -- above she is showing Richard how to use it so he can experience the joy of high torque as well.

Dan was cutting foam spacers for the battery boxes

while Bill went over the MIG welding equipment & procedures.

Okay I do have a lot of fun taking pictures of people welding! Ralph was new to MIG welding

and others (like grinning Glenn here!) had prior experience but hadn't done it for a long time.

Once the rear battery boxes were reinstalled with their new supports, everyone was excited to get going on connecting the batteries. A photo of the proper series configuration serves as a guide for location of the terminal interconnects.

The interconnects for all these terminals are anchored by Phillips head screws. That's a lot of screwdriving! We were all a little envious of the much less fiddly large-nut assembly on Dan's batteries (sorry, forgot to take a close-up), especially when it turned out that in moving fast, we had forgotten a crucial step: coating the terminals first with Noalox, an antioxidizing compound that prevents corrosion.

Grant (shown here admiring Dan's Zilla controller with Richard) was the one who thought of the Noalox so he gets extra credit!

Ay yi yi, now some disassembly is on the agenda for tomorrow! "We do it right 'cause we do it twice!" was somewhat the theme of the day ... I felt bad for Chris who had gotten the most screws in (he cheerfully refuses to be on the re-do crew!) but Julie made me feel better when she reassured me that our teaching mistake was certainly instructive! Everybody will remember now that the goop goes on first!

Jack is smoothing out the angle iron for the front battery box support

and here is a shot of him welding.

We regrouped for a brief review and dismissal of the class at 4, but most of the students stayed well past that time chatting with Dan. Bill took some time to meditate on what shape the battery hold-downs in the back might take.

"I really like what Dan has done," he says.

Dan designed his battery containment around these clips (an electrical mount that happens to have a lip that fits neatly over the top of his battery strapping). However this would require a lot of re-engineering of our battery boxes. I bet Bill comes up with a less-work workaround!

Towards the end of the after-class work session we made a significant discovery. Richard is using a voltmeter to demonstrate that our circuit is grounding to the vehicle through the aluminum controller plate and metal-to-metal couplings to the transmission.

More headscratching & brainstorming resulted -- both around the car & up at the whiteboard. There are a number of possible solutions to this problem, but we will be bringing it to the full class tomorrow so we can come up with the fix that involves the least possible amount of doing things twice!

Lots of fun, lots of problems to solve, plenty left to do -- but we are on schedule and feeling very good about things! On Day 4 we will be going in-depth into charging. Our charger was delivered today, so we'll get to open that up & play with it, plus we will host a demo of a professional charging unit utilizing the new J1772 standard.

2011 Workshop - Day Two, July 26

2011-07-27T07:17:00.000-04:00

Oh boy oh boy did we get a lot of work done today! After reviewing yesterday's work group activity and a tutorial on the low-voltage wiring to dashboard gauges, DC-DC converter & vacuum pump, we started out the hands-on portion with the job of mating the motor to the transmission (Bill is guiding it in below).

Once the motor was aligned & bolted to the transmission the top of the motor mount bracket went in (Ben from Albuquerque is about to install it below):

With the vehicle up there was much discussion about clearances (we will need to raise the battery box slightly to ensure that it is not touching the motor shaft).

Then there was lecture/discussion/q&a time

including a review of the standard wiring schematic for an EV.

St. Bill assigned afternoon lab tasks (he is discussing mounting the controller shelf in this photo)

but the first thing we did when we returned to the vehicle was hook the motor up to a 12-volt source to give it a spin test. It turned -- and so did the rear wheels! Very exciting!

Then it was back to fore-and-aft work groups. In the front the controller had to be mounted and wired up; the other group was assigned to come up with a method of securing the rear batteries in the box.

We have a wonderful variety of backgrounds in the class and there is a lot of informal sharing of knowledge; here a little group has spontaneously gathered around the tap-and-die sets to learn about those tools.

Once the controller was in Bill reviewed the high-voltage wiring

and then we sent the car up on the lift one more time to review our design solutions for front and back. On Wednesday there will be some fabricating & welding! I was a little worried that with the kit pre-designed & prepared for us by Brandon Hollinger of BH Electrics there wouldn't be any welding left for the class to do so I am happy that we are going to be able to include some.

Our end-of-day project review showed our tasks for the day accomplished and a clear plan developed for Wednesday. The build is going very well and right on schedule, but most important is the growing sense of camaraderie and fun in the class. Everybody really seems to be enjoying the collaborative problem-solving process and there is a lot of learning going on every minute of the day.

It was a little more tiring than I thought I guess since I dozed off before quite finishing this report last night and had to post it in the morning of Day Three! Off with me now to pick up coffee & muffins!

2011 Workshop - Day One, July 25

2011-07-25T20:06:00.129-04:00

Oh boy oh boy oh boy the workshop has started and we have a great class of 10 who are already beginning to click together as a group. Broke our previous distance-traveled-by-a-student record (JJ from Florida in 2009) when we learned that current participant Ben hails from Albuquerque NM! I'm looking forward to introducing all the students in a later post but for now, just shots and impressions from Opening Day:

Miata up on the lift for the first time.

Desk interlude: preliminary paperwork, introductions, & a slideshow introduction to the process of EV conversion kept folks in their seats for most of the morning, but after that we had a lot of time up and around the Miata and the e-Van,

in which Bill had brought the Miata's Warp 9 motor!

So exciting that he is using the e-Van as transport & commuting to the workshop location!

The class gathers around the clutch/adaptor disk assembly

for an overview of the measurements & process by which the clutchless transmission is created.

The motor will mount to the transmission bell-housing shown here.

Next the low-voltage wiring to the vacuum pump & DC-DC converter had to have quick connects created, so there was stripping & crimping of wires to be done.

Another crew worked on securing the rear battery box in the trunk.

Placing the forward components.

Both groups were able to work simultaneously , yay! Good thing we have such a friendly crew!

By the end of the day we had successfully situated the vacuum pump/switch & DC-DC converter, installed the rear battery box, and resolved to add a structural member underneath to secure it. We also got a lead on a low-cost material to fashion a complete under-body cradle from-- this is optional, but will help protect our investment and also make the finished car more aerodynamic.

Did I mention oh boy?! More tomorrow!

xxx,

J.

Miata Update Finally, and YES There Is Still Room

2011-07-22T01:03:00.000-04:00

in the workshop: we are definitely running folks! I really wanted to post this final announcement & invitation earlier in the week but circumstances conspired against me so this opportunity is available only to the TRULY spontaneous & last-minute souls who wanna jump on spending July 25-30 in an air conditioned auto lab putting together an EV and learning a lot -- it is going to be great! I can't wait!

I have so appreciated the folks at the Green Jobs Academy of Bucks Community College for their support of this course and all the effort that they have put into making it a reality. Be sure to check out their Fall 2011 lineup of other green jobs trainings! Also note that we will be offering a one-day intro class on EV conversion on Saturday, October 22

So okay all kinds of behind-the-scenes stuff has been going on, little of which on examination holds much entertainment value. Here's a shot of Brandon with the Mazda fresh on the rotisserie back in June. We had just installed the vacuum pump (I actually helped!). The following photo shows the engine bay as it looked this afternoon when we picked up the vehicle from BH Electrics.

With the hood and trunk now back on (a final test that the installed kit fitted as planned), the components will be coming back out over the weekend in preparation for our build! We spent two hours screwing in battery interconnects this afternoon and I've been assigned to unscrew them all tomorrow; this is what happens when I forget to emphasize that my role in this process is "head honcho organizer person who flits around taking pictures of other people working on the car" and not "unskilled labor."

We were easily able to tow the Miata, batteries in place, from Lancaster back to Bucks County with my Highlander Hybrid and a dolly -- it's a breeze to transport compared to the much heavier e-Van! Bill asked me today, "Can we think about the future? How are you planning to get two EV's to the Energy Fest in September?" I was happy to be distracted from strategizing for next Monday and since I know Kempton is 50 miles from my house I informed Bill that the plan is to drive the Miata there! I'd sure like to get to a show in an EV for once!

With everything about to get super-busy I am not sure I'm going to get the last EV news round-up posted, but I'll give it a try -- otherwise yes, expect the class to be documented here, possibly with more words than pictures as I am in an exceedingly mutually hostile relationship with my new camera.

Wow That Was a Lot of EV Talks in One Month, & EV News Roundup Week of 6/24

2011-07-03T19:32:00.012-04:00

No commentary this week either darn it folks, but the great news is that a great deal of what has been keeping me so extra-busy lately has been talking about EV's all over the place! This was me in June and July:

"The History & Advantages of Electric Vehicles"

Thursday, June 8 @ 6:30

"Fed Up With the Pump? Discover the Plug-In!"

Tuesday, June 21, 7-9 pm

with BH Electrics & others

Wayne Conservation District Office

Honesdale PA

Energypath 2011 Conference & Expo

"Join the Plug-in Revolution" & "EV Conversion 101"

Thursday, June 30 2-4 pm

DeSales University

Center Valley PA

and coming up this week:

2011 Philadelphia Tesla Science Conference

"Join the Plug-in Revolution"

Friday, July 8 @ 11:15 a.m.

Liberty Place Philadelphia PA

Holy cow, right? Four speaking engagements in the space of 4 1/2 weeks, and for traveling up to Honesdale I actually got paid! Which was almost ridiculous because my overnight accommodations were like a luxury vacation: welcomed by two SEEDS members into their lovely solar-powered guest cabin, drinking delicious Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPAs, getting to watch fireflies and a thunderstorm and sleep out on a screen porch on a lovely June night in the Poconos, then waking for an early-morning tour of their little geodesic greenhouse which was super-interesting. Its compact interior featured a 1,000-gallon self-sustaining pond that serves as a heat sink, cooling the plants in summer & helping keep the ambient air above freezing in the winter. They harvested salad greens all year long with temperatures as low as 19 degrees below zero outside! After our tour we got to sip delicious coffee & eat hot blueberry muffins on our hosts' deck (they sleep outside year round that is how cool they are) while numerous rose-breasted grosbeaks frolicked on the birdfeeders beside us.

So yeah my visit to Honesdale to participate in a public forum on EV's was one sweet experience, plus I haven't even mentioned the tasty Mexican dinner courtesy of SEEDS and the wonderfully warm & interested crowd of folks at the forum itself. It beats out Green Drinks for a fabulous all-round speaking experience -- and here I thought nothing could ever top getting to give a talk with a beer in one hand and a clicker in the other!

So that is what I've been up to, whew! I also paid a visit to the Miata in Lancaster and officially helped kick off preparations for our July workshop. I had better hurry up and post that already-out-of-date update but at least today I have last week's EV news roundup for you! Little by little we at Bucks County Renewables are catching up.

But Before the EV News Roundup, a Brief Digression on Independence

As I have said at every talk I've given, EV's are synergistic with renewables, so I wanted to share the news about this upcoming solar PV installation workshop in the area sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association. The workshop will focus on residential installations. No previous experience with photovoltaic or technical background is needed; all skill levels can be accommodated by the instructors. The work being done by grass-roots renewable energy education groups like SEEDS in Wayne County and the MAREA in Berks is slowly and unstoppably transforming our rural landscapes--equipping homeowners, one by one, with the skills to declare themselves energy independent.

I hope you will celebrate Independence Day by doing something to free yourself from fossil fuels: if not inclined to sign up for that MAREA PV class or (ahem) a really fun workshop where you get to convert a Mazda Miata into an EV, why not purchase green electricity, commit to buying that hybrid, or chuck your gas-powered mower for an electric one? I'm sure you can think of a way to make your own Declaration of Energy Independence.

Local (Philadelphia) EV-ent July 13!

Wednesday, July 13 9a-2p: "Electric Vehicles & Infrastructure: The Future of Transportation". A stakeholder meeting sponsored by Greater Philadelphia Clean Cities, check it out.

Pure EV News

Is electric car era finally dawning in U.S.? from CBS News

“Revenge of the Electric Car” To Hit the U.S. This Fall from Indiewire

5 minutes with… Reverend Gadget, a star of Revenge of the Electric Car and EV conversion specialist from The Charging Point ("EV's Made Easy")

Tesla Roadster reaches the end of the line from CNN Money

Tesla to Stop Production of Electric Roadster, Shift Focus to Model S from Treehugger

Charge: A Documentary About World's First Zero Emission Motorcycle Grand Prix (Movie Review) from Treehugger

Proterra Startup Will Make Electric Buses that Charge in 10 Minutes from Treehugger

Star Wars-Inspired EV Becomes Reality from Treehugger

Tesla Owner Electrifies Autocross Event With Roadster Fun (Video) from AllCarsElectric

Dan Monroe sez: I love the victory jig near the end. And the course. O_O Can we do this around here? ~D

AC Propulsion Powers Yokohama BlueEarth EV Racer from EV World

British Gas Powers Its New Electric Cars with Solar Energy from EV World

Electric Carmaker Think Files for Bankruptcy from Auto News

GM on making a pure electric vehicle: it's "on the table" from Autobloggreen

2011 Nissan Leaf: 5 Things We’ve Learned After 5,000 Miles from AllCarsElectric

Hybrid News

Fisker Automotive Starts First Round of Job Postings @ Re-commissioned Wilmington DE plant from the Fisker website

Honda Launches Fit Shuttle Hybrid in Japan (71 MPG) from Treehugger

Will Electric Hybrid 'Gas Anxiety' Supplant EV 'Range Anxiety'? from Rocky Mountain Institute's Outlet

Report: New Popemobile to be Electric Hybrid from the Herald Sun

2012 Toyota Prius PHV to get selectable EV mode, full battery regeneration from Consumersearch

Infographic: Why the Toyota Prius is so fuel efficient

Fossil-Fuel-Free Aviation

Coming in on a Wing and a Sunbeam Solar EV Flight from the New York Times

Honeywell Schedules First Non-Stop Trans-Atlantic Biofuels Flight from Treehugger

Battery Technology & Charging

Want a $500 Electric Car Charging Station? So Does the DoE from All Cars Electric

AAA To Offer Mobile EV Charging from Cars.com

EV's Are Not the Only Solution to Our Transportation Problems

Bikes Are New York Fringe? Even The Wall Street Journal Says Not from Treehugger

On the Technological Horizon

Newly discovered alloy directly converts heat to electricity from EcoSeed

Canceled NASA Mars project paves way to Green Earth from the International Business Times

EV News Roundup Week of 6/13 With No Commentary Whatsover; We Are Behind Here at Bucks County Renewables!

2011-06-24T21:50:00.004-04:00

Pure EV News

Revenge of the Electric Car - The first of 4 CLIPS from the film is up on the site! from The Revenge of the Electric Car site

e-miglia Electric Vehicle Rally Kicks Off August 2 from Autobloggreen

2011 TT Zero: MotoCzysz Team Takes First, Second Places from All Cars Electric

Study Finds Mini-E Owners Happy With Electric Car from EVWorld

EV Business Development & Predictions

G.M., Kleiner Perkins invests $30 million in Proterra’s electric buses from EcoSeed

Tesla Now Taking Reservations for Model S in Canada from Treehugger

Robert Llewellyn Drives Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn to the Airport in an Electric LEAF (Video) Heart to Heart Talk About the Future of the Auto Industry from Treehugger

Electric Car Market Takes Off By 2025, Says Bosch Executive from Korea Times

Carlos Ghosn: Nissan Leaf sales to hit record-setting 1,500 in U.S. in June from Autobloggreen

Batteries & Charging Technology

Why CNBC Is Flat-Out Wrong On Electric-Car Charging All Cars Electric points out that our garages are ready for our EV's!

When Heat's On, Ford's Electric Car Battery Stays Cool from EVWorld

Clarian trumps Bill Gates with rotary-piston hybrid battery from GeekWire

Penetrating the Fog Surrounding Lithium-ion Traction Batteries from WheelsUnplugged

Lighter, safer Zinc battery being developed for electric vehicles from EcoSeed

ClipperCreek introduces $995 LCS-25 residential charging station from Autobloggreen

Hybrid News

GM offers cheaper Volt from CNN Money

Next Gen Ford Hybrids Take Aim at Prius MPG from DailyTech

GM Hints At New Plug-in SUV Debut For 2012 Detroit Auto Show from All Cars Electric

EV's Are Not the Only Solution To Our Transportation Problems

23-Foot Boat Made from 100% Trash Uses Solar Power (Video) from Treehugger

Las Vegas Encourages Use of Electric Bikes By City Employees from Las Vegas Review-Journal

In Wider-Ranging Renewable Energy News

Spanish Solar Power Plant Produces Electricity at Night from solarenergyutilize.blogspot.com

U.S. pours $36 million to advance drop-in biofuel technologies from EcoSeed

Are We On the Brink of Burying Nuke Power Forever? from Reader Supported News

THE AUTO LAB IS AIR CONDITIONED!!!

2011-06-19T15:22:00.001-04:00

Look my friends, if any of you have been reading this blog or getting my email announcements* thinking, "Man I would love to sign up for that fun-sounding EV installation course but do I really want to spend 6 days of my summer vacation sweating in a hot workshop," then maybe you should go register RIGHT AWAY because when word gets out that we will be performing the Miata class & installation in this beautiful lab w/access to top-notch equipment, I should think the remaining spaces will fill rapidly.

In fact, facilities manager Rich Hansen declares that this is "the coolest room in the building in the summer." The beads of sweat mostly don't show in the pix of the 2007 and 2009 workshops but let me tell our work space was obviously competing in the "hottest room on the planet in the summer" category. Air conditioning will be a welcome upgrade!

There will be classes going on so the rest of the school will be busy (and cooled) as well -- but we won't have to enter through MBIT's front door and walk all the way back to that gorgeous lab if you choose to join us at July's class at the Middle Bucks Institute of Technology! (2740 Old York Road Jamison, PA 18929 for mapping or click here for written directions from various PA locations)

Nope, instead of coming through this front door there is parking right behind the auto bay and we will be entering & leaving directly through the classroom. Man, this is one EV conversion workshop that is being held in the lap of luxury.

Saint Bill and I had a wonderful visit to MBIT on Wednesday -- everybody there is really nice! Now I am about to leave for Lancaster with the drive train & transmission of the Miata in the back of my Highlander Hybrid and officially launch the next phase of our project -- yippee! Photos of Red Hot on the skewer up next!

BH Electrics Breaks Nationally! Plus EV News Roundup Week of 6/6

2011-06-15T01:37:00.004-04:00

Undisputed EV News Highlight

Ladies and gentlemen, it is pretty gratifying when over the weekend you deliver one red-hot, pre-prepped Miata to your professional ally & personal pal Brandon Hollinger's garage because you have hired him to develop the conversion kit for this upcoming workshop, and then on Monday morning he is featured on the freaking front page of Time's website under the headline "Turning Old Gas Guzzlers into Electric Vehicles" and your kids are all like, "Hey! We just saw that beautiful Saab! Hey Mom, we didn't know that friend of yours was famous!" etc. We are all covered with reflected glory here at Bucks County Renewables, thank you very much -- and congratulations to official media darling Brandon Hollinger, don't forget to vote for his gorgeous Austin taxi project here in the EVTV contest!

Second Best

10 Fun Facts About Electric Cars This is an excellent round-up on Practical Environmentalist, well worth sending to anybody who is just waking up and thinking about how convenient and cheap (see below) an EV might be to run. The link came from the Green Register newsletter sent me by Rich Hansen of MBIT, where we'll be converting the Miata this summer. Pix of the auto lab coming to the blog after our meeting there Wednesday -- oh boy I am excited!

Is the Electric Car Finally Here? Steven Cohen of Columbia University's Earth Institute gives a cogent argument for on Huffington Post. Key takeaway statistics: comparing the cost of 100 miles of driving Nissan's electric Leaf to the conventional Altima, the Leaf cost $2.64 for fuel versus $14.25 for the Altima, and its power needs generated 63.6 pounds of greenhouse gases compared to 90.5. Don't pay attention to the mantra about consumers not wanting electric vehicles, I know lots of potential Leaf drivers here in PA and they are just wanting and waiting.

That same newsletter also linked to this food-for thought article originally published at The Good Human (a blog with an excellent name): Oil Companies Profit While You Foot the Bill. Read it if you want to get a little fired up about the corporate tax structure that exploits our gasoline addiction and makes the rich richer. Yeesh.

Other EV News

Ford to Triple Electric Vehicle Production, Add Green Jobs Thanks to Chris Gillespie of the Green Jobs academy for this link!

How Car Companies and Rental Agencies are Creating 'Carsharing 2.0' Remember that fantastic bike-sharing program in Paris, France called Velib' & mentioned here back in March? Those guys are back with Autolib' "le projet" and you can check out GreenBiz's report on their EV share program or go straight to the sexy French version this is very cool folks.

Dutch Team Drives Electric Nissan LEAF 779.19 Miles... in 24 Hours (Video) from Treehugger

Tesla Shows New Version of Model S, Will Raise $234M for Model X ditto

MotoCzysz 2011 E1pc stands out from the TT Zero crowd, goes faster [w/VIDEO] Yay for electric motorcycle races. From Autobloggreen.

Batteries, Charging & Infrastructure

Nissan Spends $3.5 Billion On Solar EV Chargers In Tennessee from Crisp Green, which is also a pretty great name for a blog

Ireland charges ahead with electric vehicle infrastructure from British site The Engineer

Recargo App Maps 1,000 Electric Vehicle Charging Stations Dan Monroe reports: this is primarily an iPhone app. However unlike some other sites you can search & add charge locations without owning an Apple product. I’ve added the outlets at my house. Will you add yours? http://www.recargo.com/account/new ~ D

Roving Recharge Truck from Nissan to Aid Dead Electric Cars from AllCarsElectric

Hybrid News

Solar Charging at GE with Toyota Plug-in Prius Prius Plug-in review from consumersearch

EV's are not the only solution to our transportation problems

Massive Solar Tunnel Gives Trains a Boost (Video) from Treehugger

140mph Electric "Wind-powered" Superbike ditto

Father And Son Take Cross-Country "EcoTour" On The Power Of One Light Bulb (from NY1, on another electric-assisted bike w/trailer)

In wider-ranging alternative energy news & policy

GM CEO calls for $1 gas tax hike from CNN Money

Novel Geothermal Technology Packs a One-Two Punch Against Climate Change from Science Daily

Japanese device transforms hot water to energy from EcoSeed

Toyota's big solar array gives UK plant enough energy to make 7,000 cars a year from Autobloggreen

Illuminati Motor Works

2011-06-11T03:01:00.005-04:00

That is one classy team over at Illuminati Motor Works as illustrated by this comment on my last post:

Brandon's project car is beautiful, and it's the one I would have voted for if my Gremlin wasn't a finalist. Good luck, Brandon, and great choice of cars!

- Jen Danzinger, Illuminati Motor Works

Man I could not bury a nice little note like that in the little-used comment section. Now I can seize the opportunity to post the contest photo of Jen's Gremlin, which I really wanted to do anyway because people the Gremlin not only has a great name, it was the irresistibly brash early '70s AMC subcompact that beat Ford & GM to the market in response to higher gas prices: an efficient little vehicle whose iconic design somehow achieved both sexy & cute. Jen's particular car is en déshabillé so it is extra-both!

I knew these Illuminati Motor Works folks must be smart, cool people based on their most excellent name & the mere fact of having a Latin motto, but now I have internet proof because if you click on their logo below you will get to read a very entertaining account of their 216-mile-on-one-charge trip in X-Prize vehicle "Seven."

This practically just happened (June 3) and they just happened to be taking "Seven" down to meet Jack Rickard in Cape Girardieu, Missouri so he could confess on camera that he originally characterized ït as "the ugliest electric vehicle on the planet ... but actually it starts to grow on you." You can read about their visit & see the EVTV episode here.

I like Jack's writing because it is long-form (um like mine). If you have a short attention span don't apply! But here's a typically flavorful teaser: "It's what EVTV is about - let's just go to the garage and build one and to hell with a bunch of Arabs, Oil Companies, and GM executives."

Miata update AND EV news round-up coming soon oh boy stay tuned ...

Another kind of gremlin

Here's a Shocker: BCR Endorses Brandon Hollinger in EVTV Competition

2011-06-09T14:25:00.001-04:00

Oh my gosh folks LOOK our very own Brandon Hollinger of BH Electrics and the EEVC is one of the finalists in Jack Rickard's gigantic, fantastic EVTV Dream Build Giveaway contest! A complete set of top-of-the-line EV components (worth $20,000) will go to the winner -- the 10 finalists were selected by the various component sponsors out of nearly a thousand folks who submitted descriptions of their dream conversions.

Now the decision is up to online voters, so hey everybody -- read about Brandon's plans for this beautifully restored 1972 Austin FX4 British taxi and click on the VOTE FOR THIS FINALIST link at the top of the page to cast your vote in his support!

Then you can read the rest of the contest entries and Jack Rickard's exciting sum-up of the competition ;-)
Well, anyway, that's the order in which I proceeded. In the end I would still have voted for the Austin Taxi because a beautiful EV taxi doing regular tourist rounds on the streets of historic Lancaster PA is, indeed a dream way to promote electric vehicles and a great idea!

The only entry that would even have tempted me were Brandon not my pal & professional ally was the Gremlin conversion (ooooooh I do like Gremlins) proposed by the Illuminati Motor Works, the astonishing team that took a homemade EV to the finals of the X Prize and came in 2nd against much more well-funded & professional entries. They have a great name plus a Latin motto but hey, the 7-seater classic taxi project ultimately wins on coolness. And anyone who saw Brandon's work on the Miata at the EV-ent in Macungie in April knows that he is a meticulous designer and will do a beautiful build.

So take it from us here at Bucks County Renewables, this is the best project in the contest -- we recommend you go vote for Brandon Hollinger and the Austin taxi conversion right now if you haven't already, it only takes a minute!

Vote for Brandon here

Okay, here is the scoop on the rest of the contest and now you should probably go browse Jack Rickard's blog for a while if you haven't already because he is hilarious and knows approximately 10 million times more about converting EV's than I do.

EV News Roundup Week of 6/1

2011-06-05T20:32:00.005-04:00

EV News

Plug In America: "Plug-in vehicles of today are what cell phones were in 1987" - Autobloggreen blurbs the latest Plug-In America newsletter and chooses the exact same pull-out quote I did: nice work Sebastian Blanco.

Ten Reasons Why You’ll Really Enjoy Owning an Electric Car - this piece from All Cars Electric is by Michael Thwaite, who couldn't make it to the Macungie EV-ent in April :-( These 10 arguments for driving an EV are so cogent & well-written I couldn't punish him for being a no-show by burying it farther down in the links!

Electric Cars? Even NASCAR Drivers Want them Race-car loving Volt owners unmasked by All Cars Electric!

Video: Crazy Genius Charges EV by Towing It tee-hee, this link is to Wired's coverage, see also All Cars Electric take here.

Volt, LEAF Charge Faster With Unofficial Hardware Upgrade - also from All Cars Electric as is the next link -- yay for more DIY hacks!

850 Miles In A Tesla Roadster In A Weekend: Crossing The Line - tip-to-tail EV charging stations can now get an electric car from one end of the United Kingdom to the other in 24 hours.

Hybrid News

ReGo Converts Hybrids to Plug-Ins - Finance & Commerce on a Minneapolis conversion start-up.

Fisker Debuts Karma at Monaco Grand Prix Sovereign Prince of Monaco runs it through the street course, first appearance of any monarchy in this blog thanks to EV World.

EV Industry News

Electric BMW i3 to Start at $35K, Have 150 HP and 99-Mile Range from Car & Driver's "deep inside source" ooh

Tesla Roadster Rated at 119 MPGe by U.S. EPA Treehugger's Michael Graham Richard emphasizes that what matters with an EV is not MPG equivalent but how your electricity is made

Ford Follows GM Lead on EV Charge Port Location from EV World -- where do you plug in to charge your EV?

GE unveils EV Solar Carport in Connecticut - from Autobloggreen, picture this near you:

In related EV solar-charging news check out the 25 Solar Assisted EV Charging Stations Recently Deployed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory -- 125 to be completed by this time next year. Thanks to Ira Weissner of the Green Jobs Academy for this link!

London Expands its Electric Car Charging Points As Part of Transportation Plans - By next year, they'll have more charging points than gas stations, according to Treehugger.

On the Horizon

Prince Charles's Eco-Village to Include Nissan Leaf - from Scotland on Sunday yes this is definitely a brand-new source for our weekly EV news roundup

Future Mitsubishi i-MiEV Will Provide Emergency Power to Homes - from the Yomiuri Shinbum, also not a source we have linked to before for sure

Wireless Electric Car Charging Closer to Reality from more familiar web-destination Treehugger on underground induction charging systems

EV's are Not the Only Solution to our Transportation Problems

Airbus-sponsored electric airplane flies for the first time the LA Times blog on a German experimental flight

How Much Does It Cost To Commute By Bike? Treehugger's Lloyd Alter wants to count in food-as-fuel for bikers, which seems a little silly as all us car-drivin' folks eat too

The Forgotten Future of Pedal Power: How Bikes Can Do Just About Anything my friend Alex Wolfson scooped both Autoblogreen and Dan Monroe by sending me this direct link 12 days ago

In Wider-ranging Renewable Energy News & Policy

Solar Panels for All New Buildings in Japan? from Zachary Shahan at ecopolitology

New Obama Administration Rule Paves Way for Offshore Wind Power - ditto

A*Star develops two-step process for biodiesel from waste vegetable oil - EcoSeed on an innovation from Singapore

NASA develops liquid methanol fuel cell to produce electricity - from EcoSeed again

Food for Thought

Long Commutes Kill People - and destroy marriages: from Slate

Carbon emissions from energy use hit record level, agency says CNN reports, but fails to point out that this is how addicts respond to an impending shortage: "oh gosh I am stressed by the fact that I'm about to run out and that's gonna make me use it up faster"

Saudi prince: Keep Americans hooked with cheap oil There's a shocker! Also from CNN.

21st Century Automotive Challenge Report from Dan Monroe of EEVC

2011-05-31T23:43:00.005-04:00

Oh my gosh I was so happy to get this behind-the-scenes report & pix of the EEVC team from Dan.
Yellow Geo Metro = Ken, Green ,VW Rabbit Truck = Al, Narrator = Dan

I got to drive Ken’s car a few rounds in the autocross and half of the around town loops. Then I got to drive Alan’s truck for the first 30 laps of the range event. With both Al and Ken switching battery types it certainly was an odd weekend. The Rabbit came close to dominating the autocross (Al had to turn the Zilla down so he wouldn’t spin the tires whenever he hit the accelerator), but it only went 44 laps in the range event. The Metro is certainly much slower now (it really struggled up some of the hills around town), but came close to beating the Lorax in the range event. Ken drove 71 laps and Methacton drove 73.

In typical fashion Ken and I rushed to meet deadlines and keep things running all weekend. ^_^ When we got there (twenty minutes late) we immediately had to start making hold-down straps for the rear battery pack. Then the charger was acting up the first night. We thought we had it running around 11:00 pm so we left, only to find out the fuse blew out only giving us a partial charge. Just in time for a full day around town starting with a fourteen mile run to Wegmans and two twenty five loops around town. O_o The highway guys got a chance to drive out to take a tour of a wind farm.

Ken got the charger working, but we figured out that it was too underpowered to really be of any use. With the new 6v, 215ah batteries it would take 20+ hours to get a full charge out of it! Fortunately we were able to borrow Penn State’s Manzanita charger they use for the Berkeley. We were able to top up enough for the around town loops and get a full charge for the range event!

Penn State let Ollie drive the Berkeley in the range event. Everyone told him that he looked great in the car and he admitted that it drove very well. So now we have to find a Berkeley, MG, Austin-Healey Sprite, or some other micro sports car that we can convert for him!

Ken, Alan, & Ollie on the track

. ^_^

I had a wonderful time up there this weekend.

Dan

-0-

Here is an easter egg of sorts that Dan buried at the very end of the photos he sent me, without comment, PERHAPS TESTING TO SEE WHETHER I AM PAYING ATTENTION. Ha, paying attention is one of the things I do best. So naturally I have already followed up. You will note this poor abandoned Vanagon is a Syncro (be still my heart) and additionally the exact same color that die Sprite used to be, before she was orange and electric. It has a broken window and probably lots of things wrong inside it and nobody but me wants it I am sure, but just in case I am NOT going to disclose its location. Stay tuned for further reports on potential rescue operations.

Major Local EV-ent taking Place June 8!

2011-05-27T20:49:00.002-04:00

Um this fabulous opportunity kind of exactly conflicts with my own talk about EV's at Lehigh Valley Green Drinks at the Bethlehem Brew Works which I was just about to start promoting the heck out of here on this blog, but hey it all depends whether Plymouth Meeting or Bethlehem are closer to you. Also, on whether at this point in your EV education you need to see cars, because if you want to see some boy o boy here is the place to be on Wednesday June 8:

The EEVC (Eastern Electric Vehicle Club) of Valley Forge PA will present an electric car display in the west parking lot of Plymouth Whitemarsh High School from 6:00- 8:00 PM Wed June 8, 2011. A number of electric conversions will be featured along with the renowned electric Tesla sports car and a historic GM EV-1.

Dr. Joel Anstrom from the Hydrogen and Hybrid Research Lab of Pennsylvania State University will present some of the latest research regarding electric & hybrid vehicles at a meeting in the Plymouth-Whitemarsh Senior High School west end cafeteria at 8:00 P.M. Highlights & awards of this year's 21st Century Automotive Challenge (21st CAC) at Penn State will also be presented.

This special event is sponsored by the EEVC, the 21st CAC, and the industrial technology department at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. It is open to the public. Students, parents, community members, and anyone interested are encouraged to attend.

Announcement by Mr. Oliver H. Perry, President EEVC

EEVC President Oliver Perry behind the wheel of the vintage 1958 Berkeley belonging to Penn State's Hybrid & Hydrogen Vehicle Research Laboratory this past weekend at the 21st Century Automotive Challenge. (More on that to come!)

Great Stuff Vaguely Related to Electric Vehicles

2011-05-25T23:00:00.032-04:00

Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms

If you want to know why we at Bucks County Renewables love this video so much, listen up for the part about how the road diet increases foot traffic in local stores while helping drivers mellow out. Road diets make sense -- spread the word.

Click on the pretty globe graphic the Autobloggreen elves chose to accompany a recent article on market distortion of fuel prices. Richard Canny (former CEO of the Think electric vehicle company) calls for "a thoughtful energy policy that's developed not according to the power of the lobby group, but guided by scientists and policy makers that can help markets reflect the true cost – both to consumers and to society – of the fuel choices we make."

Speaking of markets, here is a rap video which it is possible you like me will really dig. It is about economics.

If you enjoyed that and are thinking to yourself, "My appetite for rap throwdowns having to do with economics has not yet been sated, I could go for seconds" you are in luck because here is the sequel. I also hope you will pass both of these videos on because they are so excellent. You could while doing so mention that you saw them originally on an EV blog, which would automatically make the topic relevant to electric vehicles (more focused posts coming up I promise).

In the meantime, here's to cheap, efficient, long-lasting DIY tech as an alternative to the wasteful & bloated mass-production/consumer model -- clink clink cheers!

Plug In America Reports on EV Legislation

2011-05-24T01:30:00.004-04:00

WE AT BUCKS COUNTY RENEWABLES LOVE PLUG IN AMERICA
and here is their monthly newsletter in case you do not get it in your email which you should! Keep your eye on the federal bills mentioned below and let's all think about the model state legislation coming out of California. Dan Davids who is the hard-working president of Plug in America wrote what follows but I agree with it 100%.

The modest retrenchment of gasoline prices from recent highs comes as good news to consumers already stretched thin, but we at Plug In America remain convinced the overall cost trend for petroleum-based fuels is upward. In the face of rising worldwide demand and dwindling discoveries of new oil fields, hopes for a return to cheap gas are folly at worst and poor planning at best.

The solution, of course, is to get more plug-in vehicles on the road so that more people can enjoy the many benefits of driving electric, not the least of which is a dramatic reduction in fuel cost. The production hiccups caused by the Japan earthquake are quickly being corrected by Nissan and GM. The makers of the Leaf and Volt, respectively, say they’re on track to deliver all their 2011 production commitments. This is good news for the EV car segment.

This month’s newsletter shines the light on the activities of our ever-busy legislative arm. With EVs slated for delivery in more states, we’re seeing a significant increase in requests for our expertise in this area. If you haven’t officially joined Plug In America yet, please consider doing so today. Your donation helps us continue this vital policy work across the country.

Thank you for supporting the cause of plug-in vehicles.

Dan Davids
President

Legislative Update

Plug In America’s legislative team, which has helped shape some of the country’s most EV-friendly public policy, has been following several new bills and EV incentives-in-the-making. Led by board member/Legislative Director Jay Friedland, the team has been meeting with lawmakers’ staffs to keep momentum moving in the right direction. These issues are expected to come to a head this summer. Stay tuned. When the time is right, we’ll ask our members to ask their representatives to show support for these crucial measures.

Here’s what’s up:

In the U.S. Senate:
Charging America Forward Act, S298, Sen. Debbie Stabinow (D-Mich.): Would raise from 200,000 to 500,000 the number of EVs eligible to receive the existing $7,500 tax credit. Also converts the tax credit into a rebate, similar to that in the Cash for Clunkers program.

In the U.S. House of Representatives:
Electric Drive Vehicle Deployment Act of 2011, HR 1685: A bipartisan effort driven by the Electrification Coalition to create 10 geographic regions across the U. S. which would receive increased support for EV infrastructure ($300 million per region) and boost the $7,500 EV credit for to $9,500 for the first additional 500,000 drivers.

Also just introduced in the House is another bipartisan bill, the Open Fuel Standard Act, which would require that 50 percent of new automobiles in 2014, 80 percent in 2016 and 95 percent in 2017 be warranted to operate on nonpetroleum fuels in addition to or instead of petroleum-based fuels. Electricity is one of the key nonpetroleum fuel technologies specified in this bill.

We are also working hard to make sure that the federal incentives for EV charging infrastructure and 2-3 wheeled plug-in vehicles are extended before they expire at the end of the year.

At the State Level in California:
SB209, Senate Majority Leader Ellen M. Corbett (D-San Leandro): Prevents condo homeowners associations from denying residents to install chargers. Modeled after legislation that Plug In America helped to pass in Hawaii. Click here to see a video of the recent panel that Plug In America convened on EV charging for multifamily housing.

SB730, Sen. Christine Kehoe (D-San Diego): Accelerates the permitting process for EV charger installations.

AB475, Assemblymember Betsy Butler (53rd District): Gives plug-in hybrid EV drivers the vehicle sticker (now awarded only to EV drivers) needed to use public chargers and parking spaces.

We’re also watching:
California Energy Commission funding for EV projects and infrastructure, and actively participating in the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) efforts to renew the Clean Vehicle Program, which provides the rebates of up to $5,000 for new EVs. These rebates are slated for a three-fold increase in overall funding but individual rebates would likely be cut in half by the end of summer. This would mean that nearly six times as many cars would be eligible for the incentive.

EV road taxes, which are being considered in several states including Washington, Oregon, Texas and Minnesota. While EV owners want to pay their fair share, we see this as a troubling trend of dis-incentivizing plug-ins at the very time we should be increasing incentives. A fair way to address this issue would be to base a fee—for all vehicles—on Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) and vehicle weight. Meanwhile, any EV road tax should be waived until a substantial number of EVs are on the road.

APA Planning Conference

There’s an old axiom, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” When it comes to rolling out charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, Plug In America is doing its part to ensure that failure is not an option. President Dan Davids spoke recently at the National Conference of the American Planning Association in Boston. His topic was best practices and lessons learned around the installation of EV infrastructure (EVI).

Based on the groundbreaking work done last year in Washington that produced “Electric Vehicle Infrastructure: A Guide for Local Governments,” coupled with Plug In America’s real-world experience with charging installed under CARB’s legacy Zero Emissions Vehicle program, urban planners were treated to both theory and practice.

The session in Boston was well received, with municipalities from a number of cities contacting Plug In America for more information. Fleshing out a fuller presentation, Dan has assembled a rogue’s gallery of photographs of public charging stations, good and bad. He’ll be sharing them at a meeting of the U.S. Green Building Council in Spokane Washington this month. If you come across a new charging station that you particularly like or dislike, take a picture, tell us why, and send it to dan@pluginamerica.org.

Nissan Leaf - official pace car for the 2011 Boston Marathon

Plug In America On the Road
Plug In America co-founder Paul Scott will speak on June 14 at Automotive News magazine’s Green Car Conference in Novi, Mich. Paul will be joined by what the leading trade journal calls some of the other “most influential leaders in area of sustainability in the automotive world.” These experts include Tony Posawatz, Vehicle Line Director, Chevrolet Volt and Global Electric Vehicle Development, General Motors; Nancy Gioia, Director,  Global Electrification,  Ford Motor Company; and Bill Reinert,  National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Manager, Toyota Motor Sales, USA.

EV News Roundup Returns!

2011-05-20T20:42:00.000-04:00

As I drove my hybrid around today on these delicious Upper Bucks County windy hill roads where nobody needs to drive more than 30 miles an hour ever, I was thinking how when I was a kid I was really into going to space; I was 5 when I watched the Apollo 13 moonwalk and I pretty much assumed that the moon would be a regular tourism destination by the time I was grown up. I assumed I would get to visit, stopping along the way at the orbiting galaxy lounge. I also thought, because I read Ranger Rick Magazine, that everybody on the planet would be recycling and using geothermal energy, and because my family boycotted grapes I labored for years under the misapprehension that abusive agricultural labor practices were a thing of the past. On all these matters I was sadly confused, though I must say I like the internet, cellphones, craft beer, good coffee, delicious local food and the incremental improvements in gay marriage & medicinal marijuana so I am not complaining about this future that I live in exactly, just pointing out that it too could be improved with more space travel and less capitalism and war. Back in the day my own grandparents were pointing out that the latter two constituted a waste of human resources and time so folks -- let's get with getting over that stuff already.

So, just reminding everybody that my fascination with EV's is sublimation for the tragic absence of actual spaceships in all our lives, and presenting Dan Monroe's EEVC news round-up now that he is back from watching the space shuttle launch -- which I hope I am going to get a report on that I can somehow work into this blog, obviously space shuttles = related to EV's, because I said so.

EV History, My Favorite Topic

Riding the World's First Hybrid Car: 1900 Porsche Semper Vivus Yes! Treehugger's Brian Merchant revives an ancient technology, nice article and photos!

Pure EV News

Moto Mundo Electric World Tour completes around-the-world trip with EV Without a support team, a production Qashqai Electric from Danish AfutureEV was driven from Copenhagen around the world, through Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Russia, Mongolia, China, USA, Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Holland.between June 25, 1010 and May 7, 2011. Kudos to Danish husband and wife team Nina Rasmussen and Hjalte Tin!

An Electric Buggy Will Be the First EV to Take on the World's Toughest Race EV buggy heads off to the Dakar Rally, a rugged 9,000k off-road trek thru Chile, Argentina & Peru. If you were looking for a road race with a geographically confusing name you are reading the right blog tonight!

Peugot's 100% Electric Concept EX1 Has Broken Six World Records Current world's fastest EV, also very sexy looking, yum!

Electric motorcycles pick up speed

EV Owners Exempt From Beijing's License Plate Lottery

Batteries & Charging Stations

Volvo C30 Electric to participate in wireless charging project

Toyota Explores Wireless Car Charging Again with the connected thing, apparently EV's are coming along at just the right time to synergize with other technologies, wireless everything-charging for me and Nikola Tesla! ¡Viva la rEVolución!

GM initiates construction of a plant to make EV components in US

With 700 E.V.’s to Lease, BMW Announces Charging Partner for U.S. Market

Hybrid News

PowerGenix builds nickel-zinc batteries for micro-hybrid industry

Toyota Launches Prius Alpha 7-Seater in Japan

All Prius Models Will Be 'Plug-In' Starting in 2014

Toyota offers free badge of honor to Prius owners

First hydraulic hybrid school bus in U.S. to run on recycled cooking oil

Future Tech of All Sorts, My Second Favorite Topic

Ultracapacitors to Boost the Range of Electric Cars MIT Technology Review reports on CA start up Nanotune's electrolyte advancements for high-energy storage.

New Way to Control Conductivity: Reversible Control of Electrical and Thermal Properties Could Find Uses in Storage Systems Science Daily reports on materials science advancements from MIT that could play fuse or thermal collector role.

Laser Sparks Revolution in Internal Combustion Engines Kind of like a double-flame cigar lighter, this technology has nothing whatsoever to do with EV's but hello in my actual present future apparently a "yttrium-aluminum-gallium" laser exists so this obviously must be celebrated, thank you Science Daily.

Splitting Water for Renewable Energy Simpler Than First Thought? Manganese-Based Catalyst Shows Promise Only including this hydrogen thing because Science Daily is a respectable source and "Birnessite"-- the name of the known and harmless mineral formation that is the catalyst in this research -- is such a pretty name.

New horizontal turbine can capture wind from all directions Ecoseed.org reports on an Australian company called Katru Eco-Energy on more renewable tech.

Present Day Stuff Plus Predictions

Orlando gas station charges $5.69 a gallon We at Bucks County Renewables are for high gas prices, as everybody knows.

Five business models to boost electric cars CNet's Green Tech columnist Martin LaMonica points out how easily smart EV operation could integrate into our present circumstances, where everybody already understands all about connection and recharging.

Video: Volt, Leaf impress in crash tests‏ This is shameless crash porn typical of what I'd expect of a mainstream outlet like CNN. Ok I guess we can open up the EV market to the people who watch stuff like this, yippee.

Americans Are Working To Feed Their Cars, Not Their Families Lloyd Alter summarizes fellow Toronto blogger James Schwartz's statistical breakdown of the true costs of owning an ICE vehicle

Global Car Ownership Per Capita Peaked in 2004 - Are We Breaking Our Auto Addiction? from Treehugger

Steven Chu Highlights 1,800+ Electric Car Charging Stations Installed Under Recovery Act from Treehugger

Plug-in vehicle point-of-purchase rebates could replace tax credits in 2012 from Autobloggreen

Whew! Happy Ending To Pre-Show Prep, & Miata update

2011-05-18T17:59:00.006-04:00

As I mentioned in a pre-EV-ent blogpost, just a couple of days before the Macungie show our rebuilt & upgraded controller was still winging its way back from Iowa (burning LOTSA fossil fuel on its special hurry-up airplane ride). I was trying to play it cool but I was sweating a little bit! Fortunately Dave Mosher of Custom Electronics came through like a champ so the controller arrived in a timely fashion. On Thursday Saint Bill & Adam the Intern wired up a SUPER-NIFTY new cooling fan that looks a lot like a flux capacitor, and on Friday I moseyed on down to assist Bill in the last stages of the install.

Naturally things did not go quite as smoothly as we hoped; there were still a few obstacles to overcome. For one thing, Bill had carefully photographed the original set-up prior to disassembly, but then his camera went on a trip with relatives and never returned so we had to wing it! It took us a long time (turn key, hmmm, this contactor opens, that contactor doesn't, rewire, rewire, now both contactors open but motor doesn't spin, rewire, rewire) to figure out from the wiring diagram that 1 of the high-voltage cables had been hooked up wrong. Whew, no smoke got out of our newly-upgraded controller during the testing process!

For another thing, we dropped a whole box of tiny electrical connectors into the engine bay while we were working and of course one fell into the motor and it took me 20 minutes to extricate it, which is absolutely par for the course when time is short and you are sweating to get your vehicle ready for a show.

I have now learned that tiny electrical connectors are aluminum & thus scattered ones (thank goodness they didn't ALL fall into the motor) cannot be cleaned up with handy magnets. I did sort them all once more by color, size & gender; Bill had to drag me away from that engrossing task to take our triumphant test-ride around the block in the re-rolling e-Van!

Sadly, pressure on my personal schedule made it impossible to bring the e-Van out to State College this coming weekend for the 21st Century Automotive Challenge or even attend sans vehicle. I am sad that I won't be able to document this year's event, but looking forward to hearing and posting about the gathering.

Meanwhile the Miata scheduled to be converted during our July 25-30 hands-on workshop (registration open now, 5 of 16 slots filled, get yours in soon!) is over at North Montco Technical Career Center getting enthusiastically de-ICEd (or "de-fossilized" as Bill sometimes says) by a team of eager automotive technology students. He's sent me lots of photos and it's so great to see how it is coming along -- here are a few, possibly not in accurate chronological order. Remember, this blog is not a to-do manual, more like an impressionistic painting or um maybe a comic strip with lots of words by ME accompanied by photographs of cars, sometimes in the act of having their insides taken out.

So yay St Bill & the kids from NMTCC who are helping move the Miata on to a new LiFe (stole that joke from Brandon Hollinger of BH Electrics) as a quiet, clean, efficient, no-blood-for-oil, who-cares-what-gas-costs-let's-get-off-the-junk, you-can-do-it-yourself-in-your-own-garage-if-you-want-to-bad-enough converted EV. ¡Viva la rEVolución!

Yay - What a Great EV-ent in Macungie 2011

2011-05-06T20:11:00.000-04:00

We had gorgeous weather (once the day warmed up) & a terrific turn-out of vehicles and spectators! Most of the photos below are ones posted by Nevyn & Chris in the forum over at www.ecomodder.com -- they were MUCH more timely than I have been in posting this update and I thank them for the documentation and for letting me link to their pix -- plus a few by Peggy Heminitz from the Emmaus Patch.

We had some great additions to the display this year so I've focused this blog entry on the cars that were new to our show.

So many cars they couldn't all fit in the frame ... the green 1979 Comuta-Car above was a last-minute addition this year, brought by Rick Tompkins of Hatboro PA who recently revived it and has been using it to, yes, commute to work. It had been sitting since 1984 and started right up when he put new batteries in! Behind the Comuta-Car is a white 1983 Nissan pick-up with a tilting aluminum bed which was converted by Don Barry all the way back in 1999. I met Don & his wife at the very first Energy Fest I attended back in 2006 (just after we bought our Dodge Colt EV). He was the first fellow EV owner I ever met, so I was thrilled to finally get to see his truck on Saturday!

batteries under the bed of Don Barry's pick-up allow it to be used for hauling cargo

A truly last-minute addition to the display was Chris Freyman's very sweet 1983 VW Rabbit, which he has been working on since June 2009 (right after our first EV-ent -- coincidence????). On Saturday it was all ready to roll and fully inspected, but he hadn't gotten his registration back from the DMV yet so he was resigned to staying on the audience side until, fortunately for us, one of the show's attenders offered to loan him a fully-transferable dealer registration for the day. So home went Chris (he lives just a couple miles away) and back he drove -- legally -- to join the exhibitors at his very first EV show! Hurray!

In addition to performing the meticulous installation above, Chris lovingly restored the vehicle AND built all the electronics himself -- unsurprising news, since he was also instrumental in the design of that OpenRevolt open-source controller which Adam Brunette brought down from Massachusetts in 2010. This year Adam was proud to add a new open source component of his own design to their table display -- a home-built (but not quite complete) 6kW PFC charger.

When finished, this universal charger will be capable of charging any type of battery -- lead-acid, lithium, and more -- from 12-400V! It runs off either 110 or 220VAC, and on the side it features a stylish knob-and-touch-screen interface. Click here for more info on this charger!

It was great to welcome Adam, his wife Jessica, and friend Kyle Gibbons back again for their second year -- they win the prize for farthest-traveling exhibitors!

Having debuted his just-completed Saab here in 2009, Brandon Hollinger triumphantly returned with this 1997 Miata, the first vehicle converted by his brand-new Lancaster, PA conversion shop, BH Electrics. Also rolling out for the very first time, this conversion is so fresh that it's still lacking a BMS and some of the bells and whistles that its owners have requested (including air conditioning -- a rare amenity in an EV). As the only AC/lithium-ion conversion on display the "Mazda LiFE" drew admiring crowds all afternoon; the Emmaus Patch called it "the most popular car of the day" and Brandon's smiling face (and beautiful workmanship) was featured in both the online and the print versions of the Morning Call article on the EV-ent.

As always the EV-ent was the culmination of a lot of planning and hard work by our little organizing committee, but none more than former Judge Bob Young, who last year proposed that our EV-ent this year should feature the installation of an EV plug-in station at the park and who worked determinedly away to bring that vision to reality! What a thrill it was to watch Representative Doug Reichley cut the ribbon on this conversion-friendly installation (it is not one of the new "charging stations" designed for production EV's, but a pair of regular 120-volt outlets for free opportunity charging at the park):

Left: State Rep. Doug Reichley (R-Berks/Lehigh) Right: Former Judge Bob Young of Macungie

Other highlights of the day included our traditional owner panel (standing room only this year!)

plus these nifty solar cookers built by Boy Scout Troop #31 of Zionsville PA, who sold solar-cooked hot dogs all day -- I can testify that they work just as well for veggie dogs as for the regular kind!

For a full listing of the vehicles present and video of the Silent EV Parade, check out the EV-ent website. (May not be updated till later this weekend.) Thanks once again to all our exhibitors and participants on the owner panel -- and a grateful shout-out to the members of the organizing committee: our fearless leader Anna DiGate, the father-son team of Don and Bob Young, and Val Bertoia, who couldn't be with us on the day of the EV-ent but whose spirit was present every time somebody rang the EV gong he had donated for our raffle!

Many of the EV's featured last Saturday in Macungie -- and lots more alternative fuel vehicles -- will be on display at the Transportation Tent at the Pennsylvania Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Festival Sept 16-18. Energy Fest sponsors MAREA gave a generous financial contribution to the EV-ent to cover our insurance requirements, and I hope to see lots of faces from Macungie out at the Festival in Kempton this fall!

Bucks County Renewables Awarded Grant for Waste Veggie-Oil Conversion -- and EV-ent in Macungie is TOMORROW

2011-04-29T14:55:00.003-04:00

Things never seem to slow down around here whew!

Yesterday I learned that Bucks County Renewables has been awarded $3,000 by the Pennsylvania DEP's Environmental Education Grants Program to offer our first ever waste-veggie oil conversion workshop next spring. BCR is one of 102 non-profits, schools, universities and conservation districts across the state to receive funding for environmental education programming and you can read all about those awards here in the official press release.

I am psyched for this workshop. We are hoping to convert a truck to tow our EV's to displays out of range and stop burning fossil fuel in order to promote the advantages of electric! While EV's are of course best suited for local, daily use, if you're an advocate/activist you often find yourself traveling to share the word at shows like our EV-ent tomorrow. I so appreciate the owners who will be hooking up/towing in their vehicles Saturday morning to Macungie Memorial Park. It looks like it is going to be a beautiful May day and we are going to have a super-fun time!

The Schedule

EV's on display all day long, with owner/drivers standing by to chat with visitors, plus the following:

last year's very popular do-it-yourself open-source 1000-amp controller will return, accompanied by a DIY charger for EV's
two local EV conversion shops: NJEVConversions and BH Electrics
free CFL's from ECOS Consulting
bake sale
Boy Scout Troop #31 from Old Zionsville PA demonstrating original solar cooker design
solar-cooked hot dogs for sale, plus other foods from the park concession

1:00 pm State Representative Doug Reichley to cut ribbon on first park plug-in station in Eastern PA

2:00 pm Owner Panel

3:00 Drawing for "EV Gong" from Bertoia Studios

3:15 Quiet EV Parade

Sure hope you'll join us!

visit the website for directions or email macungieevent@gmail.com with questions

Bucks County Renewables in the News

2011-04-26T15:07:00.000-04:00

Hurray -- this year I was asked for an Earth Day article about electric vehicles by the Bucks County Herald, my wonderful local newspaper. I got to plug Revenge of the Electric Car, our July hands-on workshop AND the EV-ent in Macungie all at the same time! It appeared last Wednesday -- click on the image below to link directly to the page where it appeared.

With apologies for the unexpected hiatus in EV News Roundup last week -- the lapse came on my end and not on hard working Dan Monroe's part!

Among other things we have been busily getting ready for the EV-ent in Macungie THIS SATURDAY. Anna, Don, Bob, Val and I met yesterday to review last-minute details. My heart is in my throat because the e-Van controller has just left Iowa (where it was being rebuilt and upgraded) and so once again Bill is going to have to scramble to get the vehicle put together right before a show. Somehow we always wind up with a frantic race at the last minute despite all our plans and deadlines.

Looking forward to sharing the happy ending to this story and to reporting on the EV-ent -- not sure if I'll have time for an EV News Roundup this week or not, but I'll try!

Field Trip: New England Electric Automobile Association

2011-04-14T22:41:00.007-04:00

So on Saturday I fulfilled a long-standing promise to Jesse Rudavsky of the NEEAA to pay a visit to his club, which draws members from Connecticut, Massachusetts & Rhode Island. Jesse has traveled down to PA annually to attend the Energy Fest, where we met in 2007. He's also joined us for the EV-ent in Macungie in the the past, so he is serious about reaching across regional borders! A professional tractor-trailer operator, Jesse isn't fazed by driving long distances -- and being pretty up-close-and-personal with our current automotive situation, he really cares about what we all choose to drive.

Jesse remembers seeing a converted electric pick-up truck in a parking lot when he was still in high school, and trying to hang around until the owner returned but being dragged off by his friends. The first car he bought was a used Honda Insight, which he later traded in for a used Gen I Prius that lasted almost 345,000 miles. A commenter at www.cleanmpg.com mourned Jesse's high-mileage Prius as "a very visible rolling ambassador for automotive hybrid technology" after the accident -- totally not Jesse's fault -- that stopped its odometer permanently. Jesse has since put 261,000 miles (and counting) on his Gen II while tirelessly advocating for hybrids to friends, family & the folks he runs into on the street.

Early on in his green-your-ride-ambassador career Jesse ran into that electric pick-up truck from his adolescence again, and this time he was able to meet its owner -- Dave Robie, long secretary of the NEEAA, who has been driving and advocating for converted EV's (trucks, scooters, and electric tractors) for at least as long as Jesse has been alive and probably longer!

Dave Robie with some pull-outs from his Fuel Saver's Guide, a downloadable, engagingly no-nonsense compendium of tips on conserving everything, from gas to domestic energy to money, time, and effort.

Dave brought Jesse into the fold of the NEEAA and -- as Jesse's been telling me for years -- it is a great group of people, with a long-standing tradition of rotating their meetings between various geographical locations in the region. Food is a part of their meeting culture (frequent cookouts and, in winter, big pots of chili figure in their gathering notes and reminiscences), which has built an obvious sense of community. The meeting I went to was being held at an Earth Day event which coincided with their usual 2nd Saturday of the month get-together

so they gathered in the Bethany CT town hall for a brief business meeting and spent the rest of the afternoon showcasing the member EV's on display:

Mike Okrentz' 97 Chevy S10, vanity-plated "ELEKTRK" (sporting stylin' new graphics on the side) and Dave Cover's very sweet 87 Porsche 944 with the ultimate understated 2-letter vanity plate.

Dave's Porsche is kitted out for racing & runs on NiCad batteries -- the first I've seen deployed in an EV. Hearing him rave about their long-lasting dependability, I asked: why don't we see more EV's utilizing this battery technology? He explained that it's incredibly hard to get hold of NiCads -- though if you can find them, they are usually very cheap (a main source being military surplus). Dave's ride also featured this funny magnetic sign announcing his club allegiance:

Prius modder, hypermiler, and lately "How to Kit Out Your Prius for 60+mpg RVíng" evangelist Hobbit was also present -- known and nicknamed for his always-bare feet (he brings slip-ons to wear into restaurants).

Below, his Prius car-camping exhibit: the seat folds perfectly flat, so a single futon on top & windowshades make for private and comfy sleeping. On either side of the door in this shot you can glimpse of the styly new yellow-and-black striping that adorns Hobbit's "rolling mod laboratory."

Member Guy Maillet's vehicle was not on onsite, but he shared these photos with me; years ago, he both designed and built this vehicle as an internal combustion engine car; much more recently, he converted it to electric using forklift components.

the build

the car

the badge (yes it is actually registered as a "Maillet" with the state of CT -- now that is taking the DIY car thing to a whole new level, I loved it)

The other members present introduced themselves & their vehicles during the business meeting, so I learned that Gilles (ack I missed his last name) owns a Citi-Car and recently became the proud owner of the 1989 EV Jetta formerly belonging to the club's long-time and evidently beloved president Bob Rice, who recently suffered a severe stroke. President Dave Oliveria, who drives a converted 98 Ford Ranger, has capably stepped into Bob's shoes and all the group has rallied to support Bob and his family, who have been forced to sell off his home and possessions in order to finance his rehabilitative care in what I am afraid is a typical example of our profoundly damaged and damaging healthcare system. (Sigh ...)

To my disappointment member Karen Nakamura did not have her 2-wheel Piaggo Boxer moped with her. She converted it to electric herself and it is her only vehicle and totally rad so I had to include this picture, which you can click on to link to her blog -- from which I learned that she is super-technical as well as a more than competent fabricator. In her last update she'd just switched her setup to run on used Prius NiMH batteries, an interesting aftermarket use.

Another member present, Joe Weber, is a former EV driver who says a hybrid now suits his driving needs better, and club treasurer George Gillett is an EV fan who is prevented from owning one by the fact that he lives in a condo and does not have convenient access to overnight charging.

In addition to maintaining a lively and informative Yahoo mailing list, the NEEAA has a web page where you can see lots of other great member cars. I cannot resist posting this one before I return to the actual events of Saturday:

this little 1979 Subaru van is so cute I cannot stand it I totally want to meet this van in person someday

After the meeting we went back outside for the rest of the (beautiful, sunny) afternoon and got a surprise visit from a relatively new EV owner in Connecticut, Ronnie Carroll of Bridgeport PA. Ronnie's friend Nate Mays, Jr kindly helped him tow over this 1974 Pinto, which was converted years ago by a local inventor (at something like 7,000 original miles) Check out how gorgeous and orange it is.

Ronnie says he had never seen an electric car before, but as soon as he looked at this baby he knew he wanted one, a feeling I must say I believe is captured in the photo above. Post-conversion the Pinto spent at least 10 years in stasis, in the possession of an owner who had never figured out how to get it to work. By the end he was threatening to strip out the EV components and soup it up with a V8 engine. So along comes Ronnie, swaps the guy a Chevette he owned for the EV Pinto (somewhere out there is a V8-equipped Chevette as an incidental part of this true story) and successfully brings this sweet-and-did-you-notice-orange classic back online -- with a 96-volt pack of 12-volts and I'm sure a lot of loving tinkering (he was modest about how much he had to do). Ronnie's been following along on the NEEAA discussion list so this was a chance for him to meet some of the members in person as they gathered around to marvel at the old, old Curtis controller and the massive DC motor -- obviously industrial and possibly out of an elevator.

Everyone shared tips with Ronnie on successfully registering/inspecting an EV and assured him it that his Pinto is a clean build and ready to go street-legal. One more home-brewed and lovingly-restored EV is about to hit the road in Bridgeport and new connections were forged because of it -- it was all so much fun to witness. Thanks to Ronnie & Nate for making my day, and to Jesse & the NEEAA for a really enjoyable visit to New England!

Of course I was up there to plug the April 30 EV-ent down here in Macungie (heads up everybody that is practically around the corner!) but I also talked up the 21st Century Automotive Challenge in State College PA, and there was a lot of interest among NEEAA members -- in fact they immediately started tossing around the idea of renting a car-carrier and coming en masse. I am certainly looking forward to seeing any or all of them again on May 21-23. For registration info visit this website and totally sign up! If you go because you heard about it from me, tell Joel Anstrom I've been promoting the event up a storm because that is true.

EV News Roundup Week of 4/4

2011-04-11T23:29:00.011-04:00

Pure EV News

Plugging Electric Drivetrains into Trucks This is a good overall summary posted on the Reuters site but noting that the material actually came from Matter Network I visited there and immediately ran across this terrific EV truck from Italy:

look it is called a T-Rex that totally made my day, maybe I will send this link to Ryan North though I am shy about that seeing as how I have been totally plagiarizing his writing style lately. It turned out that Matter Network actually picked this article up from Gas 2.0 which turns out to be an entirely awesomesauce blog (where the writers deploy words like "awesomesauce"). You should certainly check it out.

SIM-Drive Corporation develops in-wheel-motor-EV  Ecoseed reports on this different concept for EV's -- the electric motors are in the wheels! Japanese company SIM-Drive has produced the first prototype and is planning mass production in 2013.

Chevy Mi-ray Concept Introduces Mid-Electric Drive System  EV World showcases this concept vehicle developed by GM Korea and introduced at the 2011 Seoul Motor Show last week. "Mi-ray" is Korean for "future" so I guess they agree with us here at Bucks County Renewables that EV's are the vehicles of tomorrow, on the roads today.

Kia Rolls Out Naimo Electric Car Concept  Also at the Seoul Motor Show, Kia offered up an electric CUV (crossover-utility vehicle), joining the Venga (which debuted last year at the Geneva Auto Show) and the adorable little POP city car (which was showcased at the Paris Auto Show). Let us all worship costy at qsautonews.com for the following fabulous line in his POP review back in 2010:   "like what Hello Kitty might drive if she lived in the Tron universe."

Electric Motorcycles Are Also Extremely Cool

Brooklyn Motorized: Electric With a Jolt of Retro Style and removable batteries (for charging in your apartment) to boot.

Batteries & Charging Technology

Building Better Batteries for Electric Cars A solid overview of the topic that ran in the New York Times back on 3/30. Interesting observation from Alex Molinaroli of Johnson Controls (which builds li-ion batts for BMW, Daimler, & Ford): he explains that since we don't yet have years' worth of road-test data from primarily electric cars, manufacturers are currently "overbuilding" their batteries, adding in materials and safety features to ensure they meet the demands of the drive-train warranty. He claims something like 50% of the material used in current battery packs is "overcompensation."

Ford Uses Liquid Heating In Focus Electric To Give Batteries The Edge In Cold Weather My favorite part of this article from Electronic Design is when Sherif Marakby, Ford's director of Electrification Programs and Engineering, points out that batteries are just like people: “they both achieve maximum performance working under moderate, unchanged temperatures." Now that's a fact! Mr. Marakby seems like a sensible guy, based on that observation and on the fact that Ford has a very intelligent and forward-thinking electrification plan in place. They've started with the Ford Focus EV, which they're building on the same assembly lines as the regular gas Focus so that they can ramp up production to meet demands. They have also committed to electrifying 5 more models in the Ford fleet over the next two years. Go Ford go, sorry I was kinda trashing you for being mealy-mouthed in the last EV News Roundup.

Pennsylvania Firm Develops Wireless Electric Car Charging Mat Industry Week reports on a start-up down in Malvern, PA (in Chester County) which is developing an innovative charging system for vehicles -- and will be testing it in a pilot program out in California this summer featuring a 100% electric airport shuttle bus. Big shout-out to Andy Daga of Momentum Dynamics and to Enterprise Rent-a-Car for enabling this excellent combo of test, outreach & education.

Novel Nanowires Boost Fuel Cell Efficiency Science Daily reports on a group of Yale scientists who have significantly improved the efficiency & durability of fuel cells by developing a new catalyst system.

Our Current Energy Solutions Create Some Big Problems

Fukushima Daiichi: A Bitter Pill for Vermont Nuclear Foes

Japan dumps thousands of tons of radioactive water into sea

Penguin rescue operation under way after south Atlantic oil spill

Gulf oil rig owner apologizes for calling 2010 'best year' ever 2010 was such a great year in safety over at Transocean that their top executive earned a $200,000 annual raise plus a bonus of nearly $375,000 last week, shortly before the 1-year anniversary of one of their rigs exploding, killing 11 people and leaking record quantities of oil for the next 3 months. When their corporate explanation for Giant Bonuses After Giant Bungles started getting reported all over the place on sites like CNN, Transocean issued a press release noting that referring to 2010 as its best safety year ever "may have been insensitive." Wow, that's some deep soul-searching self-scrutiny there guys, keep it up.

BP Seeks Permission to Resume Offshore Oil Drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

On the Technological Horizon for Renewable Energy

River Water and Salty Ocean Water Used to Generate Electricity Electrolyte-exchanging technology invented by researchers at Stanford could mean power plants at river mouths -- giant batteries fueled by nothing more than the salinity difference between fresh & saltwater. That is pretty cool folks.

Heard This Before Department

Obama rolls out plan to cut oil imports The U.S. "will keep on being a victim to shifts in the oil market until we get serious about a long-term policy for secure, affordable energy," said the President last week, and if you have not seen the brilliantly well-crafted routine below demonstrating exactly how long THAT mantra has been around then please watch. It is funny but it also hurts! Thank you to mini-E driver and passionate EV promoter Tom Moloughney for posting this to your fantastic blog right after it aired. I sent it around to everyone I know but somehow forgot to share it here, I don't know, sometimes that happens.

The Daily Show

Next up this week (before the next installment of EV news -- yes, this is actually last week's roundup whoops sometimes that happens): I visited the New England Electric Automobile Association this weekend and unsurprisingly had a really great time talking to a bunch of cool EV people and ogling on their cars. Write-up & photos to come!