Welcome to the Electric Car Weblog. In addition to links, news, and tips about electric cars and other forms of alternative transportation we are publishing an on-line diary of our current EV project. Started in August 2005 the chronicle follows the conversion of a gas powered Ford Probe into an Electric Car.
You will find articles organized by categories, along with recent comments, along the right hand column of the website. If you are just getting started with the idea of converting a gas car to electric be sure to check out Your First Electric Car .
Welcome and enjoy!
-Jerry
You will find articles organized by categories, along with recent comments, along the right hand column of the website. If you are just getting started with the idea of converting a gas car to electric be sure to check out Your First Electric Car .
Welcome and enjoy!
-Jerry
- Congrats to Gavin on his first EV drive! Youtube version here, some photos over at the DIYEV Forum, and of course straight from the EV’ers mouth at his website.
- And speaking of the DIY EV forum, I’ve been meaning to share a few links to the EV Blog, Forum, and Wiki.
- James passes along a link to an article on The Oil Drum by our Italian EV friends Ugo Bardi and Pietro Cambi.
- Not really a new link or anything, but while watching the baby the other day I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Motor controllers and ran across this line regarding Controls for AC Induction Motors: “Recent developments in drive electronics have allowed efficient and convenient speed control of these motors, where this has not traditionally been the case. The newest advancements allow for torque generation down to zero speed. This allows the polyphase AC induction motor to compete in areas where DC motors have long dominated, and present an advantage in robustness of design, cost, and reduced maintenance.”
- Helping to balance the electrical grid…with your EV.
- Finally a bit of humor to round off the links. Check out Top Gear’s show on the Peel P50. While watching it I kept thinking “…a handful of lithiums, a pancake wheel hub motor.”.
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- Ran across this article on Ultra-Capacitors over at IEEE Spectrum the other day. I hadn’t realized how big of a market there already is for the ultra-caps: “Hundreds of thousands of ultracapacitors are manufactured each year, for applications that require rapid recharging, high power output, and repetitive cycling. In 2005, the ultracapacitor market was between US $272 million and $400 million..”
- Winner of the space-age-design award for EVs (or prototype EVs) has got to go to the Aptera. Who knows if this will ever be found cruising your local streets but it is an interesting design: looks like an airplane someone plucked the wings off of. More on their website.
- Putting some LEDs into your EV? Here’s a handy LED Calculator to help you get the right series resistor. There’s even a series/parallel version.
- A friend passed along this CNN article, Gas Guzzlers get new lives featuring Neil Young having his Lincoln Continental turned into a hybrid (bio-diesel no less). Intrigued I searched the web for the guy doing the work and found this Fast Company article along with another article trying to follow up on his claims.
Comment [3]
A Kiwi EV · 7 November 07
Our New Zealand friend Gavin Shoebridge has been making steady progress on turning his 1987 Mitshubishi Tredia into a full-blown (uhm, maybe not the best word) Electric Car. He’s got the green light (i.e. money) to buy batteries and most if not all of the parts are now in and ready for construction.
Sir Forkenswift - an EV! · 16 October 07
Congratulations to Darin who now has a street legal EV.
You might remember Forkenswift from earlier appearances here, when even Darin wasn’t sure if the loose collection of parts would make the transition to a real EV.
- Is that a tiny car or is that a Super Model? Probably a little of both, meet Pietro’s electric Fiat 500. We’ve had a few earlier posts from Pietro and today he sends along a link to his new website, including a nicely translated english version. Makes me want to schedule our next vacation for Italy just to swing by and bum a ride!
- David Pogue did a feature for CBS called Could the Electric Car Save Us? He also wrote an article for the NY Times (he’s their tech columnist) entitled, The Rebirth of the Electric Car.
- NPR also has an article on electric cars, Entrepreneur Hopes to Charge Electric-Car Market. The story covers Miles Rubin and his company, Miles Automotive. You can also learn more and see some of their products on their website.
- For all of our Electric Car friends down under here’s a couple links to Australia EV resources (thanks John): EV Australia and the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.
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- Our best wishes go out to Bill Dube, owner and creator of the Killacycle. Bill was giving an interview at a conference and decided to demonstrate a burn-out in the parking lot. The bike caught traction and suddenly launched the both of them down the road and into the side of a mini-van. Other than that part, it was a great interview with some interesting information about the bike, including its A123 battery system. Bill left a comment regarding the crash, including: “The positive message here is that when we crunched the battery pack, NOTHING happened. No smoke. No flames. Not even sparks. Not only are these cells more powerful, they are are the safest possible for automobiles.“
- Welcome to the new era of electric cars…perpetual concept cars. Meet the Nissan Mixim, which they readily admit has almost no chance of ever being produced.
- A couple of EV related articles: Can the electric car save us, or is it that the technology is too elusive?
- Some interesting EV research and testing has been going on for years at Argonne National Laboratory.
- Finally an article over at AutoblogGreen wondering if the Clean Air Act really stops most of us from buying clean cars.
- Don’t have room/money for a hydraulic lift to build your EV? Check out Eastwood’s Tilt-A-Car™. Kind of looks like you could store your vehicle vertically with this…crazy.
- Queens auto company unveils a new electric car. “We don’t see ourselves becoming a competitor to the majors, but what we are hoping for is that the majors will take up this technology.”
- File this under, “sure thing, buddy” the Mitsubishi Motors EV concept has Solar and Wind power: It is also equipped with a fan in the front air intake system, to enable wind power generation. Uh, huh, along with additional drag, thereby wasting any power generated and some. Perhaps it is only there to power the dash mounted hype machine? “:^)
- Opel is showing off a Volt-like EV with diesel backup power. The E-flex has on-board lithium batteries that can be recharged from a typical house outlet. One of the photos shows it with a slot for a Segway and I’ve read it charges while stowed.
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- Supercaps are in the news again, this time with a few stories about EESTOR and their supercapacitors. According to this Wikipedia entry EESTOR filed a patent for supercapacitor technology, “That would give it an energy/weight value of about 342 Wh/kg, twice that of lithium-ion batteries.“ Great sounding stuff. Still no public demonstration or scientific review of working units.
- The company financing EESTOR, Zenn Motors out of Canada, is set to have their EV launch in the next couple of days. Zenn, Zapi, Zap … I wonder what it is about Z’s and electric vehicles?
- I ran across a guide to using a Prius as a backup power supply for your house, or at least some of the electrical appliances you might need the most. Quite thorough job documenting and analyzing the system. If you like that be sure to check out his many other Prius and energy efficiency articles with fantastic details.
- Electronic weekly’s “Made by Monkeys” sub-site has an article on What’s wrong with Lithium Batteries. Mostly regarding the recent recalls and laptop fires related to lithiums. They don’t talk about A123’s lithium cells, which supposedly does away with many of these problems.
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