- Sony has put up a new information center to promote their movie, Who Killed the Electric Car. Nicely done flash with a bunch of information. They even have a “Go Green” section that would make Darin at MetroMPG proud with a few tips on how to get better mileage with your existing car.
- Thanks to Richard for mailing a link to this turning orange peels into ethanol story.
- A anonymous reader emailed a link to Electric Vehicle Concepts.
- Congrats to the Cleveland High School Seniors and their recently completed a Solar Car project. “Equipped with a Global Positioning System and wireless communications, data can be sent from the car to the pit area. The information collected is conveyed to the pit crew.” Anyone have a link to some pictures?
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- MIT has been working on using carbon nanotubes to create capacitors that are, essentially, super batteries. And, no, they aren’t using M&Ms, this is just a model to illustrate the concept.
- Make Magazine has contracted with MakingThings to create a new, relatively low cost controller kit. Looks like a nice design.
- Ran across the AC FluxDrive on the EVAlbum the other day in Bob’s Electric Minivan.
- Maybe if you hurry and get a job at the Bank of America you can get in on their new hybrid incentive program?
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- Valence is shipping four new models of their lithium batteries. “Three of the four new models are conveniently packaged in standard lead-acid sizes and operate at standard lead-acid voltage ranges.”
- The Governor of Pennsylvania wants to double hybrid rebates
- Speaking of hybrids, PC Magazine seems like an odd place to find this mini article about hybrid myths being debunked.
- Short review of some automotive breakthrough technologies.
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Separated at Birth · 31 May 06
Over the weekend I tore the rest of the fiberglass and odd parts off of Atom and took a few pictures for posterity.
I was cruising the internet the other day and ran across a cool video and pictures of a little sports car. On further consideration, and with my eyes crossed just so, I thought maybe this was what Atom was originally intended to be?
Yugo Greg, Part III · 27 May 06
Last we looked in on our intrepid electric Yugo-naut he was trying to resurrect a dying motor. Despite his near-super powers the motor had its mind set on an early retirement.
To help the cause we gave Greg a free motor (well, free except for the crazy shipping fees). He has been breathing new life into his Yugo EV since.
- David emailed earlier this week about this four bank charger from Dual Pro. Completely independent chargers that can charge individual batteries (lead: flooded, agm, or gel) in a string. Looks like there’s a variety of these multi-bank chargers. Would love to hear from anyone with experience using them. Bruce Parmenter didn’t like them for his electric blazer.
- Going from gas to electric a short news story about Reverend Gadget and Left Coast Conversions
- The Hydrogen Hoax. Speaking of this, a few folks sent a link to the news-clip making the rounds about the “water powered car.” A quick search of the internet shows that the claimed tech sounds remarkably similar to Brown’s gas. You’ll note in the news videos that they aren’t actually running the car on the HHO gas, just adding it to the existing gas fuel. There’s also no mention of how much energy was used to produce the HHO vs. how much it improved the mileage.
- BP is expecting solar cell production to double by 2008.
- Purple electric Ford Probe.
- Close out with a great photo collection of the Wrightspeed X1 Prototype. Not your Sunday-go-to-church electric car by a long shot.
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De-Atomized · 22 May 06
Back in January a surprise gift landed on our doorway: a homemade EV.
We’d just finished our new garage, had tons of free space, and suddenly another vehicle shows up to fill the space. Obviously we’d almost fractured some time-space garage continuum by having this clean spot. Or was it simply that not only does nature abhor a vacuum it also has a thing against clean garages?
That was Atom.
- Constructing the Electric7 electric car. Also a nice collection of photos and a couple of movies on the homepage. (p.s. nice battery pack!)
- Bryan’s 1997 Honda Accord Electric Car. Looks like he didn’t have much luck with Thundersky Lithiums.
- Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t drive 55. Remember, the faster you go, the more fuel you use (w/charts).
- The Ergosphere does some back of the envelope calculations on the cost of getting more oil through drilling vs. conservation.
- The Sakura Battery Co.’s Maranello electric car.
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- Darin passed along this link to one of the winners of last week’s Tour de Sol. This was in the Plug-in Hybrid competition and is a completely unique approach. I think Darin liked it because it’s close to the EV Pusher (or is that Pusher EV?) that he’s talked about before. It’s a Honda Insight with an EV Wheel. Lot’s of information, pics, and totally technical all of the way. Also information on their MIMA (Modified Integrated Motor Assist).
- I’m still trying to find someone that wants to sell batteries to me for Eve. In the process I’ve been using the EV Calculator quite a bit. One thing that I’ve been kind of winging was the percent incline, putting in 2% thinking that’s a good average. Well, yesterday I ran across this Grade Percent Incline and Downgrade Calculator and put in the elevation gain (~600 feet) for the last mile to our house: 11% incline! I can tell you from experience that it’s not the kind of hill you want to climb when your pack is feeling blue…
- Toyota and Aisin Seiki are making dye-sensitized photocells for homes and cars.
- Maybe some good news for more widespread wind power. Knight & Carver’s Wind Blade Division has developed adaptive low speed wind turbine blades.
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EV Pusher · 12 May 06
Psst…
Hey…
Hey, buddy!
Hey, yeah, you! You wanna buy an EV? Check out my suitcase here, I got all of the popular ones. Blue, red, black, white, and even some of them, whatcha call “off colors”.
And for you? Well, beings that I like ya I’ll let her go real cheap!
And then there’s the other kind of EV Pusher…