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
- Killian’s Metro: “Kilian Herrington gets good gas mileage on his 1991 Geo Metro. In fact, since he bought it about four years ago, he’s driven it 23,000 miles and the little car hasn’t used one drop of gasoline.” (A few errors in the reporting, but it’s still nice to see these kinds of articles)
- GEM to sell NEVs in France.
- Cool, the cost of wind-generated electricity for consumers is now less than that of electricity from conventional sources in some markets.
- The 2006 Tour de Sol is coming up May 10–14, 2006 in Saratoga Spa State Park, NY.
- Homemade multi-charger and monitoring system in an electric porche. Man, look at that workbench: geek heaven!
- I’m not familiar with the dolphin charger but here’s a schematic (PDF) someone drew up of one. There’s some pics and other data linked off this directory.
- When NiCads go bad...
- What EVs will we see in 2006?
- Ummm, fresh schematic… Gordon Stalling has posted schematics and how-to info for his homemade electric car battery monitor.
- Speaking of gauges, scroll down about 3/4 of the way (which is a long ways) on the Poor Man’s EV website to see his collection of monitoring gear. Lots of info and interesting pictures.
- Towards the end of last year a couple of guys from the EVList were brought on by Monster Garage to convert a 1962 Chevy Bel Air into an Electric Car using lithium batteries from Milwaukee Tool. Mark your calendar, program your tivo, the show will be airing on April 10th. In the meantime enjoy a quick preview and this funny ad
- Zap finally cleared all of the hurdles to bring the Smart car to the US. Gas mileage is lower than they have been claiming (40 vs 60mgp). I’ve seen these cars first hand in Europe and they are dinky, just the kind of thing that would be fun to convert to an EV. More info over at Zap
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- Clearing out the mailbox, here’s some links sent in by readers:
- Carbon Chassis Velocipede human powered vehicle and the Townlife electric car – thanks, Richard.
- The first BMW Mini Cooper plug-in hybrd – thanks, Jerry. (no, the other Jerry!)
- Dave’s old Watthour Meter Page. Dedicated to the history of the watthour meter in the USA.
- Got this in the mailbox. Unfortunately I’ve got too many other sure-things in the queue. Any takers? (India phone#)
Dear sir,i have discover one Great formula of re-cyclic electric car,this project will be the revolution in all auto world.Please,beleive me sir This car is realy great This will need backing support & At same During this project ,we could try for patent this is an confidential Matter so, please call me at following cell phone number along with country code
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- Mike posted Lee’s Bonn charger circuit to the EVAlbum tech section. It’s what they call a bad boy charger, no subtlety, no control: it charges the batteries until you make it stop.
- Darin is spinning his wheels…in a good way, and in the name of science: RPM vs. MPG.
- American Wire Gauge: guide to the gauges and current limits.
- Digimoto Vehicle Diagnostics Software. It consists of nine distinct modules: Real Time Sensor Charts, Diagnostic Trouble Codes, Sensor Grid, Quarter Mile Stats, Dyno Statistics, Data Logging, Freeze Frame Data, Serial Interface and Gauges. You’ll also need something like this.
- The latest copy of Scientific American is plugging plug-in hybrids.
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- Fun stuff from Spark Fun Electronics! Pictured is the Arduino USB Board, which is an open-source physical computing platform based on a simple i/o board and a development environment. Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer. The open-source IDE can be downloaded for free (Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux). Also of interest the FAT16 Datalogger, shown in their example as a GPS logger, and the little lithium polymer batter charger chip.
- Hey, I wonder if this scales? Build your own air powered bike
- Are Hybrids a problem because they are too quiet? Jeesh. I see the automotive/oil industry’s FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) spreading machine is starting to gear up. Modern gas powered cars are also near silent while coasting, the main noise is from the tires.
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- One of the challenges to making your own battery monitoring/metering system is keeping the high voltage pack isolated from the car’s 12v system. Sending the signals over fiber optics might be the trick: introduction to fiberoptics. Here’s a learning kit.
- Companies to Develop Electric Vehicle for Demonstration of Altairnano Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery System: press release.
- The birth of the Toyota Prius. Also for reference the hybrid entry over at Wikipedia.
- Plug-in hybrids are still gaining momentum. (this is good news: more batteries, means more research, lower prices, etc..). EVWorld reports that Hymotion, out of Canada, is releasing a plug-in version of the Prius and the Ford Escape hybrids.
- The Electrum series Spyder. A $69,995.00 EV running 300 volts of nickel zinc batteries in a composite body.
- Aerobatteries: Aerospace dry cell technology. (yeahbut…the website is one big image!)
- Your first electric car
- Driving the solution, the plug-in hybrid (PDF) artic.e from the Electric Power Research Institute’s journal.
- Darin is conducting more cold weather research, this time figuring out how to best warm up your car.
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