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
- MacWorld is coming up in a few days so I thought I’d cover the Mac-in-a-Car angle. Here’s a great how-to for putting a Mini in your car: Carputer and a commercial restoration firm’s install of a mini-in-a-Jeep. In fact there’s a whole website dedicated to putting a Mac Mini in your vehicle, MacVroom. You can even buy a dock in case you want to easily move the computer from car to house.
- Most of the in-car computer sites are adding the computer for music, video, or GPS functionality. Very few, if any, are integrating data acquisition so they can monitor a string of, say, EV batteries. Here’s a few solutions for the mini: bTop, National Instruments, LabJack, Data Translation, and Instrutech.
- As for software to control or make sense of all of this data there’s of course the built in perl/php/ruby/mysql and apache webserver included with OS X, not to mention free full-bore developer tools. I use php/mysql to store the data and jpgraph to render the weather at our house. There’s also commercial offerings like Igor, Labview and even open source projects like iDash and RoadNav. You could analyze the squeaks in your conversion like crazy using the Electroacoustics Toolbox.
- Or just do it all in legos...
- First off welcome to 2007! Starting off the new year I ran across a couple of interesting articles on Stanford Ovshinsky. If you’ve followed EV/Hybrid history his name should ring a bell, being the founder of Ovonics and inventor of the NiMH battery used in most hybrid cars along with the GM EV1. There are a few scenes with him and his wife/business partner in the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car. Stanford has over 300 patents and his latest business/technology venture is photovoltaic panels at Energy Conversion Devices. He has also, somewhat controversially, been working on hydrogen systems for quite some time, and his plant has a Prius hacked to run off of hydrogen instead of gasoline. Wiki entry on Stanford R. Ovshinsky.
- Speaking of which, here’s a brief peek under the floorboards of a fuel cell powered car. DaimlerChrysler spokeswoman Lora Renz said a typical fuel cell car gets about “50 miles per kilogram of hydrogen, equivalent to a gallon of gasoline.” She said the target price of hydrogen is the same as gasoline. Well, duh…but in what year?
- Me and my Sparrow, Valerie Myers’ funky little electric car.
- A few Instructables to start off the year: LED’s for beginners, Serial controlled motor, DIY Wind Generator.
- It LIVES! Well, at least the motor lives. Skip on over to youtube for the inaugural motor spin video of Project Forkenswift. Perhaps www.forkenswift.com is closer than we think? Meanwhile, over at Metrompg, Darin has been modding up his blackfly with a nerd gear.
- Speaking of Nerds, another extensive hybrid thread over at /., this time in response to some FUD about the new EPA standards being bad for hybrids.
- You’ve seen the movie, but what about the other side of the coin: Will GM be killed by the Electric Car?
- Matsushita Battery is setting up a new plant to create heat-proof Lithium-ion batteries (for laptops, but hey, every little bit of R&D helps). Meanwhile Nissan and NEC are teaming up to make lithium-ion batteries for hybrids. Even traditional battery makers are starting to divert more R&D into rechargeable batteries. It’s all good…
- I’m not quite sure what to think about the Venturi. They claim it to be the first energy-autonomous vehicle, presumably since it comes equipped with solar panels and even a wind generator to be deployed when parked, and of course able to be plugged into an electrical outlet. The design, well, as the site proclaims, this is a vehicle that has no desire to look like other cars. Indeed. A chief design factor was probably making a large enough flat space to have sufficient solar panels. Here’s a few of the other features it boasts:
- 400 to 800 W wind turbine charging system (turbine with mast)
- Wifi kit (module, aerial and maintenance software)
- Cloth-covered wooden seats.
- Fabric doors
- Trunk with lock
- Peripheral kit : 220 V output and 12 V output for passengers
- Blue-tinted windscreen (green on standard models)
- Water resistant Sony Radio/CD/MP3
- Optional water-resistant rear-console Sony remote control
- Why not wind-up? Damn Interesting takes a shot at speculating why. The most interesting part of the article comes from the extensive comment thread that follows.
- Trying to make an entire town car free. “For example, an annual pass for the tram is free, while a parking space costs $23,000.”
- A Segway-inspired two person electric commuter coming to China; the Camper Lotus
- UC Davis scored two million dollars in funding for their plug-in hybrid research. Hmm, maybe we could form the University of EVConvert to solicit grants and research our own plug-in hybrid: part electric, part labrador.
- Yummmm, lithium batteries! I sent them an email to see if the University of EVConvert might acquire some for R&D.
- Speaking of Universities, down in Florida Armor Electric has been contracted to develop and deliver eleven electric powered rental cars (NEVs) to be rented to college students.
Comment [6]
- Why the Hydrogen Economy doesn’t make sense. “The advantages of hydrogen praised by journalists (non-toxic, burns to water, abundance of hydrogen in the Universe, etc.) are misleading, because the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare and may become political issues, as much as oil and natural gas are today.” For a heated discussion visit the Slashdot thread.
- Seoul Semiconductor has created the brightest LED ever. It also has the highest luminous efficiency, 110lm/W@350mA (by comparison: fluorescent 70lm/W, incandescent 15lm/W).
- Speaking of efficiencies. Our fridge broke a few weeks ago and in the process of troubleshooting it I went to remove a light bulb in the freezer section and burned my finger. Doesn’t putting heat generating light bulbs in a fridge/freezer strike anyone else as a bit antiquated? Tim over at Instructables thought so too, be sure to read the comments though.
- The Sparta Ion – Europe’s number one E-Bike. Nice integrated battery and motor system and they even tap the battery for a built in headlight.
- Next time you check out a new vehicle look for the new window sticker. The EPA is coming out with their new fuel economy ratings. Car makers have responded with a website: Your Mileage will vary, includes explanations on why the stickers will be showing lower mileage and basic tips on how to help improve it. Hey, now would be a GREAT time for automakers to put MPG readouts in all cars and really help everyone understand and improve their efficiency.
Comment [2]
- The Fab@Home project is just what it sounds like, a group of folks creating their own home fabrication devices, essentially a three dimensional printer. Here’s a solid freeform fabrication unit from Cornell University. Scroll down and you’ll see that they have used it to create their own Zinc-Air battery. (here’s a paper on that process: Freeform Fabrication of Zinc Air Batteries with Tailored Geometry and Performance (PDF))
- Thanks to Peter for posting his report on this last weekend’s AltCar Expo in Santa Monica, with pictures. The Auto Blog has some coverage too.
- Around the world in a three-wheeled Solar Electric Vehicle.
- Ran across a couple of electric car related articles over at Business Week:
- The first article is about OSCar the Open Source Car project. Checking out the concept page shows that they are shooting for an electric powertrain with wheel-hub motors.
- The other article highlights the California electric car company, Zap!. Given this year’s soaring gas prices it’s not surprising to that their revenue shot up 247% over the year before.
- I get quite a few emails from folks wondering if they can convert their RV to electric and then “charge” it using a generator while they drive, somehow tricking the gas into being more efficient by going through a another stage of energy transfer with a less efficient engine. Here’s a fellow who decided to power his RV using The Fat of America (WVO powered, that is). For those still curious about using gas to power an EV, here’s a couple articles: Gas Powered EV and Free Energy.
- For those interested in enabling their hybrid to spend more time as a pure-electric check out Hymotion’s PHEV. GCC reports that the Fiarfax County Department of Vehicle Services just added a PHEV conversion to their fleet.
Comment [3]