Fisker Karmas All Over The Place

While I was in Los Angeles doing a solar power monitoring installation, at the end of the day I decided to drive over to the Tesla store in Santa Monica.  Imagine my surprise while on the way over I spotted a Fisker dealership.  I pulled in and went to check them out.  They had two sitting right outside the front door.

And three more inside.

The engine compartment is very cramped, but it is a gas/electric hybrid.

The sticker price of $107K and gas-only mileage are a bit of a shock  It is huge, heavy, the back seats are not fit for humans, but it is very sexy.

Flash forward to a trip back to my old stomping grounds in Austin, Texas to do some more solar work a few weeks later.  I walked over to the baggage claim area and there's a black Karma roped off, with electric lettering.

The to compound the shock, I was driving down the road and came upon another Fisker dealership, sharing space with the Porsche dealer.

With one out front, three inside and eleven waiting out back, that's a lot of Karmas waiting for new homes.  The saleswoman inside said they've sold about 20, with customers coming from all over Texas, but now mostly Central Texas as they have dealerships open in Dallas and Houston now.

Charging Around Town and a Tesla in the Wild

After the Gathering of Friends car show, I drove leisurely through town and hit the Costco (for groceries) and when I came out, a father and son were standing next to the car taking pictures.  The 914 is an attention-getter and then when people figure out it's electric...

From there I went to the Target parking lot across the street to try their J1772 charging station.  Here we are, in front of their 2 charging spaces.  Unfortunately when I plugged in, the charger gave an error light and the charger didn't fire up.  I suspected a problem in the charger control circuitry or fuses.  Bummer.

They use Clipper Creek chargers.

Here's the label with full details.

 There are also a number of parking spaces reserved for efficient cars, according to the ACEEE rating score, which I had never heard of.  It's too bad you have to pay a subscription fee to see if your car meets the ratings, which I think will do more harm than good for the effort.

Sadly, my VW Beetle TDi which gets 49 mpg doesn't make the list, I think it was due to the particulates of diesel combustion.  I run the car on 99% biodiesel so there is very little pollution but I don't want to have an argument with someone in the parking lot.

From Target, I drove a hundred yards down the road to the Nissan dealership.  I pulled up at the front and asked if it was OK for me to do a test with their charger.  They thanked me for asking, as one day they showed up to find a Tesla Roadster plugged in and the owner nowhere in sight.  The Tesla was in the way of something they needed to move so they weren't really happy.  I pulled the car around the side and plugged in while 3 Nissan folks watched.  The charger tried to start up, then stopped over and over, and a relay in my charging circuit was buzzing on and off very fast.  I pulled out the cord and thanked the Nissan folks.  Sorry for the dark picture.

The following weekend I moved the enclosure for the charging system and rewired it and found a blown fuse.  After I got it all back together, I plugged it into my Schneider J1772 unit and it took the charge like a champ.  I'll have to try again next time I get back down to San Luis Obispo.

To wrap up this post, here's the backside of a Tesla Roadster I was behind.

The license plate is "SOLDVSI" so I'm thinking the owner sold a company or technology that goes by the name VSI and bought the car with the profits!  I wonder if it's VSI Products, which builds products for the cycling and  BMX  markets?

Gathering of Friends Car Show 2012

Each summer the Porsche club hosts a European-only car show  in San Luis Obispo called A Gathering Of Friends, which benefits Camp Hapitok (pronounced Happy Toke, but I don't think that's what it means!)  Since I had the 914 completed, I decided to bring it down on the trailer, because I still don't think I can make it the full 45 miles from my house.  I parked the trailer behind the warehouse at my work, and drove the car across town to the show area at Laguna Lake.

Being so close to the ocean, it was a little gloomy until about 10 AM when the sun came out.

I'm parked next to a nice 70s Mercedes convertible with sheepskin seat covers...

Here's our row, Porsches as far as the eye can see.

A great selection of daily drivers, not many garage queens here.

This yellow DeTomaso Pantera was in my class and took the trophy.  The engine was pristine chrome.

This sweet 348 belongs to a friend in the Porsche club.  He's looking for another 308 / 348 with a blown engine for me to convert to electric.  eFerrari?  FerrariE?  Hmmm.  I already have most of the components picked out in my mind, with an eye to keeping as close to the stock performance as possible.

I took some close-ups of the engine compartment to see what gets to stay, what goes and what I can fit in where.  Looks like a challenge but do-able as long as I can find space for all of the batteries!

My Visit To The New Tesla Store in Los Angeles

I was working down in LA at a solar project and at the end of the day I drove over to the Tesla store I visited last May.  To my surprise, it's in the process of being converted to a service-only location, to support the Roadsters and the Model S sedans rolling off the assembly line now.  The sign below shows they've opened a new location in Santa Monica.

I didn't understand the Promenade concept until I got there - the street is blocked off to traffic and is a pedestrian-only area.  This is the entrance to the new Tesla store.  It was probably a trendy women's clothes store in the recent past.

It's pretty narrow, but the layout was designed by George Blankenship, the designer of the Apple store concept, to use the space efficiently.  Right in your face is one of the gorgeous hand-built Beta Model S cars.

The front trunk, or "frunk" as they call it, is about the size of a spare tire but very deep so you could put a lot of grocery bags or a couple of suitcases inside.

The rear trunk in this model shows the jumpseats.  A young couple was closely checking these and the baby seat mounted in the back seat.

Behind the display car is a rolling chassis showing the suspension, battery pack and motor / transmission.

On the walls are all of the materials you get to choose from on your car, interior and paint and some Tesla merchandise.  I picked up a metal license plate frame for the 914.
  

I walked around soaking it all in until I re-introduced myself to Adam, who I met a year ago at the other store.  We talked about the car and then he let me sit inside it.  Even for a hand-built car, it had magnificent fit-and-finish.  From the outside, the whole dashboard looks digitized...

Once inside, the effect is even stronger.  The normal place for driver's gauges is a non-touchscreen display, showing things like speed, state of charge, climate and audio settings.

In the center of the dashboard is this magnificent 17" touch screen display that handles every aspect of every system in the car that you could imagine.  Even the sunroof position is controller by a graphical slider.  Adam says there are no restrictions on the driver using this screen while moving, but if the government puts any regulations in place, they're ready with a software update process.

To get a test drive, you have to put down your refundable $5000 deposit and then wait until later this year or early next year once the factory produces enough cars to fulfill all of the currently pending orders.  The test drives will be run out of this store for the LA area.

It was great to see Adam again and realize how far Tesla has come in the year since I went to the old store.  I bought some Tesla stock back in January and it's been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride but I'm happy to hold out for the long run when the "shorts" get punished for not believing in the vision and execution of whatever Elon sets his mind to.  My stock gains won't buy me a Model S but I can always imagine...

I even picked up a souvenir!

Solar Carport and EV Charging

Yesterday I picked up my building permit for an additional solar array at my house.  My goal is 3-fold:

- Generate the remaining 15% of my house's power needs that I'm currently buying from PG&E
- Generate sufficient power to charge the 914 through a J1772 charging station
- Park the cars under a carport to block the direct sun and scorching summer heat

I bought the electrical parts for my system from my sister company AEE Solar and the carport from Protective Weather Structures in December of last year.  I've got a SnapNRack mounting system, 16 REC Group 240PE modules, a Schneider Conext 3300 inverter (which I will pull the data from and display in conjunction with my original Xantrex inverter), and a Schneider J1772 electric vehicle charging station.

A friend at work did my solar design and ran the calcs for my rebate application, and I worked with PWS's structural engineer on the final details of the carport structure.

Now that I have my permit, I can give PWS the green light to start fabrication of the metal, I'll call 811 to get them to mark any underground electrical services and I can start digging holes.

Here is a rough SketchUp model I made of the system.  The only SketchUp model I could find of a 914 was only half completed, so that's why it looks like it's missing most of the right side of the car.

Solar Charged Driving

The car is complete!  Well, there will always be a few things to work on, but as soon as I sign a collector-car declared-value insurance policy, I'll feel free to jump into the car and hit the open road.  Well, as long as the road isn't too long.  I took a bunch of pictures of the car next to my solar array, looking for the best glamour shot to have new project cards printed up.  I just wish I didn't have the white storage container in the background.  Anybody with good Photoshop skills want to take it out for me?

I've been a fan of Christof Demont-Heinrich's SolarChargedDriving.com site since it launched, and I've been itching to post about my solar-charged electric car project for a long time now.  I've sent Christof a note now that I'm done and I hope that we can work on an article.

Enjoy.