EVCCON 2012 - Arrival Day

EVCCON 2012 kicked off today as electric car geeks from around the world converged on Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

I want to make sure people understand that I'm doing this blog with descriptions and pictures and video to capture what happened at the event, but this pales in comparison to actually being there.  You can't get your hands dirty pulling a failed motor out of someone's car and get it running again (in the middle of the night, happy on fine whiskey), you can't see and hear such a variety of electric vehicles taking it easy and going for all they're worth, and you can't talk with the people who have actually taken the plunge and built their own electric car.  There are so many great ideas, designs and builds to pour over, looking for ways to make your car go faster or run longer.  EVCCON 2013 is in doubt as Jack was disappointed in the modest increase (80%) in the number of people and cars, so be sure to contact Jack or Richard and tell them you're interested or will commit to going next fall if they run it.

I gave fellow Canadian Jason Arnold a lift down from the airport last night.  We got over to Jack's workshop around 10 AM and there were already a dozen people and several cars there and I wandered around Jack's shop.  As Jack says, we got liquored up and played with high voltage!

This is either Dale Freidhoff or John Yecker's Ford Ranger project - I can't tell because they're both red!

This is Jack's electric lawn mower.  The goal was to make a nice, quiet mower that could be used at golf courses while not disturbing the golfers.  Sadly, it's the loudest lawn mower on the planet, a combination of the hydraulic pumps controlling the zero-radius turning system and the spinning blades.

This is Jack's Escalade, finished just before the start of the conference.

Here's Jack, pontificating to the adoring masses.

This is Jason Horak's  Daytona.  Last year he had problems with his controller, so it was put up on the lift and swapped in a group effort.  The car ran well for a year and yesterday the motor went off like a grenade, so up on the lift it goes and a WarP 9 that Jack had was swapped in.

This is the new motor.

This is the casing of the old motor, note the dust and destruction.

This is the business internals of the motor.  Note the missing and damaged parts in the armature and bent winding ends.

Closeup of the damaged plates.

This is Jim Greeson's 914, a beautiful conversion.

Here's Jim's Lithium battery pack, I'm taking notes for my own design.

This is John Allen's Celica, beautifully engineered and well documented in videos that Jack broadcast on EVTV.

This is Kevin Heath's Mazda RX8.

He built his own battery racks and uses A123 pouch cells with his own bussing design.

He uses an Orion BMS system that has a gorgeous tablet display.

This is the battery bank in the floor of the trunk.

This is Mark Emon's 914.  It ran for the first time the day before he trucked it to the convention.  Mark and his brother spent the day replacing a burned out coolant pump.  It has 56 200AH cells, making for a very long expected range.

This is Robert Salem's TVR 280i.  He put dual motors and a small battery pack in it for drag racing.

This is Al Gajda's Bottom Balancing and Charging unit.  It uses two power meters with settable relay trip points.  This is a critical piece of equipment for our community as lithium batteries must be closely matched when placed into the car to avoid over- or under-charging of one or more cell in the pack.  We're encouraging him to document and publish his schematic.

I discovered Jack's battery graveyard.  He performs a valuable service to our community by testing batteries to and beyond their limits so we know how batteries will perform. This is a pack he built from A123 pouch cells.  These are all blown, bloated out from overcharge.

This is the famous battery testing bench from the EVTV videos.

These are the new "CA" series of batteries from CALB.  Shown are the 60, 100 and 180 AH cells.  I have my eye on the 180s for my car as the voltage sag is greatly improved from the previous model.  I think I can fit the 180s in my battery boxes which gives me maximum capacity while keeping my pack voltage in the proper range without going to parallel cells.

This is Caleb Lander's Beetle.  A great job of fitting in all of the parts in a constrained environment.

This is Jack's Cobra replica, freshly back from the paint shop.

It has a NetGain Controls' controller.

After being in the shop for 12 hours, it was time to go home, grab some sleep and make it to the kickoff tomorrow morning.

Circuit Of The Americas

I was in Austin a couple of weeks ago and went to the airport a little early so I could scope out the progress of the new Formula 1 track called Circuit of the Americas.  The practice starts November 16, that's only 2 months from now and they are nowhere near ready.  I heard that they were still installing things at the new track in India the day before, this one is going to be just as close.  Check out these pictures and see what you think.  I get emails from them all the time, they really want to sell me some expensive tickets!  Bleacher seats for $1749, main grandstand for $3899!  I read it will cost $240 just to park there for the 3-day Formula 1 weekend...

Here's an overview of the track with the grandstands highlighted for ticket purchase.

This is what you see coming down the road towards the track.

This was the construction entrance, which may end up being the main entrance too.

This is the main grandstands.

 This is the (I think) west side of the main grandstands.

This is the east side.

This may be a maintenance area, or spaces for local race teams to keep and work on their cars.

Not sure what this building is, it may predate the track construction.

This is The Tower Amphitheater.  I see a tower, but no amphitheater!  You can also see a walkway across the track, the scoring tower and part of the paved track area.  

So...  a lot of work to do in a very short period of time.  Good luck, I'd like to see a great race weekend after the debacle of F1 at Indy.

Paso Robles Classic Car Show Weekend 2012

On Labor Day weekend 2012, my town of Paso Robles, California hosted a classic car show for pre-1977 vehicles.  On Friday evening the police blocked off both ends of the main street and all of the cars drove around in a big circle for a couple of hours.

The theme seemed to be heavily customized muscle cars, but I was happy to be there with my little electric car.

We were staged in the parking lot of a deserted lumber yard.

On Saturday morning, we packed into the park in the town square and set up for a long day.  I had both hoods open as usual to catch people's attention, which ended up in some great discussions and education about my car and electric cars in general.

I was parked next to a Porsche 550 Spyder replica, which won the trophy for our class.

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.