Hi everyone,
On May 3rd was on June Stoyer’s THE CLEAN ENERGY VIEW internet radio program, talking about electric motorcycles. Not too long ago, I got to speak with June about my electric car project. You can listen to the show by playing it right in the BlogTalk Radio box below.
PS – Post Show
Thanks to everyone who tuned in and called/Skyped/forum’d messages and questions in. That call from Jeff, was that Nevyn in PA?
Just to follow up with a couple of those questions…
Electric Tractors:
EV Tractors are great. There are a fair number of people out there converting Allis-Chalmers G tractors to electric. One popular site showing a conversion is at FlyingBeet.com – they have a parts list and lots of other information as well. If you are looking for a lawn tractor, check out my buddy, Tim, who converted an old rider into an EcoRider with batteries and an electric motor! My own riding lawn mower was commercially made by G.E. in the 1970’s. It’s a bit of a restoration project in the works, but mows like a champ!
Getting Started in Electric Vehicles.
If you want to know a great place to get started, I always recommend the EV Album! It’s a listing of over 3000 electric vehicles! Each entry has a few photos and the specs on the vehicle – cost, range, time to convert, etc. Also, you can search and sort the EV Album by make/model/type of vehicle or by a specific motor, batteries, or other part. It’s easy to see what other people have already done with the vehicle you would like to convert!
Another web page that I think has some great info on electric vehicles is Electric Cars are for Girls. There’s plenty of great EV info there! Once you get a little more into EVs, DIY Electric Car and Ecomodder.com both have some good EV info in the forums.
How fast can Electric Cars go?
Electric cars can go as fast as you want them to, of course not everyone needs a dragster to go to the grocery store or get to work. The fastest I’ve had my electric Geo Metro going was 73 MPH. I still hadn’t quite hit top speed yet (but was close) when I had to start slowing down, because I knew where the cop parked. That was running on used lead-acid batteries. There’s plenty of exciting high-end FAST electric cars out there. Consider the TESLA ROADSTER, with a 0-60 of 3.7 seconds. Even more fun are drag-racing vehicles like the WHITE ZOMBIE and the Killacycle. The Killacycle goes from 0-60 in UNDER ONE SECOND! Think about it… that’s borderline teleportation!
The really cool thing about building your own electric car is that YOU can design it how YOU want it to be. If high top speed or acceleration are what you are looking for, just build your vehicle for that.
Electric Vehicle DVDs
You can get my BUILD YOUR OWN ELECTRIC CAR and BUILD YOUR OWN ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE instructional videos right here at 300MPG.org! If you want to order a copy of the MOTORCYCLE DVD, I did mention a secret discount code during the radio show – click here and type in the code for a SPECIAL discount! Likewise, last time I was on June’s ORGANIC Hour, I gave out a discount for ordering the ELECTRIC CAR DVD. Click here, and punch in your secret discount code for $10 off the regular price.
One more thing you should all know about electric vehicles – there are quite a few EV clubs around the country and around the world. So a web search to see if you can find one near you. A good place to start is at the Electric Auto Association.
Boulder, CO
For the woman in Colorado who’s gone carless, great work! I didn’t catch exactly what you wanted to do for the winter, if it was convert a car to EV or something different, but there is a lot going on in Boulder in the world of EVs. Just a quick web search showed an EV truck manufacturer there, and a newspaper article about local tinkerers converting cars to EVs. I forgot to mention that Duke’s Garage is right in Denver. They do some pretty nice-looking EV conversions, and would be good people to talk to as well. Looks like Boulder is really getting up and running with public EV Charging infrastructure as well!
Donating a car to an EV program
I haven’t heard of any specific program for people to donate a car to for conversion to electric. However, there are starting to be more and more high-school programs about electric cars with “at-risk” students. The biggest one that I can think of right away is “Mind-Drive”. It’s run as a non-profit program at the high school, and they have been getting some great, positive press. The Mind-Drive web page is well done, and has plenty of photos and YouTube videos to show off their amazing projects. They are worth checking out.
There’s also a program called “Electrathon”. It’s usually held as an extra-curricular at the high-school level where students build custom-made electric racing go-carts. They do everything themselves and compete against other student teams.
It’s great to see electric vehicle design available at the high school level, especially for at-risk teens. Check with your local school. Maybe they have something going on there and you don’t even know about it!
Hope that hit everything we talked about in the show! If you have any other questions or comments, please let me know!
Thanks for tuning in!
-Ben
