Certifiable....

Alternative energy sources
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The usual. As I have two large solar PV systems here, and my lab assistant just put one in, and others are interested in things like this, here's where that stuff goes. This is mostly for things that work now, not "gee someday a fusor will do this" -- we know that, but it's not someday yet.
The hope is to save anyone embarking on this sort of thing a lot of wasted time and money, as at least I have been off the grid since 1980 and have had a lot of practice (and made mistakes you won't have to).

Re: Certifiable....

Postby chrismb » Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:27 pm

Doug Coulter wrote:Did you see the release of their new electric and hybrids? Protos at a sales event, but they sure made me drool -- and 0-60 times well sub 5 sec. Wonder how the carbon fiber and aluminum chassis do in a wreck, and they're very light, but sure are sexy. Their hybrid hot rod has electric driving one and and the engine driving the other end -- 4wd.


Yeah, and that's how they get a 'fake' 5 s. Acel, then brake, and acel again, you'll prob find you don't have 5 sec acel a second time in a row, even with it weighing in like a kiddie cart. Once you've used up the first flush of power off the batteries, now you're running the 10 sec times, which is all the measly engine can give on its own without the chance to store up electric power for 10 minutes before the acel test that gave you 5 s timing!

There is only one way to get going down the road, and that is with power. Doesn't matter what the clever kit is, ultimately some power source has to generate the energy. That's why all this hybrid stuff is only good for round towns. Get it doing a steady speed down the highway and it's all down to the efficiency of the power source. Even on a plug-in-charge, the efficiency from fossil fuels is poor compared with diesel power. The only way I see electric power in vehicles makes sense is, currently, in France (lots of nuclear energy) or Iceland (geothermal).

313bhp/450lbf, from 180 cubic inches of 55 mpg diesel engine in a 4000lbs car [unladen mass]!

Hybrids!? Pah! Waste of a good electric motor, better off using it in a fair-ground dodgem-car or lawn-mower where it is better suited! I remeber a time only 20 years ago tuning my MoPar engines (over here in UK) when it was considered top form to get 1bhp/ci with a sharp cam and well-matched 4 bbl carb whilst still being 'driveable' for road use. Now we're looking at the end of 2bhp/ci from a road-going, unlimited mileage warranty diesel car with the ultimate road-going flexibility of peak torque at 1500rpm!? And not forgetting that this is meeting exhaust emissions targets that would have killed off petrol power 20 years ago. All this was simply unforseeable back then, and it wasn't that long ago!
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby chrismb » Thu Aug 04, 2011 6:29 pm

Doug Coulter wrote:There must be something wrong with them, as you see people just leave them running at the convenience store rather than shut them off and restart them. I've always wondered about why they do that, but it's rampant.
That's something wrong with the people, rather than the cars.
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby Doug Coulter » Thu Aug 04, 2011 8:08 pm

This I can believe. Around here the people that get any diesel mostly get these honking huge trucks (the kind you don't have to bend over far to see under) -- maybe they have "real trucker" envy and do like they do - the tractor trailer guys leave theirs running for various reasonably good reasons. It always seemed an ignorant practice on "normal" vehicles -- waste of fuel, are they that hard to start hot? Or is there some myth it's bad for them?

I'd kind of have to agree with you about hybrids except for one thing -- sometimes the extra peak power at the wheels IS nice, and if designed right, it's there when you need it with a pretty small motor and battery (if the real engine is also there). That Cruze - 6 speeds. Once rolling "at all" that tranny keeps it between 4.8 and 6 grand till you're going way way too fast -- almost perfect impedance match to the engine power curve, which was the goal a hybrid was trying to get to -- efficient match of engine to road (while running the engine in its most efficient mode). Requires a bit more peak engine power, but so what if that little 1.4l has enough? It really does as soon as you get it off idle -- the low end torque is the diesel specialty. The Cruze could have used about one more gear, or a dual speed torque converter for off-stop is all. I've been pretty surprised to have it spin the tires going straight in first gear as it gets into the torque band, and then on the shift again.

Now if we could get diesels to not sound like they're gargling rocks at idle....I'd be happier (couldn't you squirt the fuel in slower?). I don't think we get as much of the sulfur removed from the fuel here - in fact, that's the reason Europe was using Libyan crude - low-sulfur right off the boat. BTW, the beemer is a diesel. Not that I'll be able to afford one.

Nothing gets that mpg in a heavy car around here -- if it did it would get run over by a slow moving tractor on our hills. Best anyone even claims (credibly) is about 35 in a mid-light car, no matter the powertrain. I'm talking real hills here -- the sort that would wind you long before you got anywhere near the top walking. Real steep. As you say, power is the thing, and there's only so much BSHP/lb of fuel that exists.

With this odd variable timing capacity, the ecotech engine runs at 13:1 compression on gasoline, regular. They just adjust the cam timing so that when slow, it doesn't reach full compression, but going fast, it has over 100% volumetric efficiency (and then add the turbo). At high enough revs, detonation doesn't have time to happen, so you can get away with it. So that's getting right up there with a diesel in compression efficiency (though it does spin a lot faster) re thermodynamics. The "knee" in that curve is about at 9.5:1 - diminishing returns after that (but real).
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby chrismb » Sun Aug 07, 2011 2:50 pm

Doug Coulter wrote:This I can believe. Around here the people that get any diesel mostly get these honking huge trucks (the kind you don't have to bend over far to see under) -- maybe they have "real trucker" envy and do like they do - the tractor trailer guys leave theirs running for various reasonably good reasons.


I used to drive Articulated trucks. A 'side' job while I was studying at University.

So I can definitely speak from experience;

The only reasons for leaving a truck's engine running are;

a) you think your battery or starter motor are on their last legs - in which case, the vehicle is unroadworthy, get it off the road and fix it
b) the air tanks are losing air too quick - in which case, the vehicle is unroadworthy, get it off the road and fix it

The only 'legitimate' occasions to leave an engine running are;

1) it is -20C and you want to keep temperature in the engine to avoid fuel waxing
2) You've just been running it hard down the highway and you come to a dead stop from high speed, in this case it is reasonable to want to circulate coolant for 2 minutes to avoid hot-spots in the head
3) You have a turbo or supercharged engine (diesel or petrol) that has been running fast in the preceeding minute and you let it run on for 10 seconds so that the turbo can spool down, and that oil doesn't carbonise up in the lubrication channels within the turbo/supercharger (because it is at exhaust temp).

There's no reason to let an engine run on indefinitely, Doug, big truck or little car. It is just plain old flat-out ignorance.


I'd kind of have to agree with you about hybrids except for one thing -- sometimes the extra peak power at the wheels IS nice, and if designed right, it's there when you need it with a pretty small motor and battery (if the real engine is also there).


Yes, I don't have a downer on hybrids, simply that they are tuned to to a certain job. And if you do not require it to do that job, then all you are doing is lumping around a heavy motor, or 4, and a set of batteries. Most hybrids are tuned to do well in the official fuel consumption tests, and that is all they are good at doing. If you drive as if you are doing Gov approved drive cycles, then you'll do well with it.

I, on the other hand, drive for 10 mins out of town and have the route sussed out sufficiently well that I barely touch the brakes. Then onto the motorway. I have no opportunities to 'recover' any braking energy, so a hybrid would be of no value to me.

Now if we could get diesels to not sound like they're gargling rocks at idle....I'd be happier (couldn't you squirt the fuel in slower?).


Again, you need to comprehend where Europe is with diesels now. They are so quiet I can barely believe it myself now. If someone gives me a lift in a new car, you really have to ask whether it is diesel or petrol.

Actually, it is quite the opposite of what you just said. The latest injection systems operate at around 2,000 bar pressure and use piezo systems that allow a series of pre-injections before the main fuel pulses. This smooths out the combustion noise. You might get 5 pilot injections, a mid-injection and then a couple of main injections, for each stroke. Further, as these engines have evolved, the way the 'deck' design of the block and the way they are re-enforced internally makes them tuned to reduce external audible radiation from the block surface. The turbo (all diesels have turbos now, some have two) smooths out the exhaust so there is essentially no exhaust note. The main noises are from the induction system (but again smoothed by the turbo and, probably, intercooler matrix) and direct radiation from the top of the cylinder head.

I assure you, if you were to buy a petrol and a diesel of the same model somewhere here in Europe tomorrow, you would struggle to tell the two apart on the noise quality.

I don't think we get as much of the sulfur removed from the fuel here - in fact, that's the reason Europe was using Libyan crude - low-sulfur right off the boat. BTW, the beemer is a diesel. Not that I'll be able to afford one.

Yes, big issue. And one, indeed, that has kept Euro diesel tech at arms-length in US. You don't get all this high performance on shyte fuel!

With this odd variable timing capacity, the ecotech engine runs at 13:1 compression on gasoline, regular. They just adjust the cam timing so that when slow, it doesn't reach full compression, but going fast, it has over 100% volumetric efficiency (and then add the turbo). At high enough revs, detonation doesn't have time to happen, so you can get away with it. So that's getting right up there with a diesel in compression efficiency (though it does spin a lot faster) re thermodynamics.

Indeed there are ways to get petrol cars up to somewhere near diesels. You might also note that if you drive a petrol and a diesel flat out, then you'd probably not see that much difference either. This is because one of the advantages of diesels is zero pumping losses. In a petrol where you have a vacuum in the intake, to maintain a lower pressure of flowing gas requires power, these are termed 'pumping losses'. Diesels have no throttles (well, need no throttles, some put them in just to generate vacuum, which costs fuel economy). So run a petrol fully open and then the only delta is the combustion temperature. (Carnot and all that).

The thing is, yes, folks keep pushing petrols upto diesel efficiencies, then diesels efficiency gets pushed up further still. Diesel will always top the efficiency thing. It's like asking who is the stronger, men or women. For sure, there are plenty of women stronger than I am, but if you wanted to train up 'the strongest person' you'd pick a man (not me - pick a good candiate to start with!) to train up. Diesels are 'men' engines, petrols are 'women' engines!
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby Doug Coulter » Sun Aug 07, 2011 9:30 pm

I'd love to experience a quiet diesel. Here, only the ones running off used fast-food grease don't stink (well they do, but it smells like fried food). But there are other factors in total efficiency. As I once proved, "it's the car" among other things, or that 500 hp petrol Camaro wouldn't get 21 mpg at low speeds in the moutains...Peterson's publishing has a hot rod theory book out, that has the efficiency per compression ratio (theoretic) and it really doesn't rise much more after 10 to 1 or so, and after that other factors are far more important -- like at slow speeds, how much of the heat is lost to the cylinder and piston top before doing the pushing on the piston, how much the whole mess weighs (and therefore, how much rolling resistance its going to have) and so on and so forth. In HP/pound the petrol wins hands down, and the calx re system efficiency have to take it all into account. No way it doesn't take horsepower to climb hills at speed, and you don't get most of that back coasting down the other side -- wind resistance. In fact, the hybrid my friend Dale has doesn't really get squat from regeneration (still gets in the 50s mpg on long trips, tiny petrol engine wide open, electrics not involved), and that's not the reason for the thing. It's so you can run the petrol engine "wide open" -- not only is pumping loss an issue, but throttling cuts *realized* compression ratio. Spinning faster cuts losses per stroke...diesels won't go fast (as far as I know) -- and if you had a perfect world, you'd not want them to go fast -- wears things out quicker.

What the electrics in that hybrid allow for in that particular design is to have an engine that is super tuned for one set of conditions -- the electrics kick in whenever that (with charge discharge and other losses) would result in better efficiency. It allows them to use an engine with zip low end torque and efficiency, yet leap off the line when required. The tech in the Cruze points out that no engine tech is a finished job - it's a bigger, heavier car than a Prius by a lot (and nicer in other ways) -- but gets comparable mileage (40's) under the same conditions -- it's a wash in fuel cost/mile-pound, actually. I think the concept hasn't been fully exploited for hybrids, but that's where we are - nothing is as good as it could be yet. And once the Cruze has gone two carlengths, there is absolutely no performance comparison possible -- it blows the Prius off like it was a bicycle (handles better too, but that's another story). Bill tells me some of this may not matter as much where you live, as the roads aren't that great, but here I live in a dream land - hundreds of miles of twisty mountain roads with no traffic to speak of on them, it's nice to do a little razzmatazz on occasion (no police cameras either).

It seems all too tempting to use the fact that any IC engine can run at variable speed to make all the rest too easy, and thus not get best brake specific horsepower per pound of fuel out of it, no matter the type. GM seems to have taken the road of "lets just have a zillion gears" in the tranny, and retune the engine dynamically so the pumping losses are minimized, among other things, and for now, that's a winner. I'm sure it does have a throttle, though I've not found it yet -- it's not connected to the pedal. The thing is entirely drive-by-wire, even the power steering is electric, not hydraulic (from a BMW, they say, most of that stuff is made in Austria) In other work, my most efficient generator runs an IC engine, wide open, right on the torque peak, with tuned intake and exhaust piping, at 120% volumetric efficiency -- that one rocks The BTU->KWH on that is better than the best steam plants in existence. If not for the weight of generators and electric motors, using that, with very minimal batteries (capacitors almost) would be ideal, again, no matter the engine tech used I think. I was able to get there on the generator, as I have a convenient dummy load -- the system batteries, and so it's basically a dynomometer itself. In that use there is no question whatever a diesel would be a little better (since I can't run super high compression on gas I can get).

I mean, there's all these other tradeoffs that happen to make a car desirable too - most efficient is a single cylinder, but no one will drive that, too hard to make it not vibrate too much. Surface area to volume ratio! Heat loss! Car mass -- a lot here won't drive a light car. We wreck these things from time to time, and the people in the light ones meet Darwin all too frequently. In my high mileage prototype, which I still drive, the extra weight of an 8hp diesel and the additional transmission needed to handle the tight RPM range would *reduce* the mileage over what I have. Of course, you 'd never be able to sell either as a road car, even though I do make the 20 mi round trip to the store in the kart when I feel like it. The light weight means it's noisy and a bit exciting to drive on real roads - it has very quick ratio rack and pinion, no power so you really have to keep control of that thing.
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby Doug Coulter » Thu Oct 13, 2011 5:08 pm

Well, I've not done it yet, but I'm still certifiable.

I just got to test drive the first Chevy Volt to arrive in Va. I might change that Camaro into one, and fairly soon.
It's an awesome little car, very interesting implementation of the basic electric transmission. Handles great, silent (including road noise) and driving it all over town this afternoon - some of it " abuse", we couldn't make it start the gasoline engine (didn't even come close to running the batteries down in 45 minutes hard driving) which is a tiny version (sans turbo) of the one in my new Cruze. Very low CG, corners like it's on rails (shades of the Camaro), spins the tires at low speeds, very slick user appointments - nice car. One small glitch for what I have in mind for it, but I'm getting onto GM to get some support and info to see if we can reconcile that one.

Here's the plan. I'm running on solar PV power here, and with the big array, even though half of it is sitting in the garden and shaded by asparagus, I very often have WAY too much power after the big house batteries are full. Since for now, I'm not even using MPPT "impedance matching" or a fancy charge controller (just a big knife switch that looks like it's from a set for Frankenstein), we often wind up turning on things like AC or space heaters to use up the extra. I'm running out of needs for those, don't have anything left that needs a big welding project, and so forth, so why not use the extra to charge an electric car? Further, that thing has huge batteries (the reason for the low CG is that they're under the floor) which is spare capacity if I can get it back in times of multiple days of darkness. Think of it as a backup power station/generator that knows how to take itself to the gas station, no more fuel transfer hassles to little generators, maintenance on them and so on -- and it will easily make the trip I make to get beer once in awhile.

The one glitch was mentioned in passing above -- it won't run its gasoline engine unless you have run the battery down, and won't use it to top up the built in batteries, just keep them from running down too far on a long trip, depending on the electric input for nearly all its power. This is all controlled by the fairly fancy (and nice UI) on-board computers. The idea of course, would be to fully integrate it into the house power system, when it's parked in the driveway -- most of the time in other words. If GM will support me, and wants some nice advertising and testbed, that Camaro is gone in a heartbeat, and some lucky guy will get to pilot that "air superiority fighter" in my stead. This is a neat car - they just didn't quite have me in mind when they put it together.

I should have taken pictures, it's cute besides, and well thought out as far as I can tell. I'll get those soon. I like the concept as they've done it, though in a weak moment I might have made provision for some direct mechanical drive from the engine (it's not a shabby engine). I would suppose the reason they did it that way is to really get the benefit of only running the engine under an ideal-efficiency load. One thing I noticed (out of many that aren't in the documentation or advertising) is that they run those batteries HARD - there is a liquid cooling system for them! Lots of very fat wire between the 360volt pack and other things too -- several fat ones in parallel for each connection. The power steering, like the Cruse, is a fly by wire all electric Bosch unit, very nice feel. Even the 4 wheel disc brakes are powered by an electric hydraulic unit, as is the AC. Nice stereo too, and color heads up displays all over. A real neat thing.

We'll see if I can get some engineer from GM mothership on board with this, and if so - I'm going to take it home and name it. I suspect it won't pee on the carpet. Did I mention it does the opposite lock full drift boogie like a real race car? Doesn't even lean when doing that, suspension is very nice, but it's weird that it's silent except for the tires when doing that.

Verrry cool. It might change my avatar. But I'll keep the fusor plates...
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby johnf » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:04 pm

Doug
Check this out
Lots more cool factor than the chevy volt
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?se ... e_number=1
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Re: Certifiable....

Postby Doug Coulter » Tue Nov 01, 2011 8:08 pm

Oh, in some ways that classic has a great cool factor - should add a little ether smell to remind folks of the cocaine along the way. But no way it's "car of the year", handles as well, has the range and so forth. The Volt is so purpose designed - it's more like an aircraft or spacecraft - every gram accounted for, and all in the right place. I shouldn't allow myself to get so spoiled, but these new cars are so much better in every department - handling, quiet, efficient, comfortable all at once that it's awful hard to consider taking a step back voluntarily. Just today, I had to make what's normally a 45 min trip inside 30 min, in the Cruze - and made it handily though I probably frightened a few folks I blew by along the way - and it was "like butter" - car just did it, neat and sweet, not scary (for me) one bit even at 1g hairpins (rated 15 mph, me going 45). I managed to get back from an appointment with a lawyer that ran late in time to close my short trades today - nice profit. (he's doing a little work for me on ditching the witch).

Just a few minutes ago I was watching Bloomberg TV (stock stuff), and they had a guy about to test drive the new Porsche 991. The anchor had recently driven the Camaro SS, and took some flak for defending it. The euro-trash guy was all over how "bad" the Camaro is - heavy (true), hard to see out of (also true). But also 1/3 the price, and I'd bet serious money, faster on a road track by a real good bit...if not, it's sure to be close, because it's entirely tire-limited in all regards below about 90 mph; you can do a rolling burnout at 90 by merely pushing down the gas pedal, and that's on 275 mm Pirelli p-zero gum-ball tires. With a 52:48 F/R weight distribution, it pulls 1.38 gees on the skid pad. I can't imagine there's a car that exceeds that performance per buck - and darn few in the running at all.

Though no doubt, if what you mainly want to do is show off how much money you can blow (eg to get women's attention) uselessly, the Porsche would have to win (as would a Beemer or an Audi -- or a Vette). It's all a function of what you like. Me, I'd buy 3 Camaros for that money, and have fun wrecking two of them, and be ahead on the fun per bucks. But of course, Ymmv....
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Well, maybe. I'm waiting for an electric car

Postby Alex Funk » Wed Nov 09, 2011 2:25 pm

It won't be too long now.

The paradigm is a car with an electric motor, a fuel cell that burns anything from plain ole gasoline to swamp gas and anything in between, fed from a tank very much like what is in your car now. No battery other than that required for acceleration/regen braking.

Bloom Energy (http://bloomboxenergy.us/) looks like it is going in the right direction. What they claim makes their fuel cell different is that they have matched their electrode material to the thermal coefficient of their sand-based ceramic substrate, letting their fuel cell operate at a much higher temperature so expensive catalysts are not needed.

And Tesla Motors makes one sweet power plant -- only one moving part in the brushless motor (the rotor) and the tranny is just a single reducing gear. I think physics dictates this lashup over wheelmotors.
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Re: Certifiable....I did it, Certified

Postby Doug Coulter » Sat Nov 12, 2011 7:44 pm

I picked up my Volt today. Traded the Camaro and some bucks for it. Drove it home, almost made it here on pure battery (it's 50 mi). But I ragged the crap out of it on 81, doing a little racing...so I ran the batteries down. Just about the time I turned off RT 8 onto the backroads that lead to my place, it seamlessly flipped over to gasoline and used .2 gallon to get me home - roughly 50 mpg in that mode. I couldn't tell the engine was running at all and stopping to listen shuts it off anyway. No change in performance whatever, which makes sense. When I got home at about 2:30 my home system had shut down because I wasn't here to use power, and the batteries had overchaged - the inverters shut down in self defense (gotta get them charge controllers for sure now - or design/build some, more likely). Soo I pulled the big switch and hooked a big load across the batteries to bring them down, plugged in the car when I got AC back, and then everything was fine with that. I got 6 miles worth of charge by sundown, then I shut that down - it uses a couple kw on max charge mode (with 120v in, it's double that with 220). I can charge it up the rest of the way tomorrow, supposed to be sunny.

I was pleasantly surprised on a couple of levels. For one thing, out on the highway, I didn't have to take a back seat to anything but a Porsche. I really didn't expect it to just keep pulling hard past 80 mph (they recommend 50 for good economy). Second, this thing is just silent - not just the drivetrain noise, but the wind, road etc. They used a lot of composite and insulation to make it efficient to heat (and lighter) and that took care of the noise too. The ride is excellent, even on Floyd washboards, and it corners hard and flat. The electric car conversions I've worked on and driven are utter jokes by comparison. This is a real car, just happens to have a weird drivetrain. I'll be looking forward to that $7500 tax rebate from Obummer for it to be sure, but I guess early adopters always pay a little more. Nice features in the car - two color, bright, high res screens (you can watch DVD's on the middle on while in park), some very fancy climate control stuff (probably required to be efficient) - the sort of thing where you say I want X temp here and that's what you get - when it's cold it heats the seat first, then if that's not good enough uses the heater.

One thing I didn't expect but learned when reading the book is that it uses bot the gas engine and the AC (which is electric, as is the hydraulic brake supply) to control that huge Li-Ion battery temperature -- heats it when cold, cools it when hot (has a separate cooling loop for to-ambient cooling when that will do). Quite a bit of fiddling and coddling for that battery.
I suppose that's why they don't use the gas engine to really charge it more than a trickle when in that mode. The charger is actually out in the charger cord for AC input FWIW, a big switchign supply to make the 360 or so volts for the main battery. It has a 360-12v switcher in the car for the 12 accessories.

The stereo is tweaker grade. Nice! And they got away from that ignorant lockin to apple's top secret ipod format, so any thumb drive with mp3's or wavs or various other formats (even ogg) plays in it. That was a real pain in the Camaro - I had to find a mem stick that matched size with one of the dumber, older ipods (there's two flavors, one where they act like a dumb disk, and one where they are a computer with a protocol, and you can only do the former with a usb drive), and then find some illegal software for linux (which apple has sued off the internet, assholes) to put my own goddam tunes on it in apple format, so as not to have to buy them (and an ipod!) from Apple yet again - just to hear crap I own already in a car I own already. I guess enough others think like me and whined that GM got the word. And Apple lost a lockin - just in time so it wasn't getting permanent. Any difference between them and microsoft is now pretty much in favor of MS, sick as that is - I hate MS With a round hot passion.

This uses HID lights, tiny jobs with lenses, looks good at night. Led other lights, Backup lights that WORK, a backup wide angle camera, ultrasonic object detection all around (which is cool as if it's on the front right, it beeps on the front right speaker and so on). It's a hatch back, generous room, bucket back seats that individually fold down, and lots of little niceties all over.

So, it's kind of slow to charge. You get two speeds more or less, and the max is around 15 amps at 120v input. Neither one liked my little honda inverter-generator (which is much more efficient than most cars) but neither minded my house power - maybe a filter would make it happy off the Honda. I'll have to finish refurbing the other big gennie I have around here and try that too, just in case I need that. A couple kw more or less is not something I can leave on over night on my house batteries, should I want it charged by morning. On the other hand, unless you also run down the 12v battery in it, it doesn't need to be run as an electric at all - it can run in a kind of hybrid mode (like a Prius) off discharged main batteries and the gas engine, in which the short term measurement tells me I'm getting almost the rated 56 mpg.. could be worse.

Obviously, more to come as I get more miles on it. Out of the 126 is has on it this instant, I put on most of them - the first 26 test driving it, and another 55 driving it home. I did keep the fusor plates for it - but now I'll need a new avatar picture if I want to keep it real. ;) And since tomorrow is supposed to be sunny, we can find out if I have enough spare power to run it fully up in a day, or if I have to really put those other panels up off the ground and start working on an efficient switcher charge controller.

I got the white one in the other pictures FWIW. Decent color for here in the world of dust and mud. For whatever reason, a little on a white car doesn't look nearly as bad as any whatever on a dark blue one. So, I now have two white, and one gold, on which the crud is invisible.
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