The electric ride: Owners proud of battery-powered cars
By Rachel Sauer
palmbeachpost.com
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Owners of battery-powered cars are few, but they're proud and they've got a message: Good riddance to gasoline doesn't mean goodbye to power, practicality — or fun.
There are some things you just expect to run on batteries: an iPod. Flashlights. Toys that make noise. But cars? Well...
Putt putt putt putt putt.
That's the first thought, right? Gutless wonders with all the oomph of a vacuum cleaner, OK for senior citizens in golf carts tooling around Delray Beach, maybe, or Ed Begley Jr. driving 10 self-righteous miles at a time.
With a national ethos of "my car, myself," and a collective expectation of being able to jump in the car and drive 80 mph for 300 miles, electric cars just haven't caught on. They might even be dead. The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? came to movie theaters last month.
And yet they're out there. That Lamborghini zooming down I-95? Could be electric. The Toyota RAV 4 parked at Publix? Possibly has 18 batteries.
As for the people who drive them: Zealots? Maybe. Speed freaks? Visionaries? Tinkerers who just like messing around with cars? Yes, yes and yes.
Driving an electric car is to take one step beyond just loving a car, and identifying with it. It is a statement of sorts. And the statements are as varied as the drivers.
CHARLES WHALEN, DELRAY BEACH: Two fully electric Toyota RAV4's
While some electric cars are more novel than anything, others look no different from their gas counterparts. And that, Whalen says, is the point.
A mathematician by training, he sees the necessity and practicality of electric cars like a proof: Americans are dependent on oil, particularly foreign oil, which is a finite resource. When that resource runs out, the only alternative to walking will be alternative fuels. So why not, he reasons, start making the move away from oil dependence now, before there's a crisis?
"We're starting to see how things are going to go now, with gas $3 a gallon," he explained. "People seem to think prices will go back down, but I think they're only going to go up. We're spending $200 billion a year on military operations in Iraq, just to keep the oil flowing."
He has worried about foreign oil dependence since 1973, when he was a 13-year-old sitting in his mother's station wagon for hours, waiting in line for gas.
"That just made a huge impression on me," he said, "that we have this dependence for transportation fuel on oil coming from the Middle East."
So he's become something of a crusader. He began investing in electric vehicle ventures. Last April, he and his wife bought their first electric vehicle, a Toyota RAV4 sport utility vehicle — one of a limited number Toyotas produced between 1997 and 2003. Three months later, they bought another one.
They keep a Honda Civic to drive longer distances, but Whalen said the RAV4's fulfill 98 percent of their driving needs — "Ninety percent of people in the United States drive 30 miles a day or less," he said.
The electric RAV4 has a range of 60 to 120 miles, he said, depending on how fast he drives. And he can drive upwards of 85 mph, should he need to, but that drains the batteries quickly. He once drove 140 miles, going 47 mph and not using the air conditioning or radio, as part of a distance challenge among electric car drivers.
Currently, Whalen is petitioning cities in South Florida to allow him and other members of the Florida Electric Auto Association (www.floridaeaa.org) to install public charging stations. He estimated there are about 25 highway-capable electric vehicles on the roads of South Florida, but said he thinks there would be more if people knew they had easy access to a charge.
"That's one of the hurdles," he said. "People want to just get in their cars and be able to drive 400 miles without stopping. And right now, that's just not possible with an electric car. So it's a matter of changing the way we think, planning our trips a little better, not driving so fast.
"The rising price of petroleum is the sole thing that's going to drive change."
STEVE CLUNN, FORT PIERCE: Owner, grassroots electric vehicles (www.grassrootsev.com)
Eventually, almost everyone locally who owns or knows anything about electric cars mentions the name Steve Clunn. He is the godfather, an electric car guru who for more than 10 years has converted gas cars to electric. In all, he's done about 30, and will only be satisfied when there's an electric car in every garage in America.
"I had the feeling of wanting to do something to stop our use of gasoline," Clunn explained. "Of wanting to stop being part of that whole gasoline rat race.
"It's like we're on the Titanic and we're about to hit the iceberg. Nobody thinks the price of gas is going to go higher, but it is. What about when we can no longer pump oil out of the ground fast enough? We're in a bus that's accelerating and there's a wall ahead."
Plus, when he looks at gas cars "belching exhaust," all he can see is dying ecosystems. He laughs at the argument that the pollution emitted to generate electricity is equal to the pollution emitted by gas cars — "at least half as much," he said. "You charge it overnight, at off-peak hours, and that makes an even bigger difference."
For a starting rate of $15,000 he will convert just about any car from gas to electric. Generally, he uses lead acid batteries, a set of which average $3,000, rather than lithium ion batteries, which run about $30,000. He said he believes in the potential of lithium ion batteries, though — they're smaller and lighter and last longer.
"But with any battery, you have a certain number of charges before you have to replace it," Clunn said. "You're always going to have to replace batteries. But otherwise, no oil, no gas, very little servicing, the motors last half a million miles. It's a motor and batteries and a controller. And a social conscience."
GARY HANSEN, DELRAY BEACH: Global Electric Motorcar
Hansen, a helicopter pilot, is the consummate gadget guy, always figuring out ways to juice up his vehicles, just because he enjoys it.
Several years ago, his grandmother passed away and he and his wife, Alison, inherited his grandmother's golf cart. They drove it all around their quiet neighborhood and enjoyed it so much that Hansen got to thinking he'd like something street legal.
A little research directed him to Global Electric Motorcars (www.gemcar.com), which makes street-legal vehicles that resemble space-age, beefy golf carts. Brand new, Hansen explained, they were $10,000, which was more than he wanted to spend. However, in 2004 he found a GEM car on eBay for $5,000, plus $700 to ship it from Arizona.
He loved it immediately, but set about improving it. He installed a new motor and charger and different batteries, and rigged a generator on the back so he could drive the 54 miles round-trip to work at Palm Beach International Airport without having to find a place to recharge. Without the generator, he can go about 40 miles on a charge.
He even changed the horn. "I can't leave anything alone," he said, laughing.
He doesn't drive the GEM car every day. His other car is a GMC 2500 truck, a necessary, practical vehicle that isn't quite as interesting to him as the GEM car, he said.
The GEM car runs on six 12-volt batteries, which Hansen said cost about $200 each and take eight hours to fully charge. It's licensed as a regular car, but he said insurance has been tricky since the GEM car doesn't have airbags. He can legally drive it on roads with a 35 mph or lower speed limit, so he takes the scenic route along A1A to work. Plus, the GEM car doesn't drive much faster than 40 mph.
He always carries an extension cord, so if he drives to a friend's house he can charge the GEM car while they chat. It plugs into a regular, 120-volt outlet.
And as for the intangibles...
"(Driving it) is like eating a cookie," he said. "It puts a smile on my face."
MATT GRAHAM, HOBE SOUND: Converted 1990 Nissan 240SX
Graham is a speed freak.
As a mechanical engineering student at the University of Maryland, he worked on a hybrid electric vehicle that got 80 miles per gallon. He and the team he worked with gave demonstrations to various auto companies, "who couldn't care less," he said. "At that point, I got sort of disgusted with the whole auto industry."
But he kept working on electric cars, though just for himself. He and a friend dabbled on various cars, then decided to do a full conversion to electric.
"EVs historically are not known for having power," he said. "We wanted to design one that could compete respectably against gas cars."
Several years ago he bought a 1990 Nissan 240SX, which he spent about three months converting to electric. He calls it Joule Injected (www.jouleinjected.com). His goal? Speed.
With 25 batteries total — eight up front, eight in back and nine in the middle — and a 1/3 megawatt controller that can put out 2,000 amps, Graham's Nissan can do a 13-second quarter mile, at over 100 mph. That's one of the fastest times in the world for electric vehicles in the same class as the Nissan.
He races the Nissan at Moroso, but also drives it the 3 miles to work, and to the grocery store. He charges it every night on a 240-volt outlet, the same outlet washers use. While his electric bill went up about $25 per month, his gas bill — which was $50 per fill-up — dropped to nothing, he said.
Graham figures the Nissan costs $1.20 to fully charge, and will go about 50 miles on one charge. He also will have to replace the lead acid batteries every five years, which costs about $3,000.
"Other than that, it's the same brake maintenance and cooling system as a gas car," he explained.
The challenge, then, is simply to make it go faster.
PAUL VAUGHN LIDDLE AND JERZY DREAM, WEST PALM BEACH: Partners in world class exotics (www.worldclassexotics.com)
Some drivers love cars for the thrill of speed. Some drivers just love the cars themselves — the lines and curves, the nuances of design.
That's how Liddle and Dream approach electric cars: As a blank canvas of design possibility — to look sleek, to push boundaries and, yes, to go very fast.
Liddle first got into electric cars through Steve Clunn, the local electric car guru. Liddle found Clunn's Web site, www.grassrootsev. com, and began researching electric cars. He thought it would be fun to build an electric car to drag race, and his thoughts turned, naturally, to Porsches. He's always loved Porsches.
Since 1986, he's driven Porsche 911s, so that's what he and Clunn converted. Something clicked for Liddle — the new possibilities for design and speed. Once he partnered with Dream, they began converting various exotic cars — Lamborghinis and Bentleys and Rolls-Royces — to electric, and redesigning and retooling the components to increase speed and power.
For example, Liddle currently has a Lamborghini that, with 18 batteries, has 1,200 foot pounds of torque at fourth gear. That probably means something only to the most devoted gearheads, but suffice it to say, that's power. It tops out at 135 mph.
Dream, an engineer, and Liddle also are creating design prototypes for electric cars that don't look like cars at all, but sleek UFOs. They hope to eventually take one of their designs to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and break a land speed record for electric cars.
"It's just a different way of thinking," Liddle said of electric cars. "They're so simple — a motor, batteries and a controller. But there's so much possibility."
WHERE TO BUY AN ELECTRIC CAR
Want to buy a highway-capable electric car off the lot? Locally, that's not so easy. In fact, you can't. But there are several businesses that will convert your car, or any car, to electric. For more information, visit the Florida Electric Auto Association's Web site at www.floridaeaa.org.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy has a lot of good electric vehicle information at www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/afv/elec_vehicles.html. The DOE also has an interesting Web site that lets you compare the fuel economy of various cars — www.fueleconomy.gov.
For example, how does the 2002 Toyota RAV 4 EV (electric vehicle) compare to its two-wheel-drive, automatic counterpart? Considering a national average of 8 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity and an average of $2.92 per gallon for regular gas, it costs 60 cents to drive the EV 25 miles, and $2.81 to drive the gas RAV 4. |
