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We Were Just Goofing Around
Back in the late 90's a car-guy friend of mine who has money to burn started buying those 70's electric City Cars for some reason.
It was a real PITA to go fetch them because they weighed a ton (literally) and weren't in running condition. The odd thing was that all 3 of them came from a rural area and belonged to older "Rennaiscance" guys and 2 of them were priests!
We finally got around to pulling all of the dead batteries out of them and piecing together one good one. They all had a big old Allison aircraft starter motor grafted to a Ford Pinto 8" rear end that seemed to be in good condition.
After buying a fresh set of batteries for the one "good" City Car and getting it running, we contemplated what it would really take to drive an electric car.
The biggest issue was not range, per se, but getting stuck out with dead batteries.
How could you handle that problem?
You couldn't effectively "jump" or charge it from a conventional vehicle without overloading the alternator and/or spending hours charging it.
We had read about the future hybrid cars and applied that technology.
First we put some Radio Shack solar cells on the roof. They delivered so little power that we realised it may take days to charge it enough to bring it home if the weather was overcast.
Then we put a little Honda generator in the back of it. It only carried a quart of fuel but could recharge it enough to get it home in about an hour. Then we realised that if we were running close on battery capacity we could run the generator while driving it to extend our range.
Then we realised that if you drove it to work and left it out in the sun all day it could recharge it enough to add 5-10 miles to its range. That extra 5-10 miles could make the difference between making it home or not.
Voila! We had an electric hybrid with solar charging for under $5,000 years before the Prius was released here.
It was goofy, and we only extended its 45 mile range to 65 miles at best. But we did get an electric car that wouldn't leave you stranded.
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