I worked with some of the fine folks over at the Electric Auto Association (EAA) to do an article on my bug for their newsletter. It came out awesome! I gave the editor a lot... [read more]

A few iPhone pictures of my car at Plug In America’s party from a few months ago. Hanging out in SF: Parked inside the winery on Treasure Island:

So, how far can it go? Today I drove home from a Plug In America gala event in San Francisco. I maintained 55 mph on highway 101 and 85 — relatively flat highways. This is... [read more]

The bug has about 8700 miles so far. I had to change the front right wheel bearing about 1000 miles ago. It started getting loose and making a lot of noise. When I took the... [read more]

A few pictures taken last weekend on West Cliff, Santa Cruz, California.

I’m working on getting pictures of my car with other’s of its kind (but more modern, in general). Silver Leaf, at Apple. RAV 4 EV (in Santa Cruz, today). Ken Adelman’s car. Blue leaf, Cupertino.... [read more]

…with Girlventures!

The Elithion Lithiumate BMS uses a serial cable to talk to the computer. That’s kind of a pain to see additional information that the SOC display doesn’t tell me. It is also nice to see... [read more]

I got my charger back from Manzanita last thursday and put it in the car Friday night. They weren’t sure why it busted, but the bridge rectifier had to be replaced, and they did some... [read more]

I now have over 3000 miles on my car. Up till today, the only problems I have had have been with the IOTA DC-DC Converter. I’m supposed to have a replacement soon, as my IOTA... [read more]

Today when I went to grab my car at lunch I discovered that the Manzanita Micro PFC-30 charger wasn’t charging. I looked at it, and the BMS (Battery Management System) also wasn’t on. The BMS... [read more]

I’m ditching my IOTA DLS-55 DC-DC converter. The inrush limiter I use (which replaced the AC bridge rectifier) eventually dries out and cracks, and then stops working. I got ~1000 miles on my last modification... [read more]

I never knew much about how I paid for electricity. I didn't know if we had certain hours that were peak or not. So, I called PG&E last week and they explained to me I was on the E1 rate. I told them I had an EV, and they suggested I go to E9 A or E9 B. They are listed here: http://pge.com/tariffs/ERS.SHTML#ERS

Like any good programmer, I decided to do my homework before blindly switching. It turns out that after I did the math, a PG&E representative told me they have a comparison spread sheet on their Plug-In Electric Vehicles page (here's a direct link to the excel spreadsheet). That page seems to lump a bunch of assumptions together about energy use, but I found that page to be quite accurate in its rough estimates.

(more after the jump...)

The loudest part of my car when I turned it on was two fans for the water cooling setup on the controller. Ideally, the controller should turn the fans on and off and that will... [read more]

I got something I had been dying to get. The bug now has DMV approval to use the carpool lane.

How about a tour of my garage shop? Grinder: Work desk and tools hanging on the wall: The fan in the window is used to exhaust fumes from welding and other things: Nuts, bolts and... [read more]

One of the problems with the electric motor is that it is exposed to the elements underneath the car. I don’t want to get water in my Warp9 and have it fry, so I needed... [read more]

I don’t think I posted this to my blog…my caption was “Sorry Tesla, I got to the Charging Station first!” \

My drive home includes ~1900′ of elevation gain, which takes a lot of energy. The car averaged 322 watt-hours/mile. So, what does the data look like coming too work where I drive *down* highway 17?... [read more]

I finally have the car running again! I got the controller back from Netgain Controls with an upgraded motherboard to fix some issues I was seeing. My Interface Module was also fixed to report the... [read more]

In follow up to: http://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog/2011/02/plug-bug-dmv-process-registering-a-home-built-ev/ I now have the car registered as an EV! I took all the paperwork I had accumulated, in particular the BAR form saying that it didn’t need smog, and the... [read more]

So, I’ve been trying to register the Plug Bug as a pure EV car. Here has been my adventure so far. 1. First DMV trip. The car was registered non-op, but I drove it down... [read more]

Currently, the car is garaged. It has been wet and rainy, and I don’t have the motor water proofed. I tested making it water proof by using some thick plastic underneath the motor area to... [read more]

I have the rear section finished now and can carry unicycles on top of my cells.

… a continuation from part 1. When putting on the cell boards boards on the cells I was extra careful to not let the wires touch anything or to put the board on backwards. Each... [read more]

UPDATE! After 100 miles, the solder got so hot that it melted out. I asked the friendly people on EVDL why this would happen. It could be because the inrush limiter was not rated right,... [read more]

I’ve been driving the car for a few weeks now, and I’m behind on some blog posts about it. The car has a small problem with the DC-DC converter, so I couldn’t drive it this... [read more]

Here’s a video of a walk around I did describing some of the car’s elements. I fumbled on “contactor” :)

Here’s an old video tour of my paint booth when I painted the bug earlier last year: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3zn4Lw44E

I have a lot more details later, but here it is!

There needs to be a way to connect one 3.2v Thundersky battery to another to form the battery pack. I’ll have a total of 48 cells in two separate packs. Apparently some batteries come with... [read more]