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]

A picture I took from the Dream Box show. Amazing! Tickets are still available for Friday (April 8th, 2011) and Sunday (April 10th – two shows, one early and another later).

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

Fuzzy Protea Taken at the UCSC Arboretum, Feb 20th, 2011.

Obama hate-mail has been scouring the internet for years. People frequently resend emails that they simply don’t understand. My dad sent me one with the title “After two years of Obama—here’s your change!!!”. Here’s an... [read more]

A friend pointed me to a link on MNN with some amazing treehouses. That led me to Romero Studios. They have built some quit amazing treehouse structures, such as the screen shot below. Check them... [read more]

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]

This is a follow up to the last post where I posted pictures.

The main part of my old treehouse fell down quite some time ago. however, the walls were left standing until a while ago when they finally fell too. Here’s a few pictures. I’ll post a... [read more]

Protea #2 Taken at the UCSC Arboretum, Feb 20th, 2011.

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]

I’ve been working hard on the car, but progress has been slow. I was missing some BMS boards — I should have counted them 6 months ago! So, I had Justin and Evolve overnight them... [read more]

How about just some pictures?

Don’t forget about the original design: http://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog/2010/12/plug-bug-battery-box-design/ I did modify it slightly as I went along. I learned a lesson from the front box: add 1/8″ or so to the total length to avoid it... [read more]

I’ve been working on fabricating the battery boxes out of 1/8″ steel angle iron and flat stock for the past two weeks. The first step was to strap them together to get an accurate measurement... [read more]

Tuner’s Cube. I made it for my dad for Christmas 2010. Aaron helped me over Thanksgiving break to figure out the details and did some machining on it too. It started out as a ~3.5″x3.5″... [read more]