Before, During, After

Before: We thought we didn't have Comp(fire) coverage.
Fortunately S. had included it, so we're looking covered.

During:

A shot provided by Ron and Jackie from the "During" period.
This is the big puff of smoke/steam from when they knocked out the side window and were spraying down the insides to cool things off before using the foam shown in the earlier post.

After: We had a meeting with the very nice insurance adjuster guy 'Chris' and spent an hour-and-some filling out a bunch of paperwork. Next business day a flatbed tow truck came by and hauled off the vehicle, now known as the 'Crispy Marshmallow', off to a yard in Eugene.
They did a 'condition assessment' there and turned it over to some sort of analysis team who are going to try and figure out what happened. More on that here once we know.

Insurance: Turns out they don't do it like you'd expect.
There is a separate arm of the insurance co. (or maybe they're outside, I don't know) that establishes the 'before' value. There were no dealer 'used' sales for them to look at so they had to survey dealers for new prices and then discount from there. Then they add back in the accessories (at 100% since this is a 'motorcycle') ...and came up with a number that was greater than what we paid. Really odd. They have the original paperwork with the price paid and most of the accessory adds right there in black and white. Mostly black, since the paperwork was in the car at the time... You think they would pay attention to that, but no, they have their process. Not complaining mind you since they're paying out over a grand more than what we have in it. We're the luckiest unlucky folks you know.

A teensy problem. HOT! or was that NOT!

Further update. There may be insurance after all.
Turns out it's the OTHER vehicle that doesn't have
'comp' coverage. A break! Finally! Maybe...

Update as of 10/15/09 below ----

Hot time at work today.
Went out to look when there was a commotion near quitting time and it turned out it was our car on fire.
Had been sitting there since lunch charging, happy as a clam. Clams like it hot?


There wasn't that much damage in the front, but the seats got going toward the center. I suspect it got pretty hot in there.


As you can see it burned up in the middle/right under the back seat. Funny thing is those are the batteries I *haven't* replaced.


Yep, this one probably qualifies as a total loss.

"Gosh, what started it?" you ask.
Hard to say. Seems like the biggest part of the problem was toward the center-right of the rear seat but we may have to pull a few bits out to have any chance of figuring it out. Right now it's cold, dark and raining. Oh, and it smells really Really REALLY BAD. More later.

Update: Had a bit of time to look it over today. The 12V system is still running we think,. One relay keeps clicking on and off despite the main pack being disconnected at both ends. Strange.
Looking for clues we pulled up the back seat and part of the battery cover. The most intense part of the fire was definately under and immediately forward of the rear seat. The 'firewall' metal cover under the rear seat did it's job, but the fire 'leaked out' just in front and eventually caught the rear seat cushion on fire. The batteries under there are VERY melted/burned. The connector posts are sticking up out of the mess and look like they're mostly in good shape. Note that the posts are NOT lead. It's looking like things lit-up there and traveled forward and sideways. The front seats appear to be relative latecomers to the blaze. Still no idea what lit it off.
The top(rear) battery, controller and motor/gearset look to be in pretty good condition as are most of the things in the dash. Some smoke damage of course.

Eeeewww, Battery Death

OK so here's my problem. The car came with some batteries that were not maybe real well known for reliability from a company called HAZE in China and were nearly a year old when I got the car plus who knows how they were treated while EcoMotion (the original dealer) had them.
There was also this one single DEKA Intimidator battery from the East Penn Co. in the US. Added to bring the pack voltage up to 84V. Supposed to be top quality. Same 100 Amp-Hour rating as the HAZE and fairly expensive, like $220 or $240 each. Guess which one dies? Yup, the DEKA lasted about thirty cycles - despite - the high bucks BattEQ battery management system.
So, we get ahold of the dealer, who turns us over (quite appropriately) to the battery maufacturer's rep, who eventually says "Yeah, we'll get you a new one." and after a week or two they pick up the failed battery and a week or two later (after some nudging) they drop off a new one. Total elapsed time is like TWO MONTHS.
I wonder how the battery guy would feel if his new car developed a gas tank leak and the gas tank supplier took two months to get him parts (which he would then have to install himself...) I don't really know him, but I bet he'd be really pissed-off to be without his new car for two months.
Fortunately I had a spare battery.

In the mean time the BattEQ system gets recalled and I get involved in the design of the VoltBlocher boards as noted earlier. I didn't have enough boards for the whole pack. Battery #5 was behaving really well on it's own so I didn't put a board on it for like two weeks after all the others had their's. Guess maybe it wasn't doing so well after all because it started to fail about two weeks later. Right about the time the new DEKA arrived. What a stroke of luck!
Just to make sure it's OK (and to break it in a little) I ran a couple cycles of charge test. Discharge at 5 Amps until the voltage drops to 10.8 and then charge up (Bulk charge phase to 14.5V - etc.) Funny thing happens: at 5 Amps (actually 4.93) disharge rate, a 100 Amp-Hour battery should last 20 hours. The most this one will do is 16 hours. 20% low. Hmmm.
Maybe it takes a few more charge cycles to come up to full capacity? We'll see. Swap it into the car in battery slot #5. A fully charged pack should be capable of going over 20 miles. This pack would only do about 18 as the original #5 was a little weak by the time I tried this. Still with a worst case commute of 12.8 miles we should be fine, eh?
Not for long. The new DEKA seems almost fine for a while. It was 0.3V lower than the others pretty much all the time. Seems a little odd, but I have one other that runs a little low and it's holding up fine. I set the VoltBlocher to limit it to 14.4-14.5V during the high current bulk charge phase and a little higher during the later (generally lower current) phases.
All goes well for about 20 charge cycles. I limited the initial miles/charge as the battery got broken in but it was running the longer commute (12.8) within a week. About two weeks later I have a 'short' commute of 7 miles (with charging a the other end) which I had been doing for a couple days at that point. I ended up going an extra 2 miles that day and the new battery dropped way off in mile 8. The next day I fired up ye olde data-collection system and captured the voltage spikes down as the new battery crapped out at just about the same place. By around the 26th or 28th cycle on the new battery it was effectively dead.
Me and the battery dude are going to have another dance. You watch, they'll try to blame it on the charging system. I OTOH have actual data. We'll see. Meanwhile I'm cycling one of the other 2+ year old batteries to see if I can swap it in while we wait. Again.
Moved the VoltBlochers further forward between the seats so I can keep a better eye on things. That part seems to be working good.

Yea! Pictures!

Da car, nestled into it's "Motorcycle Parking" spot at work. You can't see it but the charging outlet is on the post behind the car. Thanks again to my workplace for providing the charging facilities.

So, the warrantied DEKA 'Intimidator' battery was delivered about ten days ago (just over two months after the first one failed) and I stuffed it in to replace battery#5 that was failing pretty rapidly. I discharged and recharged 'cycling' the new battery several times to get it broken in. Yes you do have to do that, tossing a new horse into the team and running them hard can cause stumbling and crashing problems...
I pulled off all the Volt Blocher boards before swapping in the battery and did a little testing and tweaking and then remounted them in a more managable arrangement. I got a few resistors swapped around and now all the boards operate within about a tenth of a volt of each other. I put the boards that operate a little low on the batteries that operate a little low, makes everybody happier.

"What, the batteries aren't balanced? Heresy!! "
There are batteries of three different ages and two different manufacturers in the pack. Of COURSE they aren't 'balanced' Don't be silly.
In fact I think the battery balancer that was on the pack (until it was recalled by the manufacturer) was part of the reason for some of my battery failures. Even when 'new' both the original and replacement DEKA batteries seem to run 2-3 tenth's of a volt lower than the HAZE units (which have a couple tenths of variation between themselves) and having something that's trying to bring them all to the same voltage seems to cause the units that run naturally lower to overcharge just enough to vent a bit. The venting causes a reduction in capacity, which increases the tendency to overcharge, and vent, and 20-30 cycles later you have a failing battery.
The traditional fix for this problem is to throw money at it. Just replace the whole pack. Then they'll be balanced...if you're lucky. Being cheap, I don't much like the $1500 solution.
My fix is to have the Voltage/Overcharge limiting boards set so they match the battery they're attached to. The 0.3V difference between the switch settings on this version of the VoltBlocher boards turns out to be just about right. (Brian, take note!)
As a result, when it's nearing the end of the 'bulk charge' part of the charging cycle with the pack sitting at around 60deg.F I'll see voltages of 14.7, 14.3, 14.5, 14.5, 14.3, 14.5, 14.5
#2 is a two year old HAZE and #5 is the new DEKA. If I take the boards off, some of the voltages will shoot up to 15.0 or 15.2 wich will kill them in short order.
I'm not sure what the deal is with #1, it always runs a bit high, though part of that is maybe measurement error. Anyway, we're now at 2000 miles...and with only four (total) battery failures...Huzzah!!

Minor Update

Yes, I need more pictures. We'll get there...

I really WANT to put time into fixing all the little irritations that bother me when driving the car but all the available 'car' time has gone into trying to keep the battery pack alive. There have been two solid outright battery failures so far and another is beginning to fail. Obviously a car that needs $200 worth of battery replacements every month isn't going to be very economical.
I have five of the VoltBlochers in place and working. Two more are built but the voltages are wrong for some reason. More time needs to be applied to that problem. I probably built them wrong somehow. I'm convinced that they are what is keeping a couple of the 'lower' batteries alive. I'm very glad we designed the switchable cutoff voltage onto them. The older batteries DEFINITELY like a lower charge voltage.
Speaking of which, I've noticed two other things: The battery monitoring system provides temperature information in the display. I was using that to try and determine what the correct end-of-charge voltage should be. It varies inversely with temp. Last week I put a calibrated thermometer on the pack with some insulation above it and found that the temperature it's reporting is 8-10deg.F higher than the number the monitoring system is reporting. Since the charger has it's own temp.sensor that shouldn't matter all that much. However that 8-10 deg. means the batteries are being charged harder than I thought they were. I though it was charging to about 0.1V above the 'ideal', turns out it's closer to 0.3V above, so;
Secondly, The Zivan charger seems to be charging to a number very close to the 'maximum allowed' according to the battery manufacturer. So if the ideal end-of-bulk-charge voltage is say 14.4V at a given temp. and the max.allowed is 14.8V I find it's charging to about 14.7. Theoretically that's fine. It's staying within the maximum, right? Well, that 0.3V over the ideal translates into an almost 20% reduction in theoritical battery life, and that assumes perfect battery balance. That ain't how the real world operates. The strongest batteries are fine, but the slightly weaker ones come up to voltage sooner and are pushed over the maximum toward the end of charge, weakening them further. Thank goodness for the VoltBlochers. Also I'm going to have to find out how to turn down the charger by 0.2 per battery (1.5V overall).
Should be interesting....

Volt Blocher

Well, it's been a long time between posts but here we is again.
Updates: There's been battery failures, the battery balancing system actually got recalled by the manufacturer...the vehicle still tries to dart into the oncoming lane, attracts valdalous whackos, won't steer straight, and bounces up and down enough so you can hear the seats creak. Despite all that we've put on over a thousand miles in the last six weeks. What can I say, we're kinda stupid that way.
As mentioned earlier I've been working with a guy in California to 'morph' his existing battery charge management system into something that will work with the AGM Lead Acid batteries in this type of car. His name is Brian Blocher, so since the board progressively bypasses current to 'block' the voltage from getting too high the product is called Volt Blocher. Clever, huh?

Here's the first functioning prototype I've built.

The big white things are resistors the dissipate the excess heat (current) to keep the peak voltage under control during the charging cycle. Even a couple tenths of a volt too high can shorten the battery life considerably. The switch is so you can set an appropriate voltage for a given temperature range: Under 50F, 45-80F and above 75F respectively. There is one board for each battery so I've built seven of them. Three worked correctly right from the beginning, one is real close and three others are off by a bit more. Troubleshooting is ongoing.

I'm very glad I got three done since we had two batteries that really needed them and one that wouldn't mind a little help. Both got 'swapped in' from the other car when we had two of the originals fail (both still awaiting warranty replacement) and since they have a little less capacity (mainly from being older) they would charge up sooner than the others and begin to vent off gas as the voltage gets too high. The electrolyte lost that way cannot be replaced. So, the battery would loose capacity, charge up even quicker, vent more, lose capacity...you get the idea. The road to ruin (kinda like the US economy...)

More to come on this topic as the rest of the boards get put in place.
In the mean time, it's driving to work and school and everywhere local.

MiscUlanEous Factazoids

Big testing excitement today:

1.) Under any sort of real world load it's become obvious that one of the batteries is failing. Only good for 6-8 miles now and that's without any really high current loading (no 300A blastoffs or hills.) We captured one of the failure events with the datalogger and sent the file off to Sean. He agrees it's bad and apparently it will be warranted. May swap in a battery from the other car to get this one back on the road.

2.) Load test: we went out with four people on the car. Not a long drive or any hills to speak of, but the people weren't exactly lightweight either. It wouldn't hit 45 with four of us in there. Scotty to Bridge: She's givin'it all she's got captn'!

3.) The specs for the new battery management board are pretty much set and Brian may have first prototypes available by mid month. Way to go! Update: Prototype boards arrived and are reported to work exactly as expected. Should have final parts in two weeks. Cool.

Always: Flies in my pudding

There's always SOMETHING...

The battery monitoring system has been acting whacky. It reports the last three batteries are continually in 'overcharge' state. The first battery (the added non-standard one) is reported as being 13.2V (which it is) while the others are at 13.4V (which they are) and that the second battery is at about 13.8V (which it isn't, more like 13.6V). Sounds like small differences I know but 0.1V is a big difference in terms of State Of Charge (SOC).

Add to which it almost always shows SOC at 100%, even when the batteries are half discharged. The current indicator shows random stuff and the temperature indication has been variable. We spent part of the afternoon re-routing wires to try and improve matters (assuming it's some kind of electromagnetic interferance problem) and putting in some quick-disconnects to make resetting the system easier. Attaching the sensor modules to the top of the batteries should help with the temp reading. We'll see how it goes.

Now add the fact the Battery Equalization system (BattEQ which is separate) has just been recalled by the manufacturer. Bummer. However this will be less of a loss than you might imagine since the large voltage difference between the first and second batteries causes it to freak out and say: "that difference is too big for me, I'm turning off" so it hasn't been all that much use anyway.

Brian Blocher has a new version of his VoltBlocher product out that is intended for Lead Acid 12V batteries. I'm going to see about getting a set of these and getting some modifications done to them to replace the BattEQ unit. More on this later, it's a pretty significant price/performance breakthrough on the battery management front.

A week of "real"

Yes there really is a back seat and we really have had real people in there. Ya stuff several of the admiring crowd in there and...it still moves, really! There's just some rubbing sounds as we have the springs set fairly 'soft' and it kinda waddles under full load.

The big news is that after we came back from a week of vacation we ended up driving it to work and many trips elsewhere for basically the entire week. A slight increase in the slack in the emergency brake cable system greatly reduced the rear brake heating. There's still a little of that so a bit more tweak may be required. Still 20 trips of over 6mi. each and four over 13mi... ya gotta say overall it's working pretty well. Good enough for the real world.

When the battery temperature is around 40deg.F the top speed is around 42. when it's more like 60deg.F it'll crawl all the way up to 44mph! Of course if there's a hill or even an incline we're talking more like 38-40. Fortunately I drop off the car-pooler during the early section of the trip to work when the max posted speed is only 30, that way I don't have to face the (mild) hills and 45mph posted sections with more than one in the car. Overall it seems to work well enough for the commute, especially (oddly enough) if the traffic is fairly heavy and thus a bit slower.
Nobody has honked or had a hissy-fit...yet.

We still have the pogo-ing front end. Sean thinks it's probably the tire. I gather the quality control in terms of roundness is, um, lacking. I put a video camera on a stick so I could hang it outside the car while moving. The video came out fine, but you can't really see anything conclusive. Guess I'll try swapping out the tire.
The batteries, charger and battery equalizer systems seem to be working OK, though there is no way you would know this from looking at the battery monitoring system. It continually complains that at least three of the batteries are in constant 'overcharge' condition and that another is 0.5V higher than the rest. The SOC meter (State of Charge - battery level) almost always shows 100%, though sometimes it will drop to 95% when we have gone 12 miles (about half the useful range) and the current sensor will still show 29Amps one minute after you have pulled to a stop. The technical term for this is "Boogered."
Gonna have to put some work into that. Having $400 worth of monitoring equipment that gives you no useful information will eventually serve as an irritant. Since we'll have the battery compartment all apart to go after this problem we should get a few useful pictures. Later.

Straighten UP and fly Left

One of the recent posts on the Yahoo group is on how well the vehicle coasts when you let off the accelerator pedal.
Hmmm, I am definitely NOT having this experience. It will coast a block on the flat (starting at 25MPH) but certainly not two.
I have been trying to diagnose what is going on:

The whole vehicle heads down the street slightly 'crabwise.'
Noticeable but not high pressure on the wheel toward the right is required to get it to go straight. (ie: it wants to wander toward the left all the time.)
The Steering wheel is not straight. Completely straightening the wheel produces a mild left turn. The opposite from what you would expect from the above.
A fairly steeply crowned road (right slope) can get it to go straight.
The front wheel/tire is not very round. Since the beginning the
whole vehicle does a hobby-horse up and down thing that is
especially noticeable around 12-14 mph. It is not the rear
tires as they have been replaced and the wheels balanced. We
have looked at the rear wheels while going to see if they
run true. I thought it might be flatspotting when parked but
the problem is still there after a 10 mile drive on a warm day.

We have checked the steering wheel vs. wheel direction. Using 6ft. long straightedge the wheel, steering wheel and vehicle center-line appear to match up.
Sean in one of his lighter moments suggested a front end alignment. Pretty funny actually.
Brake drag: There is quite a bit of brake drag (I assume) on the right rear wheel. To the point of having the wheel hub quite warm after an 8 mile drive. Being on the right the drag would cause the vehicle to caster to the right. Instead it tends to go left. If anything the drag problem is helping keep it running straight. Yes we have multiple problems.
The vehicle seems pretty stable at speed and tracks well in high speed corners (40MPH).

The investigation is ongoing.

Getting up to speed

A 'basic' 72Volt Xebra SD (Sedan) is good for about 35MPH on the flat. Maybe a little more but not much and it drops to 30 on a mild grade. The GPEV (Sean) 84Volt version is good for a solid 40MPH on the flat and will hold 35 on the same grade. We wanted more of course. There are 45MPH roads on the way to work.

First thing to check was the speedometer. They're notoriously innacurate on Xebra's. We went out and checked it against a car with a known speedometer. Surprize! It's accurate within one MPH!

Second, there's some drag and tracking problems. There will be another post on that.

Third was to change the gearing (in effect) by putting on slightly 'taller' tires.
See the last part of the post below for how that works.
We took off the 145/70R12 tires and mounted 155/80R12. The new ones have about 8% greater circumference.
Results: One mile to get up to speed and then one mile with the pedal all the way down. Same course and full charge in both cases.
Before: 41-Maybe-42MPH
After: 43-Maybe-44MPH
Pretty much what you'd expect. We also ran it up our 'test hill' and couldn't see any speed difference (controller is in current limit mode). I'd say this counts as a success.

We have noticed that after it cools down from being charged the pack shows about 92-93 volts. The controller allows a maximum of 100Volts. Looks to me like there's room for another 6V battery. 90V Xebra anyone?

Fun times: The Initial Drives

We like our parking TIGHT

So, so. how does it go?
Pretty darn good. Everything about this car seems to be a generation ahead of the other (red) one. Interior, fit and finish, doors, accessories, instruments. You name it. The powertrain in the other car is arguably more advanced, but this one seems to work better in the 'real world'. Well, excepting the loud klunk that happens no matter how you finesse the accelerator pedal. That's not what I'd call an improvement.

There are power door locks and one key works for everything. There is some motor whine but is's not real objectionable. Something is buzzing against the motor or gearbox, you can hear it rattling at certain speeds, but I'm sure we'll figure it out.
We went out for several drives with charging in-between. Getting the batteries broken in without damaging any of them. The pack doesn't look really balanced as yet. Hard to tell if it's real or just flaky results from the PakTrakr battery monitor (we've had problems before...)

With the Sean's high-zoot 84V system installed the car cruises at remarkably low current readings around town. You can get pretty decent accelation while still staying below 100 amps. This should lead to pretty decent range and battery life. Cool.

It's still voltage limited at higher speeds (above 35 mph) You can see the current drop off as the speed builds even with the pedal to the floor. Electric motors also act as generators. At a given speed there is a certan voltage the motor would generate. It's the difference between that voltage and what's available from the batteries that allows current to flow, and therefore torque generated to accelerate the car. As the 'generated voltage' (back EMF) gets higher as you go faster, the voltage difference drops until you can't accelerate any more, so you reach a steady state speed.
People tend to think that since the motor isn't all that powerful you should put smaller wheels/tires on the car to improve hill climbing ability. Kinda like with a gas car where if there isn't enough power available in second gear, you drop down to first and floor-it. DC Electric cars work exactly the opposite: The maximum torque is generated at the lowest RPM. To get the electric car to pull harder you shift up to third and floor-it, You get more power right up until you reach the maximum current limit on the controller. We're going to do approximately the same thing (gearing-wise) by putting taller tires on it. More on this later.

It's Here???

Or well, it should be here, and maybe it's somewhere around here...??
Viktor the car transport guy calls about noon and says his driver is heading up from Sacramento and he'll be picking up a couple more cars and running up to Corvallis. 6PM "He's leaving Grants Pass now, should be there around 10PM, will you still be up?" Yeah, no problem.
Excitement builds.
Midnight. We call Viktor "His cell is not answering and we haven't heard from him in hours, please call if you see him." I think he's getting worried.
Later, still nothing.

Edit: Morning
The driver (Peter) was in the Super8 Motel overnight. The desk clerk tries to call me using the number he's given but I got nothing. Contacted later he says Peter has left and yup, his cell's dead.
Peter talks to a waitress we know near our EV parking spot. She calls us and we trot over. Peter is gone and we search the area. He shows up with the car about 15 min. later. He has keys but no paperwork of any sort. A handshake and off he goes, really seemed to be a nice guy. The eastern european accent was noticable but he got his ideas across. Somehow these EV things always come out strange. This is WAY better than the last go-round though!

The car appears to be in great shape, though the StateOfCharge meter is showing a really low number so we park it and put it on charge first thing. Well, that and search it for manuals and paperwork. None to be found.

It's Ccooooommmmiiiiinnng

We have word that the car is all done, modifications modified, cleaned, tested and ready to ship. Amazing turn around time from the GPEV folks. He did it over this last weekend. Pretty impressive. Now we just have to wait for it to get carted up here and get the final paperwork and insurance messes worked out. Pretty exciting times!

Optional option Optioning

As our friends in Detroit will tell you, it's the options that make the vehicle! Or at least the dealer's bottom line. Oh wait, they're all working at McDonalds now. Guess it didn't work all THAT well.
Doesn't work much at ZAP either, about the only option that's worth thirty gnat farts (a really Really small number) is the leather seats (yuck) and the rooftop solar panel.
The solar panel sounds cool, but it really doesn't do very much (3% range increase for nearly $2K?) so, no thanks.

There are however a bunch of cool options that Sean down at GPEV can add: An additional battery (with improved charger) that adds 20% or so to both range and speed. Low power high brightness LED lights. Battery management system that actually has a shot at getting more than two years out of your batteries. Trick battery monitoring systems...
Like I said. cool stuff. Not exactly cheap stuff. Good thing we got a pretty good deal on the basic vehicle. Adding all that does things to the bottom line. Yes we could have gone up and acquired the vehicle from the failing dealer, done all the work and saved maybe $1000 ($800 after tax credits) but it's worth something to have it done right.

The Name's the Game

When we decided to get one, the first order of business (other than waiting) was to get a naming contest going. Pretty important stuff. That and waiting... Did I mention waiting?

So, what do we know about it, well we know it's a three wheel white electric vehicle. Yes clever You, they left off one of the wheels. The average new car is $28,000. This is a third of that. They had to leave off something. No matter, three is all we needed anyway. What else do you need to know for a Naming Contest?
There were several clever entries, and a couple of that *other* variety. Having seen the top of the blog, I bet you can guess the winner.

Names that were proposed:
Casper (Friendly, white, opposite of menacing)
GETA (Generic Electric Transportation Appliance)
Kelvinator (White, Appliance-Fridge-like, Cool...)
EVette
EVone
EVangeGal
TheNutCase
HolyCow (must be a Hindu white cow thing...)
White Ligh10ing
Stool (OK I kinda like this one, the only
good three wheel poop joke in the bunch)
SnowFlake
œufMobilité (actually he said egg mobile but this looks cooler)

Get those cards and letters coming folks. Naming is important stuff.
The winner gets a big kiss! The losers get several big kisses!
...and you thought winning wasn't important...
[Edit]
YES! have a winner folks:

le Fantôme Blanc

Awww, you probably guessed. What a letdown.
You cosmopolitan types have probably translated this into "the White Ghost" already. The rest of us less stylin' volk had to look it up.

Anyway...
The State of Oregon in it's immense wisdom thinks it's a Motorcycle.
This, it turns out has a number of advantages.
OTHER than the faint jeering noises you might make in the general direction of the state capitol.
Advantages like lower fees and insurance, and no odd electric vehicle surcharges and fewer supremely weird speed regulations: drive 25 in a 35 zone? 35 in a 40 zone? What? I don't think you can even SEE the speedometer from where most Legislators have their heads.

Back in the beginning

About time to get another'nother EV?
As you can see below, it was a long search process.
This is actually the second recent EV purchase. The first
is documented elsewhere. It had a few problems, most of
which got fixed up pretty well, but given it's LSV/MSV
(low/medium speed vehicle) role there are some commute
sections that it's really not suited for so I suspect we'll sell it.

The original story:
Due to a change in commute habits I sold my previous EV, a
U.S.Electricar 'Leopard' ( http://www.evalbum.com/190 ) a couple
years ago. The buyer got another couple years out of the batteries
after she bought it bringing the total up to right about ten years
for the pack. Those T105 Trojan's are pretty tough.
Though my '00 Honda Insight has been doing really well (68MPG
Lifetime) you can see that it won't last forever and there are
times when having a second vehicle (other than the motorcycle)
would be nice. For a 7 mi. mostly flat commute with a short
section of 45MPH posted, the Xebra looked ideal.
Especially if available in Blue, my S.O's number one color pick.

We first went to see our most local dealer, Southside Marine in
Corvallis. Craig and Tisha have been working on boat electrical
systems for years so being a Zap dealer is a pretty good fit for them.
They use a white PK as their parts hauler so they have some real
world experience. They have a very nice *blue* '08SD on the floor
which was the first '08 I'd seen. I was pretty impressed with how
good the '08 was put together compared with earlier ones I'd seen.
I also like the nice space they left for the 7th battery on the left
in the back once you nudge the motor fan over a little. We have
several Xebra's zipping around town here so I've seen a number of
them. Pretty cool.

Couple weeks later I made an appointment to see Larry up at Electric
Wheels in Salem. I originally contacted him about the Revolution R1's
(or similar) he'd been carrying and also his Xebra's. Once I got up
there he had like five different Xebra's on display and racks of
parts. Very impressive and really nice folks. We spent quite a bit of
time talking and he said he wasn't very impressed with the folks at
Revolution and wouldn't be carrying their cars any more. He did say
theres a MicroWatt from Green Vehicles (the Triac folks) available.
A very similar vehicle to the Revolution R1 but with many bugs
sorted out and sporting a 96V AC drive instead of the Revolution's
72V 6.5KW AC system. Sort of the next notch up the evolutionary
ladder from the Flybo/Revolution. He got pictures (blue!) and the
specs look good. I started thinking 'This might be the one' but I
really needed to sit in one to see if I would fit. My upper body
is fairly long.
In '07 and earlier Xebra's I had to sort of scrunch down to see
stoplights and such. The '08 is better.
I think Larry is going to do well once the Triac and Buckshot are
available and the new Moose mini-van looks pretty good too.
The Moose looks like it will be useful and cheaper than the Zenn.

The next weekend we went up to Gladstone/Portland to see Ed
at Green Scene. A little electric vehicle dealer right on Auto Row
between Oregon City and E.Portland. They have an R1 in stock and
a green '07 Xebra. The Xebra was as OK as any other '07, pretty good
actually. Wrong year and wrong color ;-) Ed was very nice and very
straightforward. The R1 he has didn't fit me very well since he had
swapped the stock seats with some much higher quality seats from a
Honda Prelude. Unfortunately they also decrease the legroom and
headroom. If you're under 6 ft. you should be fine. The AC drive is
smooth if not real zippy. It gets up to 36 or 38 and then flattens
out. The gear whine has to be heard to be believed. Fit and finish are
about equal to an '07 Xebra. Not great, not awful. It had the stock
flooded batteries in it and they seem to work OK. He had put in some
heavy duty shocks and rubber bump-stops to prevent bottoming
(more on that below) and the ride was on the harsh and jerky side.
Not dissimilar to some Xebra versions...
The Green Scene folding electric bikes are VERY Cool and he also
carries Larry's electric motorcycle/scooters.

Couple weekends later I scheduled some time down with Sean at
GPEV. They got us reservations at a nearby hotel at a discount.
Nice, great view of the Rogue River and only a couple blocks away
Sean has the maximum number of cool toys allowed by law.
The Myer's NMG 'Sparrow' with the 1000 Amp Zilla controller is a
nice ride. I don't fit in those either, plus, single passenger and
cost about 3X what I'm willing to pay. Still, well done!
He had several scooters, a Xebra SC (copper color) and a Red R1
at the shop and more Xebra's at his warehouse, plus a wall full
of just about every EV toy you could want.
It appears Xebra's are the main thing he'll be carrying going
forward. Sounds like he didn't like the Revolution folks much
either, and Dynasty and Kurrent are both pretty much gone.

Sean's R1 is red (I'm told 'that will do') and he's done a bunch of
cool tweaks to it. He found that the suspension was hitting the
charger 'cage' (a massive factory boo-boo) so he removed the cage
replacing the charger with a Delta-Q thus resolving the suspension
bottoming problems others have been 'fixing' with harsh shocks and
rubber stops. He also put in AGM's (the same ones Zap is currently
using) which makes the car accelerate a bit quicker. Probably won't
last as long as the floodies, alas. He also put in a dash mounted
PakTrackr and some sound deadening material. The 'straight cut'
gear whine isn't as bad in this car, ie: your fillings don't
resonate but it's still pretty bad.
I wouldn't be surprised if that noise killed a *lot* of sales for
Revolution. Anyway, Sean offered a good price and I bought it.
...but that's a different story...

I've been negotiating for quite a while with both my employer and the
landlord I rent my parking spot(s) from and they are both putting in
Electric Car Recharging Stations (OK, 20a external outlets...) for me.
This kind of thing can take considerable time and bother to get going
so don't give up hope out there. That said, it's WAY better to have
these things worked out before you go shopping. In one case I had
committed to paying electricians before I even had a car!
This is the first case I've heard of a landlord putting in a charging
station for a parking lease tenant (not directly associated with my
apartment rental) and if anyone else had heard of a similar
arrangement please let me know, if this isn't a first, it's pretty
darn rare.

I've been reading the EVDL for about 15 years, the Sparrow list
intermittently since it's beginnings and have been following the Xebra
list on and off for about two years. Until December I was about 90%
sure I'd be getting a 08/09 Xebra SD this year. Sure to be a blue one
since my S.O. really likes blue. All the great info from the Xebra list
really helped with the choice. Then the Stimulus Bill happened.
I really can't bear the thought of leaving $4K on the table, possibly
more given what the Governor has proposed in his Oregon budget
(who knows, maybe another $4K?)
So. I started out looking for a Blue Xebra and ended up with a
Red R1. Assuming the Oregon MSV regulations make it through,
I'll be set.
Or not.

Hold the Presses!
There is a big sale on Xebra's going on as a big dealer goes out of
business up in Portland. Sounds like Sean is going to be able to
get us one at a really good price. Given the commute route options
the Xebra looks like the best fit after all. Negotiations ongoing.
More later....