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Recently I visited Sydney and met up with some of the local EV community.

I saw Nathan's workshop at Convert UR Car and he was kind enough to show me a Toyota Yaris conversion in progress and even let me drive Sparky, his lead acid powered '92 Hyundai Excel. I can now say I've handled a germanium transistor, as he had to replace part of the control for his army surplus generator.

I also met up with Anthony Wood (who helped assemble my Mini in January) and Michael Day (who's converting an MR2 with an MES-DEA motor) for lunch and had a ride in his Anthony's (yet to be converted) Cortina.

Jaron Ware & Mark Taylor showed me their Formula V race car which was converted to electric some time ago. When I turned up they were installing an open source DC motor controller, a variation of Paul & Sabrina's design.

Mark also had a very tidy flooded electric van conversion:

Jaron told me stories about his trip to Lake Gardener to crew for the Catavolt team. Kearon de Clouet did 177kph on a Modified Partial Streamlined Electric Motorcycle for a new world record. Besides getting the record, they learnt a lot on this trip, it turns out you should transport your gear 2000km in a covered trailer, especially when the last half day is on a dirt road and it's raining. The dirt was especially prepared by the Australian climate to get into everything. Also, you should get a big trailer and make a mobile workshop, so you can charge and perform maintenance while waiting in the queue for the next run -- you spend most of the day queuing and a mobile workshop would let them get more runs.

Paul Tuffery from the Video Guys came to Motukea from Christchurch and Bill let him drill a hole in the KillaCycle!. These are the best videos I've ever seen of the KillaCycle. In some ways they are even better than being there in person, as he has each run from 3 different angles in glorious HD video. See the KillaCycle channel on Vimeo for 5 more videos!. Make sure the HD button is off if your computer can't handle the large files.

Killacycle. Standing 1/4 mile. 4th run. Motueka NZ. 6/2/10. from Paul Tuffery. The Video Guys on Vimeo.