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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.

Athol Williams made a house to keep the KillaCycle dry while travelling on the back of his little Stud Welding NZ truck. We really can't thank Athol enough, he's the New Zealand & Australian record holder on his 6.1s nitromethane powered bike. He took care of an aweful lot of logistics on the KillaCycle tour, and it wouldn't have been the same without him. During the first part of the tour, the KillaCycle travelled in his mobile race workshop, and he provided racing advice and support at Meremere and Nelson. It was a great weight off my shoulders to have his years of drag racing experience, as I could simply be pit crew while Athol took care of the track side with Bill.

We had to wait after a V8 powered mini took out some timing gear in an unscheduled bit of off-road adventure. He managed to get it back on the track, and was loose all day.

Scotty

entertained

with

a

burnout

Not everything went smoothly, with the KillaCycle refusing to switch the motors from series to parallel. The bike starts in series, putting up to 2000A through both motors, but in series, the voltage across the motors adds, so when they are turning fast, we run out of battery voltage to push the current through them. Scotty pushes a button to switch the motors to parallel, where the current divides and we get up to 1000A through each motor, but the voltage doesn't add, so the battery is able to do this even when the motors are turning fast. Unfortunately, the shift only worked on the first easy run and while testing in the pits, it wouldn't work on the track at full power. Without shifting, we only managed a best time of 8.81s in quarter mile.

We did do a quick turnaround for the last run of the day, doing two runs within 8 minutes. We didn't do anything to the bike, we just waited behind two other cars before we could go again. The KillaCycle can do about 14 passes, including riding back to the start line, without charging. Bill tells me that when they do showboat back-to-back runs, the second run is often quicker than the first, but there is a good chance of damaging a motor as they get too hot. This time there was no damage.

Nelson is going well, we've done 2 runs with the KillaCycle, and are about to do a third. The first was a slow 10.551s @ 115MPH where we found the track is very slippery out of the hole. In the second run we had a ground fault in the motors and the series-parallel shift didn't work, so 9.594 @ 136.37MPH was slower than expected.

We hope to do an 8s pass next.

I'm in Nelson where the KillaCycle is scheduled to run tomorrow (Saturday 6 Feb) at 11:30 at Motueka aerodrome. The experimental "high voltage" motors that blew up at Meremere have been replaced with the record setting lower voltage motors with variable brush timing system, so we should see better times than last weekend.

The 4 & Rotary Show and Shine went very well. Come down to Meremere to see the KillaCyle run, we're expecting it's first run to be about lunch time.

Phil & I presented at LCA2010 this morning. The talk went well, but suffered from not doing a practice run. I guess I shouldn't have been writing the slides half an hour before the talk started. I was late getting the slides together because I got the Mini running yesterday evening! I "just" have to install the instrumentation and bleed the brakes and I'm ready for the open day. Video of the talk and the slides should be available soon.

Bill Dubé also arrived yesterday and chatting with him is great. The KillaCycle arrives in Wellington tomorrow and goes on display at Te Papa on Thursday morning. Bill's free public talk is at 6:30pm on Thursday at Te Papa. See Phil's blog for the rest of the KillaCycle tour schedule.

My friend Philip & I are presenting at LCA2010 in Wellington in January. We're talking about electric cars, the Tumanako project, Phil's dreams and open source. I'm there to talk about the EVD5 battery management system. My Mini and Phil's race car will be on display at the open day on the Saturday. My car will be road legal by then (promise!) and Philip has committed to getting his car moving under it's own electric power!

As an added bonus, the KillaCycle will be on display at Te Papa at the same time.

The world's quickest and fastest electric vehicle on the quarter mile is coming to New Zealand in January.

My friend Philip at Greenstage has organised the KillaCycle team to come out for a tour of the North Island including a few runs at Meremere. This bike is seriously fast, it does 0-100km/h in less than 1 second! It holds the world electric drag record, covering 1/4 mile from a standing start in 7.864 seconds and doing 169 MPH at the end. That's 272km/h.

The confirmed events are thus:

1. Thur 21st - Sun 24th Jan - Wellington, show and talk at Te Papa (Bill Dube, the KillaCycle owner, will be speaking 6:30pm Thursday and 1pm Sunday for 30-40 minutes).
2. Mon 25th Jan - Manfield, show and talk (Te Manawa museum).
3. Wed 27th Jan - Taupo, show and talk (exact location to be determined).
4. Thur 28th Jan - Hamilton, show and talk (Wintec, Automotive workshop D1.01 Avalon Campus).
5. Sat Jan 30th - Auckland, 4 and Rotary Nationals show and shine (ASB Showrounds, Greenlane, Auckland).
6. Sun Jan 31st - Meremere, 4 and Rotary Nationals - exhibition drag race (Fram Autolite Dragway, Meremere).

Phil will announce any further events on his blog.

If you're interested in hosting an event or sponsoring the tour, talk to Philip at philip@greenstage.co.nz

The KillaCycle is coming to New Zealand! In June my friend Philip blogged about his plan and now it's officially on. There has been a little bit of press coverage, the Dominion Post has an interview with Philip, and Radio Live has a 8 minute interview with Bill Dube, owner of the KillaCycle. The Radio Live piece is hard to find because they don't have any metadata on their archives. The interview is 8 minutes in, after the news and a song on part 1 and continues in part 2. Hopefully Philip will get permission to host these files as one piece before it is purged from Radio Live's website.

Don't miss Bill's interview -- he talks about his new battery pack from A123 Systems: more than 3 times the power density!

The plan is a tour of the North Island, with exhibition runs at the 4 and Rotary Nationals in January. The KillaCycle team hopes to take the New Zealand drag bike record. They are in talks with the current record holder, Athol Williams to do a head to head run, possibly at Taupo. Athol has set better times in Australia and will be a formidable challenge.

I've been invited to be the New Zealand pit crew member for the KillaCycle team, a job I'm very much looking forward to. I'm going to have to go down to Meremere for a few meetings to bone up on what goes on, I haven't been drag racing for years.

Sponsorship opportunities are available!

Jens Rekker from Christchurch visited the new EVWorks joint venture in Western Australia and wrote it up on the DIY Electric Car forums. EVWorks is a joint venture between EVWA, EV Power and ZEVA.

The motorkhana went very well. People were very interested and nothing broke. Unofficially, I'm told I got the fastest time by 2.1s on the second course! , the results will be available at the club meeting tomorrow. I configured my motor controller to allow reversing at speeds below 50km/h (instead of 5km/h) and used this to good effect for changing from forwards to reverse.

There are a couple of people posting on the Tesla Motors Club forum about the Wayland Invitational on this weekend. It looks like Scotty Pollacheck (the KillaCycle rider) took a 2010 Tesla out and did 12.643 and 12.715 quarter miles for a new record. It sounds like all the other Tesla drivers were doing mid 13s at worst (those with no training).

In New Zealand, we pay a petrol excise duty which helps pay for the roads and traffic accidents. No such duty is charged on diesel, instead you pay per kilometre, depending on how much your vehicle weighs. The law is written such that any vehicle consuming fuel not taxed at source must pay road user charges. Since electric vehicles consume electricity which isn't taxed, they must pay road user charges. The per kilometre charges on my vehicle are more than the cost of the electricity.

This is changing, starting in October electric vehicles will be exempt. The exemption will expire in 2013, which is probably a good thing -- if electric cars take off, there would be a big hole in the ACC & Roading budgets. It would seem that we need to thank Hon. Dr. Nick Smith, MP for Nelson and owner of a Hyundai Electron.

I took my car to show the students at my old primary school. I had half an hour with each of three classes as part of their science curriculum. The children were exceedingly interested and very positive about electric cars. I did have some rough ideas about what I might tell them but they ended up asking so many great questions that they basically led the discussion. I took a short 50²mm battery cable and a 150A 500V fuse to pass around, and I showed them a 10Ah LiFeBatt cell, an 18650 laptop cell and one of the Thunder Sky cells from my car. Before I went, I spent an afternoon cutting a polycarbonate cover to go over the battery -- I didn't want any small hands getting a shock.

If anyone is interested in starting something like B*E*S*T Outreach, get in touch, these students would be very keen.

Many thanks to those on the EVDL who gave advice on what to say.