News

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).

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!

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.