Life with the Tredia

Living with an Electric Car

February 2008

Now that the electric car project has been completed and legal since mid February (2008), I'm going to use this page as a journal of life with the car since getting it legal and on the road. I thought now would also be a good time to show the Bloopers & Cock-Ups video which was created using out-takes from the last 9 months of filming.

As you can imagine things didn't always go to plan during the conversion and it didn't take long to put these little mishaps aside for a bloopers video.

You can laugh at my expense by clicking the Play button on the left.

Also, after only a few hundred kilometres I noticed that the chargers I'm using are not powerful enough. If you're running low on power, a quick top-up is out of the question with those 3.5 amp chargers.

It meant that we'd be sitting at home waiting for the car to charge after only a couple of trips which was quite frustrating during the weekend.

Replacing each 12 volt, 3.5 Amp charger with a 12 volt, 16 amp charger would have cost around $3000 altogether, so it's much cheaper to buy a proper Zivan 144 Volt, 16 Amp charger at $1400 from EV America.

I've started saving...

My personalised number plates arrived too which was good. You may remember I mentioned in Step 17 that Rob had gone out and reserved the number plate "KIWI EV" for me. Well, now that the car's all legal I filled out the forms and installed them onto the car! Thanks Rob!

March 2008

Yvette Batten, a reporter from the Taranaki Midweek paper came around for a follow-up story on the progress of the Tredia now that things are all complete. You can read the story by clicking here or opening photo 9 at the bottom of the page. Any publicity's good publicity, so hopefully this will inspire a few more kiwis to break their oil addictions too!

I've had the chance to compile the latest video of life with the Tredia. It's just a simple video of everyday driving and events throughout the small town of New Plymouth here in New Zealand. Check it out by pressing play!

I've had a few interesting occurrences while driving the car, especially in underground car parks where you just can't hear the car when it's coasting at low speed. The controller makes that "interesting" whining noise when you're applying power at low speed, but as soon as you take your foot off the gas it goes into stealth mode! You have to keep your eyes open as people actually walk right in front of the moving car! It's happened a couple of times so I've learnt to coast with my foot right above the brake pedal just in case!

Last week after getting some groceries we "started" the car and reversed out of our parking space. It was a quiet evening so the lack of noise was pretty obvious. The couple next to us stopped loading their groceries and watched us reverse out silently, stop, and move off all with a quick whine and no fumes. They were both still staring as we left the underground carpark, giving them ample time to read "Electric Vehicle" on the rear - although they figured it out way before then! :)

With the publicity in the paper it seems that everyone here knows about the electric car which is great. They know that EV's aren't mythical, impossible dreams - they're real and they're easy to convert. Even when transferring the money for the charger to EV America, the woman asked "You're the one who made the electric car aren't you?". I've got my 15 minutes of fame - though I still haven't made any money out of it!

There's one thing I must confess though: I been known to watch my rear-vision mirror when cars pull up behind me at the lights. I feel guilty doing it but the reactions are worth it! Most of the time (if there are two people in the following car) then someone will point at the sticker and I'll see them start to talk about it. Some have almost broken their necks to watch the EV as I turn away at an intersection! That's my daily cheap thrill. My other thrill is driving past the many gas stations in our city. Gas has finally reached $1.96 a litre here, which equates to $5.60 USD per gallon.

All these little experiences shed light onto what it's actually like owning an EV. I know I'm biased but let me say it's just bloody marvellous. I still get the "EV grin" almost every time I drive the car, and anyone else that drives the car says how badly they want one!

April 2008

I attended the regional Sustainable Energy Expo on the 5th of April which was another great opportunity to show off the car and get people converting their own! It was a great day with loads of people and lots of questions. Interestingly, the Tredia was positioned right next to the Toyota Prius on display. I found it amusing that a gas-powered hybrid is at a sustainable energy fair. I stole all of the Prius' attention anyway as you can see in the photos! (cue evil laugh).

I must say a big thank you to Peter who took the photos on the left (and down the bottom of the page) as I was so busy answering questions I completely forgot to take any.

I had little window display cards with all the quick facts like time to convert, cost of conversion etc to make things easier on my voice (any EV owner will know exactly what I mean!) and while most of the people around the car were guys, the Tredia had a lot of attention from women too. This is good as we need more girls to convert electric cars proving that anyone can do it.

Apart from the Prius, there was a cool diesel Peugeot running on waste cooking oil, and a few solar and wind energy displays. The school where the expo was held has a wind generator and solar panels to supplement it's energy usage too. I couldn't resist having a sniff of the bio-diesel Peugeot's exhaust as discreetly as possible while it was running. I could definitely tell it was running on cooking oil and because it was used in chip fryers it smelled faintly of a fish & chip store!

I was asked several times what sort of incentive I recieved from the government to convert the car which of course the answer is none. That answer shocked everyone and it got me thinking just what does the self-proclaimed Clean & Green government of NZ have as it's priorities? Considering our country's image It's saddening that EVs aren't one of the priorities. Still, it doesn't deter me from wanting to convert another EV one day.

All was forgotten soon however as the Tredia clocked over it's first 1000 gas free kilometres! That's 621 miles of completely gas free driving!

I had one scare after hitting 1000 km however. I was demonstrating the car for another EV fan and we'd only got 800 metres from home when I put my foot down to show off the acceleration. At that moment the car made a crackling noise and I lost half of my power. I quickly yanked the circuit breaker and tried restarting the car again but it wouldn't move more than an inch before the familiar Curtis whine turned into the unfamiliar Curtis crackle. After contacting EV America we'd tracked the problem down. All that worry, all that arcing, all that crackling, all those attacks from a car-less wife - all due to a loose bolt! I replaced the washers and the nut & we we're driving fine again! Phew! Photos are at the bottom of the page. Thank you to Bob at EV America for his awesome support!

I'd also like to send a big thank you to Rex Nowland for sending me his 72V Alltrax controller as an emergency backup. I owe you one. He's just purchased a new 120V Curtis for his car so he had the Alltrax floating about. Thanks Rex!

Later in April my shiny new Zivan 16 amp onboard charger arrived ready for installation. First stop was the Rexel electrical store which is a treasure-trove of goodies for gadget freaks such as myself. That's where I found the ideal cable and weatherproof plug for mounting in place of the old recharging plug. I stopped by Supercheap Auto on the way home and purchased 2 new drive-on ramps to make the charger install easy - and of course it'll make KiwiEV #2 much easier as well. ;)

Next step was to remove all the remnants of the (now) old charging system. Only 10 weeks ago I was installing the multi-pin plug and here I am taking it out again!

It wasn't long before I had wired up the new beast and was trialling it with the batteries unplugged. I then triple checked all the connections and flicked the switch. After a couple of "hello" beeps, the charger fans fired up and the charging light came on! Woohoo!

The batteries were already near full so after only 20 minutes the charger turned off and the green charged light came on. I then took the car for a quick spin to drain the batteries down a bit. After zipping the EV around the city at night, I'd brought the voltage down from 160 to 149 volts, Perfect! I plugged in the car and it started charging with a beep.

In just over 2 hours after plugging the car in, it was fully charged again and the charger had switched off! Is that cool or what!

From 50% to full takes only 2 hours and 45 minutes and with the standard household plug under the gas cap we have opportunistic charging. I just have to figure out where all the local charging points are around town...

May 2008

In early April I noticed a squeaking noise coming from the adapter/coupler and it was very gradually getting louder to the point where you could hear it in carparks. Instead of having people stare at the car because it crawled around the carpark making no noise, people in carparks were looking because it made a weird whistling/scraping noise like a box of canaries being shaken vigorously.

It got so annoying that I finally bit the bullet and purchased a chain hoist to haul out the motor to see what all the fuss was about. I soon learnt how easy things were made with a chain hoist. I really wish I'd bought one months ago - they're brilliant! So, after disconnecting the control panel and moving it aside, I loosened all the motor bolts, tightened the hoist to take the weight of the motor, then took out the motor bolts. Once I'd found the missing bolt I'd forgotten to undo, it popped apart easily and I hoisted it out.

I soon found the problem too, my coupler had moved forward by about a centimetre; just enough for it to touch the gearbox housing.

I pushed it back and tightened up the side screws like never before as I don't really feel like hauling the motor out every 4 months... I then lowered the motor back down and slipped it into the gearbox again. A few bolts later and I spun the motor up with just a normal whirring noise and no more scraping. Phew.

So it's back to scaring people in car parks again.

I also had a visit from fellow EV converters Rex Nowland and his lovely wife over the weekend. They flew up from Nelson to stop by and see the car, and inadvertently we created the first official NZEVA New Plymouth meeting! We posed for a photo in front of the Tredia after dinner on Sunday night. Rex doesn't have a website at present but here's a link to his evalbum.com page: http://www.evalbum.com/1675

Rex is currently upgrading his system from 72v to 120v which should give his classic Beetle a new lease of life. He showed me some photos and I was stunned at the quality of the workmanship in his car. It was absolutely brilliant. Thanks for the visit and thanks for dinner - next one's on me. :)

Another pleasant surprise arrived in the mail advising me that I'd won an award from the Taranaki Regional Council for "Innovation and efficient use of energy for transportation". We headed down to the council building a couple of weeks later to collect the award and receive a $200 restaurant voucher! So today we're over the moon and busy figuring out where and when we should go! Veronika had the video camera rolling at the little ceremony and time permitting I'll edit it into the next video whenever that may be!

June 2008

I noticed one of the batteries was failing in the rear battery box. Battery number seven was gassing excessively and splattering acid around it's vents after only normal driving. The other batteries were all fine and operating normally but this one battery was reducing the performance and range of the whole pack. All the batteries are under warranty so I was able to swap out the misbehaving battery and things were back to normal. Whew!

Brrrrrr! Winter's setting in and the temperature is plummeting! To remove sluggish battery performance I'm creating a special wrapping using a sheet of rubber foam with a sheet of foil adhered to it. I'll put this around the front batteries to keep them warm during short trips. I've ordered the foam but it will take a few days to arrive. We've also begun using a timer to begin charging the car at 5am. This way the car is charged and the batteries are warm at 8am.

My wife and I have just bought our first house here in New Plymouth. This is good news for us but bad news for our nerves as things are flat out! We have the house to organise, things to be fixed, painting to do, renovating to do, and lots of new things that have to be purchased! Not only that, but we're both working crazy hours lately so the chances of me regularly updating the website are reduced greatly.

Just before we moved in I fitted a couple of cheap solar panels on the back shelf to charge up the accessories battery during the day as it's now parked outside (eek! No garage at our new place!) Previously we had to "pop the hood" each day and connect one of my many spare 12 volt chargers to charge up the accessories battery which was getting a bit annoying.

While the car's running fine, we're now living further from town and right at the very top of a hilly range which means many more kilometres of 200-300 amp mountains to climb each day. The battery pack is getting a serious workout so let's hope it's up to it. What worries me more at the moment is the fact that the car has no garage and is forced to sit outside in the rain on this salty coastal town. The rust is already starting to bubble up again in the back. This is very intriguing as after all that body-filler I had no idea there was still any metal left back there! Hehehe

Feel free to watch the latest Tredia info & happenings by clicking the play button above.

July 2008

We're right in the guts of winter at the moment. We had a good long summer and a very gentle autumn, but now winter has poked us sharply with a cold, bony finger reminding us that the sunshine is no more...

Yes, we're having some unusually cold weather here as you can see by the photo of the Tredia (and the neighbourhood) covered in hail. We've had a few smatterings of hail this winter but I have never seen a cold blast like this before. It's quite incredible!

All the neighbours were out throwing snowballs (well, iceballs) and taking photos. This sort of cold snap and this amount of hail is pretty unheard of in New Plymouth.

It must be global warming...

Hehehe

Some good news though, my 144V DC to 12V DC converter has arrived. It will allow me to power the headlights & accessories off the main battery pack as we've been doing a lot of night time driving lately. The separate accessories battery was fine for summer but it needs it's own charger and running cords across the lawn is getting annoying.

I should point out that it's not actually a DC to DC converter. In fact it's a power supply designed for high-power computer graphics cards using a standard AC input. I've been told it works fine with DC input and can even be "tweaked" to give 13.8 volts instead of 12 volts! If it works out then I'll have a 450 watt DC to DC converter for $150 US! DC to DC converters designed for electric vehicles are upwards of $300 US!

I should also point out that there is the very real possibility that I'll do something stupid and blow it up. So don't run out and buy one just yet...

Our Unspent Gas Money jar has reached $1000 since driving began in February. We've decided to increase the $40 a week up to $60 a week seeing as the price of gas has increased a lot since February. We're also driving a lot more than we used to as we don't have to worry about the cost of filling up anymore. Overall things are going well and we should have enough for a trip to tropical Fiji or Vanuatu by the end of the year. Thanks BP! ;)

August 2008

My DC to DC converter has arrived but I'm waiting on instructions from the other side of the world to increase the voltage from 12 volts to 13.8 volts, and a much needed break from this rotten wet weather to open the car's bonnet. It's been rain rain and more rain for the past 3 weeks with no end in sight.

If you don't believe me then here's a picture of our once green front lawn:

The Tredia (and my work van) are both getting stuck occasionally. My wife has got the hang of driving flat-out to reduce the risk of getting stuck. It just means mud goes absolutely everywhere! Even up the side of the house as you can see if you click on the photo and look closely. We need that trip to Fiji sooner rather than later I think!

On the plus side, we have our heat pump (reverse-cycle air conditioner) installed and warming the house up very nicely! The rain may be pattering on the window right now but we're both comfy and warm, walking from room to room in t-shirts! (cue my big grin).

I took the Tredia for it's 6-monthly Warrant of Fitness inspection last week. You might remember I had to go for one back in the Inspection Video and the car failed on a sticking front brake and a missing headlight clip. Well, call me a traditionalist but it failed again! This time things were a little more serious though. While I was thankful the small rust bubbles at the back weren't an issue, I was surprised to find out all was not well with the braking system. To make a long story short I had the master cylinder replaced as it was leaking brake fluid. I should have expected it because (believe it or not) the "check brakes" light came on when I was less than 50 metres from the Warrant of Fitness station! I should have seen it coming! The rear wheel bearings needed replacing too as they're getting a little worn. After that work the car was given the green light and we're commencing another six months of electric-only driving.

The Tredia was in the media spotlight again! Reporter Matt Rilkoff ran a story in the Taranaki Daily News. It was basically a follow-up now that the car's been driving about for 6 months. The article is available by clicking here. Thanks Matt, and here's to another 6 months of driving past gas stations!

September 2008

Good news! Not only is Spring officially here, but my DC to DC converter is finally up and running too!

The rain has begun to subside as winter retreats, leaving much warmer days and much happier Kiwis! It also gave me the opportunity to open the car's bonnet and play around with the DC to DC converter to see if I could make it work. You see it's not really a DC to DC converter. It's actually a computer graphics power supply. Buying a "proper" DC to DC converter from, say, evparts.com with the same 30 Amp output would have cost me $199 US + shipping. But by using a Thermaltake 450 Watt Power Express at $61 US + shipping from Amazon.com I kept $140 US in my pocket!

Now before you run out and buy one, you will have to modify it ever so slightly to change it from 12.05 volts output to around 12.70 volts for better performance. You can make it go up to a stable 13.7 volts before it's over-voltage protection kicks in but I found at that voltage too much load will switch it off. After tweaking it with the little 0-5k ohm potentiometer control-knob thingy (in the picture) I found 12.7 volts gave me super-stability even with every electric option in the car running full blast!

When I say you'll have to tweak it, I mean you'll have to take off the cover and remove the little resistory-thingy numbered R34, and replace it with some wire and a little potentiometer. The mains power input cable can simply have it's wall-plug chopped off and put straight across your battery pack. It runs fine on my battery pack anyway which is around 158 volts when fully charged. Once it's fired up you can adjust the voltage with the potentiometer until it's perfect for your car.

What I've done with my setup is completely remove the accessories battery, leaving the DC-DC converter powered up all the time, even during charging. This way I keep the my clock settings and radio presets and even with the extraction fan running the whole thing only uses 11 watts. It would take weeks to flatten the battery pack at that rate. Besides, if I'm going away for a long period of time I can always pull the circuit breaker knob - that'll kill everything!

Now don't be put off if it sounds too technical because if I can do this then anyone can. I was given some great instructions at diyelectriccar.com here with special thanks to the users Lazzer408 and RFengineers for telling me about these things and helping me figure out any problems I had.

Anyway, I'll chuck in a couple more photos down the bottom of the page and if you're interested in doing one yourself to save some cash then check out this thread!

Halfway through the month I decided to haul out the motor as the dreaded coupler squeak has returned. It looked like the coupler had shifted a millimetre again and started touching the gearbox housing. This time I took the car to the warehouse at my work and made use of the forklift! I tied a rope around the motor and threaded it through one of the forks on the forklift. It made life really easy and we had the motor out, fixed, and back in within three hours! I made sure the grub screws were pressed in hard into the dimples on the motor's shaft so it shouldn't move again with luck. The motor's nice and quiet again - let's just hope it stays that way.

What's not quiet however is the driver's side CV Joint. It makes a whopping great clunking noise whenever I accelerate and steer towards the left. Over the last week it's become so loud that people walking on the footpath actually turn around and look because of the noise. It used to be the other way around! It's quite embarrassing so I bit the bullet and paid the mechanic to fix it. I was going to try it myself but wised up at the last moment...

October 2008

Absolutely nothing interesting has happened this month...

We're busy working on the garden though now that summer's almost here. The days are getting longer and warmer. Thanks to the DVD sales I'm now past the halfway mark to getting my new high definition video camera. Give it another month and we should be there!

Hmm. I planted some seedlings the other day. We now have a blueberry bush. The cat's asleep. The car's running fine.

That's really about it so far.

Ah, good news! The car now has a CD player installed! It was the CD/MP3 player that was in Rob's car and it sounds good. Unfortunately the cheap & nasty speakers that I installed into the dash/back tray are showing their limitations and don't like being turned up much. What's the point of a good song when you can't turn it up!

The cat's still asleep.

November 2008

Christmas is looming, the days are warming up for summer and my Christmas present (from myself) has already arrived!

Thanks to a combination of Kiwi EV DVD sales and bloody hard saving I've been able to purchase a new High Definition Canon HF100 digital video camera!

Filming of the next episode has begun already and I hope to have the next episode churned out by Christmas with luck. I won't give any clues away but it'll be action packed and the much talked about Bonus Video will be in it.

Saturday the 8th of October was election day and Kiwis across the country went to vote. Possibly buoyed by the "Time for Change" theme from the USA, Kiwis ended up voting for a new government. Luckily for EV owners, the new elected government will exempt Electric Vehicles from Road User Charges. Road User Charges is a road tax that all vehicles running on Electricity or Diesel must pay separately because those fuels are not taxed at the pump like petrol is (which makes diesel cheaper to buy at the pump).

Personally I love the idea, not because it makes the Tredia $240 cheaper to drive each year, but because it encourages the uptake of EVs - which was the whole point. Apparently, once EVs make up around 20% of the country's transport, the Road User Charges will be reintroduced. Makes sense I guess.

On another note, filming for the next episode began this month. I've begun collecting clips from everyday usage and will put them together in some sort of sequence when I start editing the next episode. Looks good so far!

December 2008

Wow this year is going fast. Only six months ago we bought our house and now I have yet another video ready for release.

Thanks to new editing software and my high definition video camera I've just about finished putting together the latest episode of life with an EV.

Not much has changed with the Tredia so I decided to take a different approach with this video by checking out other people's conversions instead. There are now two other people converting EVs right here in my little town of New Plymouth. This is good. I won't be the only one at the next electric car meetup - sitting in an empty carpark by myself!

At long last, the next episode is here!