Discovery Ch. Shows
 

Saw some great shows on the weekend. They were old, but I had never seen them before.

The first was a show called "Green Cars" that covered everything from hybrids, to bio-diesel, to fuel-cells, to EVs.

The second was Monster Garage. They built an EV racer using tool batteries - it was so cool and it ran 14.5 in the quarter right after it was built. With fine tuning, some weight reduction, and better race conditions they probably could've beat the Super Bee they raced it against.

Man, I so want to make my own bio-diesel and build an EV now! I would love an EV speed-demon/commuter! :cool: :cool:

I've never seen this, but I do know from the EV list, Otmar Ebenhoech's electric Porsche 914 was filmed for an episode of this show. This electric car he charges with an array of solar panels, so it really is zero emissions. Does 0-60 mph in 5 seconds, 1/4 mile drag race in 13.8 seconds, and tops out at 140 mph. Range when driven with a lead foot is around 25 miles when kept in 3rd gear. However, if Otmar were to lighten up on the hard accelerations and use the varying gears, I think this car could probably do 40 miles per charge. But that's just not his style. :)

What that car needed more than anything was traction. With proper traction, it would have been pulling 13s with no other modifications, at least according to Rich Rudman(I often see him on the EV list and have had discussions with him a few times.).

According to Rich, the build costs on this show were grossly understated. In reality, this was a $250,000 conversion, not a $70,000 one.

I think this was mostly due to the low production volume of these batteries(relative to lead acid) and all of the individual chargers used.

Rich has repeatedly mentioned to the EV list what a ***** it was to have to charge these batteries. He'd have to take the entire set of batteries out of the car and charge each one individually. All hundreds of them.

IMO, would the parts(batteries, ect.) have been mass produced in automotive volume, it'd have been a LOT cheaper to make, more comparable to a typical car.


This car would have gotten around 100 miles range with some alignment adjustments. As it was, it got around 60 miles range.

Yeah, Otmar's Porsche was really cool. He has an Insight for his "gentle" long trip driver.

As for Monster Garage, I thought the individual charging of the batteries was stupid, but Jesse wanted to use tool batteries to increase the "build difficulty level."

Oh well, maybe it peaked the interest of some gearheads out there.

Here's a video of Otmar's electric Porsche racing the electric Datsun 280ZX named "Silver Bullet", featured in the show "Sucking Amps":

https://www.nedra.com/movies/pso04/CA...ver_Bullet.mov

There's an actually electric drag racing association??? Alright! :cool:

I'm totally new to electrics, but I'm getting more and more into them. Six months ago I didn't care all that much - just had a passing interest. Now I want one!

Dude, check the electric vehicles section for a ****load of videos and images I posted of fast electric cars. Roderick Wilde had an electric RX7 that was pulling 11 second 1/4 mile passes at ~120 mph. John Wayland's electric Datsun 1200 can kill Dodge Vipers and pulls a 12.1-12.2 in the 1/4 mile.

https://www.gassavers.org/showthread.php?t=642