Motorhead Messiah - Jonathan Goodwin

It’s hard to summarize all the things that Jonathan Goodwin has been doing with cars, but it’s all really very exciting. And when I say very exciting, I really mean VERY exciting.

He has been converting many large vehicles to be both fuel efficient, and more powerful, at the same time! No trade offs here. Kind of like, twice as fast, with half the work.

His website says that he routinely modifies large “Hummers from gasoline, 325 hp, and 8-12 mpg to eco-friendly biodiesel 650+ horsepower and around 25 miles per gallon.”

One project has been to modify a '65 Chevy Impala, and when the conversion was done, he'd doubled its mileage to 25 mpg and increased its pull from 250 to 800 horsepower.

It was so powerful it actually beat a Lamborghini on the racetrack. Who would have ever thought???



When not modifying Impalas and Hummers into powerful fuel efficient diesels, he is experimenting with a lot of new ideas: converting large vehicles into plug in electric hybrids, lithium ion batteries, compressed natural gas, hydrogen, and turbine engines!

One project is to turn a Hummer into an electric hybrid. But instead of using a diesel engine to charge the batteries, it will use a turbine engine, that you might otherwise find in a military helicopter. “Whenever the truck's juice runs low, the turbine will roar into action for a few seconds, powering a generator with such gusto that it'll recharge a set of "supercapacitor" batteries in seconds.” He estimates that the truck’s horsepower from 300 to 600. Cool!

As far out as all this sounds, Goodwin says that he uses mostly off the shelf parts from GM. And that "Detroit could do all this stuff overnight if it wanted to."

"I can go next door to Ace Hardware and buy a DC electric motor, go out to my four-wheel-drive truck, remove the transmission and engine, bolt the electric motor onto the back of the transfer case, put a series of lead-acid batteries up to 240 volts in the back of the bed, and we're good to go. I guarantee you I could drive all around town and do whatever I need, go home at night, and hook up a couple of battery chargers, plug one into an outlet, and be good to go the next day.

Jonathan’s other big project is the Lincvolt, which is intriguing enough to have it’s own entry.

References:

http://www.hlineconversion.com/

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/motorhead-messiah.html

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Who Killed The Electric Car?

Little known to me, and the rest of the general public, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, and Honda sold electric vehicles in the mid 1990s.

They performed fabulously. GM's EV1, designed as a family car, actually accelerated faster than a Corvette!

Most anyone who leased one, wanted to own it. Yet still, GM and most other companies refused to allow their customers to buy the cars, then repossessed, and crushed most all of them. The exception was Toyota, which sold a few hundred of their RAV4s.

Who Killed The Electric Car? is a fabulous documentary about the story, which I highly recommend to everyone.

There are number of myths circulating about the subject, which the documentary disproves. One being, the range of the batteries was not far enough. To see why, check out the official website.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

or purchase the documentary from Plug In America
http://www.pluginamerica.org/wktec.shtm

Or watch the documentaries on Youtube.
Who Killed the Electric Car Part 1 of 10





See some more electric car links here:

Real life EV Stories:
http://www.pluginamerica.org/learn-about-plug-ins/real-life-ev-stories.html

GM's EV1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1
http://ev1.org/

Info on the Honda EV:
http://www.hondaev.org/acar.html

EV Album
http://www.evalbum.com/

Suzuki Samurai
http://www.evalbum.com/1059

Dave Muse claims to have owned an electric car for 25 years.
http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-electric-car
http://www.squidoo.com/lensmasters/apeweek

Electric Cars Are For Girls
http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/index.html

Plug In America

Plug In America is a non profit organization that promotes electric vehicles at the consumer, government, and car manufacturer level.

I first heard about them when I attended the Electric Car Parade in Santa Monica, January 2009.




Some Plug In America members get to test drive some of the new trendsetting electric cars before the rest of the general public does. Lucky!

Some quick facts from their website:

- Today's batteries can take EVs 300 miles on a single charge.
- Battery Electric Vehicles (EVs) are by far the most efficient motorized vehicles in the world and use 3-4 times LESS energy than hydrogen fuel cell cars.
- EVs powered by the US electrical grid are cleaner than gas, E85, biodiesel & fuel cells.
- Plug-in cars capable of 50 miles per day would meet the needs of 80% of the American driving public. Source: U.S. Department of Transportation.
- We will never fight a war over electricity.

Check it out!