Morris Minor Owners Club

At Knockhill http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/10140743.stm and only £87,000 .................

hmm
Still prefer this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2JkMCzjTVE
KillaCycle 0-60 in under 1SEC!!!

prefer this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrHXdM9f ... re=related

Hello all,

it must be my age but I just cannot get excited by electric cars, despite what performance they have. (Also maybe to do with having an electrical maintenance background and working with motors etc)

I enjoyed a Vintage meeting yesterday at Oulton Park and the variety, performance and ingenuity of those vehicles is what I enjoy. From 24 litres down to 750cc. Morgan three wheelers that can match the pace of much larger cars and so on.

Alec

Someone on here was going to do an electric Minor <searches on 'Hebe'> Multiphonikks. Anyone know how that's going?

I for one would LOVE a tax free electric car - with a genuine range of 100 miles - even if it could only do 50 mph.

I thought about doing one but found the cost of the batteries prohibitive I know it would be cheaper in the longrun. Electrics dont make the VR6 sound either

Hello Ash,

"I know it would be cheaper in the longrun."

As long as there is still an electrical supply to charge your battery?
The government is pushing electrically powered vehicles but there is a projected serious shortfall of generating capacity in the U.K. in the near future, i.e. we can't build sufficient generating plant in time.

Alec

There is plenty of spare capacity at night when most car charging would take place.

Alec wrote:Hello Ash,

"I know it would be cheaper in the longrun."

As long as there is still an electrical supply to charge your battery?
The government is pushing electrically powered vehicles but there is a projected serious shortfall of generating capacity in the U.K. in the near future, i.e. we can't build sufficient generating plant in time.

Alec

If I had ever built an electric moggy I was going to add a provision of a chainsaw engine coupled to an alternator to give on board charging

Hello Marky,

"There is plenty of spare capacity at night when most car charging would take place."

That is very true but somewhat limiting given the range before a recharge is required; that, I assume, is why towns are being encouraged to install charging points?

Alec

The Tesla site says"“real world” range of 245 miles per charge" that's almost a weeks commuting for me.
I don't have that kind of money but as a proof of concept I'm amazed by it.
When I had to go into central London a few months ago I was shocked at how many of these there were;[frame][/frame]
Petrol isn't about to get cheaper, and clearly people respond to the right mixture of incentives and disincentives.
What surprises me is that they rarely have solar panel in the roof, then they would still charge in daylight even if a charging point wasn't available.

Hello Marky,

I happened to be looking in Machine Mart's catalogue for portable generator prices saw some 4KVA I think for about £800, also in the same page, solar panels for about £800 output 130watt. They are very expensive per watt.

Alec

Yes - that's the problem - the solar panel will make an insignificant difference to the battery charge unless left all week and only used for 15 mins at the week-end!

Oh well, scrub round that idea then.
The prices for this stuff should fall as more people start to produce them, and who knows what new technologies are in the wings?

Hello BMCE,

and it is not just photo voltaic solar panels that suffer from cost, the other renewable energy sources are also very expensive to build for a relatively modest output. The engineering task of building off shore wind farms must be enormous?

Alec

I thought I'd update on Nikki's EV project - sadly her minor was really too far gone for her to be able to fix the shell *and* EV it - after a bit of a disagreement with the person who was storing it, she ended up giving it to him in lieu of payment for storage*. She had, for a while, what's called a 'Plug-in Prius' - which is basically a Prius with far more batteries and a hacked controller so it'll run all electric at higher speeds. Unfortunately (again), one of the second hand batteries (from a scrapped** Prius) developed a fault which her charger didn't cope very well with...

...and that killed the entire pack of batteries. It was fairly extensive damage, and she had another project on her hands - which is a 1980s EV Golf - Built by Volkswagen it's one of very few remaining entirely electric cars. I had a little go in it, and it was pretty amazing, but the motor's gone off to be rebuilt as it was a bit sickly, and that's taking quite a while.

I have vague plans to build an EV something. 'Becca will probably be an EV when I have the cash for that - but at the moment the 1275 is nice enough

...And I have my mum's old EV (an Enfield 8000 Electric Car, from about 1975) to repair - it got flood damaged and I had a bit of a disagreement with the person who was meant to be repairing it*** - and am now arranging to pick it up and hopefully repair it myself - assuming it's not too dead.



(Ours is blue though).

My mum has a Reva G-Wiz, and loves it.


* If someone agrees to store something free, get it in writing...
** I think accident damaged
*** I lost that court case, but learned a lot about how civil cases work and will be much more careful to assume that the magistrate knows *sod all* about *anything* next time.

Hello Marky,

further to my comments about the grid, I recently read a news report about a study done at one of the universities which concluded that an extreme expansion of electric vehicles (And it is extreme, 30 million) would require a further six nuclear stations to be built. Average base load stations now being about 2,000 Megawatt? so 12,000 Megawatt of extra generating capacity?

Alec

Not fully electric but how about this http://www.zath.co.uk/porsche-918-spyde ... ncept-car/

Does anyone remember the gentleman from Somerset who made a steam car using two cylinders of an A series engine in a Morris 1000. Supposed to be very economical and almost silent.