Hello, everyone. It has been over a month since a blog from Illuminati, so here is my take on what is going on. We are still dedicated to the pursuit of highly efficient transportation. In that vein we are looking toward building our own inverter with a couple interesting features I don’t think anyone else has tried (maybe for good reason, but we will see). We are changing course toward increasing efficiency while improving Seven’s fit and finish.
Many of the people who read this will know about our disagreements with Edison2’s design criteria in that they were worried about weight as the most important variable. With over 2000 miles on our car since the competition we have learned some things. We learned that drive train is still the most important factor in our eyes, then aerodynamics, then weight. Remember, we live in plains country where hills are few and far between. We agree weight becomes is an issue when you are required to lift your vehicle several thousand feet or tow a trailer, and in, in-town driving. So we will be cutting some weight out and hopefully pulling a mold off Seven, to work on the body.
We have been crunching the numbers, and if we get to implement all of the changes we have been discussing as a group, it could result in some shocking numbers for an electric vehicle. Sorry about the play on words. We think we can increase our efficiency between 50-60%. This would mean a real world 300 mile per charge electric car. This presents new challenges and keeps us sharp. Our car requires less energy to move down the road than it takes to run most head lights. Air conditioning a car takes about 30 times that energy. That is why running the air conditioning in an electric car greatly decreases their range.
As always it is question of time and money, not dedication. Kevin went through process of insulating the shop. With his new found spray foam skills we now have mint green foam on the ceiling of the shop and on some of the walls. This will help us stay warm this winter with less wood burning.
Our status:
- Still self-funded (unfunded)
- Still dedicated
- Still married
- Still driving a 200+ MPGe, 4 passenger, 0-60 under 9 seconds, electric car
