Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Legal to drive, and 100KM

I registered the volt914 yesterday. In Colorado, all that is required is:

  • A VIN verification form (get one filled out at any car dealer)
  • The original title
  • Proof of insurance
  • Driver's license
  • Normal registration fee
This presumes that you had the car legally registered when it was a gas vehicle. They retain the title, and the state will issue a new one for the new electric-only vehicle it has become.

Some day I'm going to get custom plates, but for now, I just wanted to be legal to drive. One caution - Colorado VIN verification forms have boxes for the type of vehicle - make sure to tell the car dealer that your car is all-electric *before* they fill out the form or the will habitually check the "gas" box.

Also, yesterday, I hit 63 miles on the odometer, which means the car has 100 kilometers on it as an electric. W00T! It still needs tuning (plus some other work - heaters, cosmetics, etc.), but that will have to wait a couple of weeks as my work schedule precludes me from doing much else with it for a while.

6 comments:

onei57 said...

Glad to hear it's moving and on the road. I've been following Tim's and your blog as I'm working on mine. Nice to have the information you guys provide. I'm hoping to be on the road next month. Congratulations!

Ross Cunniff said...

Thanks - good luck with yours, and let me know if you have any questions!

TimK said...

Hey Ross, Huge Congratulations on getting the EV on the road! Let me know how it handles in that cold Colorado winter.

BTW, I replaced the front seal on the transmission when I did the rebuild and it was a royal pain to pull it out. Dropping the motor/transmission out of the EV is actually fairly easy, though.

Cheers,
Tim

Ross Cunniff said...

Thanks, Tim! The cold does have an effect - at 32 degrees F battery capacity is half what it is at 70 degrees F. This seems to manifest itself as reduced amperage delivered, and, perhaps, faster voltage degradation.

I've analyzed H2SO4 solution freezing points, and I don't think I'm in any danger of freezing the batteries as long as I keep them reasonably charged (the coldest it has ever been here is -20 degrees F).

Anonymous said...

Russ,

I am very excited to hear about your sucess. I appreciate the de bugging that both you and Tim have been doing with the controller. Hopefully when I get mine working I can just plug in the right parameters.

Now that it is running perhaps you can do some gross Watts per mile tests at 20, 40 and 60 mph on flat road. Please record, more or less, the battery volts and current. Two digital voltmeters, one across the shunt and one on the battery pack, would be nice but the dash gauges will be great.

Thanks again for your blog and posts.

Paul

Ross Cunniff said...

Paul,

Thanks, I'm glad you found it useful and interesting. I'll see what I can do about the watts per mile measurements - first challenge is getting some better instrumentation (I have a digital voltmeter waiting to be installed - but my ammeter only goes +/- 60 amps, which is not enough). Next challenge will be finding 1.5 miles of level road along the foothills of Colorado somewhere :-)