CATALYTIC CONVERTER: Instead of selling pricey new vehicles, the ChargeCar team wants to create a kit that makes it easy for local auto shops to convert gasoline cars to run on electricity.
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PITTSBURGH -- Chuck Wichrowski remembers the first car he ever worked on, when he was just a college graduate and knew nothing about cars: His wife's 1970 Chevy Nova.
The second? A 1964 Studebaker Wagonaire.
"I just sort of applied the college model, which is: You look the things up, you get a book, and then you do it," Wichrowski said.
As the years rolled by, Wichrowski put his wrench to the cars that drove the Steel City through its industrial heyday. But times have changed in Pittsburgh, and while he still runs Baum Boulevard Automotive, his customers have moved on to mostly foreign cars, and increasingly, hybrids.
Wichrowski used to run two gas stations, and he knows electric-drive cars need less maintenance than the gas-driven ones. Yet he has loaned a mechanic to a local university to help it design electric cars for regular Pittsburghers, and he thinks his shop can cash in if the future really is electric.
And for the team at Carnegie Mellon University, which is designing cars to get residents to work without burning a pint of gas or even wasting an electron, the future of electric cars is Pittsburgh.
Designers of the ChargeCar project say that instead of selling pricey new vehicles, they want to create a kit that makes it easy for local auto shops like Wichrowski's to convert a gasoline car to run on electricity.
"There's a bunch of machine shops running idle in Pittsburgh," said Illah Nourbakhsh, a robotics professor at CMU and a co-director of ChargeCar. "There's a ton of shops that can do that kind of thing. There's mechanical know-how in this town like no other that I've seen."
Electric-car conversions have been available for decades, whether through small, independent companies or engineers tinkering in their garages. But ChargeCar is likely the first effort to gut a gasoline car and redesign it for a single purpose: the perfect commute.
When Nourbakhsh and his colleagues looked at how Pittsburghers drive, they found that most trips are about half a dozen miles. Some zoom along the highway, while others plod past stop signs and red lights. Some drive on flat roads; others climb or coast down the city's hilly terrain.
The team reckoned a battery, combined with a gadget called a supercapacitor and controlled by software, could make most of these miles electric-powered, at a price Pittsburghers could afford.
Fiddling and fact-finding
ChargeCar's latest projects sit in a former gas station across the street from Carnegie Mellon. One is a 2006 Honda Civic: Over the next month, the team will convert it into a short-range, all-electric car. Wichrowski's mechanic will lend a hand and advise on how to make such conversions as simple as possible for other auto repairers in Pittsburgh.
The other car in the garage feels more like an airplane. From the outside, it looks like a common Scion xB; surrounding the cockpit, though, are scores of dials and gauges.
The car is an experiment.
As Nourbakhsh pulls onto the road, he points to wobbling needles and flashing numbers on the computer screen. This car is powered by a battery and a supercapacitor, and these gauges are constantly crunching numbers: how much juice is left, how much power is flowing, how hot the battery is.
He switches between using the supercapacitor and the battery. He tries each one on hills, up and down. When he slows at a red light, he can choose which device he wants to charge up.
As the professor fiddles, the team is learning important facts about the most efficient way to power an electric car.
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13 Comments
Add CommentAt least electricity can be produced cleanly. Just like gas autos, we need to get rid of dirty power plants, or we're just transferring pollution up the chain. All soot technology needs to be in our past.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wish these guys luck because as far as I am concerned, the more the better on electric cars. But, this does not sound like a great idea. A gas car was built around a gas engine, transmission, drive train, fuel tank, air filter system, and standard brakes. Trying to convert this into an electric vehicle (which needs none of these items) is comparable to converting a horse drawn wagon into a gas powered car. It could be done, but much better to design the car for the power source to be used.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@ Neptunerover
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince the majority of our current electricity is produced by burning COAL -- What is so clean about it?
@Quinn the Eskimo
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're misinterpreting his statement. Neptunerover said that "electricity CAN be produced cleanly" by methods such as wind turbines, solar, etc., this doesn't mean that electricity [in general] is produced cleanly...
I always liked the idea of a nuclear powered car with a trusty steam engine. Now, that's reliability!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConverted ICE cars can be done but only if lightweight to begin with as EV drives, battery packs size, cost are directly proportional to weight. Sadly lightweight in US cars is rare.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no need for for supercaps as they just add weight, expense. There are good batteries available either lead or Lithium that work fine without supercaps.
But by far the best way to built great, affordable EV's is design, build them from scratch as EV's with lightweight chassis/bodies, preferably all composite and aerodynamic. Such an EV with the same battery pack as a conversion, would go 2-3x's as far.
My present custom built EV's get 600 and 250mpg equivalent for a Harley size MC trike and a 2 seat EV sportswagon. They can be built at a profit $5k and $12k
GM built a great EV which could swap it's EV drivetrain with an ICE one in a couple minutes built in composites called the GM Ultra-Lite. This built in medium tech composites would be an excellent 4 seat EV.
EPA has studied and says even power by a coal plant, EV's are both cleaner and far more eff than gas cars.
This guy needs to bone up on his physics. There is no way electric can compete with gasoline. Unless he is hoping to get subsidies from a bankrupt government staggering toward economic collapse. Oh. Wait. That's stupid, too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfrgough,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all need to clean up as best we can for the future or our children and all life on earth.
It's common sense, people get sick when it's too polluted.
Sometimes, we all have to work for FREE to help out a bit.
Honestly, look around...you can make some small changes to help. It's not that much work.
frgough, you forget the huge subsidies oil gets from your income taxes, health care costs. ect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNext it's you who needs a physics lesson as EV's are 3-6x's as eff than gas cars are. Tell me as gas prices rise how we can afford ICE's when EV costs are far lower?
The new Nissan Leaf EV will pay for itself in 10 yrs from gas savings making it far less expensive than a similar ICE.
Or do you want to keep us in oil wars forever?
One of the writers at Mapawatt Blog is converting a Porsche Boxster to an electric vehicle. The next post is going to be on installing 220V service in his garage so he can power up faster!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://blog.mapawatt.com/2010/02/05/preparing-a-home-for-electric-car/
So you are saying frgough that burning gasoline, which is 20-30% efficient, is much better than having a battery powered car which receives charging from a nuclear power plant which is 50-60% efficient? Or maybe a solar or wind power plant which produces no waste products? I think you might be a bit stupid...
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