The Austin Area Electric Vehicle Association (AustinEV) crew spent the afternoon showing a selection of the club members' cars to interested attendees at the University of Texas Sustainable Business Summit. At this show we were excited to be able to offer clean, silent, all-electric rides to the attendees in Rob Hirschfeld's Rav4, Claire Sorenson's factory Ford Ranger and Erik Bigelow's VW Cabriolet. Scott Mauer also brought his brand new EVT America R-20 scooter for people to look at. Austin Energy was kind enough to bring their Prius Plug in Hybrid and Alien Scooters brought along an array of electric scooters, including the 65mph capable Vectrix electric scooter.

So, a while ago I wrote about Prosper, one of several community funding sites. One of the options we all have is to use this site to fund our own community's efforts while also getting a little something back for the effort. If we make an effort to bid low on EV conversion projects we benefit the community and we stand to earn back a bit more than what most of us are earning on our standard bank accounts. There IS some risk because you are loaning money, but perhaps it is worth it? We shall see.

The first loan request in the "Custom Electric Vehicles" group has been listed. If you want to try and help out, you can go to the prosper site, it is Listing #262767. If you want to join the group (and support the EV related web site projects I am involved in) you can use this link:

Okay so I just got done ranting about government subsidies and how government is closing out the little guy... So, it is a good time to remind myself and everybody else that our very own Austin Energy has listened. They are at the least matching what they will do for production NEVs. What better way to do that than to link to Rob's post about receiving the first Austin Energy rebate check! You can find the details on their conversion/battery electric car rebate on none other than the AustinEV site here...

While I prepare to go out and continue working on Brian's Saturn, I wanted to at least post to say that a group of AustinEV members are going to be showing their cars down at the Sustainable Shopper's Ball today. If you want to see some examples of what people have done in the Austin area, this is a good opportunity to check out some cars. [linkage]

coffee!....

Why would anybody think to install AC in a car that is consuming electricity as it drives down the road? It just doesn't make sense efficiency-wise. One simple answer.. We are in Texas. Its hot and humid around here from early Spring to late Fall and getting to work in a full sweat isn't one of those things that you look forward to. The lack of AC is one of the things that has been holding back any serious EVs in our market for decades. So...

The Saturn will have AC. We have been working to get it hooked up. Nice thing is that once you spin your AC compressor with a separate motor, you don't have to worry about when you turn it on. Cars have a bunch of AC clutch management logic in their computers to avoid engaging the clutch when the car is accelerating and when it is at a stop and when it is laboring, etc... With this setup, the AC can be turned on whenever Brian likes. He could even start it while the car is still plugged in, before he leaves the garage so that the cabin is preconditioned and doesn't require a bunch of power from the pack while he is on the road.