Thursday, December 23, 2010

Winter is Here!

I have now well over 5,000 miles on my EV and winter has arrived! My heater is installed, but I am waiting for an overflow tank before I can use the heat full time. Right now the pressure builds up and shuts down the pump because it's a closed system, but once my overflow tank arrives it will be an open system and I can run it continuously. It's about 900 watts of heat but once it gets going it does a nice job of keeping the interior warm and the windshield clean.

I have gone about 7 months without buying any gas, and I am going to spend part of this break testing the winter worthiness of my EV. I just watered the batteries last weekend, about 1/2 a gallon for the whole pack, so I don't use much water which is good. This pack now has 4,000 miles and seems to get stronger all the time. I am hoping for at least 10,000 miles from this pack, hopefully more. I have figured my break even point is about 6,000 miles due to the benefits of driving an EV, so I'm pretty happy.

1 comment:

Name said...

Hi David,

Perhaps one of these mornings while you're waiting for the Civic to warm up, you might feel like answering some questions for an interview in EV Gearbox Magazine?

Ordinarily, we'd drop you an email request, but I can't seem to find a contact form on your blog! If you'd be interested, please drop me a line and I'll fill you in on the details!

brian[dot]driggs[at]gearboxmagazine.com

Hope to hear from you soon.
Cheers.