Date:         Wed, 28 Jun 95 14:40:01 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: Converting to electric?

On Wed, 28 Jun 95 13:36:23 CDT William Duff said:
>...      except the motor of course. What would be really spiffy would be to
>have the electric and gas motors in parallel.

so why not just play WWII submarine (or diesel locomotive)?? :)  have the
electric motor do all the "work", and run on batteries around town. but if
you have to go out of town on longer trips, fire up the little generator in
the back to power the motor and charge the batteries!

there's a guy down in southern california (long beach?) that converts Honda
CRX's to electric, and sells a little generator trailer that powers the car
on long trips. i think you can get like 400 miles per tank of gasoline for
the generator (which, by the way, pollutes much less and gets better fuel
economy than any car ... cause it runs at basically one rpm and is designed
for that rpm. and it's a MUCH smaller engine). seems like such a simple,
elegant idea.

of course, the way most folks drive, i can just see all the sparking and
arcing when the 23-car pileups start on the freeway!!! :(