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06.29.09 - Innovation, by Jen Danzinger
I often wonder what life was like for Mrs. Henry Ford. Clara was married to an engineer who was obsessed with gasoline engines. Perhaps Henry had friends over at night and on weekends, tinkering about in his garage or workshop to all hours. I can just see it: they'd be making a racket and occasionally tromping dirty boots into the house for meals and she'd put on her best hostess game face and try not to show her vexation. Clara would even find herself periodically going out to the workshop to see if they needed any more coffee or maybe another box of Twinkies.
No, wait, that's me (at best).
On a recent podcast, This American Life talked about “Garage Entrepreneurs,” like the Hewlett-Packard team and Jobs and Woz (Apple). I can't help but watch the members of Illuminati Motor Works putting in their hours on nights, holidays, and weekends and think they, too, are following a great tradition of garage inventors.
The American economy has tanked and there is so much focus on whether “consumer confidence” is low or high. Are we as a nation still spending money? Are we doomed if we don't continue to buy products?
I think the emphasis is misdirected. Perhaps we should be focused on innovation instead of simply how much we as a nation are buying. Most of us are hurting financially. We're having to be creative to get through these times. Everyone's innovating: finding new ways, small and large to do things, even if this innovation is a new way to budget household finances in order to pay bills. Or managing to juggle work and family.
The guys with the dirty boots hanging out in my husband's workshop are innovating, too. I'm not just talking about engineering and building an ultra-fuel efficient car that you might some day see on a showroom floor. That's an old story: these guys were driven to do something that the automobile industry wouldn't do. They felt called to the challenge. But the press doesn't cover their other innovation: how they manage to juggle full-time jobs, wives, family, bills, while volunteering their many hours to try and build “Seven.”
They're sacrificing a lot to meet the X Prize deadlines and reinvent the original spirit of the US automotive industry.
I try to keep that in mind when:
...I see my husband hard at work and yet I miss him...
...he misses gatherings with family and friends...
...the money is tight because most of it is going to build “Seven”...
And I know I'm not alone in this. Football widows have nothing on the wives of team IMW.
I imagine Clara was a better hostess than I. Calm, supportive, and an awesome baker of cakes, I'd bet. Not like me, usually missing my husband, occasionally freaking out about the cost of this project, and throwing frozen pizzas and sodas towards team IMW to keep them fueled. I try to make up for my lack of hostess skills by keeping up the IMW web site, promoting their adventures through Facebook, and spreading the word:
American ingenuity isn't dead. It's alive and well in a workshop in a midwest corn field.
And it needs more pizza.
06.07.09 - New Co-Sponsor and Vehicle Design Change, by Kevin Smith
We’ve got a new co-sponsor! EV Components!
Check them out at evcomponents.com
I don’t want this to sound like an infomercial, but I really can’t say enough about these guys. They started a business doing custom EV conversions and realized after having spent weeks searching for that one elusive part, like so many of us have, that there’s a lot of unobtainium* out there. So they decided to take the expertise, and blood shot eyes, they’ve gained from establishing a supply infrastructure to build their cars and start a web site selling the parts at affordable prices to help out the rest of us.
They’ve got all the EV parts you’ll need for your conversion or one off, custom, ground up street machine including: batteries, BMS, chargers, motors, controllers, switches, fuses, brake conversion kits and more.
And their prices? Right now you can buy an AC motor and controller for $3500! Thundersky 100ah batteries: $110 each!
If you’re not sure what exactly you need just give them a call and talk to Dave, he’s always happy to give a hand and since he actually builds electric cars, he knows how to use the parts he sells and can save you from learning the hard way. When you talk to him, tell him the Illuminati sent you!
And Dave, if you’re reading this, you were right. I’m gonna need another one of the Kilovac switches, so add it to the list. Thanks
*Unobtainium: A site displaying the exact apart you need along with detailed specifications. However, after hours of searching and attempting to contact the company, you discover it is unavailable at any price.
Fans’ of the Illuminati, you are probably anxious for an update. Well here it is!
We’ve been plugging away day and night on safety reports, business plans, and detailed schematics for our next big submittal to the XPRIZE foundation; it’s the next big hurdle all the competing teams need to get past in order to continue in the competition. Not to mention digging through miles of unobtainium to try and find all the parts we need and working avidly on building the car itself. Big changes are in the works for our design. As many of you know it is widely believed that the next step for our personal transport infrastructure is hybrid electric vehicles, this is the approach we have been taking in the design of our vehicle, Seven. Although we have built in the flexibility to manufacture Seven as a hybrid, after spending more than a year designing, building and doing research into everything from motors, IC engines and batteries, we’ve decided it’s time to go pure battery electric vehicle, BEV, for our race vehicle. This was a difficult decision to make which caused many sleepless nights and lots of debate on what is the right course of action. There are many pluses and minuses for each design strategy, however the additional hurtles involved in developing a small IC engine that meets USEPA tier 2 bin 5 emission standards in time for the race has proven to be both time and cost prohibitive. Therefore we’ll be taking advantage of the flexibility designed into our original vehicle to add the additional batteries needed to make Seven a viable BEV. Once we remove our IC engine, we’ll be installing an additional 15KW of batteries, for a total of 30KW hours of battery energy storage. This will raise our operating voltage to 307V and decrease our 0-60 time to about 6 seconds. The estimated vehicle range is 360 miles (580km) on a single charge. If you figure that the average utility charges about 10-cents/KW hour it’ll cost about $3 bucks to fill up the ‘tank’. That’s about the same as one gallon of gas, but how many of us got 360 miles out of our last gallon of gas?
As you can see, we’ve haven’t sacrificed performance or efficiency by going to a BEV, nor have we increased the base price of the vehicle. We’re still looking at about $42k for the final production vehicle. This is possible because batteries and the systems that control them have slowly been coming down in price and as we increase production, prices will continue to drop do to volume purchases of these same components.
Although we are no longer incorporating an IC engine into our race vehicle, we’re continuing research and development into a small IC engine that will meet our power needs and comply with all USEPA emission standards and we’ll offer a hybrid version of the car once we go into production for those who want to simply fill-r-up with gas and continue their cross country trek instead of stopping to charge once every state or so. But for the Illuminated amongst us, who are ready to take the leap into BEV’s and the increased power, performance and efficiency they offer (not to mention breaking that nasty Oil habit we’ve gotten ourselves into) we’ve taken that leap with you! Keep your eyes open and we’ll show you just what a BEV can do.
Till next time
Excelsior!
03.27.09 - Late first post of the new year, by Kevin Smith
What’s this? Hmm looks like an old scrap of paper, “ Remember to update the site at least once every..”… oops, well better late than never.
Wow, a lot has happened since my last update, but first there are a few people without whom our project would have fallen into obscurity and so I’d like to first thank everyone who has kept up with our progress and all the kind words of support. I would especially like to say thank you to the people who have made donations, it takes a leap of faith to put not only your belief, but your hard earned dollars behind someone you don’t know; so go to our sponsors page and give these folks the credit they deserve for not only believing in but supporting a brighter future.
As it is in war: all give some, some give all, it has been with building 7. It takes everyone working together to win battles no matter the type, and we’ve needed everyone who has helped to get us this far, but now I’d like to thank those who have given all for this project. they have given their evenings and weekends, countless vacation days and have accomplished tasks that they would not have thought possible and they’ve done it for nothing other than the chance to make things a little better for everyone.
Kevin Smith, George Kennedy, Josh Spradlin, Thomas Pasko, Nate Knappenburger
Josh Spradlin, Graphic Designer, and Thomas Pasko, Master Automotive Technician, are the two surviving teammates who started out this whole shindig with me. They’ve managed to put up with my panic attacks, hair-brain ideas, rants, raves, tangents, and lots more over the past…well almost 2 years now, and have stuck with it. That’s the sign of true friendship, standing, not by but with your friends no matter the consequences to self…honestly it’s also a sign of insanity, but it’s a good kind of insane.
Josh and I have been working on projects out in the every growing ‘work shop’ affectionately nick-named ‘Tangent Works’ for several years now. It started, as most things do, very innocuously, with customizing a motorcycle, the one I had to sell to help finance this project, and led to projects ranging from repairing/refinishing family heirlooms to painting a mural and digging ditches for underground power lines, Saturdays were never boring…of course then as now fueled with lots of pizzas and Little Debbie snack cakes (that would have been a great product placement if only we can convince Little Debbie to be a sponsor ;)) . When I asked Josh if he’d work on this project with me, he said…more or less…”whatever man, I’m out there every Saturday either way”. However now he says, “Wow, it’s been a wild ride.” Guess he never expected to host a Makers Fair or be in a feature article in WIRED magazine…not to mention VPRO TV, that’s PBS in the Netherlands, or to work with Hyundai to modify some of their brand new cars….and for the record, yes, it is nerve wracking to cut into a brand new car, but once you realize it’s not yours and Kevin was the one to sign off on it…Hey, have at it. Not only is Josh good at deciphering my spelling, he can also take my sometimes vague, always overly wordy and technical, descriptions of things we need and translate it into a successful internet search that comes up with the parts that never come up when I type them into the search…maybe it has something to do with that spelling thing.
Thomas, the man whose entire life is a project, from running his automotive repair shop to being husband to his wife Karen and dad to three teenagers; Isaiah, Rachel and Daniel, to playing trumpet in the local symphony, not to mention working on 7, his days are to say the least, full. I couldn’t think of a better friend, or one with more experience on projects, that I’d want to have working with me on this project, after all practice makes perfect, so Thomas must be a Master at project organization by now and if an empty desk is a reflection of its owner;s mind then the same must hold true for ones workshop, and if you could see Thomas’ work shop you’d know that his mind is jam packed…with an organization all its own. Auto tech extraordinaire, (with the paper to prove it) and the patience (well with me at least) of a saint, and the belly of a god (Budda), Thomas is my automotive equivalent to a lifeline, that luckily I get to call more than once.
George Kennedy, Engineer, and Nathan Knappenburge,r Electronics Technician, without which we wouldn’t have gotten this far….I seem to be saying that a lot lately, tis true tis true.
George first stopped by my cube (at my day job) and handed me $20 bucks and said, “Well, gotta put your money where your mouth is and I said people should be supporting this project. ” The week after that it was another $20. The week after that he showed up on Saturday morning with a new laptop loaded up with CAD software and said, “my wife said I should have a hobby and I figured I could re-learn CAD to help you out. Oh, and here’s $50 bucks”. Since being pulled into the black hole known as ‘Tangent Works’ George has not been seen by the outside world…except at the St. Pat’s day festival in Springfield. This message goes out to George’s wife: “George is doing fine and hopes to be home in time for Christmas.”
Nathan actually hunted us down after seeing an article in the local paper, saying, ”hey, I know some of these guys.” The hunter quickly became the hunted. Now after many long sessions of brain storming, internet searches, correcting each other’s equations, assumptions and multiplication, (and discovering that there’s a whole lot of unobtainium out there) we’re ready to move forward with the perfect AC drive system and have limited our choices of batteries to a mere 786 different possible types and configurations. Depending on when this actually gets posted/read, congratulations are in order; Nate and his girlfriend Jamie are getting/got married on April 4th. Congratulations! Remember Jamie, when you get sick of Nate hanging around the house and pestering you, just send him over and we’ll keep him busy.
And last, but definitely not least, someone I have known since I was 9 years old…and been in love with since I was 10, my wife, Jen, without her support this project would have never gotten off the ground, thank you, Honey. Not only is she the greatest must supportive wife in the world, she’s also our web master…and the kick to my ass to get this blog done ;). An automotive enthusiast herself she’s spent many late nights with me working out the finer details of running (boot to the pants) the project and helping out with numerous computer problems and editing my ramblings [editor's note: I can only do so much to fix Kevin's ramblings].
CAR STUFF
Along with the updates and changes to the team, we’ve also updated and changed our approach a bit to the build. We’ve decided to go with an AC drive system instead of the DC system of our original design. AC offers many advantages in the area of overall efficiency, and energy recovery. We’ve also decided to increase the size of our battery pack to enable increased performance and add to the fun of the drive (that should be interperated as smoke your wheels off, fun).
While using our proprietary composite for many applications on our race vehicle, we’re also, as can be seen from the pictures, not compromising safety at the expense of a little weight and utilizing a full steel space frame instead of just a pan until such time that we are able to fully test the properties of our material for safety in crash testing.
Just in case you didn’t notice the Hyundai Ecomoding banner in the background, Hyundai is now a Co-Sponsor of Illuminati Motor Works and our quest for the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE. Check out our sponsors page often for updates about our work with Hyundai and some links to the other great environmental undertakings by Hyundai, like the Genesis project.
Or maybe just check it to see your name proudly added to our line-up. Where will you be, Dilithium crystals or Warp Drive? Want your name or the name of your company on the side of our vehicle come race day? Then send us an email with your proposal or questions to find out how we can work together to make this happen.
10.18.08 - More Videos! Josh has uploaded parts 5-9 of the IMW Maker Faire web blogs. You can check out all of the IMW videos on YouTube.
10.14.08 - Maker Faire video blogs part 3 and 4 are up. In part 3 Josh, Kevin, and George explain and test some of the modifications they've been making to the Sonata "B" car, including synthetic oil and voltage stabilizer. In part four, Kevin (a.k.a. "The Giant Floating Head") installs an inline fuel magnet and reports on the results so far.
10.12.08 - Video presentation of "Seven" Part One. Kevin and camera man Josh show the progress and explain the gull-wing doors.
10.10.08 - Video Blog for Maker Faire part 2. Team IMW starts discussing the types of products they're going to use to test and demonstrate the useful vs junk eco-modding products out on the market. Check for latest updates here: http://illuminatimotorworks.wordpress.com/
10.9.08- Video Blog for Maker Faire. Check for latest updates here: http://illuminatimotorworks.wordpress.com/
10.5.08 - Feedback and Facebook, by Webmaster Jen, IMW volunteer
We're trying to adapt the site based on feedback we're received from some of you. One person asked for a blog and the team has done what they can to blog some of their more interesting thoughts and adventures as they have time. We're also trying to post more photos to show you progress to the construction of "Seven."
The Progressive Automotive X Prize team has urged Team IMW to become active in Facebook since social networking is one way of educating the public about the need for alternative fuel vehicles. So there is now a fan page for the team ("The Enlightened: Fans of Illuminati Motor Works") where you can view additional photos and engage in discussions (even start some yourself!). While you're at it, if you're a fan of the competition, check out the Progressive Automotive X Prize Facebook group as well and get to know the other teams.
As a part of their participation with Hyundai and the 2008 Maker Faire, the team will also be blogging and possibly web-camming. More info to follow as we find out the details of where to go to see that.
Finally, we've revamped the donation thank you section of the site to show tiered donation levels rather than exact amounts. It's more fun that way. Seriously: you cant toute that you're a "Flux Capaciter Level Donor" and everyone on your block will be jealous.
Got more suggestions? Maybe a beef with the site? Email me. We're trying to do the best we can with the time and resources available. First priority goes to building the car. Second priority is making a user-friendly, quickly updated site so that you can see what your donations are helping to build. Third goes to goes to getting donations for the project because money is getting tight.
9.7.08 - Farewell To A Friend, by Kevin Smith, IMW
Well, I did it. I had to part with a loved one this weekend: my very first motorcycle. It was a 1979 Kawasaki KZ750 that I loved to pieces (literally). In fact, there might still be some pieces in the garage somewhere. After spending over a year modifying it, and with the ever increasing need for additional funds for the IMW project, I decided to sell the bike to help offset the cost of the latest truckload of materials for the XPrize car. That old motorcycle looked bad as hell and ran like a charm, but I simply haven't had the time to ride it since taking on this project.
Rat Bike, you'll be missed.
But onward and upward. With the proceeds from the bike sale, I was able to move ahead and pick up the next load of steel. Josh and I spent 16 hours Saturday designing, redesigning, and fabricating new gull-wing doors for the car which required some difficult but worthwhile frame modifications. Originally we had planned for Lamborghini-style doors, but they proved to be unweildy for our design. However, this caused some angst for George, as he had to rework his CAD drawings on the spot to fit the new design.
This morning I ran into some trouble trying to design the last door, so Thomas came out to give me a well-needed hand. We're now about 3 hours away from having 4 working door frames.
Keep an eye on our photos page. New pics are added as we have time to upload them.
