Earth : 1 , Oil Companies : Zero

Search for Eco Car Star

Thu, 9 Sep 2010 10:28:29 +1000

A story came out in the Sydney Morning Herald on Sep 9, 2010. It was a great positive angle on a few different way people are making ‘green’ cars, including an interview with yours truly. The entire story is below - here’s an excerpt.

“Electric
Kearon de Clouet is a self-taught mechanic who has become a poster boy for those converting petrol-powered cars to electric. The filmmaker spent six months of Sundays turning a Ford Capri into an electric car in his northern beaches garage, which he documented in a blog and a series of popular YouTube clips. With mates, he has also rebuilt a motorbike to run on batteries, which at 177km/h broke an electric motorcycle land-speed record on the salt flats of central Australia this year.
Not content with that, he is planning to build another electric bike next year that he hopes will reach 300km/h. His motivation for doing all this, he says, came from watching Chris Paine's 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car?
"I went, geez, am I going to be someone getting angry about it and saying 'someone do something', or actually do something about it myself?" de Clouet says. "It just doesn't make sense that there's a better way of [powering a car] and it's not being done.
"The only way there's going to be a groundswell ... is if people don't have a vested interest in the way car businesses are run these days. People like me."
De Clouet has a ready answer for those who say that electric cars contribute to global warming.
"You can go the easy discussion route and say just buy green power or buy solar panels," he says. "But my car doesn't need petrol stations that burn electricity, a petrol truck that's burning fuel to get petrol to it, doesn't need an oil refinery to create the petrol ..."

Odyssey Batteries sponsors our Formula Green prototype racecar

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:43:28 +1000

With the big Electric Vehicle event coming up at Bathurst’s Mount Panorama track on July 29th (the Centroc Summit and EV Challenge) it was great to have Robert and Lorry from Enersys come on board with a batch of their high-discharge led acid batteries - the Odyssey PC680. With these little black and red boxes of lightning, we’ll have 490kva available to us - making (we believe) our EV battery pack the largest in Australia!

With a 1000Amp motor EVnetics motor controller supplied by Anthony Nicholls, the car is going to absolutely scream at the Bathurst! What’s the weakest link? We’re going to keep a close eye on the gearbox...

Here’s a short work-in-progress video of the build as at June 28th, 2010. (Apologies for the quality... I shot it on my iPhone... if I took my pro camera gear, I wouldn’t get any actual car building done!!)

We got a World Record!!

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:46:25 +1100

By Andy Marsh @ EVMOTORCYCLE.ORG 
http://www.catavolt.com.au

On Friday 12th March 2010 team Catavolt set the World Record for a Modified Partial Streamlined Electric Motorcycle and the Australian Land Speed Record for an Electric Vehicle on the Australian Salt Lake event, Speed Week 2010.

The Catavolt bike saw speeds of 72mph during testing on a 72 Volt system but broke the 110mph barrier when run on 144 Volts. Not bad for a forklift motor running at six times its rated voltage limit! The 48 volt Nissan electric forklift motor was expertly rewound to 24 volts (yes 24 volts) by Kenshaw Electrical at Newcastle. Under load the Odyssey 925 lead acid batteries fed the Curtis Controller with the 400 amps required to propel the bike and rider to over 110mph.

Mixing it with the petrol and nitro heads on the salt was an experience in itself. When the bike finally broke the 110mph barrier the recommendations of extension leads and speakers with V-Twin soundtracks were replaced with congratulations and a barrage of questions about the bike. Even the audacious ‘Animal’ offered words of encouragement and wisdom with the classic “May the course be with you!”

The course was indeed ‘with’ Kearon de Clouet as on the final day the conditions were perfect for the 110mph run. Kearon eased the throttle on and passed the first time marker at over 100mph. The second marker showed 110mph. After returning to the pits it took several hours before Kearon could lose that EV Grin.

Also on the salt were the Fast Sparks team from Bathurst who achieved 97mph on their Electric Kawasaki setting the record for a naked electric motorcycle. The Fast Sparks team were using Odyssey Lead Acid Batteries at 144volts. Both teams shared a pit area together and traded expertise and encouragement at the event.

Finally the bar has been set and the race is now on. Next year, electic motorcycle expert Jon Eggenhuizen promises 200mph+ and Catavolt team has a feeling that there will be a lot more electric teams on the salt for 2011.

Team CATAVOLT - Land Speed Record attempt`

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:56:06 +1100

My mate Egg (Jon Egginhiuzen), Jaron Ware, Mark Camilleri, Andy Marsh, and I are building an Electric bike!

‘Team Catavolt’ is launching an assault on the world land speed record for an electric motorcycle - at the time of writing, held by a Mission Motors bike, built for the TTXGP.

And guess who’s riding it? Yep - me!

We've just done our first test on the new build - at only 72 volts, instead of the 156 volt we intend to run on the salt flats. In this video, you'll see timelapse video of building the bike - which will end up in 'Assault on the Salt' - a documentary I’m shooting on the whole adventure of building the bike, and running it in one of the biggest salt lake races in the world, at Lake Gairdener, 700kms north of Adelaide.

This video was a quick 3hr ‘throw together’, as time before the race is really tight - there’s so much to do on the bike!

This will probably be the last post before the trip - and as there isn’t any phone coverage out in the middle of the South Australian desert, I’ll be seeing you on the other side of a world record (well, ya gotta be confident, eh?)

Today Tonight Loves the EV Capri!

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:07:50 +1100

The crew from Today Tonight on Channel 7 (airs Nationally at 6:30pm in Australia) did a very flattering story on me and the car. Reporter David Eccelstone needed no encouraging to get behind the wheel - he was very keen to take it for a spin!

EVCast interview with Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 16:43:10 +1100

After flying back bleariy-eyed from a very interesting two-day trip to Brisbane (meeting with all sorts of parties regarding the future of electric vehicles, and the technology in them) I had a live video interview cross to the UK to do.

Also appearing in this episode was Mathius Van Den Bok, from the Aptera Forums.

Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield is highly regarded in EV circles - and flatteringly, she chose to chase me up for a bit of an on-air chat. Enjoy!

Electric Vehicle Day in Canberra, ACT

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 14:20:12 +1100

Yep - another ‘show the electric cars to the punters’ event!
Jaron, Mark and I had a good ol’ chat to all sort of interesting people - I even got to give joyrides in the EV Capri!
For me thought, the pinnacle moment of the event was zipping around in our Electric Formula V racecar (we call it the ‘Formula EV’) in front of 100’s of onlookers.

Pity the safety guys woudn’t let me line up a drag race against the Tesla Roadster...

It’s REAL - it’s here - and it’s fast!

Sun, 9 Aug 2009 00:16:05 +1000

Yeah, I’ve been busy! (This kinda explains why I’m taking so long to get the next episode of EV Capri up and going!)

More testing on the track in the next 4 weeks, then we’ll REALLY have something to shout about!!

The start of something....clean and quiet!

Thu, 4 Jun 2009 17:03:44 +1000

Yep! I’ve kept it under wraps, but as the car now has ‘The Electric Car Company’ signage on it, it makes sense to tell you all that TECCO (for short) is working on a way to get electric cars to YOU.

Yep - they’re not just the domain of techie types - your Mum could drive one!

I can’t let too much out of the bag yet - except to show you the new signage on the EV Capri...

The EV Capri goes live!!

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:50:59 +1000

A channel 10 crew came over yesterday to shoot a piece on ‘Backyard electric car conversions’ - which was pretty much based around myself and Nathan Bolton over at converturcar.com (another EV buddy of mine!).

I hope this exposure will lead to a few more opportunities to get the ‘Electric cars CAN be cool’ word out there - time will tell.

This marks the first bit of public media I’ve done about the EV Capri - crack out the Champagne!