What's New at Electric Blue June 1, 2009
The past month has been a busy one at Electric Blue. Even though it has
only been a month since we launched our web site, we have had hundreds
of inquiries and made many new friends. Thank you all!
New People: Dave Labau has joined us as President. Dave has had
considerable success taking small companies like ours to the next level.
Most recently, Dave was the Chief Operating Officer and Director of
CamLite Corporation, a video security electronics provider since its
inception in 2001. He has almost twenty years experience with retail
organizations as a senior executive and general counsel. Previously, he
was President of Homes Buy Express, LLC., a start up new home buying
service; Vice President - Real Estate, Construction and General Counsel,
for Smitty.s Super Valu, Inc., a regional grocery chain in Arizona, and
Vice President and General Counsel of Northern Automotive Corporation,
predecessor to CSK Auto, Inc., then the nation.s largest auto parts
chain. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Washington
and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics and Political Science
from Utah State University. If you have any comments or would like to
reach Dave, his phone number is 602-690-9676, and his e-mail is
davelabau@connect-tech.com.
New Products: The boys in the air conditioning group have been
busy!
For people who have a stronger need to keep cool, we now have a stronger
8000 BTU compressor/condenser in addition to the 5000 BTU we introduced
last month. Sometimes, an A/C installation doesn't require the whole
condenser, expansion valve and all that stuff, just a compressor. For
those, we are introducing a 5000 BTU compressor only and a 11,000 BTU
compressor only. The 11,000 BTU compressor is our first offering
powered by 240V AC which is perfect for the 280V plus battery crowd.
And for the people who can't get enough voltage, we are adding a 240V
inverter which is perfect for 240-330V batteries.
New Applications: As mentioned above, our Blue Window dashboard
computer is open source. Just like we expected, people have been
hacking into it and making it their own. We got an email from Rich
Carroll at Pioneer Conversions (rcc@pioneer conversions.com) who signed
up as a dealer: I love our Blue Window Dashboard Computer, and likely
will use it in upcoming conversions. We have tried a couple of
different displays, and different displays are needed for different
vehicles. I have added small amounts of programming to our Blue Window,
and love the Open Source software that allows this, I also have a
presentation on the Blue Window at the Fox Valley Electric Auto Assoc.
meeting this Friday, and have developed a e-slide presentation, in both
Open Office and M$ Office format for the presentation. I could put it
up on the web, and link to it from the blog page if it would help
others.
Last month we were working on a car with a busted speedometer and rather
than fix it, our engineers (being engineers) reprogrammed a Blue window
to do the speedometer/odometer and more! The prototype version outputs
speed, distance, amps, volts and watt seconds (watt hours/3600) every
1/4 second through the programming interface. We used one of those
little Linux EEE PCs with the tiny, unreadable displays to grab this
data and stuff it into a file. Since the file was a standard CSV
format, we could open it in Excel and get numbers about how much energy
it really takes to power an EV. Just remember this for the next EAA
meeting. You know, afterwards when everybody stands around lying about
how much energy their car uses. You can be the first to actually prove
it! Look for this free software on the download page later this month.
New Alliances: EBM has entered into a pact with Island Green
Motors
to
supply components and logistics to support their conversion efforts in
the Caribbean Islands. Island Green Motors is the creation of two
entrepreneurs, Brooks McLaren and George Klopfer. As part-year residents
in the West Indies, the inspiration for IGM arrived when George and
Brooks became aware of projects to generate geothermal electrical energy
on several volcanic islands. These great projects will eventually
eliminate the need for the burning of fossil fuels to generate
electricity for many of the islands in the Caribbean area. However,
George and Brooks realized that even then it will still be necessary to
import petroleum-based fuels to power conventional vehicles.
The vision of Island Green Motors is to help these islands complete the
transformation to 100% green, non-polluting, energy economies of the
future, by supplying Electric Vehicles to be powered directly from the
clean, renewable energy the islands produce locally. Many Electric
Vehicles made by major auto manufacturers in the USA, Europe and Asia
are geared toward continental driving; the cars are too expensive and
far from practical given the terrain of islands. Other EV producers are
going in the opposite direction for urban markets, producing small,
underpowered vehicles, with unsatisfying performance, range and carrying
capacity. At Island Green Motors we have developed a sophisticated and
economical electric drive train, sufficient to power a conventional
passenger car, SUV or light truck, with the built in characteristics of
speed and endurance that island drivers deserve. For more information,
visit
www.islandgreenmotors.com.
New Successes: Jason, a creative director for a Hollywood post
production company, joins the list of success stories this month. Jason
has always been interested in a green life style and now he and his
family have an electric car from Electric Blue. Read all about it on
our success stories page.
New Buzz: Read what is being said about Electric Blue on
www.evforum.com
and
diyelectriccar.com.
Please contribute to the threads. We get lots
of good ideas from you! One good suggestion was we make our future
dashboard computer releases available with metric units as well (OH DUH!
why didn't we think of that?!).
New Ideas: Please share your comments with Dave or with your
blogger,
Bill Schlanger (
bschlanger@connect-tech.com
928-600-3925). Also, if
you or your company have a product or an idea for a product for electric
vehicles, please let us know.
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by making
our computer based products open source which makes the software and hardware details available
to you. You can customize or reprogram our products to better suit your needs. This makes it
possible for community involvement in the improvement and features of our products.