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Chapter Meetings for 2001:

• January - Review of CARB
• February - with North Bay Chapter, Curtis EV controllers
• February - Data Acquisition
• March - Conversion Basics
• April - Earth Day Events
• May - Public Charging Standards
• June - Station Car & Shared-Car Programs
• July
• August - East Bay Chapter Rally
• September - Silicon Valley Chapter Rally
• September - PIHEV & Fuel Cell Field Trip
• October - EV Meters
• November - Chapter Planning
• December - NEV (Neighborhood Electric Vehicles)

Past EBEAA EVents page

Previous Meetings:

September 28, 4th Friday (special event)
Topic - Tours of Hybrid EV and Fuel Cell efforts in the Sacramento area.
Tours of HEV Lab at University of California at Davis and Fuel Cell Partnership Facilities in West Sacramento.

Date: Sept., Friday 9/28

• 10:00 -11:30 am - lecture and tour on the plug-in HEV concept at UC Davis Transportation Dept.

• 1:00 - 3:00 pm - orientation and tour of California Fuel Cell Partnership Facilities in West Sacramento. Have several FCEVs on-site for viewing and refueling station.

September 15, 3rd Saturday (special event)
Silicon Valley EV Rally at Stanford, Palo Alto (sponsored by SVEAA).

August 25, 4th Saturday (standard meeting)

Annual East Bay EAA Rally
Traditional distance rally (50-75+ miles) (our EVent!). Will meet at Rally site rather than our usual meeting place (4th Sat). 

Rally Location: Sun Valley Mall, Concord
We will meet in the lower parking garage next to Macys, where the EV charging stations are. Have a 2-mile loop of cities streets for participants to drive their EVs, demonstrating distance and drivability while giving visibility to the public and allowing the uninformed to even ride as passengers. 
Results reported by Scott Cornell

The vehicles and drivers participating in the event were:

Veh #	Category	Driver/Owner	Vehicle Description	Batteries	Pack Voltage
1	Conversion	Scott Cornell	VW Karmann Ghia	PbA	90V
2	Commercial	Ed Thorpe	Honda EVplus	NiMH	288V
3	Conversion	Anna Cornell	VW Rabbit	PbA	96V
4	Conversion	Robert Richert	VW Sciracco	PbA	96V
5	Conversion	Chuck Hursch	VW Rabbit	PbA	96V
11	Bicycle/Motorcycle	Michael Saari	Skeeter 2 Recumbent Bicycle	PbA	36V

• Also present at the event, but not competing, was Scott Cornell's Kewet EL-Jet 3 - Lead/acid 48V (a cute little neighborhood EV great for attracting the public to the event site).

• The longest distance traveled was 58 miles by Ed Thorpe's Honda EV plus, which is very impressive considering that he drove to the rally from his home in Alameda (30+ miles), ran in the rally, and drive home that evening with only a short charge at the mall before leaving.
• Another impressive run was by Mike Saari on his Skeeter 2 electric recumbent bicycle - he ran 52.2 miles with very little pedaling, and with only 50 pounds of batteries the number of miles per KWhr for this vehicle is very large!
• Robert Richert also drove to and from the rally (10 miles each way with no additional charging) with car full of people and equipment and still managed to run 8.7 miles on the course.

Here are the official results:

Veh #	Driver/Owner	Vehicle Description	# Laps	Miles	Finish	Category
2	Ed Thorpe	Honda EVplus	20	58.0	1st	Commercial
11	Mike Saari	Skeeter 2 Recumbent Bicycle	18	52.2	1st	Bicycle/Motorcycle
1	Scott Cornell	VW Karmann Ghia	17	49.3	1st	Conversion
3	Anna Cornell	VW Rabbit	9	26.1	2nd	Conversion
5	Chuck Hursch	VW Rabbit	7	20.3	3rd	Conversion
4	Robert Rochert	VW Scirocco	3	8.7	4th	Conversion

Acknowledgements:
Special thanks go to Ron Maynard and Milt Stultz from East Bay EAA for help with setup, tear down, and lap counting, and to the management, facilities, and security offices at Sun Valley Shopping Center for letting us use their property and charging stations for the event.

July 28, 4th Saturday (standard meeting)
Planning for Annual EV Rally for next month. And joint meeting with North Bay EAA to discuss/plan group efforts through end of year. 

June 23, 4th Saturday (standard meeting)
We unfortunately had a small meeting (due to difficulties with meeting reminder cards) for an excellent prevention by Mr. Martin J. Bernard III, Executive Director of the National Station Car Association, headquartered in Oakland, CA. He discussed the history and current operations of the Station-Car and Shared-Car Programs. Currently there is a new Shared-Car Program in San Francisco, which is working well. And the Station-Car Program is presently only active at the Fremont BART stations. Great concepts.

Ed shared about Alameda Power and Telecom's EV loaner program, to expose Alameda residents to the use and practicality of EVs. The program allows people in Alameda to sign up for a 2-day free usage of a Honda EVplus or Toyota RAV4EV. Both drive very well and response has been positive. We had the Toyota at the meeting.

Member's EVs in the parking lot, after the meeting.

May 19, 3rd Saturday (special meeting)
Group meet a week early at our meeting site in Alameda because standard meeting falls on Memorial Day weekend. 

Discussed various standards of charging standards - from the regular 110V (NEMA 5-15 - Level 1), which only delivers a maximum 1kW/hr, to the more widely accepted 220V outlets (also known as Level 2), which provide 4-6+kW/hr. Most conversions use the 4 wire NEMA 14-50 plug which can be found at many older EV charging stations and typical RV sites (Like KOAs). Old charging stations are typically EVI ICS 600 series, which include 110V and 22V connections.
The plugs look like this:  110V 15A (5-15)  220V 40A (14-50)

Reviewed the two manufactured EV standards of Inductive vs. Conductive 220V connectors. The Inductive MaganaCharge requires a heavy amount of computer communications to check on number/ type/ capacity/ performance of batteries - limited to GM EV1, Toyota RAV4-EV, Chevy S10 EV and Nissan Alta EV vehicles. Not for consideration with conversions. Note that the CitiCar actually uses another type of Inductive paddle - not compatible.

Inductive - old large & new small Conductive Avcon-paddle

Other type is Conductive, based on the Avcon-paddle. This connection is used on Honda EV+, Ford Ranger EV and even Selectria Force vehicles. 

Conversions can be outfitted with a paddle inlet receptacle or adapted using the EAA adapter box to interface Avcon-paddle to NEMA 14-50 receptacle.

Avcon inlet receptacle Adapter box

Most of the group drove to Alameda Power and Telecom (the local power company for the city of Alameda) to look at actual charging stations. Found they have 4 EVI ICS stations: one Conductive Avcon-paddle and 3 with combination 110V NEMA 5-15 / 220V NEMA 14-50 outlets. We were rather disappointed to found out through testing that only the Avcon-paddle stations has power. Not good for EV usage. Many of the EV charging stations sites are inaccurate and out of date. The CALSTART hanger out at Alameda Point with two EVI ICS 600 stations is inaccessible due to fencing and change of ownership. The only other charging stations on the Island is at the Bank of Alameda has 2 charging stations - one EVI Avcon-paddle and one MagnaCharge Inductive - both alive/powered. Score for Alameda = 3 for 8, not very EV friendly.

Note: NEMA stands for National Electrical Manufacturers Association. 

April 28 - not meeting due to Earth Day events
Group didn't meet because of various local Earth Day events. 

Previous Saturday was Earth Day at College of Alameda, at the North end of the island. Turnout was good for the small event, with a Toyota EV-RAV4, a Ford EV Ranger and a new green Corbin Sparrow displayed by Alameda Power and Telecom (our local power provider for Alameda City). Also an instructor from a local school displayed two EV go-carts and material to encourage kids to see how clean power can transport people.

Earth Day at the end of April at the Concord Pavilion was fantastic, with over a dozen EVs, 3 HEVs and one Fuel Cell car, and many e-bikes and a electric minibike.


Many thanks to Andriko Zavadell for gathering the EVs together and Terry Wilson for the pics! (click on pictures for larger images)

Lots of talk about EVs but unfortunately all of the production EVs are not available. Need to plan to display and talk about conversions next year. Many manufacturers are coming out with NEV (Neighborhood EVs) to satisfy California ZEV requirements - top speed of 25-30 mph, range of 40 miles. Not really going to resolve the commute smog problems. But that means that conversions will out-perform the production vehicles! 

March 24 (standard meeting)
Group met at our new meeting site in Alameda - the First Baptist Church meeting room. 

The meeting focused on experiences among members who have converted ICEs (gas car) to EVs (electric car). We started with the basic components and how they compare in size and weight to a conventional gas car - motor vs. engine, batteries vs. gas tank, controller vs. carburetor, etc.

Several EVs were on hand for examination after the meeting. (click on pictures for larger images). 

February 24 (standard meeting)
Group met at Carrows Restaurant in San Leandro to review how our joint meeting went with the North Bay Chapter earlier in the month. 

Scott Cornell presented and demonstrated how to get started with Data Acquisition using some simple tools. Using an inexpensive mulimeter with an RS232 (such as from Radio Shack), Scott demonstrated how voltage levels can be monitored and recorded by connecting to a simple Windows computer. 

February 10 (special meeting)
Joint meeting with the North Bay EAA Chapter at the Fair Issac Conference Center in San Rafael. 

We had a detailed presentation by Andriko Zavadell and Mike Ramirez of Curtis Instruments about the current line of Curtis EV controllers, including a new sep-ex controller.

Large turnout (over 40 people) and excellent PowerPoint presentation. Had several controller examples, even without the case and heatsink, to describe the features and performance of the Curtis line controllers. Lots of Q&A as members who have converted/built EVs shared about experiences with the controllers.

The popular 1221 and 1231 series  and the new sep-ex 

January 27 (standard meeting)
First meeting of the new year. Since CalStart is no longer managing the Alameda Point Hatcheries and the facilities have been transferred to another tenant, we met at Carrows Restaurant in San Leandro. 

Ed Thorpe introduced the new Chapter officers and the new challenges for this year. He reviewed the impact of the recent CARB (California Air Resources Board) Hearing on Jan. 25 where the Board amended the requirements for Automobile Manufacturers for implementing the California Zero-Emission Vehicle Regulations. Basically, the CARB caved in to the Manufacturer's pressure and relaxed the requirement from 20,000 to less than 5,000 new ZEVs to be sold to the California public in 2003. The EV supports managed to win the confidence to CARB to enforce a growth policy towards 14,000 new ZEVs/year by the year 2014. 

Chapter Members EVs:

Will expand as members list their EVs with the EValbum.

For more information: email to EAA-contact-at-excite-dot-com

The EAA is a non-profit organization for the promotion of clean, quiet electric vehicles (EVs) for personal transportation. Check for the EAA Chapter near you on the National EAA page: http://www.eaaev.org