Battery Vehicle Society

Glad to hear that the El is on the road at last! Now, what sort of range and speed can it do?

The latest issue of Auto Express (12th-18th Sept) has a short article on the Elettrica, including (with permission) one of my photos from the London to Brighton run. They seem to like the car, and point out that the cost of a charge-up is around 50p.

ChrisB wrote:You've got to put a couple of TFT monitors into it for starters
ChrisB

Clearly, a TFT monitor on a C5 would be, to scale, the equivalent of a 42" plasma TV on a larger vehicle! But think how much less power it would consume...

We had a great time driving from Cribbs Causeway in north Bristol, to the Create Centre near the harbour, and back to the Better Food Company.

Photo set on Flickr here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/sets/72157601819211380/

Just a quick update to show the Flickr address for the photos from today:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anachrocomputer/sets/72157601819211380/

We had a grand day out! More details to follow...

If the vehicle is over 10 years old, all you need are MOT and insurance documents. But, you'll need to prove the date of manufacture, so normally you'll need the original registration document as well. The web-site info doesn't explicitly say anything about older vehicles, but as you saw, tells you ...

If I leave the Biggles hat at home will it reduce the number of strange looks ? Up to a point. To avoid tempting fate,I intend to visit my local DVLA Office in person rather than risk all the paperwork going missing via snail mail. That's what I did, since the local office is very close to me anywa...

Great news! Now you should be able to get on with the DVLA stuff and get a number plate. Then, it'll be time to test for maximum range! And of course, you can start getting strange looks while parking in the supermarket car parks... or maybe that's just me?

For those who like to see photos of this kind of thing, I have four pictures of the contactors and diodes in Nikki's City-El. Hers is a Series III (mine's a Series II), and therefore has just two contactors, mounted close up to the Curtis controller. One contactor engages for going forwards, and the...

Should I mention the other fault? The one that took out the dashboard and battery monitor power supplies? Something to do with a 3A fuse, which was blown even when "all the fuses are OK"? As for the diodes, the City-El has 1N4007 diodes in inverse parallel with the contactors for back-EMF ...