Running On Lithium Text Transcript, Titles and Credits

Time Code: Transcript:
01:00:00:00 Portland Citizen with Ball Cap: You know, it’s important to me to see a good future, a good, clean, bright future and I am amazed at what I just saw. I just saw a car take off like you would not believe alright, and this is not a …
01:00:12:25 Engineer in Green Shirt off camera: Look at the burned rubber.
01:00:13:05 Portland Citizen with Ball Cap: …and this is not like conceptual technology, this is technology that is here today, alright…
01:00:18:00 Engineer off camera: Show them the burned rubber.

01:0019:00 Portland Citizen with Ball Cap: Oh my god, oh my god man, I mean do you see this asphalt right here? It’s gone man, it’s gone, all right. Right to the tail end of this sucker right here. Do you see this? The car jumped 6 inches into the air. From right here to there. I mean off the ground, OK. Yeah! Beeewww, Gone. That is good stuff!

01:0043:00 Titles:
Running On Lithium
01:00:48:00 Featuring
01:00:49:21 White Zombie
Scrolling Text: The world’s quickest accelerating street legal electric car

01:01:01:21 Off Camera Interviewer: And what do you think an electric car is going to do against yours?
01:01:08:12 Driver: Ahh, I am not really sure. This is the first one I have seen racing, but…
01:01:13:29 Driver:…I hear it is pretty fast.
01:01:17:20 Driver: We will see.
01:02:04:15 John Wayland, Title: Crew Chief White Zombie: The guy got a little to close to us. That is what you call rotary power. That is a pretty hot car. Now that was exciting, wasn’t it?
01:02:14:07 Off Camera Interviewer: Absolutely.
01:02:15:10 John Wayland: That was a heck of a race, man. That’s like by the skin of your chinny chin chin. Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good race.

01:02:30:12 John Wayland: This car and I have been close friends for 27 years. This car was converted in 1980 to electric power and since 1980 it has not used one drop of gas, one drop of oil, one drop of anti-freeze, hasn’t had any filter changes, hasn’t had any exhaust work, because there is no exhaust system. This car has been totally maintenance free other then a couple battery pack changes over 27 years, which were minimal cost. And everyday you start it up and this is what you get. Total reliability and it is nice to know that we are going down the road free of dependence on foreign oil. We run on American generated electrons.
01:03:27:14 John Wayland: You know, a lot of people want to know if it is a big deal to plug an electric car in as opposed to driving to a gas station and I always tell them, yeah, you know it is a really big deal, I don’t know, this may be too hard for somebody, but I just drive home and I plug it in. And that’s really tough, and now we are sipping clean electricity from hydroelectric plants here on the Columbia River. No air pollution and I don’t have to go to the gas station.

01:03:55:10 John Wayland: This is Blue Meanie. This is the brother or sister to White Zombie. Same kind of car, same year. This is the more street able version. This is my everyday driver. Instead of direct drive it is a transmission car. It has a four-speed transmission. But it still has quite a bit of spunk and unlike the racecar we have batteries balancing here and there, so we have four places seating, instead of just a two place. So it looks a little different under the hood. The workings of an electric car are pretty simple. Where a gas car has a gas tank full of fuel we have a battery pack. This is part of the battery pack, the rest of it is in the back of the car. This is our fuel source and instead of hoses and pipes for the fuel to run in we have cables and then we have the motor controller instead of fuel injection that meters the electricity and finally to the electric motor itself. Over here we have the charger that puts all the energy back when we need to recharge the batteries. It is pretty much that simple.
01:04:55:13 John Wayland: That’s the beauty of electric cars is that you have this nice silent vibration free cruise mode. It is really funny and I don’t know how to explain it, you can drive with the windows down in a gas car and that is all you are doing and in an electric car when you have the windows down you can hear the birds, you smell the breeze, you literally smell the roses, you are not distracted by all the vibrations and problems that an internal combustion engine has that we all kind of have gotten used to. I mean, you know, we are just kind of cruising down the road here, but what can you hear? I think Simon and Garfunkel said it best: The Sound of Silence. And of course we just got passed by another electric vehicle, the electric Light Rail for Portland, so we are on zero pollution road here. This is kind of a symbiotic relationship between myself and the train.
01:05:55:20 John Wayland: You know when I build this car back in 1980 I looked around and a lot of the electric car conversion people what they were doing in their backyard was basically duck taping and bailing wire, you know they had something that would get them back and forth from work, but golly you would not want to be seen in it. They had oozing batteries with corrosion and wires hanging here and I decided we needed to put a little sizzle with the steak. So even though it is an older Datsun that is based on, it’s kind of a retro look, it’s got a flashy paint job, it’s got maintenance free batteries, gold plated connectors, a rocking sound system, and this is really one of the first backyard build electric cars that had acceleration and sex appeal at the same time. Yeah, I know it sounds funny a little Datsun with sex appeal, but when you blow away a V8 Mustang it is pretty sexy.

01:6:51:26 John Wayland: I should talk through the propeller, it sounds cool, it sounds like a… hello testing, one two three. Welcome to the EV electric breakfast at the 10th annual NEDRA drag races.



01:07:12:00 Portland Citizen: Wow. It’s like nothing in there. That’s awesome.

01:07:24:26 Title: Mark Mongillo, EV Converter: My main car is a 1959 Fiat 600 and it runs on a 120 volt system. It has 600 pounds of lead batteries in it. I drive it to work. I have an 18-mile commute and I charge it at work and then drive home. It does freeway speeds really nicely.
01:07:44:00 Interviewer Off Camera: And you also have a gas car?
01:07:45:10 I have a gas car. When I drive the electric car I fill up the gas car every two and a half months or so. A tank of gas lasts a long time, because I just park it.

01:08:00:00 Title: Gary Graunke, Oregon Electric Vehicle Association: This is a Honda Insight, a Hybrid car which I converted from a Hybrid car to a fully electric car. So I am not a racer. I want something that is economical per mile basis. So I don’t mind spending a lot of money upfront but then it only costs me a penny a mile for electricity to run this thing. A gallon of gas is 33.7 kilowatt worth of energy. So if you multiply 33.7 times six you can immediately see that I am roughly getting the energy equivalent of 200 miles per gallon or more.

01:08:51:01 Title: Roy LeMeur, NEDRA NW Regional Director: And things where pretty primitive back in the day compared to what they are now. We did not have Zilla motor controllers, some people had simple off and on switches and blew up motors left and right. It was all a learning curve. Nobody had tried this before. Auto manufacturers have always said: You win on Sunday and you sell on Monday. Racing improves the breed. That is why and one of the reasons auto manufacturers race and all do is to understand the limits and to improve the technology. And people love fast, you know NASCAR sells. They might have a plastic body on it, but people go buy these cars. Ha-ha, it’s all about what motivates people to adopt something. Unfortunately in a lot of ways electric cars in the past have been promoted on the basis of guilt. Oh, you need to save the planet and even though I fully agree with that, but you can’t sell based on guilt you want to sell something based on fun. So if they see something that will burn rubber and go fast and it’s hard to hang onto and it’s beating their Mustangs, Camaro's and Corvette's..It’s all-good as far as we are concerned. And that is one the main reasons I am really enthusiastic about electric drag racing and involved in it was to promote it. It helps promote the whole idea that electric cars are fun and fast and that it is an interesting technology.
01:10:15:09 John Wayland: You’ve got a hold on your camera? Interviewer Off Camera: Yeah!
01:10:26:00 Interviewer Off Camera: laughs
01:10:27:00 John Wayland: its kind of fun isn’t it.
01:10:38:11 John Wayland: Once you have had a taste of electric power you never want to go back. Driving a gas car is like primitive. It is. It is like going back to the dark ages. I mean you are burning dinosaur juice. You know, we run on American generated electrons. We get our electricity hydroelectric from the mighty Columbia River. You know there is no air pollution.
01:10:59:12 John Wayland: If you look at this motor it is actually a motor, but it has got twin sections. So you can see there is one motor section here and there is one motor section here. But instead of having a commutator with brushes here and one here, you notice that that one back there is turned around. So we actually turned the head of the motor and put it against the head of the other one and we pressed a long custom made stainless steel shaft through both of them like a skewer, so I called it the Siamese 8 and it is joined at the head and it is the world’s first Siamese 8 and the reason we did it is the motors used to be this long and now they are this long and they fit better in this little car. We were able to get the attituded motors right this way and we were able to get rid of the couplings that kept breaking, so we ended up with a motor that is 7 inches shorter and 25 pounds lighter.
01:12:14:00 Interviewer Off Camera: So tell us what all this is what we are seeing.
01:12:15:28 Title: Michael Kadie, SSI-Racing.com:
Okay, right here you are seeing 960 lithium ion cells with battery balancing circuits, one per ten packs. We have multiple lines of cable rated to try and take the 800 kilowatts off the line that we built this car to be able to produce. I have a full air ride suspension so we can independently raise and lower each wheel. Everything in here is power distribution. Then we have the air tank system for the air shocks. Standard car battery. We got a 600-watt stereo and then you know, lights, hook up for a trailer, etcetera.
01:13:03:12 John Wayland: Lithium are so powerful you can drive it to the track and you don’t necessarily have to charge between runs. They are that powerful, but we have all learned that even with the lithium we keep them hot, we keep them agitated and charged between runs, you get the most power you can out of them. So, Michael is going to be charging in between runs at the track with his lithium and it should be pretty exciting. I might have to secretly put a chain on the back of his car and you know, he won’t know about it or something. We are pretty excited about this.
01:13:29:14 Michael Kadie: You want ten more horsepower for your car. John Wayland: Oh my, can I have that? Michael Kadie: laughs. John Wayland: Here we go. Look at this. This is not real pretty, but here. Michael Kadie: I did not give you the good one. John Wayland: Laughs. This is ten horsepower in my hand. Look at this. This is ten horsepower. Yeah, you could actually take these and split them up and start two highway tractors. One for one and one for the other one.
01:13:51:21 Interviewer Off Camera: When you say powerful, how powerful, what are we talking about?
01:13:52:21 John Wayland: Let’s put it into these terms. When you start a car with a V8 engine, you crank over that big engine – your starter will get those cables hot and it will draw a couple of hundred amps just to crank the car over. One of these little cells can effortlessly put out 200 amps. It’s unbelievable, look how tiny they are. One of these. And four of these makes about a 12 Volt block. Those right there will start a big block muscle car with high compression. So we are powering a car with.. How many do you have in your car?
01:14:25:28 Michael Kadie: 960, because I had some problems.
01:14:28:12 John Wayland: 960, well you are going to need more then that to beat me.
01:14:31:16 Michael Kadie: Well, I was thinking I was going to go down to 800. Laughs
01:14:34:02 John Wayland: Ohh, I see how it goes. Well I can think of something to do with them. This is pretty exciting stuff. Again these are normally used inside DeWalt cordless drills. The 36 Volt drills. It has taken cordless tools to a new level. These lithium ion tools are so powerful, they actually have more power then a plug in drill has. They have more power. It used to be contractors would go: Oh these are toys, give me a plug in drill, now they are saying: put away the toy plug in drill, give me that lithium ion power tool. And you actually got these out of DeWalt tool packs.
01:15:11:12 Michael Kadie: Right.
01:15:12:03 John Wayland: Look down here. You got a bunch of DeWalt tools. Phenomenal power. So as long as Kadie can get the power on the ground today, by tonight. What – you are going to put some slicks on the back? We are going to put some wheelie bars on the back. He stands a good chance of beating our car. And I will be the first to congratulate you. Of course, that is if you are fully charged.
01:15:31:16 Michael Kadie: Yes, I don’t see any of my lights coming on yet.
01:15:35:09 John Wayland: There is a problem though you see, you only have one motor. I have two.
01:15:40:06 Michael Kadie: Yes, that is true. But you also have more experience.
01:15:42:19 John Wayland: But he has a really big one. Have you seen the motor in this thing? The motor is unbelievable. Come on show me your big motor. That is what I say, that is a big one. What is that? Is that an 11-inch motor?
01:15:52:24 Michael Kadie: Yes it is.
01:15:54:00 John Wayland: How much torque do you think you are going to make out of that?
01:15:55:22 Michael Kadie: 1800 to 2100 pounds of torque depending on…
01:15:59:00 John Wayland: At what rpm?
01:16:00:00 Michael Kadie: Up to 5500..
01:16:02:02 John Wayland: And where does it start? It starts at zero rpm. With an electric motor you don’t have to look for a torque curve. The torque curve is instantaneous, there is no build up, you don’t have to wait for a certain rpm, you don’t have to slip a clutch. Electric motors will hammer it full power the minute you put electricity to them.
01:16:26:22 Victor Tikhonov: This is a converted Honda CRX HF from 1995 year of production. And what you see here is an AC drive system made by Siemens. A German company which manufactures these systems specifically for electric cars. Here is the main inverter, which runs AC induction motor which you see on the bottom. And this motor is made to work with a standard transmission. A very simple design.
01:16:57:19 Title: Victor Tikhonov, metricmind.com
Currently fewer people use AC drives because first of all it’s new and not many people know what is and how to use it and right now they are more expensive then DC drives which have been on the market for quite a long time. Situation might change when volumes of production will pick up or somebody will produce more of them. Certainly AC drives have advantages over DC drives. It might not necessarily be the raw power, but other things like regenerative breaking or the ability to drive at high speeds are very highly desirable characteristics of these drive systems.
01:17:32:16 John Wayland: Just like working with gas cars not everything always works perfectly, you know. With gas cars you can just pick up the phone and order something out of the catalog. With this you can’t just pick up the phone and order this stuff. We have to engineer them and make them. What happens is that a guy who is building an electric car and sees the need and also has the ability will start his own design and start his own company, like the guy who builds our chargers. He is an electric car guy just like us and he was fed up with the lack of good charging equipment. That’s how he makes his living now. He builds these wonderful chargers. The guy who builds our motor controllers, well he used to use other peoples controllers and they blew up all the time and did not have enough power. He designed a better one. That’s how he makes his living now. So there is a whole cottage industry where we kind of support ourselves and that you know is going to continue to grow.
01:18:19:03 Michael Kadie: You are at 360 Volts?
01:18:20:04 John Wayland: (off camera) the charger cuts of at 444.
01:18:23:26 Michael Kadie: Oh, OK!
01:18:29:10 John Wayland (off camera) I have not turned up the charger yet, let me know when you want the rest.
01:18:31:26 John Wayland: So what we are dealing here is that we can set it all up for a certain car and it is not that big of a deal but you have to turn things and adjust them because I have all this set up for my car and I don’t want to take it down and then way up. You can use this on any voltage you want. But if this is higher voltage then what you are charging, the way it is set up, you have to keep your eye on it and watch the gauges and when it starts coming up to high we can turn it back down.
01:18:54:14 Interviewer off camera: What can happen?
01:18:55:16 John Wayland: Oh you can blow the batteries up. You can destroy pack if you get carried away and walk away and forget about it. If it is set up properly it won’t. It will automatically shut off.
01:19:04:24 John Wayland: They are still on!
01:19:06:14 Michael Kadie: (off camera) It will come down.
01:19:08:04 John Wayland: So what just happened is here is that we hit the over voltage situation that we were talking about. And here are all the regulators that he has designed to protect these very delicate lithium ion batteries. They are tough but you have to be careful when you charge them and the red lights mean that you have hit an overcharge situation. So that was a good call on your part to come running through there. I did not see that, how long were they like that, I wonder?
01:19:30:07 Michael Kadie: Not that long.
01:19:31:14 John Wayland: It won’t hurt them. I think you are fine. You still have those there going. But do you have the charger completely off right now?
01:19:41:10 Michael Kadie: Yes. So this is the weak pack, which always comes off last. So but in fact with all the rest are off means we hit it perfect.
01:19:54:00 John Wayland: OK.
01:19:56:00 John Wayland: I want to make sure that people will shut the gate here for me. Thank you!
01:20:17:24 John Wayland: I love technology and I like that part of the electric car. And I consider myself a pioneer and how many times can you be a pioneer in anything nowadays? You know there are a lot of people who are doing electric cars so that appealed to me, and of course the other good reasons of doing my part about clean air. A lot of people talk about it, but they don’t walk their walk. I do.
01:20:55:00 John Wayland: Hi! Garage Mechanic: How are you doing! John Wayland: Good! How are you! Garage Mechanic: Good! Hey I have a favor to ask. I don’t know how busy you are, but we are doing some filming about the electric cars that we are drag racing last night.
01:21:06:21 Garage Mechanic: I saw you guys drag racing last night.
01:21:08:28 John Wayland: Oh good! I thought you might and we got the electric Ford Cobra and we need to put a last minute wheelie bar on. We need a lift. Can I get some lift time from you?
01:21:17:18 Car Mechanic: Well, for how long?
01:21:18:00 John Wayland: Probably for one hour. Or whatever we can get away with.
01:21:24:21 Car Mechanic: We are going to take off at 2:30. That is 45 minutes.
01:21:27:00 John Wayland: So if we did it right away.
01:21:30:00 Car Mechanic: How many guys do you need in the shop?
01:21:31:00 John Wayland: Whatever you say. If you only want two people then that is what it will be. When can we do it? Right now ok we will bring it over. Thanks! I appreciate it.
01:21:55:12 Car Mechanic: What in the hell are those?
01:21:59:02 Mark Mongillo: Those. That is exactly what those are. He has taken this battery packs and has taken them apart. They are lithium.
01:22:09:00 Interviewer off camera: It is the white car on the right here.
01:22:14:44 Geek1: He has Datsun too, but it is 4 door.
01:22:17:07 Geek1: That is a lot of batteries.
01:22:21:00 Geek1: How long does it take to charge it up?
01:22:23:00 John Wayland: When we race we charge in-between runs and it takes about 15 minutes.
01:22:28:00 No way.
01:22:31:00 John Wayland: If we have driven it for 30 or 40 miles it takes about 45 minutes to load it up. That is not quite as fast as gas as far a fill up.
01:22:40:00 Geek1: So the cars they start using right now so how would they fill up? They drive up to a gas station and wait for 45 minutes?
01:22:48:00 John Wayland: No, no. Here is the thing, if we had “filling stations” for electric cars, see when we are at home we only have 240 volts top right, so you could have a filling station with 480 volt feed lines and you could charge a car in 5 minutes.
01:23:02:00 Geek1: Jeez, You have to know so much about electricity.
01:23:06:00 John Wayland: You got to have a lot of friends who are Geeks. You know, you look like you are kind of geeked out. You are half way there, you know.
01:23:15:00 Interviewer off camera: So what do you think? Are you sold on the technology?
01:23:19:00 Geek1: No. I still like turbos.
01:23:48:00 John Wayland: He is connecting up to the Hairball interface that runs the controller. It is part of the controller system of the car and he is going to dial up or dial down the battery amps for the first run. We have it set at 1400 battery amps, which is pretty high, and we are going to turn it down to 1200 amps for the first run and it will be a little easier on the car. We are actually detuning the car a little bit. You can do that with electric cars.
01:24:11:28 John Wayland: So this is my car but my car deserves the best electric car driver in the world and this is Mr. Tim Brehm but he has a new nick name. We call him “Full Throttle Tim” and I will let him explain to you why he has that nickname.
01:24:26:00 Title: Tim Brehm, Driver Team White Zombie
Tim Brehm: Last time we were at the track we had a throttle linkage failure and it failed full on for last quarter mile of the track. It was the shut down area of the track. So you can probably see the tires tomorrow at Wayland’s house. He saved them. They are flat spotted.
01:24:43:00 This meter right here is telling the whole story. It is showing that the charge level is just about where we need to be and in about three more minutes we are going to disconnect and head on out to the track and see if we can kick some gas powered butt.
01:24:57:18 Title: Steve Schrab, Taunter Team White Zombie
Steve Schrab: I like to pick on Mustang Cobras, Corvettes, big muscle cars. We even go after some of the more modern, what we call rice burners, the Subaru’s, hyped up Hondas, you know, fast cars. I am going to go over and talk to the guy in the red Corvette.
01:25:39:00 Steve Schrab: How are you doing? Do you mind if I cut in for a moment. So have you heard the rumor of the electric car?
01:25:52:00 Title: Robert Akers, Portland, Oregon
Robert Akers: No.
01:25:52:08 Steve Schrab: Do you want to get the experience of racing a very fast electric car?
01:25:53:03 Robert Akers: Sure, why not. I can get a spanking from someone.
01:25:57:00 Hey, well you have a hot car. It is a beautiful Corvette.
01:25:58:22 Robert Akers: Thank you! It is hers.
01:26:03:29 Steve Schrab: Wow, you let him drag race?
01:26:07:15 Interviewer Off Camera: So what do you think? Can an electric car beat your car?
01:26:12:04 Corvette Owner Woman: No.
01:26:18:00 Steve Schrab: Sound fine? Robert Akers: Yes. Steve Schrab: So when you get back, if we could interview with you to find out what you thought of the race? Perfect. I appreciate that.
01:26:26:00 Robert Akers: Is that him right there?
01:26:27:21 Steve Schrab: That would be him. So pull up next to him.
01:26:43:12 Steve Schrab: 400 Horsepower, he ran a 13.7 seconds. That should be fun for you. Get you warmed up.
01:27:16:30 Announcer: The red Corvette against White Zombie, the fastest street legal electric car.
01:27:40:00 Corvette Owner Woman: That was pretty impressive.
01:27:41:29 Steve Schrab: It was, wasn’t it. And your car, no disrespect, it is an awesome car. but, it was an awesome race. You guys were only 2.0 seconds behind us.
01:27:52:00 Corvette Owner Woman: Yeah, yea..I..I… wow.
01:27:55:19 Crew Member: Ok, we got audio.
01:27:57:29 Tim Brehm: Good race.
01:28:01:24 Robert Akers: Yeah, yeah. What did you do? Pick an amateur out?
01:28:05:00 Robert Akers: I did not expect it to launch like it did.
01:28:07:00 Tim Brehm: We can rematch if you want. Once our batteries get a little warmer we will get faster.
01:28:12:08 Robert Akers: God no. You already spanked me once, why would you want to spank me again for. You embarrassed the hell out of me.
01:28:23:07 John Wayland: When I was seven years old, a little guy. That is back in the late fifties. Oh, I just told my age. My parents took off in the family car and back then the family car was not a pollution-controlled car like we have today. It was a regular internal combustion car with no pollution control whatsoever. And it stunk. And they took off one day and I waived goodbye to them and I was a little guy and the exhaust is at my level. It burned my eyes and I cough. I am going wow, that is pretty awful stuff and I looked around and I was smart enough to figure out that this was being poured into the air and I was choking on it. I literally went inside and started with my little battery-powered toys that I had, little cars and trucks. And something snapped and I said: someday big cars will run like this and they won’t make the air stink.
1:29:20:10 Title: Don “Father Time” Crabtree, Vice President NEDRA
Don Crabtree: This is a 120 Volt bike. It has twin motors set up to switched circuits parallel. I am using a 1200 amp raptor controller and it is never been on the track in this configuration. So I will have to wing and see what it is going to do. This is the third generation of this particular bike. That is why I call it Frankendragon Redux. That is the Latin term for revisited or brought back – Frankenstein style.
1:30:05:15 Title: Miles Tweek, Portland, Oregon
Miles Tweek: What we have here is a 1921 Milburn Light Electric. It was built in Toledo, Ohio and it was built from 1915 to 1923. This particular one was built towards the end of the production years and they pretty much did not modify them from 1917 to 1923. I did not convert this car to electric. It is an original electric car and there are approximately 300 original electric cars from the early century that are still out there and in people’s hands or in museums.
01:31:04:00 Rick Barns: I have a 1986 Chevy Sprint that is converted to electric. It has ten batteries in it at 120 Volts DC. I drive the car everyday. It is not a racecar for me. It is a commuter car.
01:31:14:12 Title: Rick Barns, 1986 Converted Chevy Sprint
01:31:16:00 Rick Barns: So I use it to drive back and forth to work. I live four and half miles from work and I live in an urban area. Everything is close by and it suits my needs pretty well. I have been driving electric since 1996.

01:31:44:10 Rick Barns: We are at Number Two World Trade Center. It is the PGE Charging Station, it is compliments of the Portland General Electric. They allow electric vehicles charging here.
01:32:07:20 Rick Barns: It is probably going to take about 30 minutes or so for the charge to go on. I am down 18.6 Amp hours on the meter and I am putting about 60 Amps in. So you can watch it counting down. 18.5 …takes a little bit 18.4, so it is counting down and when it goes down to zero I will have a full charge and I will be able to go another 15 miles or so. Depends on how you drive it.
01:32:40:00 John Wayland: You know, as much as I love these electric cars and it makes a great city car, you can’t tell someone with a gas car who is used to going 300 miles on a charge, I mean 300 miles on a tank full that you can go only 50 miles. That does not sell the public. The other problem is that lead acid batteries have a fairly low cycle life, so the shortest is two years and the longest is five years. You have to replace your pack, you know, it just wasn’t ready for prime time. So if you ask me today what does the future look like. I am saying it is happening, we are now turning the corner because with lithium ion batteries you can go in fact 300 miles per charge, you can. You can in fact fast charge. You can in fact have a battery that has thousands of cycles, so year after year your pack is healthy and strong and a well-designed lithium ion pack should last you the life of your car. One issue only, they are very expensive right now. But there are many firms right now that are working on a electric vehicle size lithium ion battery and I foresee in the not too distant future and affordable lithium ion pack, so I think the gas car better be watching his rear view mirror.
01:33:48:20 John Wayland: I am bragging about your wheel. Are those not Torque Thrust? Yeah!
01:33:53:00 Interviewer Off Camera: So tell me what you think is going to happen with this Mustang?
01:33:57:00 John Wayland: Well, this Mustang is a pretty hot car. I have seen him run.
01:33:59:00 Steve Schrab: 470 at the wheels.
01:34:00:00 John Wayland: This is a 470 horsepower Mustang and he runs a really strong 12.2 so he will be a real good match for us. It could be close.

01:34:21:00 Announcer: White Zombie 1972 Datsun electric car is the worlds quickest electric streetcar. This will be a very very nice matchup.

01:34:46:28 John Wayland: We got the Mustang. Remember I told you it would be a close race. Very close, both of them. I think he did a 12.7 and we did a 12.1. Yes we did a 12.1 against his 12.7, so we actually beat him pretty bad. But it was a good run. That is a hot running Mustang. Let’s go talk to him and see how it turned out.

01:35:06:20 Race Fan: That is a bad boy Mustang. That is not just a hot running Mustang that is fire.

01:35:24:00 Tim Brehm: What did you guys think? 12.1 (sec) at a 107 (mph), so we are getting faster, slowly. Wait for our batteries to heat up.

01:35:46:00 John Wayland: I need the keys. Dave what did you run?
01:36:02:00 Michael Kadie: Wayland I am in. John Wayland: You are in? Michael Kadie: I am in. John Wayland: I am very very happy about this. Michael Kadie: so I am.. I need to top the batteries off for the first run or do you think I should wait.
01:36:13:00 John Wayland: My honest truth. I think you should wait and see what it does, because you are not going to crazy on your first run.
01:36:21:00 Michael Kadie: Yeah, 600 amps. It’s not going to matter. I was just thinking… John Wayland: Yeah. Michael Kadie: It would be nice to just have it full. John Wayland: Did you charge it before you came to the track, before you came down here? Michael Kadie: No. John Wayland: Oh no, you got to charge, you got to top off. Michael Kadie: Right. John Wayland: you got to charge it. Michael Kadie: There is the charger. John Wayland: We need to unplug somebody else here. We got to get his Cobra charged up.
01:36:44:23 So do I need to put my Cobra over here, or what? John Wayland: Yes
01:37:09:22 Michael Kadie: This is the first time I will ever have taken this car to the track. And I am looking forward to it.
01:37:30:00 Michael Kadie: I am kind of disturbed that we do not have lights yet.
01:37:34:00 Electric Crew Member: We had something burning over there. Michael Kadie; OK? Electric Crew Member: Something burning..
01:37:47:00 Michael Kadie: OK, now. This is a DC line and I am measuring AC amps with the clamp. Electric Crew Member: That might have something to do with why our readings don’t look right. Michael Kadie: Right. Electric Crew Member: let me go get an AC/DC clamp on and answer that question for you. Michael Kadie: Right. No, I mean in the past I have used it and it has always given me a number lower in the DC range, which made sense. Electric Crew Member: What you are doing is you are catching a 120-hertz ripple on the DC. Michael Kadie: Right, that it what I figured. What I am saying is that might not be the amps it is pulling.
01:38:21:00 Other Electric Crew Member (off camera): So did you get it all charged up? Michael Kadie: No red lights. Still waiting.

01:38:33:00 John Wayland: Geek squad attention! Everybody clear. We are going to move the electric car.
01:39:33:00 Electric Crew Member (off camera): We got red lights. Michael Kadie: OK! Electric Crew Member (off camera): We got red lights. Michael Kadie: All of them? So we are starting. The Christmas tree is lighting up, as it should. Electric Crew Member: Holy Crap!
01:39:53:00 Michael Kadie: There is not enough, man.
01:39:55:00 John Wayland: Not enough?
01:39:56:00 Michael Kadie: It’s not enough. So I will let it settle and bring it back so it’s fully charged.
01:39:59:00 We got to get you on the track, dude.

01:40:06:00 Electric Crew Member: We got to find a way out now. Michael Kadie: Yes.
01:40:25:00 Steve Schrab: I want to try to get a nice little rice burner to run up against him and see what he does. Let’s see if this WRX wants to go after him.
01:40:42:00 Steve Schrab: What do you guys have under the hood?
01:40:41:00 WRX Subaru Driver: A motor.
01:40:42:00 Steve Schrab: Yeah, gas powered, right. WRX Subaru Driver: Yup. Steve Schrab: Cool.
01:40:46:00 WRX Subaru Driver: It is a Subaru Impreza WRX. Stock it is like 225 horsepower maybe now it is 300. It’s got some software worked on to it and some exhaust.
01:40:55:00 WRX Subaru Driver: Where is the big driver?
01:41:00:00 Video Crew Member: Competitor.
01:41:02:00 Michael Kadie: I will crush you! Or will be crushed by you. It is my first run. WRX Subaru Driver: Is it? Michael Kadie: I will be running on 35% power. WRX Subaru Driver: OK. Very cool. It is a cool looking car. Oh there is nothing under there.
01:41:19:00 Interviewer Off Camera: Does that surprise you?
01:41:19:20 WRX Subaru Driver: No, it is electric. I would imagine that all the electrics are underneath.
01:41:24:00 Michael Kadie: It is actually the transmission tunnel. That’s under the car. WRX Subaru Driver: That’s cool. Michael Kadie: I look forward to racing you. WRX Subaru Driver: I look forward to racing you as well.
01:41:35:00 Steve Schrab: I have never taunted anybody that I did not know how fast his car is. This car I know nothing about other then that he is running on 35% of capacity. So we will see.
01:42:19:00 Michael Kadie: My first drag race was excellent. And now I am ready to take it with more power. Because she just dug in and you know the 800 Amps I had her at, you know just stuck it, nothing, just beautiful.
01:42:34:00 John Wayland: Lithium ion batteries that is the Holy Grail and it will. I will say now that electric cars can and will be something mainstream. People will be driving electric cars. There will be a time when they will say to their kids: You know we used to drive around and had explosions and things popping up and down. We were blowing things up going down the road to get around. Really? You did not always run on electricity? No, in this time we burned fuel. That is what I am looking forward to, I am looking forward to the day when burning fuel seems like a horse and buggy.
01:43:26:00 Portland Citizen with Ball Cap: You see that big beast that I drive, that diesel? No. I had hopes and dreams for bio diesel, bio fuel. There is no reason for it. The combustion engine, throw it out. Throw it out, you know. We have got clean energy here that we are ready to use, why not use it. Diesel, it is years off. I mean it’s been the fifteen-year down the line ticket for I don’t know how many years now. We will improve that in 15 years from now, we will improve that for the future. We will deal with it later, so to speak. As far as being able to see the technology and to appreciate it, man, I am convinced. I want one. I want to build one. I have got a forklift and I think I am going to tear that sucker apart. I am have to get into it man. Serious. Serious.

01:44:19:00 Titles: Directed and Edited by
Andreas Langley

01:44:25:00 Produced by
Stephan Rebelein
Frank Jansen
Andreas Langley

01:44:31:00 Camera
Joe Bourguignon
Brian Mazzola
Zach Brown

01:44:37:00 Audio
Jon Fessler

Music
Amy Langley

01:44:20:00 Production by
FilmRanch.com
BewegteZeiten.de
PlasmaBoyRacing.com

01:44:45:00 Special Thanks to

Peter Oppewall of EvTransPortal.org

"Father Time" Don Crabtree on
Frankendragon Redux

Otmar Ebenhoch of Cafe Electric

David Boyd of Synkro Motive

Rich Rudman of Manzanita Micro

Robert Akers

Roderick Wilde of evparts.com

Chip Gribben

Marko Mongillo

Jim Husted

Rick Barns

Miles Tweek

Steve Schrab for excellent taunting

Victor Tikhonov of metricmind.com

"Full Throttle Tim" Brehm

Gary Graunke

Oregon Electric Vehicle Association

Michael Kadie of SSI-Racing.com

Chris Brune

Keith 'The Dutchman' Ebeling

Portland International Raceway

Village Inn

VP Performance

NEDRA

Roy LeMeur







01:45:29:00 John Wayland: You know, what I love is when you run into people and they say: Electric cars don’t work. And you go: How did I get here? I just drove here in an electric car and you tell me that they don’t work? Yeah, but they don’t work. Well, what do you mean? What do you use them for? Well, to drive here to see you. People are really odd…I don’t know. Electric cars have a bad rap and we are here to change that.

01:46:00 Title: FilmRanch Productions 2010