PROJECT LINCVOLT PROGRESS 2011

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 02:49:19 UTC

PROJECT LINCVOLT PROGRESS 2011-LV2February 27, 2011

The disastrous fire that destroyed LV1 has offered us an unbelievable opportunity to make improvements throughout the car in the LV2 version. These improvements will allow LV2 to boast superior performance and be even cleaner than LV1.

January and February have been busy months for the LincVolt project. We are restoring the body of LincVolt by carefully and selectively replacing damaged body parts in the original car. A 1958 donor car (a gift from my wife) with many identical parts is parked alongside LincVolt. Under the direction of famed California hot rod builder Roy Brizio (Brizio Street Rods) LincVolt’s 1959 body is being painstakingly restored at Camilleri’s Auto Works back to its original condition.

In LV2 the dashboard’s original Lincoln Continental instrument cluster is being repurposed to monitor the functions of the new 200 KW electric drive and 30 KW Capstone Micro Turbine power generation systems. We found that the original Lincoln instrumentation layout was superior in user friendliness to the one we had installed in LV1. Now we have a chance to improve that.

We are also adding a midline control console in LV2 that runs between two new front bucket seats. The console will house an additional multi-purpose touch-screen control monitor.

We are in discussions with wall charger manufacturers. Soon we will be making our final choice. We are being very careful because the wall charger was most suspicious as a potential cause of the fire that destroyed LV1, although we are still awaiting more analysis to determine the exact cause. An identical charger was found responsible for the fire that destroyed a Canadian entry into the X-Prize.

Battery system technology has improved greatly during the last 4 years and continues to improve. We are dedicated to getting the best and safest batteries available today for LV2. We have found both American and a Canadian companies that offer battery packs superior to the Chinese batteries we utilized in LV1 and we expect a dramatic improvement.

The direction of our project remains the same. We believe it is more efficient to go with the flow than to go against the flow. People want big cars and will resist losing them as a choice. Re-powering the American Dream will not be an easy task. With each day that passes we are joined by more people who share our goal. We feel that new cars and the energy sources that power them should not only be aimed at “economy” and a “smaller is better” philosophy. North America is big and it needs big cars and pick-up trucks. These vehicles are on our roads everywhere and cannot just be written off as unrealistic. People need choice. People want big and small energy efficient cars and trucks as part of the American life style.

Fisker is one manufacturer going a long way in the direction we believe in. The GM Volt also represents a step forward for Detroit. Neither car offers freedom of choice in the fuel they run on like Lincvolt does, but we think they still are great cars even though they are powered by gasoline. When they are “plugged in” they provide cleaner transportation that costs less than a conventional car of the same size and they both have an electric range that meets today’s average demands.

Where Lincvolt is unique, aside from the way the car looks, the emotions it stirs in the hearts of those who remember another time, or its immense size, is the choice of fuels it can burn to generate electricity. LV2 uses bio-diesel. It can use regular diesel or any blend of the two and burn the fuel cleanly in the onboard Capstone Micro Turbine. When the turbine burns Bio Diesel Lincvolt is twice as clean as the USA average grid per KW generated. This means LincVolt, an immense luxury cruiser from 1959, can run as clean as a 2011 Nissan Leaf and run further without “plug in” recharging.

We are planning to be on the road filming again with LV2 in late summer 2011. We will then complete our film, an immense 4 years in the making. Shakey Pictures post production and editing with Ben Johnson, son of the late Larry Johnson, original Project Lincvolt team member, has begun and the film is looking great. We have a story to tell.

To our sponsors and readers, thanks for your continued support.

-The Project LincVolt team.

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