Make Faire: PHEV in Houston; CalCars Gets Unusual Donation; DIY Documentation advances
Jun 28, 2007 (From the CalCars-News archive)

PHEV PRIUS IN TEXAS
It's a bit more than a month since the May Maker Faire in San Mateo,
where our team converted a Prius to a PHEV for the second year in a
row. You can see photos of that event at
<http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/2007_Maker_Faire> and on a middle page
of car owner Jim Philippi's blog about his Prius at
<http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=26951&st=120>

Finally, Jim Philippi and his family have a working PHEV that drives
past Houston's City Hall every day. The car worked briefly as a PHEV
at the end of the Maker Faire, but then faced a series of problems
that have finally been resolved, with the help of a dedicated group
of troubleshooters. You can read Ron Gremban's wrap-up technical
report at <http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/eaa-phev/message/938>.
Jim hopes to organize a team to do another conversion at the Maker
Faire in Austin this October 20-21 <http://makerfaire.com/austin/2007>.


UNUSUAL DONATION
At the Maker Faire, CalCars was the happy recipient of a $500 check
from Armando Ramirez of The Ramirez Office, a Coldwell Banker
affiliate real estate broker in Petaluma, CA. See the photo at
<http://www.calcars.org/photos-groups.html>. It's the first
installment on a $5,000 donation for 2007 with contributions each
time he closes a property sale. He explains it in his community
update mailings he sends out frequently and at
<http://www.petalumahomes.com/about_armand.htm>.

Armando contacted us a few weeks before the Maker Faire, saying, "To
summarize, I'd like to make a donation! ...I'm a real estate agent
and fellow Prius owner (2007, just got it in march) in up in
Petaluma....Eventually my girlfriend and I would like to convert my
Prius to a PHEV....There's a ton of hybrids up here so I'd eventually
love to spread the word on plug-ins with the first PHEV in Sonoma
County - put some green racing stripes on the Prius, trick out the
wheels, throw a page about it on my website, you get the picture! I
think you all are doing an awesome job, I really appreciate the news
feeds, keep it up!

We would be pretty happy if others followed this inspiring example.
(We're still scraping along on the fundraising side, and still
relying on what we can accomplish with the help of many volunteers.)


DO-IT-YOURSELF PROJECT MOVES AHEAD
We now have a queue of 50 people waiting for the final debugging and
re-layout of control boards -- including one person planning three
conversions using Nilar's nickel-metal hydride batteries. (Nilar
already did one conversion from our plans -- see
<http://www.calcars.org/where-phevs-are.html>.

You can read Chris Ewert's call for help in the final push to
document the Do-It Yourself conversion at
<http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/eaa-phev/message/908> -- and see
the documentation in its current incarnation at
<http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Template:PriusPlus-Doc_Process>, where
the sections are divided into:
PriusPlus Main page for the CalCars PriusPlus DIY Documentation
PriusPlus-Theory Info on the operating theory of the system
PriusPlus-Mechanical Info on Mounting Batteries and other hardware.
PriusPlus-Electrical Info on the High Voltage wiring and systems
PriusPlus-Electronic Info on the low power control electronics
PriusPlus-RawData All resource files, schematics, images, etc.