We had a bit of a visit this week from George Hamstra of Netgain Motors, and took advantage of the visit to interview him on camera - mostly about earlier careers and how he got started with electric vehicles and Netgain Motors. Netgain's Warp 9 is inarguably the workhorse among the conversion community and he continues to innovate and improve on this motor.
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A Tequila powered interview, George talked about some of the 26 improvements he's made to the latest build, going on now. These include a new fan blade design to run the motor cooler with a port for an optical RPM pickup. It also features some new brushes good up to about 192v. The previous recommendation was 170v on this popular line of DC series motors. Oh, and 1/2 inch terminals.
The Tequila flowed both directions and I wound up spilling the beans on a couple of our "sekert projeks". The one most likely to cause a stir is the $20,000 contest giveaway. George has signed on as motor sponsor for this event, though we continue to discuss 9 inch or 11 inch motors. We're still designing this event, ergo the lack of an announcement. Current thinking is that we will have an extensive questionaire entry form. From the entrants, we will select 10 and present them online for a popular vote. The winning "Dream Build" project will receive a motor, controller, full set of LiFePo4 batteries, and a charger. So far we have Elite Power Solutions as the battery sponsor and Netgain Motors for the motor. Still to select, charger and controller.
We are also going to convert my 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT. This vehicle has all the room in the world. We're going to fit it with a massive 67kWh battery pack and TWO Netgain Warp 9 motors with a special automatic transmission. It will also feature a huge capacitor bank made up of Maxwell 3000F Supercaps. George and I spent a good part of the day talking about how to wire up two motors and two controllers and he has a method supposedly far superior to any you've heard about. HE's also actively campaigning for an active hybrid cap/bat pack using a DC-DC converter. No problem George. I just have to figure out how to build a 1600 amp buck/boost circuit with a2/0 gage cable coil and a half dozen 400 amp IGBTs. I can do that. I think.
It's shaping up as the impossible to complete and totally impossible for anyone to fund EV conversion. Don't try this at home. Our goals? 1000 mile range and 723 mph.
That's what Tequila does to me.
Enjoy....
Jack Rickard
