Uncooperative Crickets

My EV

I'm afraid that I might start writing a lot about my electric car. Sadly, it is not doing well right now. When I first got it, I was able to drive it to school and back on one charge with plenty to spare (that was on December 19th). Now, I can barely make it 2 miles, and during that time it ends up having a top speed of about 15 miles per hour. Here are the things I did to try to solve the problem:

1. I insulated the batteries with styrofoam. Granted, this was not a very good job, since I was not crazy about working on the car in 0 degree weather for long, but it should have helped quite a bit.
   
2. I watered the batteries. This car has lead acid batteries, and they require a refill on distilled water about every month. The batteries were pretty thirsty when I refilled them, but that did not help the performance.
   

My new theory is pretty good: the difference between now and December 19th is 20-30 degrees. When I drive the car now, it does not coast. That is, if I get it going to 15 mph and take my foot of the gas, the car stops almost immediately. The third clue is that the car is from Texas. This leads me to believe that the transmission fluid is freezing up. Check out Lynne Mason's excellent weblog Electric Cars are for Girls and scroll down to "How do you winterize the non-battery components?" for a great description for what my car is likely going through.

The good news is that we should have our regular January thaw this weekend, and temperatures should be in the high twenties to low thirties. I am hoping that this will thaw the transmission fluid enough that I can go get it changed. Then I should be able to use it to commute to work, especially if they get back to me about a place where I can plug in at work.

posted by Dirk Awesome @ 9:16 AM