License to drive!

How close am I? Well, I went down to city hall and registered my EV this past week. Very interesting:

"How many cylinders is it?"
"Would you believe...none?"
Eyebrows rise, she smiles and calmly waits for me to finish the joke...
"It's electric."
. . .
"Oh"

It went pretty good, very little fuss. The State of New Hampshire charged triple the fee since I wouldn't be paying any of the road taxes that they normally levy at the gas pump. The city charged the normal fee.

I rigged up the broken video camera so I could take some picts this weekend since almost everything is done and I'm cruising around the neighborhood with the EV.

So, lots of stuff to talk about and pictures to view. I'm also expecting some photos back from the developer (the local 60 minute photo takes 48 hours and 60 minutes on weekends) with more details. I took almost everything apart and then welded in some brackets for holding down the batteries. I installed two sets in the rear box and one for the front, uppermost battery box. Sliding through these brackets, and across the batteries, are 5/8's inch steel bar. These bars are secured in place with pins on each end. The nice part of this design is that I didn't have to cut slots in my nice battery boxes, just small holes for the bars to slide through. I imagine it's quite a bit stronger than threaded rod as well.

Harder to see is the plexiglass cover for the control electronics board. I have to go down and get the vehicle inspected this week, plus I'm starting to show it to more people; I want to make sure curious fingers don't poke around the wrong places: kind of like the shrouds they put around radiator fans.
Here's a different angle on the frontend:

If you squint your eyes and crank up your imagination you can make out the potbox and accelerator cable in the middle bottom of the picture. I still haven't finalized the wiring. I want to find some better connectors plus there's the issue of getting our Zapi's working with regen. Plenty of time.

Oh, and a side note: see the contactor in the lower part of the photo? Remember how I waffled and then ended up putting in two safety contactors? Well, this particular contactor has been 'stuck' twice now. I shut off the car and it sticks on: now I see why two of them are a good idea. I also need to clean the contact surface on this puppy...

Next: Back in the Trunk