Photovoltaic Powered Electric Vehicle Update
Christmas Edition
J.Durand 12/22/09
I am writing this just before Christmas. Our family Christmas this year has been completely overshadowed by the birth of our first grandchild, Charis Eva, who was born December 20, 2009. Of course the near record snow storm was thrown in just for good measure. As you might of guessed, our daughter-in-law in Lynchburg was taken to the hospital in the midst of the storm in a four wheel drive vehicle. It’s a great story for the grandkids. I am attaching our family news letter for those who want more detail. Some encouraging RideForward items are summarized below.
• We are driven. That’s right our Honda is on the road! It was driven for the first time on a rainy December night, just before the final design presentations. I was not there, but the three members of the Honda group made RideForward history by driving our first converted vehicle about a mile. Everything went well (ie no one was hurt, and the car actually made it up Reactor hill on the way back.) We need to do a good bit more work on the car to make it more rugged, before we take it to be inspected. (Can you picture the inspector trying to find the exhaust system, or even the engine?)
• We are in the fall edition of the UVa Engineering Alumni Magazine. I have attached a copy. Do a search on RideForward and you will find our article.
• The other big news is that at this time last year we didn’t even have half of our money in, we were running way in the red, and hadn’t even ordered most of our components. This year, we have all the large components in, everything else is ordered, and we are running a surplus (of course contingencies have not been accounted for, so we are confident that the surplus will get soaked up).
• We actually bought some tools and are starting to equip our shop to look like a garage. We need at least two of everything, but it’s great to actually start getting the things that we so desperately need.
Upcoming:
• Get in the remaining items for the building teams and get everything organized.
• Set up the shop with the new tools
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good…. New Years! Take good care. Travel safely. Enjoy friends and family.
We look forward to what God will do with our project in 2010.
Posted by rideforward 
