Maker Faire
Austin, Texas October 20, 2007
I drove up to Austin to see the conversion of the Prius to a Plug-in Hybrid being done live, and to meet the project manager, who was Jim Philippi from Houston.
The Faire was all over the Travis County Exposition grounds, and I wandered inside the coloseum, where the robots and gadgets were. I noticed a google booth, and lots of things down on the floor.
Meanwhile, outside there were food booths, entertainment, and a rube goldberg machine that ran a bowling ball through a course of levers and springs.
Inside the ShowBarn were exibits by vendors on all kinds of kits, and wonderful machines, and high tech toys. One of them was a 3-D printer, that when it finishes printing makes an object.
Check it out at their Automated Creation Technologies website.
There were also some CNC wood carvers and cutters from Shop-Bot and CarveWright.
Both Shop-Bot and CarveWrite looked promising for a woodworking shop (some day).
I knew I was getting close to the electric Cars when I saw the Zap models on display. Then, a little further on, there were some three wheelers, and a car that looked like the Wright Speed X1.
It was a Kit Car that runs about $9000.00. You still have to provide the Ford Tempo engine. AustinEV had several "home built" electric cars on display.
The Toyota MR4 and Rav4 conversions were very nice, and was accomplished for under $10,000.
There was another interesting three wheeler with the rear the single drive wheel. Not ready to sell yet, but getting there.
The presentation I went there to see was excellent. Jim Phillipi answered a lot of my questions. I think that more people will convert their Prius Hybrids to Plug in Hybrids as gasoline prices climb again.
Now, who wants to build an electric car?
I want to build a Series Hybrid S10, Frontier, Tundra, B2000 or Ranger SuperCab.
It will still use some gasoline, but will get over 100 mpg.
I even wrote a proposal for anyone interested in financing this project.
