Electric Porsche: The end of a sad saga.

In June of 2008 I bought a 2003 Porsche 911 Carrera and contracted with a guy in Florida to convert it to electric. He botched the job. Then I got the president of the local EV club (who also has an EV conversion business) to agree to fix it, which required completely dismantling, re-designing, and re-doing the conversion.

The first and second parts of the saga are told in my Electric Porsche thread, and in my http://priuschat.com/forums/ev-electric-vehicle-discussion/74581-electric-porsche-update.html thread.

Now for the sad ending:

I finally got the car back. The year estimate for the fix turned into more like two, as more and more things turned out to be screwed up from the original botched conversion. For a while it looked as though I might have the Porsche before the Nissan Leaf arrived, and they seemed neck and neck for a while, as both the Nissan and the Porsche were delayed. Back in June, when I finally got sick of waiting for both cars, and the frustration level had become intolerable, I flew to Seattle on a whim and test-drove a Tesla Roadster. The production Roadster turned out to be so much nicer in every respect than the prototype I had ridden in 4 years ago, that I bought one and canceled my Leaf order.

Now the Porsche is here, the local guy finally having finished it.

But there's a vibration in the motor at high rpms, because it's out of balance. That's probably fixable fairly easily, just a matter of rebalancing.

There's a bigger problem: We learned fairly recently, from the original battery importer, that the original conversion guy damaged the batteries BEFORE installing them. True to his behavior throughout this project, he never told me, and he just went ahead and installed the damaged batteries, perhaps hoping I would never notice. LiFePO4 batteries have come way down in price, but it would still cost a sh!tload of money to replace the pack.

And here's my dilemma:

Three years ago, when I was originally supposed to be in this car, it would have been one of a tiny number of hundred-mile freeway-capable EVs on the road. It would have been a showcase for what an electric car can do. It would have been a huge step up from my Zap Xebra. And it would have been worth what it cost, in a market where there was just about nothing like it.

But today even if it had a balanced motor and a brand-new battery pack it has insignificant resale value because anybody who wants a commuter EV can buy a Leaf, and anybody who wants an electric sports car can buy a Tesla Roadster. Add to that, that I don't even want to drive it now that I have the Tesla, which is less comfortable to sit in, but vastly superior in every other way. The Porsche is three years too late to be of interest to me or value in the market. And without a new battery pack, it is a beautiful junker. (Though it still handles like the car it was. Everything Paul didn't touch is still impeccable German engineering.)

And so...

I've decided I'm not willing to put any more money into a car that I would not want to drive and wouldn't be able to sell. It was a mistake to buy it, a mistake to pay Paul to convert it, and a mistake to pay Gordy to fix Paul's botched conversion. I will list the car for sale, but I know I'm not going to get an offer I'd accept. Gordy has offered to garage it over the winter, but I imagine in a year or two it will end up in my outside parking area, under a tarp, until I die and my estate sells it for $50.

It's not the worst mistake I've ever made. I'd say it's around my third worst mistake of my life. But now I'm going to forget about it and move on. I'm enjoying driving the Roadster. I have the EV I've wanted for so long. And it's a far better car than the Porsche ever could have been, and while it lacks the size and comfort of the Leaf, it goes almost 3 times farther, and for acceleration, it blows away pretty much anything else on the road other than another Tesla. For the range and fun factor, I don't mind a few contortions getting in and out.

 

There are times I want to sue Paul. But it would probably mean spending a considerable amount of time in Florida, spending a lot of money on a lawyer and on getting Gordy (who worked on it here) to go down there and testify, and then after I got a judgement, being unable to actually collect anything.

The guy is a crook. The world is full of crooks. If I were to sue everyone who has cheated me I'd be spending the rest of my life in court, instead of mountain hiking, scuba diving, freediving, visiting art galleries, etc.

I know that you will disagree with what follows, and I know that virtually everyone on this board will disagree as well, but capitalism is one huge, organized con game, which serves primarily to steal from people who work and give to people who don't, or in some cases who work, but are compensated a thousand times more than those who work just as hard or harder. What Paul did to me is such a tiny part of that, it matters to nobody but me and the very tiny community of people interested in electric cars. The word has gone out: Nobody in the know trusts Paul any more. And the courts are notoriously incapable of stopping scammers, who just close up shop and open again under another name.

The time has come for me to deal with the fact that I was robbed one more time, and move on. As for the car, I'll revisit its fate after some of the present anger has worn off. Three years ago, EV conversion was a very progressive and environmental thing to do. Now the Leaf and the Tesla are on the road, with more to come. Once the Leaf goes into full-scale production in Tennessee, I'm not sure that conversion will any longer be viable.

 

I had to do one last thing to put this behind me: I had to phone Paul and ask him to give me my money back. I remained calm and courteous. I listed the major defects of the car as he sent it to me, some of which were things we had discussed at the time, many of which I was not aware of until later.

Basically he denied everything. Calmly, and apparently with a straight face, he denied everything. The batteries, he said must have been bad when he got them. The motor, he said, could not possibly vibrate even if it had been mounted off-center. Bolts, he said, can work themselves loose in a matter of weeks. The power brakes, he insisted, worked fine when the car left his shop. One by one he insisted that he did nothing wrong: Either it went bad after I had the car, or it was not really a problem. Live battery contacts one millimeter from grounded frame was no problem because they never actually shorted out.

He also said he could not refund my money because he didn't have any. That part I believe.

None of this surprised me. I just needed to make the request before letting it all go. After fifteen minutes or so (not really sure), he said that being Friday he had to leave and could we continue the conversation later. I had really said and heard what I needed to, so I agreed that he could call me on Monday.

As for the car getting donated, that could possibly happen at some point, though the only things it really needs now are balancing of the motor and a new battery pack, and a new pack will cost more than any club or school class has. Basically, this is a project nobody is going to want to invest in. But I'll revisit the issue when I've calmed down.

Oh, when I mentioned my disappointment that the car has really passed its window of usefulness, with mass-produced EVs now available, he said that the Porsche could still be just about the best EV on the road. I replied, "Have you ever driven a Tesla Roadster?" And he said, "I've never liked the Lotus." Basically he pooh-poohed the most amazing EV on the road today.

 

It would be nice to borrow a battery pack to see how the car performs. The pack consists of 96 LiFePO4 cells and I can tell you for a fact that nobody in Spokane has one, would probably take ten to fifteen hours of work to install, with the BMS, which consists of a circuit board for every cell, and will probably cost between $12,000 and $15,000 dollars, new, shipped from China, which is the only place to get that battery chemistry without paying probably two or three times that much.

It's not like the Prius NiCad battery that you could lift out intact and drop in. Those 96 cells are grouped into bundles of, I think, six cells, and those bundles are distributed throughout the car for weight distribution.

I won't be looking at the Porsche. It is now parked about 250 feet from my house, in a lot where other residents of the association park their RVs. If Gordy does not take it for indoor storage in his new shop, I'll put a tarp over it for winter.

 

Something like this may happen. I just need some time to cool off. Thanks to everyone who made similar suggestions.

As soon as I started posting about the Porsche on EV forums, I began to get PMs from several people who had negative things to say about Paul. I won't repeat them because they are hearsay. But such messages erode my ability to believe what he says to me now, if the sheer number of problems with the Porsche didn't do that already.

Four years ago, when I got the Xebra, I had the dealer install 7 big AGM batteries. This gave the car 84 volts rather than the stock 72, and with 750 pounds of lead, the thing had a range of 40 miles to dead empty. What I didn't realize, and what was not well understood in the Xebra community at the time, is that AGMs are powerful, but short-lived if not treated with kid gloves. I routinely drove it to 75% DoD, when I now know that 50% is as far as they should be discharged. After six months they were showing serious problems, and I had the dealer replace them with LiFePO4, which gave the same range to empty with 500 pounds less weight, and permits 80% DoD, but it was only a 72 volt pack, so the car no longer had the oomph it had before. I've had no problems with it since then. I drove it almost every day until I got the Tesla back in June. I'm hoping to sell it now.

If you do put new AGMs in the Honda, educate the owner about their limitations. Floodies are much more robust, but need an irrigation system if you don't want to have to fill them by hand all the time. Some folks have had good luck with floodies in the Xebra PK, though I don't think anybody would want to put them in an SD. And they're not as powerful as the AGMs. If you want range, you need lithium. NiMH is somewhere between the two.

 

As strongly as I feel I was wronged in this transaction, readers of my posts have only heard my side of it. A judge and jury would hear both sides, and might be more convinced by Paul. Or to put it more realistically, Paul's lawyer might turn out to be more skilled than mine.

I've never been in civil court, but I've been in criminal court, and I've been incarcerated with the victims of the criminal "justice" system, and I assure you that courts are not about law or truth, they are about procedure and which lawyer is more skilled in the abuse of that procedure. Since I was guilty, the only way for me to be convicted (as I was) was to forbid my lawyer from making a procedural motion, and insist on presenting the argument that nuclear weapons are a greater crime than was my peaceful, nonviolent act of protest against them.

It is by no means certain that Paul (who I believe to be in the wrong) would lose in an argument before a court. I'd have to get the people who worked on the car after Paul to testify as to the condition of the car when they received it, and if Paul had a good enough lawyer, he could twist the words of my witnesses, and make them look like fools.

Thank you. It's not true, but thank you anyway.

Thank you, too.