Sat, Sep 19th, Houston Hybrid and Hypermilers Club

Hi all, I plan to attend and will bring along as my guest, Kim Adelman, Founder of Plug-In Conversions Corporation who just happens to be in town installing a control systems upgrade to my own PHEV.

Since your meeting's timing just happens to correspond with our projected timing of our test drive of the upgraded system we will have the vehicle partally disassembled so all components of the 6.1 kW PHEV system are visible.

See you at Beck's

 

Hey Dan - I'll be there, at least for awhile. Have to make sure you have a 2010 to play with!

 

Hey Dan - sounds interesting. If there's any time left, maybe we can try playing with the REV iphone app and PLX wireless OBDII adaptor I just bought.

Now, where did you say that OBDII port was?

 

Hey Dan - that was pretty interesting to see the plug-in conversion in person and talk to both the owner of the car and the owner of the company. Here are my iphone pics:

Picasa Web Albums - Greg - 9/19/09 HHH M...

Here's the plug-in battery pack:

 

Greg....
I'm gonna spank you!!! That pic sucks of me. hehe

I was really great meeting all of you. A very awesome group of peeps.

 

Kim - beautiful and charming women such as yourself should never object to being photographed! It was lovely to meet you. Tell hubby he needs to think of driving this car like a video game, where the highest mpg wins. Maybe he'll take it out of power mode once in a while that way!

 

Hi Dan, was nice to meet you and the rest of the group. What a fun bunch, but I think Kim (both of them) stole the show. I was glad to be able to share my little recycling project with the group and look forward to November's meeting.

My pictures will be posted shortly. However in your photos you have misidentified the circuit boards. The black one is the hybrid energy manager, the other is the second control board (I forget what PCC calls it) that is placed in series with the Toyota OEM battery management board. The OEM battery management board continues to be used to monitor and manage the new batteries. This is possible because the number of battery cells in the OEM battery pack and the replacement pack are exactly the same. Toyota's done a great job of controlling the state of charge of a NiMH battery pack, why mess with success.

Since the number of cells in the OEM and replacement packs are the same, the difference in size (1.3 kWh vs. 6.1 kWh) comes from the use of the high density NiMH cells from Gold Peak Battery Corp. Gold Peak holds a license for the NiMH technology patent that was obtained before the later Ovonic/GM/Texaco/Chevron/Cobasys patent agreements tied the hands of the auto manufacturers limiting them to only using smaller cells.

Thanks again for finding and inviting me to you little get together. I'm so glad that I was able to drag Kim Adelman along so you could all meet this amazing guy who is truly on a mission to make a difference. Thanks Kim for allowing me to drag you around and show you off.

 

Ok guys here are my photos. I'm new at this so if the attachments don't work here is the link to the Picasa album. The album also contains milage photos made prior to the latest control system hardware upgrades.

Picasa Web Albums - Howard - H3C_09-19-09

Enjoy

 

Better late than never.... Here's a few more pics of our fun little outing.

Howard... I LOVE THE PLATE!! That is the coolest!!! I'm waiting for mine. I should be here next week. I can't wait... ;-)

Enjoy the pics....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43040514@N04/sets/72157622391924789/

I hope it works...

Kim

 

Whoops, didn't work for me. Are you sure you made it public?

 

Hey Greg,
You were absolutely right. My first time using Flicker, so pls excuse me. I think it will work now. ;-)

Thanks my friend...

Kim

 

Do I have to be signed in to see? All I can see is...
mzkimc doesn't have any sets.

 

Yea, it kind of makes you want to drive around just of show off the car, and the plate. I'm glad I stumbled upon it at the last minute as I was considering other options. Now to get a decent picture (not done at 10 at night with a cell phone with no flash).

Howard

 

Hmmm... now it says
"mzkimc doesn't have any sets."


I don't think you have to have created a set, but just going to your ID (without sets on the end of the link) also doesn't show anything, which would seem to indicate the permissions on the photos have still not been set to public. I had never used flikr before, but I did just do a couple of test uploads and also created a set out of them. Have to say the flikr interface is a bit confusing. You have to make sure you hit the right "save" button to save any changes. You can edit the permissions on each picture, or create a set and make the set public. I think it should work either way.