By Bob Bauder, PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor and a team of CMU colleagues, with help from an Oakland auto repair shop, have developed a process for converting family gas guzzlers into battery-powered electric cars with a fraction of the operating and repair costs of a new electric car.
They call it the Charge Car.
Nourbakhsh, 40, of Squirrel Hill said he can convert a Honda Civic right now for about $14,000, including parts and labor. After that, he said, it will cost less than $1 in electricity to fully charge the batteries. Downsides are that the charge is only good for about 40 miles and fully charging the batteries takes 10 hours.
By comparison, the most high-profile, all-electric car being offered right now, the Nissan Leaf, retails for almost $33,000, has a range of around 100 miles and can be fully recharged in eight hours.
The Department of Transportation says that Americans drive about 37 miles per day on average.
The team is wrapping up development and test stages of their conversion kit, and they hope to begin converting cars in the next few months.
"My dream is a bottom-up electric car explosion in Pittsburgh," he said. "Instead of Pittsburghers buying cars from the auto manufacturers, I would like to see Pittsburghers going to local auto shops and using local mechanics to convert their cars. What are we going to do with all these cars on the road? Why not recycle them?"
Customers would take older-model cars to a qualified repair shop where mechanics rip out the engine and fuel, cooling and exhaust systems and install the kit, which includes an electric motor, a lithium ion battery pack and controls. The car looks exactly the same, only there is an electric motor in the engine compartment, batteries in the trunk and a computer control on the dashboard.
Nourbakhsh and company are pitching the cars for daily work commutes. Studies conducted by the team show that the average round trip for 80 percent of Pittsburgh-area residents is 12 miles.
"There's a segment of people for whom this will be a real useful solution," Nourbakhsh said.
Chuck Wichrowski, 61, of Greensburg, owner of Baum Boulevard Automotive in Oakland, has agreed to convert vehicles in his garage. The conversion should take about two days. One of his mechanics has been working several days a week at CMU's Electric Garage on Forbes Avenue, developing the Charge Car.
The plan is for CMU to develop the process, then find a private company to make and market the kits. CMU Research Engineer Josh Schapiro, 25, of Shaler said they will be able to convert only Civics at first, but the team hopes that will shortly change to include almost any vehicle.
Nourbakhsh said he's had a test model running 75 mph on the Parkway West going up Green Tree Hill. He said the vehicles will run well in the winter, so long as they are continually charged.
The team has collected little information on potential repair costs, but that's because none of the three models developed to date has needed repairs.
"I've been driving an electric car since the year 2000, and I've only gone to a service station once," Nourbakhsh said. "After 11 years, the brake pads wore out. In general, the thing about electric cars is we have very few parts that wear out or corrode. We expect the maintenance costs will be a tiny fraction of the maintenance costs you have on a regular car."
Read more: CMU pushes conversion kit for gasoline cars - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_723449.html#ixzz1EPMNStJb
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