In the latest round of daily range extension (good grief, that sounds like spam!) I took my wife and youngest daughter to a friend's party. The longest single contiguous trip we've taken: 8 miles. And with a heavier load than usual.
Near the end, she wasn't accelerating so well. But we got there without damaging anything. We charged for about 4 hours at the party, then drove home. I took a different, slightly faster route, and we seemed to do fine. People who passed me seemed to look over more than usual, and I think someone even waved (I was too busy watching the road).
Except for the stop light where I couldn't get into gear, and some ... driver honked at me. I was sitting there thinking, "Yeah, make your own electric car and see how well it does!"
Once I came back, I took some more pictures for the Honda Civic Wagon forum. I posted a bunch of pictures earlier, but they were all the outside of the car. I forgot to provide anything interesting! Here are the photos I snapped:
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Here you see the engine bay. The major components are the controller (the long black rectangle on the left), the motor (barely-visible blue thing), and the DC/DC Converter (silver box on the right). The converter acts like an alternator, converting the 120V from the battery to 12V for the lights, wipers, and other accessories.
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Here's a picture of the dash. You can see it looks almost completely normal, with the exception of that big round gauge on the left. That's an E-Meter, which was recently renamed a "Link-10". It provides a bar estimating how full my pack is, along with several other measurements I can cycle through, like pack voltage and kWh used. I usually leave it measuring amps, so I can tell how much energy I'm using up right now. I expect it will help me adjust my driving habits.
The only other difference between this dash and others is that the gas gauge always reads Empty. And the temperature gauge always reads cold.
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The rear battery pack currently holds 6 batteries, plus a plywood frame to fill out the space where the other two batteries went. That's hidden farther back, under the floor metal, so you can't see it.
The rear seats fold up and down just like usual. It's sort of a stealth EV. As you can see in the first photo, I was just using them with a child's booster seat to get to the party. Observant readers (and parents) will notice the optional child-debris package. ;)
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This is a PFC-20 charger. It can handle normal wall voltage, including 120V and 240V, and output anything from 12V up to.. heck, I don't even know; at least 240V. At up to 20 amps. I usually charge around 10A, but from the 20A plug at work I'll pull 15A.
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And the coup de grace: the fuel door. This is all I need to do to recharge. No muss, no fuss, no fumes, no problem. Refueling stations everywhere I go.
There's a little sticker that says "120V 60Hz Only", but it's nowhere near as visible as the unleaded fuel sticker. I gotta replace that.
And that's the end of our tour! Hope you enjoyed this look at real, working electric vehicle!