Recharged

The Land Rover is renowned for off-road versatility around the world. It was designed as a multi-purpose utility vehicle for rural areas. In a truly rural setting, an electric powered utility vehicle has a tremendous advantage over its gasoline or diesel powered counterpart. The operating fuel can be obtained on-site via solar collectors, or wind or hydro generators. The Daimler-Benz Fuel Cell Car can travel over 400 kilometers on 38 liters of methanol. And, if you have an electric vehicle in your garage, when a brownout occurs, you have available 8,000-10,000 (8-10KW) watts stored in the batteries which can be used to power you refrigerator, lights, TV and computer for several hours.

About a month ago I sat in on a Electric Vehicle introductory design class at my local collage. Told them I was going to build an off road vehicle that would be charged by driving up a hill and setting up a wind mill or parking by a fast moving stream and using a pelton wheel, water wheel or propeller type generator. They all (students and professor) instantly liked the idea. For those of you who have access to this type of class. Take it - It will teach you the care and feeding of batteries - generators - DC motors - best and worst practices. Has lots of hands on experience. I may never take the class but I plan to buy the book used to teach the class as soon as it is restocked in the book store.

Offered by Mike.