Carmel Duryea Morris

Mitsubishi MiEV Takes Charge

November 12, 2010

That Massive Dynamic of EV makers, Mitsubishi, are aggressively promoting their MiEV electric vehicles, with sales in Australia expected to climb steadily, which in turn will eventually reduce the price of the vehicle considerably. After nine months or so of sales gestation in Australia, so far no bugs, no battery issues and no unhappy buyers [...]

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Farewell to a Legend

August 12, 2010

It is a sad day when one has to let go of a beloved Starion. Regrettably, due to financial commitments and just ‘getting on with life,’ I have sold my ICE Starion GSRIII. This was a beautiful car to drive that I had once considered converting to electric. Being an automatic, I was advised against [...]

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Swapped the Instrument Cluster

January 7, 2010

I know many of you liked the Nut Rider 80s retro electronic instrument cluster. All those LEDs looked cool and would have gone nicely with my retro 80s ham gear. But there was simply no decent geography to put in a decent visible-easy battery gauge. Having run out of money and deciding not to get [...]

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A Charge is in the Air

June 2, 2009

Reports have been coming in of a new type of air-charged battery which could provide up to ten times the energy storage of a conventional lithium cobalt battery. Called the STAIR (‘St Andrews Air,’ where it was developed at Scotland’s University of St Andrews), it provides improved capacity via a porous carbon exchange cell lattice [...]

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My Breaker Broke :-(

April 11, 2009

My Airpax breaker, the main breaker switch, now has a busted switch-arm (I’ll save you the painful images). Just a few test throws under tension, the supposedly strong Bakelite switch arm shattered. The Airpax breaker is expensive, and we’ll have to see if it’s still under warranty as I paid for this some time ago. [...]

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Brakes: Positioning the Vacuum Pump

November 11, 2008

This has been sitting around in the garage for some time now begging to be installed. When we rushed to prepare for the EV demo, the brakes weren’t finished – they were hard-pressed to slow down one could say. As most cars have vacuum pumps for power-assisted breaking, it’s a must-have for my car too, [...]

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Battery Management and the Not-So Fat Controller

November 11, 2008

It’s finally arrived after a long, long wait for this thing in which the supplier admitted in a text message to me that he accidentally ‘blew it up’ when trialling it in his Mazda sports car (when I should have had it in my hot little hands by then). Oops, but that’s okay – the [...]

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Electric Starion at the Sydney EV Show, October 19

October 20, 2008

The show kind of crept up on us fast. Although not fully completed, we still managed to make my Starion EV drivable for Sydney’s annual electric car show, held by the Australian Electric Vehicle Association. The show turned out to be a great success in itself…

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[Video] Battery Management & Rack Construction

September 23, 2008

It’s taken a bit of preparation time, which is essential rather than diving in to find something we’ve done is not quite right – both Nathan and I have been guilty in the past of making stuff only to discover a better way of doing it….

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Thundersky Battery Management Has Arrived (Well, Almost)

September 15, 2008

What I mean is I’m still waiting for the master controller unit! The waiting-for-parts thing has been a big thorn in our sides. I sometimes wonder if this may be because our interstate supplier might like to corner the local market and serve his customers there first with their EV conversions. Ah, but perhaps I’m [...]

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