# The Electric Tredia is Legal!



## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

Woohoo!

The Tredia is finally legal! 








(I couldn't resist driving past one of these)

So, nine months of hard work (and lots of waiting) later, my electric car is complete and on the road. I'm pretty chuffed right now. 

As always, there's a video of the latest "episode" here: http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=rFrmjhKcAws
I'll bet you all wish you had dashboard Jesus' too. They wobble.









That's one happy Kiwi right there wearing a shiny new T-Shirt and holding a handful of "PASSED" inspection forms!

Right, I'm off for another gas-free drive!


Cheers!
Gav


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## mattW (Sep 14, 2007)

Wow Gav that is great! Its been such a privilege to be right with you throughout your conversion with the videos and all. You have inspired many people. I can't image how satisfying it must be to finally have the Tredia on the road. You should be well and truly proud of yourself!


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## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

I see you were able to keep the OEM tachometer working as well, nice. So how fast can it go anyway?


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## BjBlaster (Nov 11, 2007)

Onya Gav,

This is what keeps the hard-to-motivate motivated! Well done and let us know how the battery watering and other tedious jobs stack up against oil changes and refueling 

Cheers

Bj


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## BenNelson (Jul 27, 2007)

Gotta ask,

On the gas station sign in the photo, what is the bottom price which is so much lower than the other two?

Is it diesel?

In my area, diesel hasn't been cheaper than gas in at least a decade.


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## BjBlaster (Nov 11, 2007)

I'd guess that it's gas, LPG that is


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## John (Sep 11, 2007)

Diesel is cheaper than petrol in NZ because the road user charges are built into the cost of petrol but you have to buy miles separately for diesel and consequently don't pay for it at the pump.


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## BHall (Aug 1, 2007)

Congratulations! The step by step documentation and videos on your web site are great, and quite honestly they are what motivated me to pursue my conversion. You make it look so easy. Good job and thank you very much for sharing your conversion!

Brian


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## houseoffubar (Nov 18, 2007)

Sweeeet!!!


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## Alfred (Feb 1, 2008)

awesome!

love the shirt...


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## trabant601 (Jan 20, 2008)

Congratulations! Matt directed me to your youtube series which has inspired me to the planning stage of a conversion here in the states. The donor is a 1966 Trabant. Do you have any there in NZ? I didn't see any when I was passing through a few years ago. Thank you for making the video and the detailed and easy to read story of your conversion. More later. Eric


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Congrats Gav!
Glad to see you got through all the red tape!
Is that price per liter?

Jerry


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

Hey thanks everyone! I've got some serious driving to do now to rack up as many gas-free miles as possible!

You got it Jerry, the prices in the photo are per litre, which works out around $4.50 US per gallon from memory. It's expected to go up soon though which is good news. Oh, I mean bad news. Sorry. 

Hey Eric, I know about the Trabant and it's impressive history but I've never seen one in NZ. There _must_ be one here somewhere though surely. It would make a great EV as they're as light as a führer. Uh, feather. 
Sorry, poor attempt at humour. 


Now where's my wife? She's taken the EV to work and _I_ want to drive the car! It's my turn!


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## elevatorguy (Jul 26, 2007)

Gav,
If you can't get it back from the wife, you may have to build another
Like the shirt btw


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## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

Great Job and congrats.

I can't enjoy the videos due to a very slow dialup but followed your story.
Working on getting mine ready when this darn snow leaves.


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## Nick Smith (Oct 26, 2007)

John said:


> Diesel is cheaper than petrol in NZ because the road user charges are built into the cost of petrol but you have to buy miles separately for diesel and consequently don't pay for it at the pump.


Right you are John - unfortunately we poor NZEV'ers have to pay these Road User Charges for any fuel other than petrol - and that includes electricity!

You would think that the government would want to subsidise any "green" efforts but i suppose that would reduce the amount of money to give to the jobless and the idle...


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## John (Sep 11, 2007)

I've often wondered how the NZ bureaucracy will cope with plug-in hybrids when they arrive here. Since they are at least partially powered by petrol do they pay the separate road user charges or not?  If they don't could I put a tiny petrol generator in the boot of my electric car (and not use it) and call my car a hybrid and get myself exempt form road user charges.


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

John said:


> I've often wondered how the NZ bureaucracy will cope with plug-in hybrids when they arrive here. Since they are at least partially powered by petrol do they pay the separate road user charges or not?  If they don't could I put a tiny petrol generator in the boot of my electric car (and not use it) and call my car a hybrid and get myself exempt form road user charges.


I think the rule with whether or not a car should pay Road User Charges is, "If in doubt, tax 'em out".


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## John (Sep 11, 2007)

With the current law in NZ anything more powerful than a moped that doesn't run on petrol is supposed to pay separate road user charges and if I remember rightly this is the same charge per km all the way up to a three ton truck. There was talk a while back of separating the road user charges for petrol as well because there are people paying road user charges when they fill up their lawn mowers, chainsaws, and boats or any non road vehicle or device that runs on petrol.


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## ForkenSwift (Feb 3, 2008)

Congrats, Gav! Now you can stop pretending you haven't been driving it around illegally for months!


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

ForkenSwift said:


> Congrats, Gav! Now you can stop pretending you haven't been driving it around illegally for months!



What? Me? NEVER!

Although I'm not sure where that extra 100km on my odometer came from.


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## nutsandvoltsvw (Oct 29, 2007)

Gav,

Congrats...

Let us know how the performance is and what kind of range and speed
this beauty is capable of...

Very proud of you and the great documentation... think I will go down stairs and work some more on my battery racks...

This is great to watch to get my motivation going...

I have a feeling this wife thing may become a universal problem with these EVs...

Great Work...

Robert
Nuts&Volts


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## Mastiff (Jan 11, 2008)

KiwiEV said:


> What? Me? NEVER!
> 
> Although I'm not sure where that extra 100km on my odometer came from.


It was from all the Dynamometer testing. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamometer


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

Um, yes. Of course. That's it.
(eyes dart around the room, tugs at collar)

I'm hoping to add another video this weekend. A FAQ video. If anyone's got a spare 2 mins, have a look through my FAQ page and let me know if there's anything you can't see that should be on the FAQ video and I'll add it in.

Be quick, filming is tomorrow!


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

Jaqie said:


> I checked and off hand the only things I can think of is asking why you chose the battery type you did, and why you chose that motor. You may also want to expand on the curtis controller portion, saying why you chose that controller as opposed to one with regen or simply another brand.
> 
> I love your site, and the video logs, they seem to be one of a kind!


Awesome stuff, thanks Jaqie! I'll add those questions to my list.


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## mattW (Sep 14, 2007)

My question is what is the best thing about having an electric car? The rest of the questions are great, really well answered. I think you've worked out the price of the lion Ev cells a little wrong; 144V is 45 batteries, then you need 4 strings to get up to 80Ah so 180 batteries times $45 per cell is US$8100.


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## KiwiEV (Jul 26, 2007)

mattW said:


> My question is what is the best thing about having an electric car? The rest of the questions are great, really well answered. I think you've worked out the price of the lion Ev cells a little wrong; 144V is 45 batteries, then you need 4 strings to get up to 80Ah so 180 batteries times $45 per cell is US$8100.


Yeah, TexomaEV corrected me on those LionEV cells. I'll update the site too, and I'll chuck in the "what's it like having an EV" question too.
Cheers!


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## Cornelius (Sep 15, 2007)

Congratulations on a well constructed EV, and the great videos you made.


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## trabant601 (Jan 20, 2008)

Thanks for the motivation Gav,
These links and tips and those in the "Electric Trabant?" thread are great. I will certainly be in contact with appropriate people regarding advice and ideas.
I have made a small video of the donor Trabant in Indiana (perhaps the first electric Trabant in the USA), Rumpi might find others. 
I will post a link to show the donor video ASAP in the "Electric Trabant?" thread.
btw: I have decided to remove the clutch. All of the advice here has been great but... the mate with some knowhow and a welder said he will not help me if I leave it in. I am convinced. The Hungarian Youtube video didn't hurt either.
More soon in "Electric Trabant?" thread.
trabant601


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