Backstory: Saving the planet, one car at a time
Switching an old convertible to run on plug-in power is tricky, expecially in front of an expectant crowd. Part 2 of two.
from the March 20, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
3:45 p.m.: The batteries are in, Gadget's "box" is in, the car is fully wired, and it's ready for its first test. Gadget slips into the driver's seat. A crowd of 50 leans in. Gadget turns the key. Nothing. Nothing is what would happen in any case: Electric motors are silent when they start. But this nothing means nothing – no power. No juice. Not working. Gadget starts pulling wires.
4:00 p.m.: Electric diagrams lie across the hood. Gadget huddles over his controller. With a toll of a bell, the expo officially ends.
4:10 p.m.: Security people walk through telling everyone who is not an exhibitor to leave. No one huddled around Gadget's car moves.
4:30 p.m.: Gadget is in the trunk. The crowd has thinned to 15 people. Gadget follows the wires. He is still hoping to drive the Triumph out.
"Now it makes perfect sense," he says, tracing wires back to the "go-pedal," the equivalent of a gas pedal. He pulls it out and holds it aloft triumphantly. He says that when he was checking the controller, he should have detached the batteries. By not doing so, he thinks he "fried" the go-pedal. His fiancée offers to go to his shop and get another.
But it's a half-hour round trip. Time has essentially run out. In the end, Gadget winds up loading the Triumph onto his F-350 pickup. It seems an ignominious exit – a failure.
***
I pull up to Gadget's workshop in Culver City, Calif., three days later. Ironically, it lies at the foot of a line of hills that, in the early 20th century, were encrusted with hundreds of rocking-horse oil pumps. The Triumph is parked outside. It's working perfectly now. Gadget explains that, in the end, nothing had been shorted out. He just hadn't properly connected the go-pedal. He attributes the lapse to the rush in the final minutes.
We hop in the car. He turns the key – nothing again. But this time it is a good nothing – the power is on. He steps on the pedal. We take off, burning rubber. The car is fast. Very fast. Gadget explains that it has the equivalent of nearly twice the horsepower of the gas engine.
I ask Gadget if he was disappointed in the way the expo went. "Not at all. I had dozens of e-mails Monday, people who wanted to invest, people who wanted to work for me, people who wanted to volunteer 30 hours a week."
Then he speeds silently past Sony Studios, heading for somewhere in the future.
• Part 1 appeared in Monday's Monitor.
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