Stephen writes:

I'm Stephen Taylor and I live in Marietta, Georgia a suburb of Atlanta. My first electric vehicle was an E-bike. Although it was a little easier to get to the store and back than a regular bike weather and traffic speeds make it a second rate choice. Then I received a catalog (something like a Sharper Image catalog) that showed a Corbin Sparrow. I quickly went on the web and found that there was a local dealer. So I test drove it and 7 months later I had my orange Sparrow. Now the Sparrow was neat for errands and it sure drew a crowd, but being a single passenger vehicle I still wanted something that could help me with car pooling. (As a side note, I already owned a Honda Insight and two Toyota Prius, but I wanted to stop using even the little gas these cars used) I went on the web looking at the EV Trading Post and EV Finder. In October I almost bought a Commutacar, but it just didn't feel roadworthy enough. In November a Solectria came up on E-Bay. Well I lost the bidding and the bidding process made me hunger even more for a multi-passenger EV. In late December my wife and I made a trip to Seattle and ended up buying a 1973 Porsche 914 EV and then going to British Columbia and buying a 1993 4 door Ford Escort. The Escort was going to be the carpooling car and the Porsche was for fun. In early January before either the Escort or 914 got to me in Georgia a second Solectria came up on E-Bay. The bidding was already at my losing bid on the other Solectria, but for $500 more there was a buy it now option, which I jumped on. So that is the long story of how I got my Lead Acid Solectria. The only problem was that I felt my 35 mile round trip carpool would be too taxing on the car for daily use. I have tested the range, with the original pack at 16,000 miles, to be something around 43 miles maximum. So not wanting to damage the Solectria's batteries, I continued to drive the Prius for the carpool. In mid April of 2003, I found on the Solectria site that NYSERDA was wanting to sell their NiCD Solectria for only $10,000. Needless to say I've jumped on it and now have two Solectria Forces. Although, I have some coolant leaking problems with the NiCD car, I'm sure it is up to the task of the carpool.

My EV Fleet is currently:

-Corbin Sparrow
-Lead Acid Solectria Force
-NiCD Solectria Force
-1973 Porsche 914
-1993 Ford Escort

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This page last updated 07/22/03