(Update 2014-11-03) I liked the Octopress concept a lot but since it used ruby so much it was hard for me to customize or deal with any issues that turned up (I don’t know ruby). Also, I didn’t like the fact that every site you want to use with octopress is a clone of the repo. I switched from octopress to Pelican, which is python based. I found it much easier to understand and maintain. The plugins make sense and I was able to make my own modifications to plugins and themes after using it for only a short period of time. Everything I wrote below about reasons and advantages of switching from wordpress to static site generator still apply.

I recently changed this site from Wordpress to Octopress. Wordpress was getting to be a hassle to maintain, especially with needing to worry about constant security updates. I think I actually had the site hacked once and I had to rebuild the site to get it cleaned up. Then you have to keep a security plugin ... I just got tired of maintaining it.

Post edited to indicate that the car was sold.

2009 Smart Passion Cabriolet

Price: SOLD

Contact:

xxx@xxx

Details

• 2009 ForTwo Passion Cabriolet (convertible)
• Red body panels, Silver Tridion

This weekend I got the truck inspected for a safety inspection (there is no emissions test).  This means I have been driving it for a year as electric.  I looked at the mileage and I am just shy of 5000 electric miles.

I wasn't sure what to expect for the …

When people ask me what is the range of my electric truck, I tell them 40-50 miles.  Now that is an estimate based on how many Ah per mile I use and 80% of capacity of my battery pack.  I consider the full use to be 80%, always keeping 20% in reserve.  The 20% reserve serves two purposes.  First it give me additional "emergency" range in case I get in some situation where I have to drive more than planned, and secondly, it extends the life of the battery pack to avoid fully discharging it routinely.

Up to now, I have never actually measured the range, only estimated it.  Short answer is 60 miles.  Click below to read the details:

People sometimes ask, and I have been wondering myself, how much am I actually spending on electricity for my electric truck.  I have made some estimates but it would be nice to actually measure it.  I do not have a separate meter for my truck, but I do have historical usage data for my house back to 2007.  See the chart below:

Average daily electric usage (per month) in kWh

Click below to read more:

I had a steady stream of people looking at my truck.  I was on my feet all day and talking to a lot of people.  Many people seemed genuinely surprised that it is possible to make your own fully electric vehicle and were very interested in the project.

Here I …

I will have my truck on display at the Austin Mini Maker Faire, with AustinEV, this Saturday May 12.  I hope to see you there!

I am using an mr2 power steering pump but it is not working well and needs to be replaced. I want to order a rebuilt but I need to know what year or year range to use when ordering a replacement. Can anyone tell me the year for this pump …

I have been unhappy with the way I have been embedding the videos so far.  Usually with just a link, or link from a still that I made from the video.  The videos were mp4/h264 which for most people meant they had to use quicktime to view.  I really wanted to get to a point where people could view the video in their browser without a plugin.  I thought maybe with html5 we were getting to a point where this would work.  Actually it does work great in Safari and Chrome.  Both of these browsers understand the video element and will decode h264 encoded video.  Firefox understand the video element as well but will only decode ogg format and not h264.