Right now, it’s like a dream, being in this car again, rolling down the road. We still have a ways to go, getting her back where she was before Covid hit when she was stranded by a failed inverter on a grade outside of Pescadero California, pulling onto Pacific Coast Highway 1. She went into the shop then and we went into quarantine for months. Everything ground to a halt. It took a while to get back on our feet.
Before then, quite a long time back, I remember sitting with my son Ben at the breakfast table, telling him how we were going to make the 59 Lincoln Continental parked outside into an electric car. What a great dream! We were so excited. I talked with him every morning about this big dream – our big dream.
We had a lot of trouble getting going at first. None of us knew what we were doing. My film making partner, Larry Johnson, and i went to Wichita Kansas, where we had found a mechanic, Jonathan Goodwin, who wanted to do it with us. We made a lot of mistakes along the way. But we just didn’t give up. We had a disaster a few years into the project and had to start over – setting the mileage to 0, with the same car though. It’s a great story and it will be told in ‘The Ride’, our new film, revealing the years of ‘Lincvolt – Repowering the American Dream’.
Now years later, the second iteration of Lincvolt has travelled 94,000 miles. A series hybrid, powered by electricity, from batteries charged by a cellulosic ethanol generator. She charges underway or at a stop.
The fuel is clean, Lincvolt creating her own energy, cleaner than most electricity in America, with the exception of California. A great state which is equally clean.
The source of most of the USA’s power is not that clean. Many US coal plants and natural gas powered plants provide our electricity. But Lincvolt’s power is very clean. Very minimal pollution at the source. Ethanol is a powerful clean fuel, without the damage to earth of fossil fuel. Lincvolt uses cellulosic ethanol, made from the waste of growing corn. As I have said before, America has a lot of waste. Now we are using it to roll quietly and cleanly down the road.
It’s a long story with many chapters. ‘The Ride’ will tell them all, right up to today. I’ll keep you posted.
Earlier I told you about a problem we were trying to solve. We will solve it. I’ll be here telling you about it. Hopefully in the next chapter…