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An Interview with Art Haines, Maine’s New Henry Ford? |
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By Bill Drinkwater |
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Art Haines with his Prototype Sunn Solar ‘Low Speed Vehicle’, which is also called a ‘Neighborhood Electric Vehicle.’.’ May 2nd, 2007 EVMaine: Art, thanks for talking to us. Your excellent video on YouTube.com shows much of the process of you collaborating with local high school students to design and build a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle that would be practical in Maine. The result is an original electric car that is street legal, is that correct? Art Haines: It’s not quite correct. It’s not street legal now because it does not have front brakes, which it needs to have be street legal. The new ones will have them. I’ll put some front brakes on this one next month. EVMaine: First of all, would you mind explaining what a Neighborhood Electric Vehicle is for those who might not have heard about them? Art Haines: The official name is ‘Low Speed Vehicle’, and it’s a federal designation. The classification has been around since, I think, about 1998. They need a windshield, brakes on all four wheels, turn signals, lights, seat belts and a few other items. They have a top speed of 25 miles per hour, and a minimum speed of 20 mph, and you can only drive them on roads with a speed limit of 35 mph or less. In most states you can also cross higher speed roads. EVMaine: How did the idea to build a battery electric vehicle first come to you? Art Haines: I’ve been interested in building an electric vehicle for a while, of course I was always so busy that I didn’t take the time to do it. Then I woke up one morning and I got an idea. The Grange, of which I am a member, wanted to do a community project. I wanted to build an electric vehicle for my own fun. I proposed to the Grange members that we do an educational project to build a solar powered car with the high school and they thought it was a good idea. We went to the high school and did the project as you saw in the video. It turned out that the high school students were a great motivator for me. Because we had to meet a schedule for the high school we were able to finish the car in four months. EVMaine: Detroit claims it takes them over three million hours to design a new model of a car. Art Haines: Well, we’re not building a Detroit car, all tooled. This is an ultra-simple car, and actually I didn’t invent anything, We just put together the car using standard methods. EVMaine: How much enthusiasm did you initially find in the local high school for starting such a complex project? Art Haines: Well, the teacher, Ivor Lofving, was very enthusiastic because he’s an energy enthusiast. That’s one of his main passions, and he was running a couple of study halls. I called him and he said he thought it was a great idea, so I took in the flip chart that I had done for the Grange and showed it to the kids in the study hall. They had kind of blank looks on their faces, and they probably thought this guy was completely whacked. But they signed up anyway because they wanted to get out of study hall and go with me down into the auditorium, where we met. The Drama Club pushed us out of the auditorium into a classroom, and then we got kicked out of there because they didn’t have enough classrooms. We ended up assembling it in the hallway and outside. Anyway, we survived and the students became enthusiastic as soon as they saw it coming together. EVMaine: What 3-D software package did you use? Art Haines: Its called ‘Inventor’, and it is made by the AutoDesk Company. EVMaine: What percentage of the physical work on the car had to be done by the students in your sophisticated machine shop versus what percentage could be done in the local high school? Art Haines: Well, I realized that the students really didn’t have the experience to design things or make parts so the way it turned out I did most of the design. The students helped make some of the parts, not a great deal though. The students did the assembly and wired the headlights, taillights, solar panel, etc.
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