Chapter 1

It is an accepted fact that the great majority of people who have a college degree will earn more in the way of compensation in their lifetime than people who do not have a college degree. While there are some exceptions to that occurring, that was the impetus for Kevin Alan Reeves parent’s insistence that he go to college. Because of their insistence and their support, he attended college.

Kevin enrolled in a small university that wasn’t that far from his home in Austin, Texas. He chose this university because he thought if he had enrolled at UT-Austin, he would be just a number because of its large student enrollment. He handled the first year’s costs of attending college with student grants, loans, and by living at home. He was fortunate in that he was a walk-on for the basketball team and was offered a full ride when two of the players on the team were declared academically ineligible and left the school. He looked at playing basketball as a job and a way to cover the cost of attending college.

While Kevin had some basketball talent, that was offset by his undistinguished academic accomplishments. Kevin was, at best, a C student. Barring any unforeseen developments, he should be graduating with a business management degree. Kevin considered himself to be mechanically inclined, and that was because of his genes. His father owned an automobile body repair shop, and Kevin growing up spent a considerable amount of time there, especially when school was out for the summer. He observed how cars were repaired, and he became capable of doing those same automobile body repairs.

He had repaired and restored his present car, an older Ford Mustang, which had been involved in an accident. The insurance company totaled out this car because the cost of repairs exceeded the car’s value.

Kevin’s social life at college was enjoyable for several reasons. One of them was his good looks and his popularity because he was on the basketball team. Another reason was that the ratio of students at this university was two female students to one male student. That favorable ratio translated into good-looking male students being in high demand among the female students.

In the course of his first three years at this university, Kevin dated a few female students and learned about the “birds and the bees.” It wasn’t that he was able to sample the charms of every female student he dated, but there were a sufficient number of them that he was successful in accomplishing that. Some of these young women, he could tell, were looking for life partners. He accepted the fact that they were looking to do that, but none of them despite some great sex, caused him to want to commit to any of them.

At the end of Kevin’s junior year in college, his Ford Mustang met an untimely death. It happened when a semi-trailer truck driver lost control and struck the Mustang where it was parked pushing it into the back of a truck which totaled out his Mustang. In describing the damage, Kevin would say his car looked like an accordion. The insurance company for the truck company didn’t argue the liability and paid Kevin the retail value of his car.

Kevin wasn’t sure what he was going to do to replace his car. At an automobile salvage yard auction, he spotted a good front end on an older EV and a decent rear end on a similar model EV. He made the effort to be the high bidder on both of these salvaged items. Kevin thought in keeping with the times, he would contribute to the effort to go green and clip together the good front and rear ends of these cars.

During the summer when school was out, Kevin worked two days a week at his father’s body shop writing estimates on damaged vehicles. The other three days, and sometimes on a Saturday, he would spend the time putting his car together.

In doing the repairs to this EV, he couldn’t help but think about the negative aspects of owning an EV. Those problems were the range of travel of the vehicle before it needed to be recharged and the time it took to do the re-charging. Down the road, it was the cost of replacing the expensive battery pack that currently ranged from $12k to $20k, depending on the car. He could picture in his mind that there would be a glut of EVs on used car lots because of this replacement battery cost.

After giving it considerable thought, he came up with an idea he hoped would extend this EV’s range before there was a need for the batteries to be recharged. His idea was to add additional alternators to supplement and reduce the discharge from a slim-down battery pack. How to go about doing that was the major problem. After giving it considerable thought, he finally came up with the idea of using the turning of the rear wheels axle shafts to power these additional alternators. Of course, if the engine was in the rear of the car, this would not apply but that was not his current situation with the car he was repairing.

It did take him time to fashion his idea into reality in doing these repairs of how to provide the power to turn these additional alternators’ pulleys. He needed to reduce the size of the battery pack and rearrange it for the needed space. Mounting the alternators and fashioning the sheet metal to protect the alternators’ from the elements was not a complicated process in comparison to fashioning the powering device. There was considerable cutting and welding involved in working with the tight tolerances involved in installing this device.

After the repairs were completed and the title was applied for, but before the EV was painted, Kevin did a long drive of the car. He wanted to see what the driving range would be before recharging the batteries would be necessary. He was hoping that the car would be self-sufficient and wouldn’t need to be recharged, but that was not the case. He managed to drive the car close to three times farther than what the manufacturer indicated the driving range would be, which was close to eight hundred miles. At the end of this drive, he called a car-towing service the body shop used and had them tow him back to the body shop.

Kevin’s father was anxious to hear how far the car went before it quit. Kevin told him, saying he was satisfied as in the normal course of driving, it would only require a quick charge in the evening to bring the car back to being fully charged. That being the case, he wouldn’t need to install an expensive, more powerful battery charger. He was now going to finish the repairs by painting the car a candy apple red color. The two coats of clear coat he was going to apply would put an excellent finish on the car.

When the painting was completed and clear coats applied, he was proud of how good this car looked. His father agreed with Kevin and asked him to come into the office. In the office, his father took out from his desk a stack of business cards with a rubber band around them. In going through the cards, he found the card he was looking for, which he handed to Kevin. His father suggested that Kevin make an appointment and see this man. His father said they had repaired a car owned by this man over a year ago, and he seemed to be a straight shooter.

The business card Kevin was given was for Steven Casey, that said he was a patent attorney along with being the managing partner of a law firm. With his father having a good business sense, Kevin called the attorney and made an appointment.