Chapter 14

My wives and I discussed the test results over dinner that evening. As our conversation wound down, I mentioned the idea Carl had given me.

I started off with, “You know we built three of everything and Carl mentioned that we should integrate those items into a custom frame and an aerodynamically designed body. What do you three think of that idea?”

Sam was the first to respond, “I sort of like the idea, but won’t that extend our planned schedule for completing the prototype design and being ready to start manufacturing?”

“As Cathy said, don’t worry about schedule, just do it right the first time. Furthermore, while the second prototype will take a bit longer to build, if we do it right, it should end up very close to our final design. If the second prototype is close enough to what we want to build as a production car, we may not need to build the third prototype. I think this will actually shorten the overall design phase.”

Mary said, “I think it’s a good idea also. What I want to know is, what will we do with the Suburban? I like it better than our van. I want to have it to drive around here, especially when we and the kids have to go somewhere.”

“Humm ... the only problem that I can see with that is, people will see the car and ask questions. We don’t want news of what we are doing to get out yet, so that may cause a problem. Let’s talk about this on another occasion and see if we can come up with a believable story that will satisfy others’ curiosity without letting our secrets become public knowledge. If nothing else, I suppose we could mount a dummy charging plug on the side of the car, and you could plug the car in every time you come home.”

“That’s fine with me as long as we get to use the Suburban.”

“Karen, what do you think of the idea?”

“I’m fine with it as long as I get to drive the Suburban.”

The next day, Jeff and I sat down and discussed what would be involved in creating a new design that would combine our goals for the second prototype with an all new chassis, body, and running gear that was close to what we wanted for the production model.

Jeff had an idea for the second prototype. I had been thinking of designing and building a chassis that would be identical to that of our production vehicle. He convinced me that we should consider an off-the-shelf-chassis and modify it as necessary. He told me that if he couldn’t find a suitable chassis, we could always go with a custom chassis.

Jeff had a friend that could get almost anything that an automotive enthusiast might want. He told me that once we knew exactly what we wanted for the production model, we could have a custom chassis built for us to our specifications.

Jeff did an analysis of the optimum wheel length and base for our SUV, and looked for an existing off-the-shelf chassis that was close to our needs. He figured that if he picked the right chassis, we could modify it, and save ourselves a lot of time and effort, not to mention money.

His research indicated the Cadillac Escalade’s GMT K2XL chassis was very close to what we needed. He would have to extend the rear of the chassis by twenty inches to allow for supporting the trunk that we wanted to add to the Suburban’s basic body style. According to his calculations, we would have to shift the rear wheels back six inches in order to attain the ideal center of mass for the production car.

We sat down and talked about our two options. Both options had advantages and disadvantages. Over all, I liked the idea of the custom chassis as long as we received a detailed set of drawings suitable for manufacturing future chassis. I decided we should go with the custom chassis.

We had a great deal of design work to do before we could place an order for a chassis. Jeff redesigned the mount for the Solar Cell Tray, so it included an air intake scoop. A baffle was used to direct the heated air that resulted from cooling the tray’s heat sink into the interior compartment of the car or out of the tray’s rear air vents. The roof panel was curved to meld with the bottom edge of the air scoop and to form a watertight seal. The result would be a rather thick roof, which would look a little odd until we grew accustomed to it. Our final task was to produce a design specification for the chassis and concept drawings of what the car should look like. My ladies liked the look shown by the concept drawings. They especially liked the two rows of back seats. They said if we made the production model’s interior really posh, it would be close to a limousine.

We negotiated a contract for a custom chassis with an option for a second modified chassis. I winced at the price. We would provide four motor-generators, a battery tray without batteries, and a Solar Cell Tray without solar cells for fit checks. The first custom chassis required four months to build. While it was being built, we redesigned the instrument panel and Solar Cell Tray. Eight months after we received the first custom chassis, we were ready to start testing the second prototype. We would wait until our testing of the second prototype was close to complete, to determine if the second chassis was required. By then, we would know the changes that would be needed to create the production chassis, if any.

It was time for us to make contact with the owners of the Chocolateen Corporation.

“All right, Jeff. I’ve been thinking about us only incorporating the must have items necessary for testing and ignore the rest of the items we plan to include in the production model.”

Jeff said, “I don’t know, Ward. It seems to me that we should definitely keep the sensors, data recording feature, and radio link. But do we really need the test instrumentation in the car? The tests we plan to do will be on a race track. We will be in the RV monitoring the data in real time. I think we should build what should be the production vehicle with all the bells and whistles included. If any of the bells and whistles create a problem, I want to know about it now, not after the production cars come off the line. However, we may want to cut a few corners, but I don’t want to get into the details now. We can discuss the matter later.”

“Okay, Jeff. While I am on the subject of testing, what I want to know once we do our cold weather testing is, how much excess capacity do the batteries and Solar Cell Tray have? I’m thinking of possibly reducing any excess capacity to about minimum plus ten or twenty percent of our cold weather needs. That also reminds me that we need to put some environmental specifications together to define operating conditions.”

Jeff said, “Ward, there are a number of things that I don’t like about the current design of automobiles. If we are going to do this, I would like to make some changes.”

“What sort of things would you like to change, Jeff?”

“Well, did you know that if you are in an accident and your car doesn’t hit the other vehicle head on, there is a good chance that your airbag won’t deploy?”

“No, I thought they would always deploy in an accident.”

“Well most accidents happen with one driver hitting the rear bumper or side of another car straight on with their bumper, and under those circumstances the airbag will deploy. The type of accident I’m thinking of is, when you try to swerve to avoid the accident and hit the other car at an angle. The airbag may not deploy under those conditions.

“It should be relatively easy to devise a device that would sense an impact at any angle and deploy the front or side airbags or possibly both sets of airbags.

“What I’m thinking of is a wire running through the center of a metal ball. I would mount a metal plate in the center of a metal box with the plate’s flat surface in the horizontal plane. The plate would have a hole in its center that is larger than the diameter of the ball. One end of the ball’s wire would be connected to an insulator at the top of the box and the other end to a spring that is secured to a second insulator at the bottom of the box. The ball would be held suspended in the middle of the plate’s hole. The box would have a connector with two wires. One wire would be connected to the metal plate and the second wire would connect to the wire that supports the ball.

“Then if your car were to hit something, the chassis would come to a sudden stop, but the ball’s inertia will result in the ball continuing to move and strike the metal plate, which creates a ground contact that triggers the airbag. The same type of thing will occur if a car hits you from the front, back, side, or any other angle. The metal plate will be accelerated toward the ball, and it will strike the ball creating the ground contact that triggers the airbag.

“The main difficulty would be calibration for you don’t want the ground contact to trigger the airbags due to sudden heavy braking or a very minor impact. However, that could be accomplished by picking a spring of the appropriate strength and an adjustment screw that moves one of the insulators up and down.

“If we wanted to get fancy, we could split the metal plate into sections and have the sections determine which airbag to trigger, if any. After all, airbags protect you when you are thrown forward and to the sides, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to trigger a side airbag when you get rear ended. However, it may make sense to trigger the side and the front air bags if your front bumper hits a car at an angle other than straight ahead.”

“I like the idea, Jeff. My wife, Cathy, was killed in a car accident. The car did not have side airbags, and the car was hit on the side. The other driver’s airbag deployed because he T-boned the car my wife was in. That is probably why he survived the accident, while my wife and her parents were killed.

“I agree, Jeff. That would be a good feature to add to the production car. If we are going to design new features for the car, let’s do it right. Hopefully, we can add new features to the second prototype and do any necessary testing before we finalize the production car’s design. Talk with the crew and see if they have any ideas for new features. Put a list together and we can discuss the ideas later.

“Now that I think of it, Jeff, I was in a friend’s Tundra a couple of weeks ago and his truck had two visors on each side of the truck. You could pull the first visor down and swing it to the side to block the sun from the side, and pull the second visor down to block the sun from straight ahead. By shifting the two visors, you could align them so they overlapped and blocked the sun over a ninety-degree arc in azimuth. I think something like that would be a good idea for our vehicle.”

That afternoon I met with the crew and told them that we would design the next prototype from the ground up except for the motor-generators, batteries, and solar cells. We would make modifications to the Battery Tray and Solar Cell Tray as necessary. I asked them to consider the problems they had experienced with prior cars and our prototype, and to submit a description of any problems or enhancements they thought of to Jeff, with or without any solution they thought might work.

That evening, I told my wives we would be adding new features to the production car, so it may be necessary to create the third prototype that would be as close to the production version of the car as we could make it.

Sam asked, “Couldn’t we just add them to the production car?”

I said, “No. Some of the new features may require testing. Testing of the second prototype may also result in design changes that will need to be tested.”

Sam, Mary, and I decided to spend the weekend looking at different makes and models of cars and documenting the attributes we liked and disliked.

Karen asked, “Ward, are we going to only make one model of car?”

“No, Mary. Once production is running smoothly, we will create other versions of the car.”

“Well, I was thinking of the first version of the car as a utility car, and then building a luxury version of the car. If we build all of the new features into the utility car, what would we do to create a luxury vehicle?

“Humm ... that is a good question. I’ll have to talk with Jeff about two versions of the same car. I’ll have to get back with you about the idea of a luxury version of the car. If nothing else, we may want to make some of the new features optional items.

Cathy got involved in our conversation and we ended up deciding to only produce one version of the vehicle and to include all of the features as standard equipment.

By early Sunday afternoon, the three of us were tired and overwhelmed by the details we had documented. We spent the rest of the afternoon consolidating the information, and we were surprised by the results, although we shouldn’t have been.

Throughout the effort we had performed to date, we had envisioned and talked about the car as if it would be a standard four-door sedan. After rating vehicles, we reached the decision that we should design a modified, four-door SUV body style.

A center console would be between the front seats and the seats would be swiveling captain’s chairs. We hated getting in and out of a vehicle that had hinged doors when we had to park close to another car, so we decided on left and right sliding rear doors that would open by sliding to the rear, and open far enough to provide access to the two rear bench seats. Each of the two rear seats would have three sets of seat belts and fold down arms like those used in airplanes; the spacing between seats would provide liberal leg room. The customer would be given a choice of the standard seat belt configuration or a four-point seatbelt system. The rear of the vehicle would resemble a sedan in that it would have a large trunk with its interior isolated from the passenger cabin. We all thought the standard SUV’s open cargo area behind the rear seat was a hazard for in the event of an accident, cargo might fly into the passenger area. We also had a large number of little things like temperature-controlled cup holders that we wanted to integrate.

Monday morning, Sam went to the shop with me. We met with Jeff and discussed our ideas for a new car. When we finished going over our ideas, Jeff introduced a few ideas of his own.

Jeff said, “I came up with three main ideas. The first is a tubular steel cage to protect the passenger cabin and battery compartment. We can design the cage for supporting the Solar Cell Tray, which will a better approach than our recent solution for the problems we had with mounting it on the Suburban’s roof. The second is to fabricate the pieces of the exterior surface as injection moldings using a high impact plastic. Although for the second prototype we can use thin polycarbonate sheets and thermoforming techniques to create the car’s exterior surfaces. The third is to fabricate the exterior portions of the car as easily replaceable sections. That should also simplify the manufacturing process and reduce the cost of repairing the car in case of an accident.

“I was thinking of repairing the car after an accident when I came up with the last idea. I was thinking of a floating bumper system that is supported by the frame. The front grillwork and headlights would mount to the bumper system. Shock absorbers would be used to stop the rear movement of the bumper system if it impacts something. In theory, the bumper, grillwork, and headlights would be a module that would slide into the battery compartment and damage would be minimized in a low-impact collision. If designed right, the module could be pulled for easy access to the motor-generators, steering, and brakes for maintenance. I need to think on that idea some more and do some testing before making it part of the design.”

“Will you need the Suburban for anything else, Jeff?”

“No, I can’t think of anything right now. Why?”

“Well, my wives want to use it for running errands.”

Sam had a smile on her face when she said, “Yeah, you guys have had your fun with it, so now we girls figure it’s our turn. Don’t plan on getting it back either. It’s ours from now on.”

Jeff wasn’t sure how to take Sam’s comment, so with a look at Sam, I said to Jeff, “Sam knows that we will need it back for cold weather testing, if the second prototype is not ready. If you really need it for something else, I’m certain the ladies will be happy to bring it over to you, Jeff.”

“I don’t have a problem with that as long as they bring it by every other week so I can download the data. That should give us an idea of performance under typical use.”

“What I want you to do, Jeff, is prepare a full set of manufacturing documentation that will let us build the third prototype as if it were the production vehicle. We may have to make a few changes after testing this version, but hopefully those changes will be minor. Once we are close to finishing the testing the second prototype, we will make the decision as to whether we need to build the third prototype.”

I had gone home early for I had agreed to talk with Cathy about recruitment for the Mission, and I didn’t want to do that at the workshop. When I was in my office’s recliner with a cup of coffee, I asked Cathy to contact me.

“I’m home now, Cathy. We can begin any time that you are ready.”

“I’m ready now, Ward. What the Council recommends is that you begin by engaging Jim Schneider in a business discussion. Be upfront with him about your plans to build a solar powered all-electric car, and that you are considering him and his partner Frank Toliver as possible partners. Both of them are interested in environmental issues, so you should introduce yourself as the owner of a Foundation that is attempting to reduce or eliminate automobile pollutants.”

“That should be fairly easy to do. Does the Council have any idea of how to enlist them in support of the mission?”

“Not at this time. They think that you should form a partnership with them first. Then as the three of you get to know each other, there will undoubtedly be opportunities to interest them in supporting the Mission.”

“Okay, now all I have to do is devise a way to arrange a meeting with them.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult, Ward. James Schneider is scheduled to be a presenter at a Weight Loss Symposium next week. If you attend his presentation, you could arrange to introduce yourself after his presentation. Let him know that you are the founder of a Foundation that is working to reduce atmospheric pollution, and that you would like to discuss a business deal with him over dinner that will result in a major, worldwide reduction in automotive pollutants. The Council expects that you will get either an immediate appointment or at least one in the very near future. Oh, and one other thing, Ward, they are both multibillionaires, so additional money may not be a major factor in their decision.”

“All right, that should work.”

Over dinner that night, I told my wives about the Council wanting me to recruit James Schneider next week. Then I had to explain how the Council wanted me to go about doing that.

Sam asked, “Do you want one of us to go along with you?”

“No, I don’t think that would be wise. If the two of us are by ourselves, it should give us a chance to bond on a personal level. I’m planning to get a hotel reservation in Los Angeles for when I attend the symposium. I am thinking about driving the Suburban when I go, for it should be good proof of my bona fides. I can take James out to dinner in the Suburban and even let him drive the car. That should make a strong impression on him and make my story credible.”

The following week, I was in a Los Angeles hotel’s conference room, listening to James Schneider making his presentation on the Chocolateen Weight Loss Program. It was very interesting, especially the part about Chocolateen being used to modify lifelong habits and beliefs. The possibility of misusing that product scared me. What scared me the most was my thoughts of how I might be able to use it in completing my Mission. I decided that the Council would be very upset with me if I were to do something as immoral as using a drug to compel a person to believe the way I wanted them to believe. I waited until Jim Schneider finished his presentation so I could run into him in the hall.

“Excuse me, Mister Schneider, my name is Ward Conrad. I was hoping to have a minute of your time to discuss a matter that will result in a significant worldwide reduction in automotive pollution.”

“Well, I am on my way to attend a competitor’s presentation. If you would care to join me, we can talk until he begins his presentation.”

As we walked to the next presentation, I said, “I would appreciate that, sir. As I said, my name is Ward, I am the founder of a research foundation that is trying to eliminate or at least reduce automotive pollutants.

“We have developed a full-size, operational prototype of a solar powered electric car that generates no pollution, and we are looking for someone to help us with manufacturing and selling the vehicle. This will take a lot longer to explain than the time we have available right now. If you think you might have any interest in doing business with me, I would like to talk about my car over dinner tonight or at some time in the near future.”

“Ward, there are a lot of electric cars on the road today that do the same thing. Why should I be interested in your prototype?”

“My foundation has built and tested a full-size electric car. One of our tests was a forty-eight-hour endurance run that was completed without stopping to recharge the battery, and the test data proves that with a clear sky, my prototype is capable of being driven on a twenty four seven basis without stopping to recharge the battery, for an unlimited time. That means it has an unlimited range.”

Jim came to a full stop and turning he looked me in the eye, and then said, “Are you serious about this? You actually have an operational prototype that can be driven without stopping for a week or longer.”

“Yes, I do. I have the test data here in my briefcase, and the prototype is parked in this hotel’s garage. Would you like to see and drive it?”

Turning to the man who had been following us, obviously a bodyguard, Jim said, “I just changed our plans, Mike. We’re going to go look at a car.”

Turning back to me he said, “Ward, call me Jim and this is my bodyguard Mike Hantan. Mike, meet Ward Conrad.

“Okay, Ward, where is this car of yours?”

“As I said, it’s parked in the garage. Let’s go and I will give you and Mike a quick tour of the car.”

The three of us took the elevator down to the garage level and I guided them to the Suburban. When we got there, I pointed to the Suburban and Jim said, “A Chevy Suburban. I figured that you were talking about something like a small compact. You know something like a Smart Car.”

“No, I wouldn’t sell something like that to a customer. I admit that I may be wrong, but it’s my opinion that your chance of surviving a high-speed accident with a heavy car or truck without a serious injury when driving a small vehicle like that is slim. Especially if you rear end someone and are then rear-ended by a third vehicle.

“Let me show you what makes this car so special. This car isn’t nice looking for it is our first prototype; it’s our proof of concept vehicle.