Recent content by Maple894

Thanks so much. Both were quite fun projects and both holding up well. Probably my last major build as I was 73 at the time.

I built a wood 9X16 carport from scratch for about $1500 and topped it with 1 kW of panels. The panels direct-charge my vintage EV at about 120V and 100-800 watts, adding up to 12 miles worth of charge per day. This has satisfied all my charging needs for more than 3 years now. (I'm retired...

Never take advice from anyone who names their vehicles.

As far as looks and styling, Slate beats the Ford by a mile.

1961 Falcon wagon, white, 170 cid 6, column 3-speed stick, bought for $200 in 1973. Rear main seal failed 1974. On that car you could remove a cross-member, drop the pan and disassemble the bottom end, so I did, took the crank to be reground, new seals & bearings, all in the driveway or maybe...

Glad to hear someone verify this. There's an old Fully Charged video where Robert is completely flummoxed when his wife gets better mileage with accelerator regen turned off than he does with it on max. Certainly in theory coasting should be more efficient than constantly going into regen...

Power meter could be a great aftermarket add-on. No need to mess with the wiring, just find an accessible site to slip a Hall sensor around one of the power cables. Mount a nice big analog meter on the otherwise barren dash. I converted the tach on my vintage 1988 EV to a power meter and it...

It's true YouTube is replete with Tubers who simply clone clips from the Slate web site and repeat its promotions, knowing that for a few days they can chalk up views from people who will click on anything with Slate in the title. For those desperate to find some tidbit of new information among...

Slate once again following the lead of Tesla, who locked-in one-pedal on most models in 2025, supposedly because incompetent drivers kept turning it off, engaging the mechanical brakes and then complaining about their mileage. So Tesla stopped giving them a choice. As electronics have improved...