WIND, powered by electricity

Phil Chipman is living the good life. The 62-year-old retiree surfs almost daily, still plays in his college rock band, and he’s got a set of wheels that run for a penny a mile.

Chipman drives a two-seater that he designed and built to run entirely on electricity, one which plugs into any standard socket.

“My mission was to prove that you could build an electric vehicle in your garage and that there are alternatives out there,” the Costa Mesa resident said of gasoline-powered vehicles.

His three-wheeled vehicle is a hodgepodge of used and hand-crafted parts from different modes of transportation: motorcycle suspension, old airplane seatbelts, aeronautical metal tubing , and batteries typically used by boats, to name a few. He purchased the various pieces off the Internet and by scouring junkyards, spending less than $5,000 total.

But this project brought to life by electricity is no Frankenstein monster. Designed with a lifted tail-end (to show off the streamlined metal tubing underneath) and a sleek fiberglass body with a glossy coat of white paint, Chipman created a balance between aesthetics and efficiency.

“I originally was going to bring the back all the way down,” Chipman said, indicating the fiberglass body which comes to a point above the rear wheel. “That would have created more efficiency, but my 10-year-old neighbor thought this would look cooler.”

The project took him about three years, which breaks down to 600 hours of labor and a lot of understanding from his wife, he said.

“He’s a little strange,” said Laina, Chipman’s wife, although she said his quirky projects were a large part of what drew her to him when the couple married in 1988.

Chipman recently entered his electric vehicle in UC Irvine’s Energy Invitational, and took home two prizes after competing against six other teams.

The May competition through the UCI Henry Samueli School of Engineering challenged electric vehicle-builders to create a vehicle that could complete on a multiple-terrain course and go the farthest distance on one dollar of energy, according to the event website.

Chipman came in third place overall and won the prize for “Longest Projected Distance.”

His car can travel up to 20 miles without recharging and costs about a penny’s worth of energy per mile, he said.

Based on miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (MPGe) calculations, which measures the distance traveled per unit of energy consumption, Chipman projects that his vehicle, when compared to a gasoline-powered vehicle, would do the equivalent of 400 miles on the gallon.

But for now, he’ll keep his trips to less than 20 miles.

“I don’t want to get stuck somewhere,” Chipman said. He keeps a cable with him on long trips for emergency “refueling” at prearranged locations.

The car can reach up to 50 mph, which is perfect for quick sorties onto Coast Highway on his way to his favorite surfing spot, he said.

“The car just takes off from a stop,” Chipman said.

Chipman was able to insure the car through State Farm Insurance and registered it with the California Department of Motor Vehicles as a motorcycle.

However, the car is set much lower than other vehicles and its fiberglass body would be no match for a truck or SUV, Chipman said.

“You’d be a cream puff,” he said, explaining that the car has to be driven “defensively” as you would a motorcycle, watching the other drivers around you for clues that they may be turning.

“Generally, I found that people keep their distance when I’m driving,” Chipman said. “I was surprised at how respectful they were. I think that they realize that this is a car that is trying to do something different.”

Chipman’s wife came up with the name WIND for the car, which stands for “World In a New Direction.” Because “when the car is on, it’s so quiet that you wouldn’t believe it — all you hear is the wind as you ride along,” Laina said.

Electric vehicles are utterly silent when turned on and not in motion because they have no engine, Chipman said.

Additionally, EVs don’t have transmissions, exhaust pipes, a gear clutch or any of the other many trouble-prone components of a gas-powered car, Chipman said.

Chipman’s car runs on four deep-cycle marine batteries that provide the power to run a bike chain, which turns the back wheel.

WIND also has a fully lifted suspension system — Chipman’s own design from a combination of motorcycle and ATV parts — brakes, acceleration, a lighting system with head and taillights and turning lights.

“But no power steering,” Chipman joked.

He has not yet enabled the vehicle to go in reverse, which would require a heavy copper switch to reverse the electrical current and thereby reverse the direction the chain is pulled.

Chipman is still debating whether to add this feature because it would add costly pounds to the vehicle’s lightweight frame; the entire vehicle weighs less than 500 pounds.

Chipman’s garage is a crowded museum of his many projects: some skeletal frameworks resembling amped-up bicycles, fiberglass glider wings that would span 36 feet when pieced together, logbooks in which Chipman documents his daily progress, and an assortment of tools.

An aeronautical engineering graduate from Purdue University, Chipman finds that he jumps from one project to the next, he said.

Now that WIND is mostly complete, he is starting to get itchy to find something new — or give an old project a rebirth, such as making another single-rider glider, he said.

However, first he will step out of the garage and return to the house for an entirely different kind of project: a walk-in closet for his wife.

“I’ve warmed up to the idea,” he said. “It’s going to be nice.”

Spilling The Facts

The United States uses more than 20 million barrels of oil per day, two-thirds

of which is used for transportation.

Petroleum imports cost the U.S. about $5.7 billion a week.

U.S. cars account for 26%, or 1.7 billion tons, of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

From the 2010 Fuel Economy Guide by the U.S. Department of Energy