Michigan man hacks scooter to run on PV panels; makes 20-mile round trip regularly

Jon » 31 May 2007 » In Clean Energy, Solar »

Don Dunklee of Davison, Michigan has tricked out his scooter so it runs on PV panels.  Looks like   - unfolded - the scooter takes up a space about as wide as a typical automobile parking space.

dunklee-solar-scooter-picture_7.jpg

Apparently his children - three, late teens and early twenties - are embarassed to be seen with him.  We wonder if they’re also embarassed to take gas money from him.

 Via Wired Blog.      Here’s Dunklee’s how-to.

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2 Comments on "Michigan man hacks scooter to run on PV panels; makes 20-mile round trip regularly"

  1. Jon
    JennyGage
    31/05/2007 at 2:10 pm Permalink

    Careful about that royal ‘we,’ Jon. I was just recalling with my own Dad this weekend how terribly embarrassing it was when his first inklings of self-sufficient green-ness came over him in the early 80s. There I would be standing at the bus stop with all those kids who never really liked me anyway, and there he would come pedaling by (dress pants rubberbanded to his shins, tie tucked in between the buttons of his white shirt) on a 3-speed Raleigh tricked out with a moped engine assist. It’s true that as his cycling hobby and environmental motivations evolved, I benefitted: in high school he often let me take his car to school, I’ve more recently more or less inherited a Prius, I and later my husband were given very fine bicycles with all the fixings, and he’s installing solar panels on the family home now, so gifted energy credits are likely on their way. Still and all, it is the developmental task of teens to begin to break their dependence on the family by shifting their allegiance to peers, so it’s not necessarily easy to be the child of an iconoclast.

  2. Jon
    JennyGage
    31/05/2007 at 2:11 pm Permalink

    JG

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