Jay Leno takes us for a stroll around the Concept Lawn at this year’s Pebble Beach car show. He checks out Infiniti’s electric Emerg-E, the Mercedes-Benz Concept Style Coupe and a collector Rolls Royce Coupe from their bespoke program.
What? A Flux Auto post about a bus? Bear with me here. There are a lot of things that make this electric bus interesting. They mostly come from the fact that the Proterra Ecoliner has already been in operation for a year with a 24 hours a day duty cycle. This is made possible by a wireless AC induction charging station that recharges the battery through the roof. It can take the Ecoliner’s battery from 20% to 95% in a mind blowing 10 minutes. The drivetrain consists of a 250 horsepower permanent magnet AC motor by UQM Technologies running through a 2 speed gearbox adapted from offroad racing. The non-conductive body of the bus is made with a balsa wood and fiberglass composite process developed for the hulls of PT boats. The Ecoliner isn’t exciting in the sense that they drift the bus or do a burnout, but it is exciting because it goes to show what EV’s can be capable of when the charging technology and infrastructure get put into place. The Ecoliner addresses a lot of people’s concerns about the future of EV’s and it’s already been running for an entire year.
The CEO and Lead Designer of ICON, Jonathan Ward, stopped by Jay Leno’s garage with their latest creation, the resto-mod Ford Bronco. ICON searches the country for clean Bronco shells and then completely overhauls and upgrades them. The truck now has the 5.0 liter Coyote V8 from the new Mustang under the hood along with a Aisin-Warner transmission, Atlas transfer case, modern solid axles from Dynatrac and Stoptech brakes. All of the lighting has been replaced with LED’s and ICON even worked with the designer that created the Ford GT to re-imagine some of the details and interior trim that were parts bin sourced or overlooked on the original Bronco. It really is modernizing a classic chassis taken to the extreme and it’s a testament to the fact that there is still maniacal attention to detail and high caliber craftsmanship in the modern world.
Bob Lutz stopped by Jay Leno’s garage to show off the product of his latest venture, the VTRUX by Via Motors. The premise is pretty similar to what we’re about here at Flux Auto. Take a desirable vehicle and retrofit it with an electric drive train so it appeals to regular people. Via motors is turning full sized GM trucks, SUV’s and vans into series hybrids similar to the Chevrolet Volt. They have large ( 24kwh) battery packs that are charged by plugging into a 220V outlet. when the battery pack gets low, an on-board gasoline V6 begins turning a generator to recharge the batteries and extend the truck’s range. The trucks are estimated to get 100 mpg while operating in this mobile recharging mode. It’s really the best of both worlds.
My friend J showed me this story. It’s an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage that’s somewhat different from what you’re probably expecting. The car featured is a 1000 horsepower supercharged Plymouth Duster. The car is awesome, but the real story comes from how it came to be. The Duster was built by a man named Paul Annunziata. The project started when Paul won $10,000 from a scratch off lottery ticket. He bought a body in white from Plymouth and then shoehorned a massive 426 Hemi under the hood in order to make a street version of some pro drag cars he saw as kid. Several years later, Annunziata donated the car to Jay Leno when he was diagnosed with lung cancer after making Leno promise that he would never sell it. Instead of paying for the Duster, Jay donated money to the McPherson College in Kansas because it’s the only college left in America with a four year degree program in automotive restoration. Unfortunately Paul has since passed away, but he was able to build this award winning Duster and ensure that the next generation would also have the opportunity to build project cars like his. That’s a legacy that any of us could be proud of.