Blood Shed: a John "Plasma Boy" Wayland & Mitch Medford collaboration
http://green.autoblog.com/2014/06/19/black-zombie-electric-mustang-launches-blood-shed-motors-video/ Black Zombie electric Mustang launches Blood Shed Motors [w/videos] By Domenick Yoney Jun 19th 2014 Hemmings Daily [images http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/801c2a7acf1a346129c1fe1bcda33317/200296424/front+shot+of+222+for+auto+blog.jpg Blood Shed Motors Black Zombie http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/midas/324ec9b1299f2752dff3a3629e38e90e/200300584/rear%2Bshot%2Bof%2B222%2Bfor%2Bauto%2Bblog.jpg Black Zombie EV videos http://vimeo.com/98239632 Zombie222 from Jack LaPenta http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j_21qzOW_HM Zombie 222 from the air. Jack LaPenta· Jun 15, 2014 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4-lK9Jrf2cQ White Zombie Tire Roast Jack LaPenta· Jun 16, 2014 ] Say Hello To The First Of Many Classic Muscle Car EV Conversions As patient zero of Blood Shed Motors, the classic pony car has received a powerful electric transplant. Lightning repeatedly vanquished the darkness like the angriest of strobe lights and thunder shook the building, punctuating the clatter of a heavy Texas rain on the metal roof as the clock ticked away the initial seconds of a rare full moon Friday the 13th. It was then that the Black Zombie came to life for the first time. Beneath the hood of this rust-free 1968 Mustang fastback, a 289-cubic-inch V8 no longer turns gasoline into heat, noise and pollution. As patient zero of Blood Shed Motors, the classic pony car has received a powerful electric transplant, and now boasts twinned Warp 11 DC motors and a pair of fresh Zilla controllers that will serve as the basic blueprint for future vehicles. Dubbed the Zombie 222 drivetrain, the setup will be limited to 750 horsepower in customer's cars to keep the maintenance experience low, and eventually will draw power from a 40-kWh battery pack. In this first example, though, the output is bit more extreme. For one day, at least, they have the 1,500-kW-capable pack that powers the record-setting Swamp Rat 37 racer belonging to Don Garlits and a brief window of opportunity to try it out on a track. Blood Shed Motors is the result of a collaboration between NEDRA co-founder John "Plasma Boy" Wayland, the man who helped bring electric vehicle drag racing to the attention of the world with his unassuming White Zombie Datsun 1200 conversion and Austin, TX business man Mitch Medford, who've put together a small team of experts in their chosen fields. The plan is to build a limited number of muscle car conversions on pristine early Mustang, Camaro, and Barracuda platforms. The plan is to build a limited number of high-quality muscle car conversions on pristine (No restored rust buckets!) early Mustang, Camaro, and Barracuda platforms. Each can be customized according to buyer's wishes and blessed with its own serial number. The price tags will be in the eye-watering $200,000-and-up neighborhood, reflective of the cost and rarity of these cars and the custom nature of the alterations. Of course, you can't just multiply horsepower and add the monster torque that these electric motors put out and expect an antique chassis to hold up. To help keep everything straight and under control in all driving situations – these aren't meant to be quarter-mile queens only, but also enjoyable road machines – the outfit has added subframe connectors and a unique motor cradle that helps stiffen the front end, along with high-performance suspension and other parts. The next evening, the calender still read Friday the 13th as Black Zombie did its first burnout on the asphalt of the San Antonio Raceway, ahead of a couple shakedown runs. There had been no indication to onlookers that the fastback on the track was anything other than what it appeared to be, so as clouds of smoke raised from the spinning rubber, so did eyebrows. Where was the deafening sound? What was powering that thing? A bigger shock was in store, though. As the dragstrip's light tree went green, jaws dropped as the front tires lifted and stayed off the ground for the first 50 yards. A glitch momentarily cut power to the motors and the Mustang seemed to settle. Wayland's foot was still to the floor, however, and so when power somewhat unexpectedly came surging back, the front end again came off the ground despite the 40 miles an hour of forward motion. The car didn't set any records that night. That was not really the aim. Besides, it was not really prepared to go a full quarter mile at life-threatening speeds. (Something about someone who's name rhymes with "pitch" forgetting to reattach a sway bar and no time for a proper front end alignment.) Still, it reassured the Blood Shed bunch that they are on the right track. With the first bit of fun out of the way, the real work begins. Now, with that first bit of fun out of the way, the real work begins. The Black Zombie will be completely disassembled and have every nut and bolt assessed before being reunited with a freshly painted body shell and displayed in front of the crowds at this year's SEMA show. While we wait to see how it all turns out, we have video below of its first launch on the track, along with some burnout footage taken from the air. As an extra bonus, we've thrown in a bit of the original White Zombie – which is also getting a refresh – roasting some tires. [© 2014 AOL] ... http://www.zombie222.com/ 'If you want to get an early place in line or just keep up with the project, the company's first sketch of a website' http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/06/11/amped-up-ponies-electric-mustang-converters-promise-750hp-in-classic-package/ Amped-up ponies – electric Mustang converters promise 750 hp in classic package Daniel Strohl Jun 11th, 2014 [images http://assets.blog.hemmings.com/wp-content/uploads//2014/06/blackzombie_06_2500.jpg (siamese motor) Photo by Steve Berry http://assets.blog.hemmings.com/wp-content/uploads//2014/06/blackzombie_04_2500.jpg (zilla controller) Photo courtesy Mitch Medford ] Traditionally, muscle car enthusiasts and electric vehicle enthusiasts rarely set up camp anywhere near one another. The Venn diagram between the two just doesn’t have that much overlap. One set tends to search for outright horsepower, while the other yearns for environmentally responsible transportation. But a couple of hot rodders hope to bring both groups together under the same roof, starting with an electric Ford Mustang that they predict will run 10-second quarter miles. “We want it to look like it came off the showroom, but still do 0 to 60 in three seconds,” said John “Plasmaboy” Wayland, an EV evangelist who has done his part to spread the word about the performance potential of electric cars for the last 20 years with his White Zombie drag racer. Perhaps the best-known four-wheeled electric drag racer thanks to John’s incessant tinkering with it, plenty of exposure on YouTube trouncing gas-powered cars, and his tireless campaigning with it both on and off the track, the White Zombie – a 1972 Datsun 1200 coupe that John has repowered with siamesed 9-inch electric motors fed by a bank of lithium-ion batteries good for 355 volts – has managed a best of 10.258 seconds at 123.79 MPH in the quarter mile with a 0-to-60 MPH time of 1.8 seconds. And he can drive it both to and from the track. “Some racing electrics have gone quicker and faster than I have, but they’re all track only,” he said. All the expertise and technology that John has developed with the White Zombie, he now intends to put to use first converting a 1968 Ford Mustang to electric power, and then building a business converting classic muscle cars into electric cars good for the street or the strip, with as much as three times the horsepower as stock. For all of John’s enthusiasm for electric vehicles, however, he admitted that the business idea wasn’t his. Instead, it came about nine months ago from Mitch Medford, an Austin, Texas-based tech CEO and muscle car enthusiast with plenty of Texas can-do attitude and entrepreneurial chops who said he sees a market for electric muscle cars. “It’s for the guy who might want to buy or already owns a Tesla but misses his big bad muscle car,” Mitch said. “Through my business, I’ve met plenty of wealthy people through venture funds, and they often tell me that they’d like to have a classic muscle car, but something they can drive without getting messy. What typically breaks on old muscle cars isn’t the suspension or brakes, it’s the carbs and the fuel lines, which we’re eliminating.” Mitch said that while researching his idea, he kept coming across John and the White Zombie, so he eventually reached out to John, who lives in Portland, Oregon, to share his idea. The two naturally hit it off, assembled a team – including fabricator Markco Mongillo, mechanic and restorer Allen Koester, and tech guy Jack Lapenta – and began working in earnest about six weeks ago to bring the idea to fruition. “What John’s doing with electric cars reminds me of what Carroll Shelby did for Mustangs,” Mitch said. No surprise, then, that Mitch and John decided to base their prototype – a car they’re calling the Black Zombie – on one of Ford’s pony cars. Specifically, they chose a rust-free T-code 1968 Mustang fastback that Mitch found in Houston, since re-powered by a 289-cu.in. small-block. “The car was immaculate when we found it,” Mitch said. “All my friends thought I was crazy for doing this to it.” While the White Zombie uses dual 9-inch electric motors, a single Zilla controller, and a 22.7 kilowatt-hour Kokam battery pack, good for about 100 miles of range and 538 horsepower, John has re-engineered the Black Zombie to use dual 11-inch electric motors, dual Zilla controllers, a Gear Vendors overdrive unit, and a 40 kilowatt-hour Kokam battery pack, good for about 120 miles of range. He’s calculated that the Black Zombie‘s drivetrain will produce about 750 horsepower and about 1,800 pound-feet of torque, add about 600 pounds to the car’s total weight with the batteries installed, and endow it with the potential for 3-second 0-to-60 times in addition to the above-mentioned 10-second quarter-mile times. To get that power to the ground, they’ll use Street or Track-developed coilover shocks in the front and a Strange Ford nine-inch axle in the rear hanging from a Street or Track three-link system with Watts link, all set up for the shift in the car’s weight balance. All four corners will run 13-inch brakes, and they’re planning on fitting a rollbar for safety. They even plan to include air conditioning and power steering in the completed cars. John said they chose that specific drivetrain as a compromise between performance and range, but could easily tip the scale in either direction. For instance, they’ve arranged to borrow a 1.5 megawatt battery pack from the electric dragster that Don “Big Daddy” Garlits has already used to set the EV quarter-mile world record and is currently using to try to become the first EV to top 200 MPH in the quarter mile. With that pack, which John and Mitch plan to use to power the Black Zombie on its debut Wednesday night at San Antonio Raceway, the Mustang should put down the equivalent of 1,500 horsepower. “We know we’re going to get tossed after one run, but the battery pack just fell in our laps, so we’re going to try it anyway to see how fast we can go with it before we have to give it back,” Mitch said. After Wednesday night, Mitch said, they should be ready to start taking orders for converted muscle cars, selling them as the Zombie 222 under the business name Bloodshed Motors. “Right now we thought we’d start with Mustangs, keep them limited, and give them serial numbers; then later on we’ll move to Camaros and maybe Challengers,” he said, noting that he already has a pair of 1967 Mustangs – a fastback and a convertible – ready for conversion. “Initially, we’ll supply the cars to convert, then later we’ll convert cars that our customers supply. We don’t want to start with rust buckets or reproduction bodies just because we don’t want to spend the time fixing rust or piecing the car together.” Mitch estimated that if Bloodshed supplied the base car, a conversion would run anywhere from $200,000 to $250,000, depending on how much range the customer wanted. “If the customer brings in a car, we’ll subtract from that price,” he said. “We’d like to supply the cars, though, because we want to make sure we’re starting with a good base of a car – preferably a six-cylinder or a small-block car, so we’re not cutting up a big-block car or something rare.” Down the road, he envisions making the components for the EV conversion – including the motor mounts and rail system that the team has developed – available in kit form. “Our first goal is to build these awesome cars,” he said. “But our second goal is to promote electric propulsion, and making a drop-in system available will help us meet that goal.” As for the White Zombie, the car that brought John and Mitch together, John is concurrently restoring it at Mitch’s shop and should have it presentable in the near future. “I’ve been thinking of reintroducing it at a Wayland Invitational for just electric drag racers,” he said. If so, then maybe the White Zombie will get a fair fight for once. UPDATE (17.June 2014): The Bloodshed Motors site is live now. Also, John and Mitch did take the Black Zombie to the track last Friday, where they got in a couple passes, including one wheels-up launch. [© 2014 American City Business Journals] For all EVLN posts use: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/template/NamlServlet.jtp?macro=search_page&node=413529&query=evln&sort=date http://www.lewistownsentinel.com/page/content.detail/id/531971/Bill-would-OK-Tesla-dealerships-in-Pennsylvania.html?isap=1&nav=5013 Bill would OK Tesla dealerships in Pennsylvania http://www.techtimes.com/articles/8671/20140618/nj-relents-assembly-allows-tesla-to-sell-electric-cars-directly-to-consumers.htm NJ relents. Assembly allows Tesla to sell EVs directly to consumers http://guardianlv.com/2014/06/tesla-motors-causing-uneasiness-in-car-dealers-and-oil-companies/ Tesla Motors Causing Uneasiness in Car Dealers and Oil Companies http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1092795_terrified-of-tesla-nada-launches-campaign-to-tout-benefits-of-franchise-dealerships Terrified Of Tesla, NADA Campaign Touts Franchise Dealership Benefits http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/youngandhungry/2014/06/11/mr-ps-ribs-and-fish-bus-becomes-sausage-centric-d-c-dives/ WashDC Metro's shiny new public EVSE near Mr. P’s Ribs&Fish dive-bus ... http://www.yelp.com/biz/mr-ps-ribs-and-fish-washington + EVLN: EV Love Fest, Tesla & EV makers Are Having Collaboration Talks {brucedp.150m.com} -- View this message in context: http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-Blood-Shed-Motors-Black-Zombie-electric-Mustang-videos-tp4669988.html Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
