The Electronic Traveler
The First 3000 Miles

[Sparrow's First Test Drive] [Eight Seconds] [About Out of Oil?]

A recent January morning marked the first anniversary of my ownership of a single seat Corbin Motors electric commuter car, the Sparrow, in which I am highly pleased. They say that "Love is blind"...ask any young mother if her newborn is beautiful and she will positively beam at you, even though all new infants look just like Winston Churchill. I would advise, therefore, that you "consider the source" of these comments which follow. I have never before bought a car in response of one of the seven deadly sins, Lust.

It is the greenest green colored car in the whole State of Maine. It is the most senior of all the Sparrows on the road, and was the first to find its way east of the Rocky Mountains from its manufactory at Hollister, California. I have driven it 3000 miles this year, 81 miles in one day the farthest. My usual driving involves about 23 miles each day, which is pretty close to average for the American commuter. Long distance trips are still taken with the help of the world's dwindling supply of ancient solar energy from carbonaceous underground oil.

Mine, being a 1440 pound Beta car, is already a technological antique, and its Sparrow 2000 successors are a great leap forward, probably good for up to a 60 mile run on a single charge, more than enough distance for over eighty million American solitary commuters who live an average of 18 miles from work. "Lima Bean", my early-tech beloved transporter, was one of about 30, a hand built developmental model, and has what I realize is an unexpected motor-to-wheel ratio, which could probably push it up into the 100 mile per hour speed class where neither of us really belongs. Its short wheel base, combined with my fading reflexes could be poor combination if pushed to the extreme.

Wilbur and Orville's first flight went only 80 feet, required sitting on the wing, and there were no complimentary beverages or peanuts. The Sparrow was born out of Mike Corbin's fertile brain and delivered almost fully developed. What I have learned with "Lima Bean" in frigid Maine has been fed back to the factory, and from mine and many other sources, the current production, Sparrow 2000, has some additional features.

On a single charge, at top legal highway speeds, blending with the outlaws and law abiding, pushed hard, my "Lima Bean" goes about 42 hilly miles, when its batteries are summer warmed, and in the chill of the winter, will only carry me half that far.

Thoughtless me. I will wrap batteries in a blanket of insulation and they will warm themselves during recharging and stay warm under the covers. A California car probably didn't know it is wise to bring a winter coat to Maine. A warm battery is a happy battery. Each of my batteries will also sit on a thermal/electric shore power bottom warmer to cope with a wicked Maine winter climate, contributing to a temperature stabilizing "flywheel" effect, also a symbiotic contribution to cabin comfort and luxury. .

This Sparrow is in no way like your great-great-grandmother's Columbia Electric car, popular a century ago, one in which a lady of those times sat unbendingly erect dressed in matching black, imprisoned in corsets and sometimes inside a high glass box, clutching a tiller for steering, her car humming sotto voce down the cathedral lane of arching elm trees on her way to buy a newspaper which concerned itself with the exploits of Col. Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders in far off Cuba.

Now, a full century later, this Sparrow goes, to my own certain knowledge, perhaps more than the 75 miles per hour (the most I had once attained during a passing situation on the Freeway). The 1440 pound power Sparrow enjoys hills, and whensoever the driver wishes to increase speed, upslope or downslope, all that is required is to push down further on the accelerator, and it excels! The Sparrow leaves the choice to the driver. "Go as fast as you want, but remember, your energy supply is finite!" It does better power climbing hills than any of my petroleum gulpers. But push it up to a steady unrelenting 75-80 miles per hour, and you'll be all done in way less than half an hour. Sure it can do illegal speeds, but that's not what it is made for! Its made to get the wise driver to work in half time, slipping past the faltering herd, a clever, legal solitary speeder in the diamond lane set aside for carpoolers and busses. Sparrow is fully occupied, with one driver in one seat, to earn the right to the diamond lane . (The nearest diamond lane to my house is about 200 miles away)

During my first couple of months I drove like a juvenile delinquent, passing any and all cars not traveling at (at least) the posted speed limit. In one spectacular ploy I passed four cars at once, all in a row, and then I passed a couple of blondes in a top down convertible at one of my favorite coasting slopes (topographic surfing), in retribution for their having blasted by me earlier, but I passed them coasting with both of my feet flat on the floor, and not spending a single watt. I can coast for two miles in one stretch while maintaining the legal speed limit (and a little more!).The energy I spend in climbing a hill is not lost, its a gravitational investment which will pay back going down the other side. Gashawgs suck gas going uphill and downhill. My model Sparrow does not regeneratively brake, so I don’t waste any gravity I have bought. I just let it roll.

I suppose I drove madly just because I wanted the world to know that the electric car was just as good as any other machine out there. (Better, damn it!) Finally I came to my senses and posted a message inside over the windshield visor, where only I can read it, which insisted "Don't Be a Pass Ass!" Now I often drive a little below the posted limit, as long as there is no one tailgating in my rear view mirrors. No more rubbing their noses in "performance". But, on the other hand, what an empty triumph it must be for them to say, "I passed an electric car today."? (Yah, so what? ..but I could have blown their doors off!) Why hurt gashawg driver's feeling…it just makes them more insecure, angry and they go out and buy something even bigger, gargantuan no longer being enough.

An adrenaline rush, the kids talk about? The "Secret Life of Walter Mitty", is a short story about a middle aged daydreamer and fantasizer with a type A thundercloud of a wife, some of the best humor by James Thurber. It's hero, Walter, is personified, alive and well in Maine, driving a small flash of bright green on patrol through the clouded highways, looking for the lumbering "enemy" SUV. The Green Baron. Flies again! Move over, Snoopy!

My Sparrow's speed of choice for economy is anywhere in the 45-55 mph range. Out here in rural-land I am not held back by urban clogged arteries, so speed selection is up to me, not dictated by the flatulent iron majority, jammed amidst 10,000 other drivers doing a metal imitation of glacial ice flow. (Unless you city drivers use the almost empty diamond lane, for which the single seat Sparrow qualifies. If so you can go like a relative bat out of hell to and from work, humming, not swearing, blood pressure at 120 over 80, getting there first to pick a prime spot in the parking lot and noted by "management" as an always remarkably punctual smug wiseass.)

Serious hill climbing? Last Fall I was given the opportunity to drive my Sparrow up the breathtaking and vehicle tormenting New Hampshire Mt. Washington Auto Road, to the highest summit in the northeast's White Mountains. Some stretches have grades up to 22 percent. I was also allowed to start my ascent before the road was officially open on a September Sunday morning. Thus there would be no lumbering "gashawgs" in my way, no SUVs plodding like a column of trunk to tail circus elephants around the curves and switchback on the way to the 6288 foot summit. I could let my little bird Fly!

Most petroleum powered pollution pooters take about 45 minutes to reach the top of the Mountain. I paused three times to quickly take notes from my instruments, and still reached the top in about 20 minutes driving time. When I arrives I was all alone, not another car in sight, veils of thin cloud whipping by in the high winds, fluttering and feathering the pointy summit like Sally Rand's burlesque fans.

Single seater? What a shame space is limited so that you can't take your querulous in-laws or your yappity kids with you! In a world where nobody seems allowed to disconnect for even a moment, where other people's noise is with us always, and cellphone implants must be close in our future, we will just have to brace ourselves for those few commuting moments of solitude, and try to discover how Henry David Thoreau could have possibly enjoyed being a hermit at Walden Pond. Leave your cell phone turned off, if you can.

I am often asked to demonstrate my Sparrow at some distance from my home, (summertime parades in particular) and since the Sparrow form and function is Commuting, not interstate cruising, I arrive at the distant demo site with it fully charged, having driven it onto a trailer hauled behind my 1985 Mercedes 300D petroleum sipper. Recently I needed to replace the Mercedes muffler and tail pipe as it had begun to bellow like a bull. The bill was $600.

Then I bowed low to look under the Sparrow, and there was no metal plumbing there to be changed, just a smooth flat belly with no navel. Nor do I have to change oil, or replace spark plugs, or pass an emissions inspection, or have a tuneup, or check my anti-freeze. My batteries are sealed so I don't worry about watering them. Every now and again I stop at my friendly Texaco station to check my tire pressure, and not wanting to be a freeloader, I will buy a gallon of windshield washer solution or some such triviality to appease the owner and to keep my credit card from mold. So far I have collected six extra gallons of windshield washer solution, stored in the trunk of the Mercedes.

Last winter I frequently drove the Sparrow shortly after snowstorms, having waited for the plows to clear the asphalt. Since the Sparrow has a single drive wheel in the rear and two steering wheels up front, I don't try to compete with the hulking Yuppie transvestite trucks with all four of their knobby fat tired wheels clawing in fresh snow. My motto has become, "Don’t go out in four wheel drive weather in a one wheel drive car….that isn't what its for!" Maybe six or eight days a winter I will use petroleum engined vehicles for slush mushing, my Mercedes as a snowdrift battering ram. The Sparrow's single rear wheel must push the two non-traction front wheels plowing through the deep snow, and given all the power available, a lead foot driver will probably spew out a 40 foot rooster tail from the rear wheel every time the Sparrow takes off. This is a handy technique to deal with the impatient guy revving behind me at a traffic light. He honks, I slam my foot down in alarm….damn!…I jet six bushels of slush onto the hood of his tin abomination…..sorry about that!

In seeing just how far I could push the Sparrow on cold road slime, I had the rear tire studded to cope with the film of ice under the snow, and this was only small help. And as I also drive a John Deere tractor in summertime to hay out at the farm, I have known that more traction is possible by liquid filling tires for added tread weight. So I put 2.5 gallons of windshield washer solution inside the rear tire, for the 20 pounds of extra weight. No worry about freezing due to its anti-freeze components. Harmless to rubber, I believe. The liquid seems to be self balancing, and I want to believe that I have also created a hydrostatic gyroscope as the tire spins. It "seems like" it has helped with stability when only one front wheel at a time hesitates on hitting a diagonal icy patch or a ridge of gritty sand and salt left behind when the snowplows have swung around a corner.

Warm? Best heater I have ever had! I believe the electric heater in the Sparrow cabin is about 1.2 kilowatts and due to the small cubic footage requiring heat, and foam insulation in the composite structure, the heater is very effective. Once underway I click two rocker switches on the instrument panel and immediately warm air blows onto my hands clutching the steering wheel and begins to warm the cabin. Usually within a quarter mile of travel I find I am warm enough to shut off the heat. In my petroleum car I often travel into the next town before the engine has produced enough wasted energy heat to have any effect. How is it in winter? Just fine, thank you. And short trips in cold weather don't lead to exhaust system rot. like with gashawgs.

Fogged up windshield from my heavy excited breathing is a small problem I am working on, particularly if I track in a lot of snowmelt onto the cockpit carpet and the cabin air becomes very moist. On the Beta Sparrow I find a small squeegee takes care of the problem.

Air conditioning? Nope. Good ventilation and in Maine the whole state is air conditioned by Mom Nature. The cabin ventilates nicely without wind buffeting my ear drums

Cost of operation? (I have a separate outdoor sub-meter so I can check EV electric usage). I live in a state with expensive electricity, "currently" 15 cents per kilowatt hour. Nevertheless, my Sparrow adds only about $24 a month to my household bill which I can pay from a surprising sudden surplus in my gasoline budget, left over from reduced gasoline purchases. That is about what I would pay for a single filling of my fossil fueled car's gas tank, and I can't get a month of driving from just one filling, far from it!. If I lived in a state where electricity was the cheapest (some may be 1/5^th the price I pay) I could expect to pay a month's total of only $4.80 to drive every day ….for the whole month. How would 161 "miles per gallon" sound to you? A clever Sparrow dealer could advertise free electricity for the first year and then have to shell out only $60 to cover the offer! SUV dealers please copy?

Battery charging. As originally delivered the Sparrow came with a dual voltage automatic battery charger which allowed me to plug in to either 115V or 230V, the charger would sense the voltage, take it into account and complete the charging process all by itself. 230v charging takes about 2 hours, plus a little optional tapering. 115V takes about six hours. I had always used the 230v until the original battery charger quit. Wanting to check an all 115v system, that is what I asked for as a warranty replacement.

I much prefer the speed and efficiency of the 230V, but the 115v system allows me to recharge anywhere, at any outlet, so when I go out of state to visit my grand-children I don't need to rewire their house for 230v. Apparently the Corbin Motors Company plan is to complete development of a dual voltage charger, and in my opinion, that ought to be the standard.

Maybe I could also make some arrangement with the phone company for backup charging. Every lighted phonebooth must have 115v somewhere, and I would be happy to drop a quarter in for a nickel's worth of their juice. Or on my pre-paid calling card? How about that, Ma Bell?

With dual voltage charging there would never be a need to snake a 50 foot extension cord down into a cobwebbed cellar to find the 230v dryer outlet. (In a year's driving I have never run out of "juice") And when I get dumb enough to get caught out on the road in a discharged state, I won't have to knock on the door and ask the lady of the house if I can "rewire her panel". This could lead to a dangerous misunderstanding.

Actually, the whole question of on-the-road charging is moot. In a year's driving I have never, never, never run out of power. I have a scanning "E-Meter" on the instrument panel which tells me how much "gas" I have and how much reserve remains. My usual driving each day seldom uses half of the energy available. And if I ran out on the road, I would be embarrassed one, not my Sparrow. I don't want anyone passing my exhausted bird parked on the shoulder, rolling down his chauvinistic window and yelling 'GET A SUV!" (He drives a dinosaur and doesn't even know it!)

Last year the world consumed 23 billion barrels of oil, but found only 6.7 billion to replace what is being "expended".

And at home I have metered outside service to both my Sparrow and my 25 year old Corbin Gentry Electric Motorcycle, my 26 year old Sebring Vanguard electric Citicar, my aged Aurenthetic electric minibike, etc. etc. etc.. I am a rolling museum!

As a travel "appliance" the Sparrow cost me a little less per month than my home's electric water heater, a little more than my electric clothes dryer. And not too far from my house is a millpond with a 13 foot high dam, and I am eyeing it, speculating that the century old overshot waterwheel up in my attic might be put back to use, twirling a generator, thus assuring me that not a single electron is temporarily imprisoned on board at the expense of a breathable world atmosphere. 100% pure sustainable energy can be produced by the gravitational attraction of falling water, drawn to our earth..

The Sparrow costs me a bit more, not in dollars (it now sells for $13,900), but the cost is in lost time. It takes three minutes to drive to the post office, but 35 minutes of conversations to get from my parking place through the door of the building to get my mail. I have had people follow me home to ask about the Sparrow. Same thing happens at the hardware and grocery stores. I meet admirable people every day who might otherwise have never spoken.

The first week I had my Sparrow I decided to take it to the local IGA store to buy a loaf of bread I really didn't need, wanting to see what kind of a reaction "Lima Bean" would produce among my friends and neighbors. I selected the bread, but when I got to the checkout counter, I was the only person left in the store…everyone else was outside in a cluster around my pride and joy. I had to go outside to get a clerk to wait on me, and that effort alone took about ten minutes. Other shoppers headed for the store just added to the cluster around my "Lima Bean". Like more bees swarming to the honey.

Since I am a 71 year old widower, I have found this machine is the best of all possible traps to catch the attention of 71 year old "chicks", otherwise reticent women who fearlessly approach my car and engage me in smiling conversation. As a social icebreaker it is several times more effective than taking a puppy to the park.

The Sparrow threatens no one, and on the highway, after a year of public exposure, there are still a lot of oncoming cars who will blink their lights as we pass each other, a fair amount of frantic waving, a little timidly discrete waving like Queen Elizabeth's wrist swiveling gesture, an occasional double blast on the air horn from 18 wheelers, and EVERYBODY smiles, some point, and the first timers all seem to be jaw dropped open mouth breathers. If my long distance telephoto eyesight was better I bet I could clearly see their startled tonsils.

Columns of motorcyclists out for Fall or Spring rides universally salute the Sparrow (which registers as a motorcycle), arms up and ALL the fingers extended in what I understand to be "high five".. Most bikers don't smile, as we mutually agree that the serious travel we are doing is very pleasant…like the teenager who's first sex experience was "the most fun I ever had without laughing out loud!".

For Halloween this year I am thinking of green facial makeup and snap on head band antennae, a "Man from Mars"costume….I wonder if that would be too dangerous? Some believe it is their patriotic duty to shoot all extra-terrestrials on sight. It might, on the other hand, be the only way the man-on-the-street could gain access to our "Take me to your Leadership" and thus replace the $10,000 campaign contribution as the token for entrance to their elite subway station by instead exciting politician's curiosity rather than their compulsive financial nymphomania.

"AGH! Legislation!" Quite a few states require wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle, at least for first year riders. But the Sparrow IS a helmet, a whole body helmet. And if a grandmother wanted to drive a Sparrow, in some states she would need to pass license testing for motorcycles. Should she borrow her grandson's Harley to take the test, and what if her legs are too short?

When the Automobile was first introduced some political domains (all of Great Britain for one) required that each auto be preceded by a man on foot, waving a red flag, or carrying a red lantern at night, to warn the dominant traffic, skittish horses. It would appear that in some cases descendants of those original Jesse Helms style legislators still sit in family seats under the State capital rotunda, insisting to this day that all motor cars must have "dashboards" to keep mud out of the lap, and whip sockets for speed control when being towed by horses.

Although electric vehicles as a class can benefit from a substantial federal tax credit, the law demands four wheels, and the Sparrow, not matter how much better it demonstrates "form following function", has been ruled ineligible. When I wrote to the IRS asking why a three wheeled electric vehicle did not qualify, after a long wait one of their lawyers responded, "because three wheeled electric vehicles do not qualify".

Other Impediments to Innovations? On arrival in Maine for the first time the Sparrow would need a motorcycle license plate, and to get that, first must come an insurance policy. I asked four insurance companies (AAA, GEICO and two others) for a quote. All refused, "because the Sparrow is TOO NEW!" Three banks, asked about financing the purchase also join in the chorus, chanting "TOO NEW". Finally, in rural low risk Maine I was able to get a liability policy at better than three times the rate for populous and dangerous California.

A country which allows its insurance and banking industries unquestioned veto power over Innovation is in subtle but serious trouble. (Are you listening Warren Buffett?) If they had been so dominant during the time of Wilbur and Orville Wright, Seattle would now still be a small slumbering railroad town instead of a home for Boeing. Meanwhile, SUV's bully smaller cars our highways, they are everywhere like runaway Kudzu vines, bursting from the seedpod showrooms to obscure the landscape. They desecrate the wilderness.

"How does the Sparrow handle?"

Driving the Sparrow is neither like riding a motorcycle, nor driving a car. My beta Sparrow came equipped with special low resistance, easy rolling tires, very narrow high pressure tires, with minimal amounts of tread in contact with the road and thus reacts more like a ballerina up on her toes than a tank. Accustomed as I have been since 1944 to driving vehicles that handle like a cast iron hippopotamus with bungee cords for reins, I have found the Beta Sparrow's steering to be "crisp". It is close to mind control, as in the Latin expression "Cognito, ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am". I think about changing to the left lane, and that's where I am, with just a twitch of the fingers and no flailing of elbows! As in riding a well trained cow pony, it is not necessary to saw at the reins. Instead pressure is used, and watching the steering wheel out of the corner of my eye, I don't seem to be able to catch it in the act of moving. Given the power ratio to weight and potential speed of my delightful Sparrow, I try to avoid its envelope of aerobatic potential without violent maneuvers. No rubber donut marks on the asphalt in the middle of the night. The Red Baron of World War One fighter fame flew a Fokker Tri-plane which also handled crisply, and in it he scored many victories, but except for his last flight, he paid attention to what he was doing.

But the new improved Sparrow 2000 has different tires and suspension. I drove it recently at Hollister, out on the Freeway, taking it up to 75 miles per hour and then sawing the wheel to check its stability. From "crisp" it has become "sharp and steady", very sportscarlike. I liked it. But I see little wrong with my senior Beta machine, even though my septuagenarian reflexes are somewhat attenuated.

Surprisingly, on meeting a high speed 18 wheeler coming at me on a two lane road, I had expected some buffeting when I passed through the compressed air bow wave thrown up by the truck, but the Sparrow penetrates the pressure wave neatly without tendency to wander.

Cross winds bothered me at first, since I felt I had to be steering all the time, in order to counter blasts from on the beam. And then one day, driving in the tatters of a passing storm, I noted one of Detroit's finest gashawgs upside down in the ditch as I passed, its four fat tires pointing toward the sky, illuminated by flashing blue lights. This restored my confidence in three wheeled transport.

Nevertheless, I pay the same attention to driving my Sparrow that I would lavish on a brand new fantasy illicit lover (which this small sweatheart may very well be for us energy perverts).

From outside the passing Sparrow makes no noise. I lack a local source for the purchase of a Bermuda carriage bell in order to warn pedestrians, and do not want to startle little old ladies laden with groceries, who are sometimes inclined to step blindly and suddenly off the curbing into the roadway, unaware of my silent glide. I fear that tooting the discrete Sparrow horn would suddenly qualify their resulting startled grocery bag toss for Olympic hammer throw team membership. So I bought an electronic doorbell at the hardware store, which will "ding-dong, ding-dong" gently to let them know I am approaching otherwise in stealth. I am a good humored man, and I hope they will be too.

Sound inside the Sparrow sometimes puts me in mind of how a mouse might feel who has taken up residence inside an accoustic guitar body. I had expected it to be as noiseless inside as out. On my Beta Sparrow the motor noise resonates to a degree, enough so that I notice. My damaged hearing from Korean War cannon fire, can't detect high frequencies or home in on the ringing of a telephone bell, but can detect low frequency and otherwise sub-audible sounds. What is strange is noticing all the odd car noises I was never privileged to hear before as they have been heretofore hidden by the internal combustion engine's growl.

The Sparrow shock absorbers must be lubricated from time to time, else I hear what sounds like the cry of wild geese in flight as the springs rub on the barrel when I turn into my elevated driveway,.

With windows down in the summer, there is a surprising lack of wind noise and the buffeting isn't felt on the ears, but the breeze brushed me near the back of the head instead, nice for air conditioning. So I can hear my CD player without distortion.

And I can tell you the condition of my brake pads, because I can here them.

So I have purchased a CD-ROM of military march music which I often play while driving along. I wish I had the nerve to use Rosini's William Tell Overture, the Lone Ranger themesong of early radio, but I am afraid it would cost me independent control of the ball of my foot. My two favorites Sparrow marches are STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER, since the Sparrow is American designed and made, POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE, my high school graduation marching music, because form finally follows function, and AT LAST WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE!

We American's consume our own weight in petroleum products, each of us every week! We need to be looking around for a car of the future.

[Sparrow's First Test Drive] [Eight Seconds] [About Out of Oil?]