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Show A-17 ENVIRONMENT EDITOR: Frank Fisher 649-9014 ext.118 educatlon@parkrecord.com SAT/SUN/MONATUES, JULY 7-10, 2007 THE PARK RECORD www.parkrecord.com Inventor designing 24 battery electric truck BRIEFS He wants to tell gas station attendant, "Just charge it." Utah Living With Fire Workshops By FRANK FISHER Living With Fire (ULWF) will be hosting regional "Make Your Space" workshop providing the knowledge and resources to prevent and prepare for disaster from wildfire. The seminar is designed for homeowners, fire officials, government agency employees, planners, contractors and builders, landscape designers, emergency planners and business owners. Among topics covered will be firewise landscaping, building materials and community evacuation planning. An open forum will follow. The Aug. 11 workshop will be held at the Guesthouse at the University of Utah, 110 s Fort Douglas Blvd., Building #365, Salt Lake City. Food will be provided. Businesses and organizations specializing In any product or service related to fire prevention or preparation should register as a vendor to showcase their products. Registration Is limited. Register online at www.utahfireinfo.gov Of the Record staff It may sound like a crazy idea, hooking up 24 golfcart batteries in series to power a pickup, similar to hooking a lawn chair to a birthday-party-full of helium balloons and going for a ride. That is until you see Trace Gordon in action. He seems a perfectionist who works in his orderly garage, and all of the modifications he has made on the newer-model Chevrolet, are machined, fitted and welded with the tolerances expected in a race car. His driveway has two late-model natural gas vehicles that he purchased to do his part for the environment, and now he wants to do more, He is an inventor, having held 12 patents on fitness equipment, and having done pretty well in the process financially, he is turning his talent toward inventing an electric car that he can recharge with solar panels he hopes to mount on his home. Gordon started his career as an inventor literally by accident. In 1985, a bike accident left him with internal injuries, broken femurs and severed vocal chords. He underwent grueling sessions of physical therapy, and it was then that he started thinkingabout exercise equipment. He has been inventing exercise equipment since, some, bought by major companies, are still in production. But, he said, he grew tired of designing exercise equipment and "wanted to do something more beneficial for mankind." The motor he bought is a 144 volt DC power source, which he said is extremely reliable. He said the car will make little noise, use no motor oil, and Jeremy Ranch resident Trace Gordon Is a proven inventor most importantly, produce no emissions. He has trie-powered truck, powered by 24 golf cart batteries framework built into the chassis to hold the 24 batteries, each weighing 65 pounds. He hopes he can wind unfriendly energy source. So, Gordon wants to install out a top speed around 80 miles per hour, and get about 60 solar panels on his home, to both provide supplemental miles to a charge. power to his home and recharge his car. He is currently But what does Gordon know about electric cars? "This working with the Jeremy Ranch Homeowners Association is sort of a new area for me," he admits. He educated him- to get panels approved. self by talking with other people and reading a lot of He believes he will have the electric-powered truck finbooks. He lives on the Jeremy Ranch golf course, but that ished in three months, The controller, which orchestrates had nothing to do with his planned use of golf cart batter- impulses of energy translated from driver input, and sends ies, which instead, he chose because they are well suited pulses of electricity to the motor to control speed, is so for electric cars, and many electric car prototypes have popular with others building electric cars that he is on a successfully used them as a power source. three-month waiting list to get one. But pollution-free batteries have to be recharged, and Gordon is already making environment-friendly plans it is likely the power plant uses an environmentally- connected with solar panels. He said he has several ware- kimballartcenter SARAH AUSE/ PARK RECORD who Is focusing his energies on developing an elechouscs in Salt Lake and he would like to use their roof space to mount solar panels, then lease them to people who could sell the power they generate back to utilities. He sees clean energy as being imperative to the survival on mankind, and hopes the United States will eventually lead the pack in clean energy, but predicts that China could take charge of clean energy cars. Gordon said he has no ambitions of eventually putting his electric car in production, but more to see if he can learn anything new, information he could share with others. "I'm sure there are better ways than the ways we are doing these things," he said. 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