Ken Norwick’s Electric Saturn, 2003

In 2002, Ken Norwick of Calgary built the first electric car to see street use in Alberta in more than 80 years, as well as the first electric car registered in the province’s vehicle database. In 2003, he spoke with a local morning show about the vehicle and his work.

 

[Brief picture-in-picture of reporter Dave Kelly speaking with a host in studio. Text on screen reads “The BIG Breakfast.” Text at the bottom left of screen reads “8:23 -28°”.]

Kelly: Well now, we’re outside, and Rochelle said it’s windchill of minus 38, but the wind isn’t blowing too hard.

[Static. Cut to shot of Kelly and Ken Norwick standing outside on a snowy downtown street, with a car with an open hood behind them. Occasional titles pop up reading either “Dave Kelly” or “Ken Norwick / Electric Vehicle Creator”, accompanied by the same “The BIG Breakfast” logo.]

Kelly: The Kyoto Accord talks about global warming and trying to keep things energy-efficient and not get so much emissions.

[Gestures at Norwick.]

Kelly: You said to yourself, Ken, “I’m going to go all-out,” and you did. Tell us about this car. It’s electric, are there any emissions at all?

Norwick: No, there’s none coming out of the tailpipe because there is no tailpipe. The emissions are simply transferred to the powerplants and they’re federally regulated so that, um- and they’re inspected all the time so it’s a little easier to control those types of emissions.

 Kelly: Now this is your electric car. You built it yourself, didn’t you?

Norwick: Yes. In my garage, last winter.

[Kelly laughs.]

Norwick: A heated garage.

[Camera zooms in on the open hood space of the car, full of batteries and electronics.]

Kelly: It’s an unbelievable thing. If we take a look inside the hood here, all this looks different than your standard car. Did you tear the entire insides out here to do your version?

Norwick: Yes, the original transmission stays with the car, the drivetrain and the gas motor simply replaced with an electric motor that weighs about 143 pounds, and this box here is the computer that- that drives the power to the motor.

[Cut back to the previous shot.]

Kelly: Now tell me about speed and distance. Does this go as fast as a gasoline car? 

Norwick: Actually, this one’s a 1996 Saturn four-door sedan and it’s much quicker than the original car.

Kelly: No way!

Norwick: And it does about 160 kilometers per hour and can out-accelerate them.

Kelly: So it is quicker. Now, how far can you go before charging up?

Norwick: That’s one of the problems with electric cars. Um, this one goes about 25 miles in the winter. Cars coming out shortly from the car manufacturers will probably triple that range.

Kelly: So about 75 miles they get before a charge.

Norwick: Yes.

Kelly: How long does it take to charge up a car?

Norwick: I charge two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, but, um, I’m sponsored by Calgary Technologies up at the University and they pay for my electrical bill.

Kelly: Which is nice. What would your electrical bill come out like?

Norwick: Typically about 80 cents to a dollar extra every day.

Kelly: So that’s not out of control.

Norwick: No, it’s pretty good, and- and to consider that you’re not polluting while you’re driving down the road.

Kelly: Now, this, uh, if somebody were to- could I do this sort of conversion on my own? Or is this just for an expert to do?

Norwick: No, actually my degree is in experimental psychology, and I have a friend up in Edmonton who’s a doctor and he’s converting an old Citroen.

Kelly: Now tell me about safety in something like this. If I have an electric car is it going to electrocute somebody or what happens if I get into an accident or those kinds of things?

Norwick: No, there’s several safety features built-in to the automobile. One is an inertia cutoff switch here [gestures under the hood] so if the car’s ever hit in an accident, um, it will automatically cut the power to the systems.

Kelly: Now, uh, we’re gonna see if we can show you the backseat there where Jeb’s getting ready to climb in, but there’s a whole pile of batteries in this thing.

Norwick: Yes there’s actually twelve twelve-volt batteries, um, for 144 volts of system voltage in the battery pack.

Kelly: So it takes a fair- uh, you can’t have backseat people in there.

Norwick: Oh, actually, um, I’ve taken the cover off for today, but we have a padded cover and there’s three seats in the back there.

[Cut to closeup of the vehicle’s rear seat from the driver’s side, which has been removed and replaced with a rack of batteries and cables.]

Kelly: So you can actually get in if you need to? Do you have to get tuneups like a regular car? How does that work?

[The co-host, Jeb, leans into the car, pretends to pull on a wire, then glances at the camera and waves his hand in a “no, no” gesture. The camera cuts back to Norwick and Kelly.]

Norwick: Actually there’s no maintenance on this vehicle for about 100,000 miles, and after that it’s a 32-dollar set of brushes that go in the motor.

Kelly: Now if Jeb were to go in there and lick the batteries, what would happen?

Norwick: Uh, he would need a pacemaker later in life. [He and Kelly laugh.]

Jeb [Offscreen]: I’ll do it!

Kelly [Laughing]: Well get him in there!

Norwick: I can tell you what happened there, there’s a big black mark on one of the batteries.

Kelly: Well, that’s, you know, it’s great to have you with us, now…

[Image and sound fade out. Fade in on Renwick and Kelly, with a streetcar passing in the background.]

Kelly: It’s such a beautiful day Ken, how are you?

Norwick: Fine, thank you!

Kelly: Now Ken built an electric car. Tell us a bit about the project. You took a Saturn and what happened?

Norwick: This Saturn was smoking very badly, the motor was burnt out, but I took the gas motor out and replaced it with an electric motor.

Kelly: How long does that take you to do?

Norwick: Uh, it was done over about a three-month period.

Kelly: And now you’ve got yourself an electric car. Does it cost a lot to convert something like this?

Norwick: In this case it did, but, uh, with careful planning you could probably cut it down considerably from what I spent.

Kelly: What would you guess, like if I did it, what would I spend? Ish?

Norwick: Uh, twenty thousand.

Kelly: Twenty thousand? [Laughs] Wow! Okay, but if we did a thousand cars, by the thousandth one…

Norwick: Well, once the manufacturers get involved here the prices of course are gonna come down considerably.

Kelly: Do you see electric cars coming out more and more in the future?

Norwick: Actually you’ll be able to buy a car from Toyota from Ford, a pure electric car by this fall, they’re out in California right now.

Kelly: No kidding, so you can do it. Now a car like this, tell us a bit about the time it takes to get something like this converted. How long, three months you said?

 Norwick: It was three months, it was in the winter, it’d probably be a little less time if it was warmer.

Kelly: Now speaking of warm, how do you keep warm inside something like this?

[Panning shot across the open hood of the car.]

Norwick: Actually over here on the table…

[Camera pans to a small folding table with several mechanical and electrical components laid out on it.]

Kelly: Yup.

Norwick: …Sorry.

Kelly: That’s okay, I’ll dance with you.

[Norwick’s hand moves in to frame, grabbing one of the components as Kelly moves out of the way.]

Norwick: So we have a thing called a ceramic heater here.

[He hands it to Kelly.]

Kelly: Yup.

Norwick: And there’s two of those under the dash and they provide the heat, and they’re approximately 1,500 watts of energy, uh, come out of that.

[Shot of Kelly and Norwick from behind, framing the components on the table.]

Kelly: Does it work as warm as a regular heater?

Norwick: Little bit less but it’s comfortable.

Kelly: You’re okay?

Norwick: Yeah.

Kelly: Today?

Norwick: But- I wear a big coat.

[Kelly laughs.]

Kelly: The truth comes out! [He gestures to another component on the table.] What’s this guy?

[Cut back to the closeup of the table.]

Norwick: This is the original water heater that came from under the dash, and that’s replaced with two of these units here.

[He places the small ceramic heater on top of the much larger water heater.]

Kelly: And then you’re done. And how many batteries you have in your car?

[He gestures to a large battery on the table.]

Norwick: There’s 13 batteries. Twelve of them are in the traction pack and they look like this [He pats the battery] they’re specialized batteries, then the thirteenth one is, uh, is the battery that runs the lights and everything.

[Cut back to shot of Kelly and Norwick.]

Kelly: Isn’t that wild. Tell me about getting this licensed. If you go to the registration, do they care? Does it matter to anyone?

Norwick: You have to get a safety check, um- [He moves backwards towards the car]

Kelly: Sorry, I’ll get out of your way, yup.

Norwick: Where they look at the, uh, the brakes, and the suspension, and then of course there’s nothing to do with the engine. Um, there’s no emissions, other than that it’s just a normal safety inspection.

Kelly: Is it a lot quieter than a regular car?

Norwick: There’s no noise at all when you’re driving other than the road noise from the tires.

Kelly: Can it run a CD player and all that?

Norwick: Oh yeah, and, uh, all the original systems are in there!

Kelly: And they work fine?

Norwick: And they’re just, uh, like normal.

Kelly: Well, see, ‘cause if it’s a quiet car, that means that if you crank the stereo, you can really crank the stereo.

Norwick: You can hear everything just fine.

Kelly: Now, if I’m driving, say, if I’m doing a road trip, can I get to Edmonton and back or no?

Norwick: No, not in this car, but the ones coming from the car manufacturers you’ll be able to do that.

Kelly: Then I’ll keep my eyes open for them but you can do it if you need to.

Norwick: Yeah, they’re coming out in the fall.

Kelly: So this car, right now, if somebody wanted to do a project like this on their own, ‘cause it’s fun, this is good for just tooling around the city.

Norwick: Yes. An urban commuter vehicle.

Kelly: Yeah, it’s- that’s all it’s for.

Norwick: And that’s what it was designed for. I only go five kilometers a day.

[A bar pops up at the bottom of the screen, reading “Website: advancedguard.dbs.org/conversion.”]

Kelly: Now we have a website up, and I’m not sure what the address is ‘cause we’re outside, but do you know what the website is, and do you know what we can get from that.

Norwick: Uh, yes, I have a website with a hundred pages and it describes the whole conversion process and cost and time and all the effort involved and if you just go to a search engine and put in the word “Saturn” and then leave a space and put “EV” for “Electric Vehicle”, uh, you’ll find the site.

Kelly: No kidding. And that’s what you did?

Norwick: Yes, uh, and I get visitors from 12 time zones a day coming to look at the, uh, information.

Kelly: No kidding! How wild is that. Well Ken, it’s a pleasure to have you here on the show with us, good for you!

Norwick: Well thank you very much for having me!

Kelly: What a project! And-