A lot of changes have taken place during the last several months. 

My wife, Heidi, and I attended the Wayland Invitational in Portland Oregon.  This event exceeded expectations in so many ways and helped me gain a better perspective regarding Hot Juice Electric, the day job and life. 

 

The Zilla is now back in production!  EV Components will be producing the Zilla controller, under Otmar Ebenhoech’s supervision.  Otmar is the designer of the Zilla and has been producing it through his Café Electric business.  This is very good news for Hot Juice Electric!  The Zilla is, by far, the most powerful, versatile and reliable DC controller on the planet.  The loss of Zilla production would be devastating to progress of electric vehicle advancement.  That is why the return of Zilla production is such good news for Hot Juice Electric!

 

Hot Juice Electric, LLC is now focusing full attention to the Chassis Juicer instead of trying to spread limited time and resources across numerous projects.  This is even more important since Hot Juice Electric is also developing unique tools for testing.  These tools will enhance our research capabilities ensuring rock solid reliability of first run products.  Now, more than ever, the Hot Juice Electric endeavor is to push reliability and durability beyond practical limits.  “Beyond practical limits” means expensive products with very little profit.  That’s why the day job is necessary.  Yes, an over the top, ultra high quality business format may not sound very sustainable, but it hasn’t seemed to hurt Rolls Royce very much.

 

Chassis Juicer progress:

The Chassis Juicer is now in a state of redesign.  This is due to discovering that a chip (integrated circuit) used in the design has been listed as obsolete by the manufacture.  Since the obsolescence rate of chips far outweighs that of discrete components, many of the chips used in the Chassis Juicer design is being eliminated and redesigned using discrete components.  Another benefit to designing with discrete components is the designer has far greater control of the design.  The purpose of chips is to modularize the design process.  While this is very attractive to design engineers, because much of the work is done for them, the cost is control of the circuit design.  Designing with discrete components increase circuit density, makes circuit board layout more difficult and increases cost.  However, none of these are issues regarding Hot Juice Electric’s goal.

 

Maximizing anything is a matter of balancing it with the things that support it.  Balance means that each element supports the other.

 

I would like to thank John Wayland, Jim Husted, Otmar Ebenhoech, Mike Willmon and everyone who attended the Wayland Invitational 2009 for illuminating the necessity of balance.

 

Ken