Allison Sheridan Drove the EV1

[00:00:21] Hello everyone and welcome to Kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles, renewable energy, autonomous driving, and much, much more. My name is Bodhi and I am your host. And on today's episode, we have a little chat with Allison Sheridan. And this was not planned. This morning, Allison sent me a text and she said, Hey, I was listening to your interview with Kim Lundgren. And do you know, because Kim and I talked about how she had an EV1 for a little bit or had the use of an EV1.

[00:00:52] And Allison, did I ever tell you about my experience with an EV1? And the answer is no. But we know now because Allison shared it with us. So I was like, you know what, this is going to be the episode today. One, because I got a lot of stuff to do today and I've already done a lot of stuff already today. So since this is done, this is what's going to go out.

[00:01:16] But two, it's just always fun to catch up with Allison. Like genuinely one of my favorite people to talk to. It's a conversation. She does my homework for me. She makes recording this podcast super easy. Her and Steve and a bunch of other people as well.

[00:01:33] Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm almost forgetting. We had another fun topic that I'll save for a surprise. But we talked about the EV1 for a little bit and then we kind of transitioned into something that has nothing to do with this show whatsoever. But I happen to find fascinating. So having said all that, let's go ahead and welcome Allison to the show. Hey, Bodie. Nice to see you again.

[00:01:56] Nice to see you. It's been a minute since we've actually chatted. I think it's been since Vegas that we've sort of been face to face to chat. Yeah. Oh, wow. Well, I had to horn in and say, can I come on and talk again? I had stuff to say. Well, actually, you know, that's not true. You said, hey, did I ever tell you about my EV1 experience? And we've been friends for seven years and no, you have not.

[00:02:22] That's surprising. I try to repeat all of my stories at least 12 times in the first seven years. And I've heard many of them 11 times. So but this is the first time I'm going to hear this one. So how did you get an opportunity to drive or play with an EV1? Well, the reason I brought this up was you interviewed and what was her name? Kim Lundgren. Kim Lundgren. And she was talking about her experience with the EV1. That was a great interview, by the way. I love that.

[00:02:51] But so I started working for Hughes Aircraft Company in 1978 and I stayed with the company for 35 years. And during that time, they got bought and sold a whole bunch of times. In 1985, they got purchased by General Motors and it was not a successful collaborative thing. It didn't really come of anything. They did some cool laser stuff for being able to follow cars at safe distances and that kind of thing.

[00:03:18] But it all fell apart because, I don't know, two giant bureaucracies don't do well together, I guess. But around 1995 or so, GM built a prototype of the EV1. And they were trying to get excitement going. Oh, and this was collaborative with the El Segundo Culver City area Hughes Aircraft people. Actually, down in Datorrance, we had some people working on it and I got to work on it a little bit. And they wanted to get excitement going with the executives about this new fancy electric vehicle they were going to build.

[00:03:48] So they built this prototype. And since I was a girl engineer, my super respectful boss thought, you know what, she can shuttle the executives around to do the test drive. I'm an actual engineer. But okay, that's fine. So there's something to know about Hughes. It was founded by Howard Hughes, who was an American aviator, amongst other things. And Hughes Aircraft plant in Culver City only ever built one plane, the Spruce Goose.

[00:04:16] So Hughes Aircraft is kind of a misnomer. But there's a whole other story, if you want to get into it later, about what the Spruce Goose. But it doesn't have anything to do with the subjects of Kilowatt. So anyway, it's Culver City Hughes plant. Howard built the longest privately owned airstrip in the world at the time. It was 1.8 miles long, 2.9 kilometers. So that was apparently for his personal planes, because it didn't have anything to do with the Spruce Goose, the only plane he ever built.

[00:04:44] I thought it was because the Spruce Goose was so heavy that that was the only way it would get off. I did know that they, and this is all coming from a movie. Don't steal that part of the story. Oh. Don't steal that part of the story, because we're going to go off to the Spruce Goose later. But yeah, no, it never went on land. So it didn't have anything to do with that. This was just his own personal private runway. He did three, I think, transcontinental flights that he was famous for.

[00:05:13] He almost died in a plane crash, a lot of different things. But yeah, he was a big plane guy, so I think he was probably doing it for his own plane. But anyway, this privately owned airstrip, which was no longer being used as an airstrip, was where they were going to let the executives drive the EV1. So my executive drove the car, and the guy running the program said, well, do you want to drive it too? What do you think Allison said? I would imagine you said, nah, this isn't something that's going to interest me in the future. No, no. Yeah, I wanted to do it.

[00:05:41] Yes, pick me, pick me, pick me. So I have two distinct memories from it, and one of them was that this prototype had a dial where you could dial in or down the regenerator braking. Oh, cool. I thought that was an interesting idea, because some people, for some reason, don't like regenerator braking, but maybe they'd like to have some of it. They could have a dial on it, but I don't think most people would probably understand what it was doing or why you would want more of it.

[00:06:09] But anyway, I dialed it all the way up, and then I punched the accelerator. And as soon as I got up to speed, I let off the accelerator completely to come to a full stop. And I did it again, and I did it again. I did a little bit of feathering in and out to just see what it felt like, but mostly I was just punching it, screeching to a stop, punching it, screeching to a stop. And the program guy that was with me just completely freaked out,

[00:06:34] because he said all of these executives were like these old guys that would just get in and kind of, well, it didn't make noise, I guess, but, you know, putter up and down the runway, and they never stress tested the car at all. And he was really kind of surprised that I was as aggressive with it as I was. But it was really, really fun. You know, I do have a question about this, and it relates to today.

[00:06:58] But how did you have the foresight to agree to get in the car and do this so that we could have the interview today? That is some amazing foresight. Well, you know, Bodhi, I've always been thinking about where I could best contribute to your show, and you bring this kind of thoughtful information to you. No, I appreciate that. And my 21-year-old self appreciates that, because I was just getting smashed every night. So I wasn't, I had no foresight.

[00:07:26] Oh, I did the same thing, by the way. I had an opportunity, Steve and I both got to do this, to drive the Tesla Roadster. And it's a long story how that ended up happening. But I scared the guy that I was driving it with. There was a point where I needed to turn left, and there were cars coming. But I had felt what the car could do, and so I just hit it and went right in front of these cars. And he freaked out. He thought I was going a little aggressive. And I said, well, the car was fine.

[00:07:55] This was the original Roadster. Yeah, yeah. The first one. Yeah. I mean, still, the first one, by today's standards, not the same pickup that your car has, the Model 3 Performance. But still, quite a bit. Oh, interesting. Yeah. No, I don't think, I think the original Roadster was still in, now I've got a little kid up. Mike and Vamp while you do that.

[00:08:18] But I definitely bought the Tesla Model 3 Performance because I love fast acceleration. I don't speed, oddly enough. I go from zero to 35. I love going in front. I love it when some jerk goes flying around me up to the stoplight, and then I smoke them at the light. I enjoy that quite a bit.

[00:08:42] So it looks like the first generation Roadster had a couple of zero to 60s. Man, I'm looking on the Wikipedia, and I just lost it. Where did it go? It's finally happened. You heard it here. Bodie's finally lost it. As we've already discussed before we started recording, my brain's not working so good today. Uh, let's see. What the heck? You're supposed to be going doo-doo-doo. Doo-doo-doo.

[00:09:12] Allison, I told you I gave a presentation today, and without thinking about it, I made that noise. I was like doo-doo-doo-doo. Anyway. Um, I was told it was a- You could have asked perplexity this question a lot faster. 10 out of 10 presentation today, by the way. Um, okay. Well, that's what I was told. Um, I made fun of the city manager, so that was a good way to start it. Uh, zero to 60, 3.7 or 3.9 seconds, depending on the- Wow.

[00:09:42] Yeah, mine's- yeah, you're right. Huh. So it's still fast. I mean, there's no- no shame in the game. It's faster than my car. Mine's 3.1. So, yeah, no wonder I love my car. Yeah. No slouch. Do you want to go completely off topic and talk about the Spruce Goose? Because I have a fun story about that. I mean, I've already tried to, so let's go ahead and jump into it. So, the Spruce Goose was a massive flying boat.

[00:10:11] Uh, it was created by, uh, Howard Hughes. It was built by a Hughes aircraft during World War II. And its purpose was going to be as a transatlantic flight transport vehicle. And, uh, it's an important point that it was not made out of spruce. It was made out of wood, but it was made almost entirely of birch. But I think the word birch didn't work with- I don't know if you couldn't- All the names they came up with that started with another B sounded nasty. So they went with Spruce Goose. So, Howard built the prototype, which, by the way, is the largest seaplane ever built in the history of time.

[00:10:41] And to this day, it had the largest wingspan of any aircraft other than the twin fuselage straddle launch that came out in 2019. That was one of those big glider sort of planes. It was made- I think it was made to go around the world without stopping or something like that. I forget. But the Spruce Goose wingspan, if you look up Spruce Goose and 747, you'll see diagrams people love to draw of how big the Spruce Goose wingspan is compared to a 747. It's massive, way, way bigger than 747.

[00:11:12] So, back to the flight. Oh, so the prototype only flew once, and that was on November 2nd, 1947. And Howard was at the controls as it flew for 26 seconds. It got 70 feet off the water, and it went about a mile at 135 miles per hour. And that was down in Long Beach Harbor. Okay. So, yeah. So, it never was on the runway, and it also was never flown again after that. That was the end.

[00:11:40] And the program was canceled. But now, why am I telling you this story? You could have all read out of Wikipedia. In 1979, I was working as a student engineer for Hughes Aircraft. This is before the EV-1 stuff happened in the 80s. And Dave Grant was a hydraulics engineer in the same group. And he came out of his office one day, and he says, hey, everybody, they're selling the Spruce Goose to the Rather Corporation, and today's the last day I can give you a tour.

[00:12:08] And I looked at him, and I was like, Dave, why would you give us a tour of the Spruce Goose? What did you have to do with it? And he goes, oh, I didn't tell you. I was a co-pilot on that flight. What? Yeah. And I said, Dave, I didn't know you had your pilot's license. And he said, I didn't. And that's why he let me be in the co-pilot seat, because he wasn't cleared to take off. Howard wasn't. And he didn't want anybody else to take the controls. And there's no way Dave was going to, because he didn't know how to fly. Isn't that crazy? Oh, crazy.

[00:12:38] Also brave and kind of stupid. Yeah. He did a lot of stupid things. But so anyway, I was like, okay, he wants to take us on a tour. And Steve and I, in our entire lives, never, ever played hooky. We never skipped school, even one time. I mean, like, didn't skip college classes. I mean, I might have been late sleeping in a little bit, but never skipped a class. We never skipped work.

[00:13:04] I called Steve, who was in a different group in Hughes, and I said, Steve, we got to go do this. And so he's like, yes. So we all raced down to Long Beach, and he took us into, at the time, the Spruce Goose was in a building that was designed for it. So if you looked at it from an aerial view, it looked like a plane. It had, you know, a point apart and the wings sticking out. And we walked into this room. There were probably 15 or 20 of us. And it was dead silence, Bodie.

[00:13:31] Just shock at the massiveness of this thing. I mean, it was unbelievably big. It was just ridiculous how huge this thing was. And so we started climbing around on the plane. Like, I remember a couple of guys got a ladder and climbed up and looked at the rotors and stuff. There were eight of them, I think, four on each side at the engines. And they played around with those. And then we went inside.

[00:13:55] And you know how you go to a museum and there's like ropes, little red ropes and barriers and a docent telling you what's going on and you're not allowed to touch anything? There was none of this. This was just us with Dave climbing around in the plane. So I got in Howard's seat. And the funniest thing I noticed was that the horizon indicator was painted on the window. There wasn't an electronic one or, you know, a little, you know, gravity level or anything like that. And I asked him why. And he said, well, because Howard was the only one ever going to sit there.

[00:14:23] So it was painted at his eye level. That's all you needed. You didn't need anything else to show you that the horizon would be the horizon. You could tell the tilt from that. So I guess it was foggy or something that might have been a problem. But anyway, we also walked out into the wings. Actually, I don't think I did, but I know Steve did. And you could literally play basketball inside these wings, the height of them. It was so freaking big. It was crazy.

[00:14:50] I climbed up a ladder up into the tail and I was mad because I had to climb back down because I realized I had a skirt on. So that was poor choices. But I didn't know that was going to happen. But it was so cool. And all throughout this, Dave kept telling us stories. He kept saying, oh, we upgraded this and then we upgraded that and we upgraded that. And I said, why were you upgrading things? And he said, this plane was kept flight ready until the day Howard died. He always wanted it ready to fly it at a moment's notice. He was going to do it again. Isn't that crazy? Wow.

[00:15:22] Why did they cancel the project? That I don't know. I mean, Howard did a lot of weird things. There's a movie about him and the way he ran things. And he was kind of loose with the money. He eventually made the company into a nonprofit. The Hughes Medical Foundation was what we did on behalf of.

[00:15:48] So we had no, there was nothing like profit and loss and revenue kind of numbers. We just took money from the government, did whatever we wanted. But a lot of cool stuff came out of the company like lasers. Or no, not laser. The digital watch. That was one of them. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There were some amazing inventions considering that we were kind of a slush fund for whatever I would want to do. We actually had a, he had people build a medical bed for him. Like Hughes Aircraft did.

[00:16:17] That was probably a $300,000 bed when we were done, you know, or a million dollars. I don't know. Really? Yeah. Yeah. That's just kind of an undercover thing. But the last thing I did want to say on the Spruce Goose thing is not one of us had a camera with us. There's no photos of it, of us getting to see it and sit around in it. That is so unfortunate. Yeah. That wouldn't happen today. No. It'd be hard to.

[00:16:42] As a matter of fact, that might get somebody fired today just because like why was so-and-so standing on top of the guy? Whatever. You know, there's lots, lots of stuff. That is so interesting. I do find that time period, you know, when like airlines were just forming and, you know, I don't dress. I'm a slob when I go and fly, but people would dress up in their suit and tie. Oh, yeah. Hats.

[00:17:12] Yeah. My mom was a flight attendant for a while and it was just a little plane that flew from Kenai to Anchorage. And it wasn't little. I think it held like 50 something people. But like my mom dressed like the flight attendants in the, in the sixties, you know, just like what you see. A little pill top hat kind of thing. Now you see me, that kind of thing. And I got to, I got to fly in the, in the cockpit with the pilots. I sat in the third seat.

[00:17:42] It was super cool. But yeah, all of that in terms of that, that era is just really interesting to me. Yeah. Maybe we should do a podcast on it. Yeah. There's a, in the mute, there's a book called Hughes that tells you a lot about the crazy stuff that's going on. But in the movie, they focused on the, the courtroom stuff with TWA. And I forget what he was doing. He was doing something underhanded and he was in trouble for it, as I recall.

[00:18:13] Yeah. I mean, as we know, geniuses with a lot of money do some stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Are you familiar with Jimmy Buffett's plane? No. Huh? So he had, um, it's the Grumman HU-16 Albatross, but it's an amphibious boat.

[00:18:38] And when I worked as a firefighter in Carson City, the, I don't know if it's still station two, but back then it was station two was at the airport and right next to the airport or right next to our station or right behind it, actually, they used to fix these Albatross amphibious, uh, planes. And they were, they're like, um, probably what, and I don't know what year Howard Hughes

[00:19:03] decided to build the, the Spruce Goose, but these were built, you know, back in, I believe the fifties sometime. But these are things are like Winnebago's, but they're flying Winnebago's and Jimmy Buffett's plane. I didn't go in his plane, but I've been in other people's planes just touring that facility, but his plane used to be serviced there. And, um, they are a throwback to luxury. Like nobody modernized these things.

[00:19:32] Like it's all wood paneling and it's nice and polished. And that's what this, this, uh, group did on top of keeping the plane fit, you know, is they made sure that if there was, uh, something damaged, you know, they'd sand it down and they'd re-lacquer it and maybe fill it if they needed to do that kind of thing. You know, they, these things were just like, like you would, these planes, this is terrible to say, but these planes would be, you could imagine someone flying these planes, a pilot

[00:20:02] flying these planes and being brought a cocktail. That's how swanky and nice and of the era they were. So. Oh, geez. Well, it's funny to let me come on and tell a story that has somewhat to do with electric vehicles, at least at the beginning. That was fun. No, I think actually this is going to be the episode today because, uh, I've been really busy with actual work stuff. So this is, this is perfect.

[00:20:27] And the fact that we have, uh, gone just short of 20 minutes is also perfect. So, uh, this will, this will be today's episode for sure. Well, good. Always fun to come on. Should, should you plug my show or something? Oh, you do all the time, right? You know what you should, we, we, we should do this because you are, uh, going on a couple of vacations. So, um, what, what do you have planned? Cause I know you've got lots of stuff planned just because you're on a vacation does not mean you stop doing your show.

[00:20:57] Right. I'm going to be playing, uh, audio files from Bodie Grimm. Bodie has mixed a couple of the, uh, uh, interviews he's done recently, especially the Kim Lundgren one and, uh, and a couple of others that I'm going to use as, uh, I'm not going to call them filler, but you know what I mean? Uh, listener contributions, uh, to the show. I think they're going to be really fun. Um, yeah, it's, uh, hard to have a 21 year streak without missing a show because you just

[00:21:26] can't, right? I can't break that because once I do, I'm just probably going to go, yeah, I'm out. And this is hard doing it for so long. So, uh, I'm going to keep it going, but with the, uh, with the help of some wonderful friends like you, Bodie. Oh, and I, I, I phrased my whole pitch that way for your show, just so that you would thank me. I like it. Yeah. You did everything on the pitch except for introduce yourself, but I get to do that at the beginning. Oh yeah. Yeah. I guess that's a good point.

[00:21:56] That's okay. I'm learning so many things in my fifties. Where would people go? So it's podfeet.com. Uh, it's the no silica cast chit chat across the pond, uh, programming by stealth. Wow. You have been paying attention. That's everything. Security bits is my favorite when you and Bart get together. And chat security. Yeah. I've always, I've wondered a lot of times whether I should spin security bits off as its own show, but I'm afraid nobody would listen to the parts of the show where I'm on by myself. So I don't do it.

[00:22:26] Um, that's a valid, that's a valid concern. And it's not to say that it's valid in that people won't. It's valid in that I have similar, similar thoughts sometimes. Yeah. Everybody loves Bart. Bart is a cybersecurity specialist and brings us, uh, security news that we can do something about mostly, you know, he tells you whether to light your, your hair on fire about something or not. And, uh, basically the answer is if something can't be updated, throw it away and, uh, pass all your systems all the time. Yeah.

[00:22:56] He has now started to say responsibly recycle it. Yes. Yeah. No, it's great. And Adam Inks is great. So I, I, if you're not subscribed to Alison's podcast, I would highly suggest you do that. No, you should subscribe to Bodie's podcast. Much better show. If you're not subscribed to this podcast, what are you doing? Why are you even here? There are so many people who listen to this podcast on the web, according to the stats. Yeah. And it's always very surprising to me, but I got, God bless you. I love that you do, but subscribe.

[00:23:26] All right, Alison, thank you so much for joining me today and doing my homework for me. All right. This is great. All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Alison. I sure did. We probably talked for another 20, 25 minutes after that. And it is nice to catch up. Um, I genuinely don't think that I have talked to her, uh, since Vegas, since January.

[00:23:54] Um, you, of course we text all the time and message each other all the time, but yeah, uh, it's been a while since we've actually been able to like sit down and have a conversation, which is, I mean, again, always fun, always fun. Second only to that is listening to Alison's podcast, the No Silicast, chit chat across the pond programming by stealth, you know, under No Silicast. We talked about it.

[00:24:22] We had security bits and it's, it's a, it's a don't miss in this crazy world that we live in with everything going on with, with data breaches and security bug vulnerabilities and all this stuff that's going on. Like it really does make me feel better because sometimes the headline that we get in our,

[00:24:42] in our news aggregator may, um, skew towards you reading that article, but it might not actually be what the headline is. And Bart and Alison take that, uh, scariness and they put into something that's reasonable and often actionable. So yes, I really encourage you to go and listen. And that's, that's part of security bits is part of the No Silicast. And I believe it's every two weeks.

[00:25:11] And then she talks to Adam Angst, which if you know who he is, he, he created along with his wife, Tanya, the tidbits newsletter and truly OGs. Um, they've been doing it for a really long time and just have so much, like not only do they have a wealth of information, they know the history. So if you're a technology nerd, please go and check out what Adam Angst is doing as well, which I don't think he owns tidbits anymore, but it doesn't matter. He still does stuff for them. Go check out what Adam's doing.

[00:25:41] I'll, I'll put links in the show notes. All right, everybody. That is it for me. If you want to email me, it's Bodie, B-O-D-I-E at 918digital.com. You can find me on X at 918digital. I'm on LinkedIn, which is just Bodie Grimm, G-R-I-M-M. And I think that's it. Um, still working through those emails, but, uh, hopefully maybe by the end of the week, I'll have a call caught up.

[00:26:09] I thought I was going to be caught up and now I'm not. So trying to get through them. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for listening and I will talk to you soon.

[00:26:37] If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.