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Google earth EV1 sightings

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I'm not sure RR...it looks pretty clean to me...if it was just a shell sitting there ad infinitum, you'd think it would look like George Costanza's vehicle left at Yankee Stadium...decorated with bird stuff & dirty...if it was just a shell and the owner wanted to preserve it, you'd think they would have parked it inside, or at least put a car cover on it.

Conversely, if it is just a shell, why would someone be keeping it clean?

Regards,

The Grassy Knoll :wink::biggrin:
 
If I use Google Earth app instead of Google web, it shows the date of the dataset.
It shows 10/1/2009 for the dataset from the top view.

You can use a slider to view images from older datasets. Datasets from 2005 and older lack the detail to make out types of vehicles parked there in most previous years.

I can see it parked around the other side back on 4/29/2008 (in the same location where the Street view cam caught it.)

So, it seems that the vehicle has been parking in and around those buildings for quite some time in recent years.
It also shows up on other photos from 9/29/2008, 8/23/2009, etc. So I would say that has been "home base" for that vehicle.

It may not run, actually, as I see it in all the recent photos, and it only moved once in many years. It looks like it was parked where street-view saw it from at least 5/19/2007 through 9/29/2008,
then moved around the corner next to the bus in later shots from 6/5/2009 through 10/1/2009.
 
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If you look up in street view and zoom in on the sky (or in some other background places) you can see a faint "Copyright 2007" in the street view images.
So, further confirmation that it was parked next to the Miata around 2007, then moved to the dirt part of the lot (next to the busses) between 2008 and 2009.
 
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/object-jun06.html
...
Only 40 EV1s were preserved, according to Jill Banaszynski, manager of the EV1 donation program, to be given to museums and institutions or kept for research by GM. Of these, the only fully intact EV1, complete with its (now inert) lead acid battery, is today part of the {Smithsonian} National Museum of American History collection. “Our requirement is that all the vehicles in the museum have to be complete models,” says Withuhn. “We may remove parts, but we have to know that if we wanted to drive a car, or a steam engine, we could—not that we would. It’s a question of authenticity.”
...
 
http://saturnfans3.saturnfans.com/~saturnfa/forums/showthread.php?t=38378
...We have an EV1 floating around here but it has been gutted out. Basically all that is left is the body and that is being used for hydrogen propulsion research, probably as a fuel cell test vehicle. The battery pack and charger were removed.

The electric motor was still inside. Interesting to note was it used the orange DexCool for coolant and it had a radiator.

The interior looked like an astronauts dream with far too many buttons for the climate control (heat pump with cabin preconditioning). The funky dash also looked a bit like the 'dashboard' in the HyWire concept I got to sit in (but not drive
no.gif
) earlier...
 
I am a little suprised that they let the Google StreetView car into the Richmond Field Station. The whole facility is (I think) behind a controlled gate.

http://rfs-env.berkeley.edu/about.html#currentuses
...
Institute for Transportation Studies (ITS)
ITS is the oldest and largest of five transportation research groups on the campus. It has supported transportation research at UC Berkeley since 1948. About 50 faculty members, 50 staff researchers and more than 100 graduate students take part in this multidisciplinary program. ITS is home to (list only includes units with a presence at RFS):

  • Partnership for Advanced Traffic and Highways (PATH)
    The PATH program researches and evaluates new technologies that can reduce congestion in California's surface transportation system and make it safer. It supports faculty-directed research at 14 universities in California and the rest of the country including research by full-time staff at RFS.
  • Technology Transfer Program
    Tech Transfer works as a program to help train some of the 3,000 engineers and planners recently hired by the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). Overall, Tech Transfer has trained more than 4,000 professionals around the state and has taken part in evaluating traffic safety engineering and enforcement programs in 20 California communities.
  • Pavement Research Center (PRC)
    The Pavement Research Center conducts research on ways to improve pavement structures, materials and technologies, often in partnership with other academic institutions and state departments of transportation, as well as private industry. The center has many recent projects in various areas of the state when it has worked collaboratively with Caltrans, the Washington State Department of Transportation, the University of Minnesota and others.
    ...
http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA3430/
...The University uses some of the original buildings from the California Blasting Cap company, which was the former owner of the property. Starting in the 1860's, in addition to explosives manufacturing, the property, including the adjacent lot occupied by the Zeneca Company, has been used as a copper refinery, pesticide plant, and for the production of sulfuric acid. The extent of the pollution on site is still being assessed.
...
There is a guard booth, and access is semi-restricted. To get to the Field Station, take the Bayview exit off the 580, go over the freeway, turn right on Meade, then left on 47th, at the Zeneca sign...
 
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