Foxcroft students test-drive electric car

DOVER-FOXCROFT – Zipping around orange traffic cones Friday, Mike Blocker, 16, found it “cool” to test-drive the electric car that he and other Foxcroft Academy students had tinkered on for so many months.

Rather than transport the electric car to this year’s competition in western Connecticut and leave many of the students behind, instructors of the “Going without Gas” technology course, John Sylvester and Peter Classen, decided to hold their own affair locally.

“We wanted to showcase our electric car for our sponsors as well, so they can see what they have supported,” Sylvester said Friday.

Using the parking lot at the former Ames store, the students each had an opportunity to cruise around in the race car, which uses a 1.5-horsepower, 24-volt DC motor and two 12-volt batteries. Even sponsors of the class were encouraged to take a spin.

The car used Friday was made by students a few years ago and has been modified each year in an attempt to improve its endurance and speed. Students at the academy also are continuing the work started last year on another electric race car that is smaller and more streamlined. Unlike the current electric car, the new vehicle will not have a metal frame, and it will be lightweight and stronger.

“Each year we try to improve the performance,” Classen said. Last year, the vehicle made 83 laps around an oval track at 28 mph before running out of energy. Friday’s event, however, was not an attempt to best the record; it was just a demonstration, he said.

That was good enough for Blocker, a sophomore, who said he enjoyed working with electronics. “I thought it would be cool to drive the car,” he said.

And watching the event was cool for some of the sponsors, including Mac and Judy MacKinney, owners of Webber Hardware in Dover-Foxcroft.

“We’re really interested in the future of our kids,” Judy MacKinney said as she watched the electric car streak around the cones like an angry bee. She said the technology course teaches the students to work as a team and have fun doing it. MacKinney called it “real satisfying” to watch the result of their labor. “They’ve done a really good job,” she said.

Blocker, too, was pleased with the performance. “It felt great,” he said, although he felt somewhat jinxed. A tire blew during his first test-drive and he struck a cone doing 15 mph and ended up driving the vehicle on one wheel.

“It almost felt like I was flying,” he joked.