SSI-Racing Story
Back Story

So the story starts 20 years ago when Magnum PI and Miami Vice were on TV and we were in our previous gas crisis. My friends were talking about how wonderful Ferrari's and Lamborghini's were while I grew up on American muscle cars. I read an article on hydrocarbon fuel cells and I had the idea of taking a classic muscle car, like a Challenger, dropping this fuel cell in with an electric drive train to create a car that would get 85 mpg while being able to crush Ferrari's and Lamborghini's in the ¼ mile. Well, then we did some research and found out this type of fuel cell requires $1000 worth of platinum per kw of power (1 kw = 1.3 hp). So the project was shelved; I maybe could have scraped up $10k, but it looked like it would cost a minimum of $300k.

I build a lot of things over the next 20 years, including KDTalk and SSICMic. KDTalk came about when I was taking a road trip with a friend's wonderful family. They are literally the family that is featured on the news because they adopt all of the disabled children that no one else will. I realized along the way that I thought of Michael (a teen age boy restricted to wheelchair with no fine motor control) as not being smart because he had no way to communicate. As soon as I had this realization I was very disappointed in myself and I started thinking about what it would take to make it so that Michael could effectively communicate. I had an idea while we still had several days of road trip left and I started getting details about Michael abilities and limitations. Then I started building KDTalk, a portable device with a display that he could read, buttons he could push (arcade buttons with doll plates glued to them), and a very tolerant interface (when he gets excited it is easy for him to push the wrong button, or knock things over), and quick and flexible (he has seven most important things he can say with the push of a single button, and he can say anything he wants in a somewhat optimized fashion, plus he and his parents could reprogram it in a fairly intuitive way). I did this while working full time on my Masters degree and teaching part time 50 miles away. It took me 2 months, I was friggin' inspired, and it worked. Michael entered a normalized 7th grade classroom almost immediately. I built a second one for a child named Tell who had a much less severe problem and could use a keyboard to some extent (he was at a pre-reading stage). So my advisor told me to throw away my thesis work and write up what I had done because “It is be best thing to come out of this university in the years he had been there.” I tell you this, I think I had the easiest thesis defense of anyone - Michael is doing well in his 7th grade classes, QED Masters Degree.

SSICMic (for Simple Solutions Inclusive Car - Mickey Mouse operation) was the DARPA Grand Challenge robot that I built with help from my friends. We ran out of time about 1-2 weeks from where we needed to be to make the semi-finals, but it was a series hybrid electric vehicle that I built out of steel and motorcycle parts that gave me the confidence and put the idea in my head of building my high school dream car.

Then I cashed out of a good job because of irreconcilable differences with my manager. This left me with time and money together for the first time in my life. So I had a debate about what I was going to do, pay down the house, travel the world for 2 years, startup some kind of business, or build my dream car. Well we know how that turned out ... I spent several months determining what was the sexiest, classic American muscle car reproduction that I could find and choose the Factory Five 65 Coupe. I went to kit car build school, ordered the kit, talked to everyone with experience that would talk to me, searched the Internet, read books, and determined that at least half of everything contradicted everything else, and I did a lot of math. All of which brought me to my original concept (and final one for that matter) a system very similar to the world record holder White Zombie – Zilla motor controller, big DC motor (320 kw, about 450 hp), lightweight batteries, good stereo, and air shocks.