Driven Man Creates
Electric-Hydraulic Dragster



Omaha World-Herald
Saturday, July 5 1997; Page 15

By Joe Popper, The Kansas City Star

Kansas City, Mo. on May 15, at dusk, about 20 persons standing in a suburban parking lot witnessed what may have been a rare moment in the history of human progress. That night they saw Mike Blood crank up his electric dream machine, a unique car that incorporates some radically new design ideas.

Those parking-lot witnesses, all Members of the Mid-America chapter of the Electric Automobile Association, hardly expected to view history. They were simply hanging around after a meeting of their club. And then Blood eased himself into the narrow cockpit of his blue and white dragster-shaped vehicle. "He didn't say a word," recalled Jeff Simpson, the club's president. "He just turned it on." The engine didn't flame and roar like a fuel dragster; it screeched like an amplified owl. The whole thing caught most of us by surprise," said Simpson. "Before we knew it he shot across the parking lot. The acceleration was incredible. He reached full speed almost instantly. People stopped in mid-sentence. They were awed.

Simpson, a mechanical engineer, electric car expert and owner of a solar-energy company, is not easily impressed. "I'd been openly skeptical about Mike's design," he said "But he's proved out everything he said he would do. I think he has the potential to revolutionize electric vehicle design."

Blood was quietly pleased by the response to his demonstration. It had been a long time coming. He has worked on his car for 18 years. "People have called me so many kinds of crazy it's pitiful," he said. Last month, for example, he ran his car at the Kansas City International Raceway. He hit 40 mph. Top speed. People laughed," said Joe Blood, Mike's brother. "They scoffed. They thought Mike was nuts.

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But they didn't realize they were seeing a test run with a very small motor." Mike Blood said, "I went out there to prove my design works. And it does. With a larger motor I could beat the electric car speed record." The record is 200 mph. "He could do it", said Simpson.

Mike Blood, 38, is a burly, bearish ex-Marine with shoulder-length blond-gray hair and a full beard. Whenever he discusses his car, his speech increases in volume and speed. His sentences start tumbling around as if he couldn't find the precise words to express the complex vision he's lived with for so long. "But you can see the passion in his eyes," said Simpson. "You hear it in his voice. It's burning inside him."

Blood's obsession took over his life 18 years ago. At the time, he worked in a factory driving a forklift that routinely lifted 4,000 pound rolls of roofing paper. "That struck me as odd," Blood said. "I mean that a forklift with a tiny little motor could lift such a huge weight. I knew I couldn't run a car with the same size motor. I started asking why."

Blood knew that a forklift's prodigious strength is derived from hydraulics - the energy transmitted by fluid under pressure. "So I began pondering how to run a car using hydraulic power," he said. From the start, he faced major problems. For one thing, he had no engineering background. "I barely made it through high school," he said. Acquiring the vast, necessary body of knowledge to proceed became an act of self-creation, an act of will. In 1986 he befriended a mechanical engineer named Stephen Ferguson. They met through a mutual love of hunting and soon began spending weekends in the southern Missouri woods.

"On those camping trips, Mike started talking about his ideas." said Ferguson. "He was fascinated by hydraulics, and he picked my brain for every bit of knowledge I had. He never let go. The more we talked, the more enthused he got." Blood started making regular trips to Ferguson's home near Truman Lake. He always arrived loaded with notebooks filled with sketches, diagrams, figures and formulas. When Ferguson pointed out that something was impossible, Blood often became furious - at himself. "He'd walk outside to cool down," Ferguson said, "and then he'd come back and work it through, find a new answer to the problem"

Ferguson soon realized that Blood was methodically working out a novel concept: the design for a hydraulic power train to transmit the energy of a car's motor to its wheels via a liquid flow rather than a mechanical drive shaft. In simple terms, Blood's design involves a battery-powered electric motor that circulates fluid through hydraulic lines at intense pressure. The fluid drives two hydraulic motors attached to the rear wheels. "His ideas are borderline revolutionary," said Ferguson. "There is a kind of genius in him."

By 1993 Blood was prepared to build a prototype. A woman who met him that year recalled how driven he seemed. On the evening we met," she said, "he climbed into my car and then spent the whole night talking about his ideas for an electric vehicle. He was absolutely inflamed by his vision. He is the most eccentric person I know, but he is fascinating. He doesn't see things the way other people do." Simpson, too, became intrigued by Blood's way of thinking. Mike perceives things in nontraditional terms," he said. "Engineers usually proceed from theory to proof. Mike goes at it the other way."

Blood, a welder by trade, teaches full time at the apprenticeship-training school run by the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers in Kansas City, Kan. Five years ago, when the school was looking for a live-in security guard, Blood took on that job as well. It suited his needs exactly. He could teach by day and work on his car in the center's shops at night. "He worked tons of hours on that car," said Joe Blood. "Sometimes he didn't sleep at all." That lifestyle took its toll. "Would a normal person hide in a shop for five years acting like a hermit?" said Mike Blood. "I guess it's pretty strange from anyone else's point of view. And it's sure torn up my personal life. But from my point of view it's not strange at all. I have a purpose, a plan."

Thus far his purpose has consumed roughly half his life and about $30,000 of his money. "But it's worth it," he said. "Just think what a really efficient electric car would mean for the environment. That's what really drives me." His next goal? The world speed record. "What Mike has already done is incredible," said Simpson. "And he's done it alone. General Motors has invested something like $300 million in its electric car, and I think Mike's vehicle could give them a real run." But a new problem has arisen. "I'm broke," said Blood. "I'm down to nothing. I need sponsors to help me go on to the next stage." Some of Blood's friends wonder whether he can continue. But Ferguson has no doubt. "Mike won't let it go," he said. "He can't. His intellect and desire won't allow him to stop. He has to prove he's right. He'll find a way."







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