AutoblogGreen

A somewhat mysterious message arrived the other day via the ABG comments from someone calling themselves "B.T." It consisted of a link to pictures of a Toyota Corolla station wagon with an admonition to check it out, as well as the sentence, "There has to be an interesting story behind this." This seemed like a challenge so we took it up and discovered there was an entertaining bit of back story once we started uncovering the clues.

Looking at the pictures more closely revealed "Seabury Engineering" printed across the front of the car and a license plate from Hawaii. We knew the comment also originated from the island we discussed the other day as being a perfect place for electric cars like this one. Our good buddy Google soon put us on the straight and narrow path leading directly to Seabury Hall, which is a small "Blue Ribbon School" on Maui affiliated with the Episcopal Church where, among other things, they are teaching kids how to turn sinful gas burning cars into green-haloed electric ones.

A little more digging found the car conversion blog which had lots of pictures and posts by different students. It shows the class opening a highway project with Hawaii governor Linda Lingle and getting "celebrity" visits from such folks as the Tesla Motors co-founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. The exact fate of the car itself may remain a mystery. the blog was last updated in early June with a post talking about the NiMH batteries arriving. Perhaps it remains for next years class to put on the final touches and let us know what kind of performance they have achieved with their seraphic conversion. Thanks for the tip, B.T.