Converting Your Car to Electric

Thanks for the link my friend.

Have we ever had a discussion on the environmental impact of creating and disposing of multpile lead-acid batteries every 4yrs vs using a traditional gasoline vehicle over the same time span. My question is based on the "greenness" of an electric car that uses those kinds of batteries.

 

If I do this right, this should be a link to a YouTube video on my YouTube channel. This video is of a car that has been successfully converted to battery power.

Chuck D.

 

I believe batteries would be much more than 1000-3000$.
Just the battery upgrade kit form Hymotion for the Prius is 10k.

For 3000$ you could get 30 regular 12V lead-acid batteries, but imagine the room they would take, plus the danger if ever involved in a roll-over accident.

 

San Diegito High little red electric car.

Abran Quevedo converts electric car.

Abran used to teach a class every summer. eMail him to see if he's offering a class this summer. Plenty of info on his site as well.

 

way cool
i love to see this kind of stuff

if a car mechanic can do it -- how come car manufactures can't do it?
something isn’t right with this picture, that is for sure.

it all boils down that ;
A: more the complex cars are more profit is to be made for all industries involved -- there are vested interests by many parties
B: oil interests (controlling stock) seems to be always involved in major decisions of car manufacturers, as far as what kind of vehicle should be offered to consumers
C: junkie addiction effect -- car manufactures as well as consumers are behaving like junkies, they can't seem to get off that fuel "straw", just like coke addicts. it has a lot to do with habits and preconceived ideas
D: dependency = control, so if you make someone dependant on say oil -- you control him. with electrical cars dependency is largely removed, you can use your own solar panel, your own windmill or other energy generator
to recharge your batteries. now, that is a major obstacle to those who would like to keep things under centralized control

seems to me that people need to be re-educated about things like this and what they really mean.

more unpredictable actions of people are -- less control can be imposed on them.
that is yet another reason to spread the word about people like this guy who used his own genius to plant the seeds of radical change in energy arena.

 

No "discussion" is needed, because they're completely recyclable.
.
_H*

 

Not a bad article, if a tad optimistic. I spent about a year designing and simulating an EV conversion in my spare time before deciding to buy a Prius. While you can convert a car to electric, you have to be content with pretty limited range and/or performance at a pretty high price tag. My conversion was going to run ~$7000, would have had a top speed of about 90, ~6.5s 0-60, but range of only about 30 miles at 65 mph. This would have been a big 9" DC motor, Zilla 1000 Amp controller, and high output sealed AGM lead acid batteries. Back then I was convinced that I needed that kind of acceleration, top speed and freeway range. After driving the Prius for 8 months I've gotten much more open to the idea of commuting off the freeway, and accelerating at a reasonable pace. At 40 mph, and with the acceleration dialed back the same car would have had about a 50 mile range. I still prefer the flexibility of a plugin Prius at the moment, but the idea of converting my old saab 900 convertible is starting to grow on me again. Its just a little hard to think about putting that much money into a ~20 year old car, or having to add the cost of another donor car to the cost of the conversion.

You can see lots more conversions listed here:
EV Photo Album: Our Electric Cars on the Web

And of course everyone should check out White Zombie, worlds fastest street legal electric dragster. He's now got ~772 ft-lbs of torque in an 1850 lb Datsun 510 giving him a 1/4 mile best of 11.446s @ 114.08mph. Thats about 1/2 second faster than a new Corvette Z06 from the numbers I can find :eyebrows:
Welcome to Plasma Boy Racing, home of White Zombie, the world's quickest street legal electric door slammer in the 1/4 mile drag.

Also very cool, Bill Dube's electric drag bike Killacycle. Best run so far was 7.824 @ 168mph!
KillaCycle - World’s Quickest Electric Motorcycle

I will say an EV conversion is hard to beat from a "tell the man to stick it in his ear" perspective

Rob

 

I have been for some time considering an electric conversion for my daily driver. I love old Ramblers and there is A TON of room in the engine compartment and trunk of these old cars for batteries.. plus, it would kill two birds with one stone. I get an electric.. I get to keep a Classic! the more and more I think about it - I just need to get off my a@@, sell my Rambler and (dare I say it) my Miata.. and make an electric. (fyi.. the rambler I have is way too nice and too original to mess with - it's practically a museum piece).. and the miata isn't really practical. I'll keep the Prius for longer trips, but my daily commute, errand, run around will be an electric...

Now someone give me a kick in the a@@ so I can actually get started!

 

Is there an analysis based on the energy input to produce and recycle those batteries? I mean recycling is all well and good but if you use the plastic bottle as an example of disproportionate energy inputs (recycle 14 bottles to save the energy to produce 1 new one?) we see that sometimes recycling does not equal a net balance of energy expenditures.

I'm just curious about this and I'm not slamming the idea as I'd love to see more electric cars out there. The peak oil situation we are in scares me to death.

 

It sounds like it's time to visit this site which has a number of threads on DIY
electric car and motorcycle conversions:

Fuel Economy, Hypermiling, EcoModding News and Forum - Ecomodder.com Fuel Economy Forum

The thread by MetroMPG converting a Metro? is choice stuff...

Got a spare 48V DC forklift motor lying around ?

If so, you're halfway home.

 

There's also the EVDL:
The Electric Vehicle Discussion List

Very active list, at times too active. Was up around 50 messages per day back when I was reading it regularly. I fell behind, and now have about 22,000 unread messages in that box

Looks like its more like 10-20 per day now. Always used to be lots of very hands on folks on there, lots of good info and resources.

Rob

 

Thats kind of what I was thinking. There are a lot of great cars out there that I'd love to drive, but probably never will due to pollution and/or fuel thirst. An EV conversion could give you the style without the guilt, assuming you install solar or buy clean power.

There are always cheap ways to do something, but IMHO you largely get what you pay for. If you want something that performs well and is reliable, I'd use new quality components.

I was looking at:

NetGain Warp 9 Motor:
http://www.go-ev.com/WarP.html#WarP_9

Zilla 1K programmable controller:
Controllers : Cafe Electric llc

Soneil Isolated 12V Chargers (for balancing while charging):
SONEIL - High Power 12V Chargers

24 Optima Marine (blue) D34M Sealed AGM batteries (2 parallel x 12 series):
Specs & Tech - Technical Specifications

My old Saab convertible was not an ideal choice from a weight/aerodynamics perspective, but worked pretty well (on paper) due to large payload capacity and heavy cast iron block engine. Many times a very small light car might seem ideal, but there's just no way to pack enough batteries in to make it work.

I still think a Honda Insight would make an awesome EV, but you'd need the budget for an AC motor & controller plus Li-ion or at least NimH to really do it justice. You're probably talking $30k to convert, but it would be pretty sweet both from a performance and range standpoint.

BTW, this should be a pretty hot Miata when its done:
Ian Hooper's 1990 Mazda MX5 Miata

Here are some more typicla ones:
Joe Harris' 1996 Mazda Miata
Pat Beirne's 2000 Mazda Miata


Rob

 

The article
By Mark Maynard
UNION-TRIBUNE WHEELS EDITOR

sure has GM's spin on why the EV1 'went away'. Lack of demand? Every one was snapped up that was ever made. Let's not EVEN tell Mr. Maynard of the 5,000 person waiting list. How is THAT lack of demand. GM wishes their Yukons & Hummers had such lack of demand. But this TOOL vomits up GM's ongoing lie that, 'they could only get 800 leased' ... you know ... because they were such a bust. Maybe Mr Maynard needs to have his empty head busted into, and filled with a little reality.

Then there the whole mis speek regarding the EV1 having lead acid batteries. He forgot that only the FIRST run were lead, then they went to nickle. Maybe the Tribune is heavily advertised by GM, and that's why this poor slob is sooo mixed up. Or maybe no one told Mr. Maynard any other parts of the story that he seems to really know nothing about. Sheesh. It's a shame that a great EV article had to be fowled with GM's ongoing lie.

Edit:
BTW Mr. Maynard, why is it that Toyota was able to sell their Rav4-EV's outright ... and didn't have to claim (make up a lie) that they needed to all be crushed as a safety hazard ... because of possible / future parts shortages / difficulties. Being the good jornalist that you are, I'm certain you'll run out and get the answer (not).

 

Home Power magazine had an interesting cut-away drawing in an article called "Anatomy of an EV" in its Apr/May 2008 (#124), pp. 34-39, issue.