http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3357/2951

Any comments welcome!

T:T

I would like ask you about my idea – maybe for that functionality will be better to use AIR pneumatic accumulator?
I think whit this solution will be get 3 important things:
1. Will be unload electrical part (accumulator and el. engine) in start moving moment, be course the air have more reactive power.
2. Simple of realization, the main parts of system are Air receiver (Air accumulator), compressor and turbine (Air engine - start engine).
3. Appears Noise!! One of the problems of electric cars is a silence at driving time, most danger for old people and children.
4. and extra, will be possible braking a care by compressor/engine.

br
Vlad /Riga/

Most likely you will have to buy a new battery after 3-4 years, unless you oversize it, but that in turn costs you more money.

A better estimate can be had if you find the specifics of the battery. For example, let's take a 20 kWh set that costs that 18k€ and lasts for 1000 full cycles of 20 kWh and 6 years. By this time the capacity has dropped by 30% from the aging alone, and 30% from the driving alone, to around 50% of the original combined. If we hold that as the cutoff point, we get 90 cents per kWh as the capital cost for storage, and we can further assume e.g. 10 cents per kWh with losses accounted for the electricity.

1€ per kWh used is then compared to the consumption of the car, which can be up to 200 Wh per kilometer, which in turn gives you 20€ for every 100 km. Compare that to the price of gasoline, and for 10l/100km it turns out to be roughly 133% of the price. In this case, you won't break even.

In the case that the battery lasts for 2000 cycles, the cost is obviously halved to 10€/100km and you do break even, but then again that would mean that you have to drive 2000 cycles in roughly 6-8 years, which means 40 000 kWh used and 200 000 kilometers driven, that is, 25 000 kilometers per year or more. It may turn out that the battery dies on you from old age before you can drive it far enough to recoup the investment. It's difficult to drive 25k in a year with a car that only goes around 75 km on a charge on average throughout its lifetime.

Please share your calculation of savings, maybe I missing something/Have any of you have some info about governmental support in other countries (tax benefit, subsidy of conversion, etc.)?

During 10 ears we are using Super Capacitors in our EV and HEV. As buffer energy storage sistem Super Capacitors gives HI energy at pulse load, acceleration. It has 1 000 000 charge/discharg cycles. Together with battaries it becames very effective sistem.

http://www.convertthefuture.com/mwiki/index.php?title=Battery_Management_Systems

Best regards,
Kaisa

This is an open source project where the intention is to create a conversion kit from COTS (Common-Off-The-Shelf) parts. There are car specific and non-car specific parts on the kit. Non-specific are motor+battery+battery controller+computer (ecu+gui). Car specific are motor chassis, battery chassis, transmission box and drive shaft. Our kit uses CAN. We do not sell kits, we define the kit that anyone can use and we have selected one car model, e.g. Toyota Corolla for this. We have not created other kits for other cars and I doubt that will happen. At least not with the current conversion.

That is because selection, mounting, measuring and programming takes time and since all of us are working on our free time, there are no guaranteed resources to make other kits. Our current car is sponsored and if someone would like us to make different kits to other cars or use different parts, we would need a sponsor for it and that sponsor would need to provide the whole kit including car to us in Finland, because no-one of us or our sponsor wants to rip off parts from eCorolla now that it is going to be finished in a couple of weeks.

Replacing battery, motor, computers etc. is possible. All our interfaces are open and all mounting kits are open too with CAD drawings and we have a conversion guide in English on the works too - initial version is available on our site. And as long as you comply with interfaces and specs you can easily try other options, but you need to do that by your own as mentioned before.

But I must say that I have been on this project since it started and conversion is imho much simpler than I originally thought. Take look at the the kit and think about it.

Is the conversion kit model Azure MOtor/Thunder Battery/LB charger defined or you may define new suppliers ?

I have an info that NiMH Battery offers 30% less Kw/kg than Li-Ion. Is it true ? Does it compensate the higher Lithium cost ?

Are you Electric today ?

Thank you Pedro Mendonça O.E Ltda.
41-3252.5834 41-9911.3193
Curitiba, Brazil - skype: plm.tecno

http://ecomodder.com/blog/dirt-cheap-diy-electric-cars-part-5/

They are being realistic with the targets: The range (20-25 miles, 32-40 km) and top speed (30-40 mph, 48-64 km/h) of those projects is a bit different than the eCorolla targets. The donor car price is different, the parts for eCorolla will be new. The prices should come down little bit through mass purchases though.

There is one nice sentence in the last page: "(about naysayers) What these people fail to understand is that their vehicle needs are not the same as everyone else’s vehicle needs."

Everyone should calculate their own needs. If you can do the conversion work yourself, a 15-20 years old donor is ok and the daily travel is small enough, the dirt cheap cars are the best fit.

My current daily needs are 80+ kilometers at 100 km/h so a dirt cheap car isn't quite suitable for me. Ok, 80 km/h speed will be enough if I don't use the Tampere-Helsinki motorway/freeway which has 120 km/h speed limit during the summer. Just like Darin Cosgrove said on page 3: "So we stay on the side roads." The eCorolla might be suitable for me, I'm waiting for the real measurements from the first prototype.

One guy told me that his daily commute is less than 20 kilometers but the car should be a comfortable one with heating for winter and all that. Maybe an eCorolla with less batteries suits him? Everyone has different needs and there are different solutions to them.

Br, Murska

I see that picture as a reminder to get a good charger and/or battery management system. If you mistreat the batteries (like overcharge them) they will be ruined much faster.

Br, Murska

Thanks for posting.

The eCars - Now! project is aiming for a range of 150 km (93,2 miles), that needs a large battery pack. The battery type to be used is LiFePO to keep the battery pack weight down, these are more expensive than lead batteries.

The major parts are
- Toyota Corolla as a donor car
- Batteries from Thunder Sky
- Motor and controller by Azure Dynamics: AC24LS, AT1200 and DMOC445
- Battery management by Lithium Balance, Denmark (that seems to have changed since last month)

In Finland the wintertime means the car must have a good heating system, that means some extra steps in conversion and parts, also some percentage of the battery pack energy goes to heating. I heard that there is some kind of heat pump system being worked on but that was a small comment in the Finnish forum if I remember correctly so I don't have more information about that.

The donor car, Toyota Corolla around year 2002-2005 is also pretty pricey like all cars in Finland. According to a Finnish web site www.autotalli.com a brand new Corolla goes from EUR 19952 to EUR 25950 ( google converts those numbers to USD 28865 - USD 37542 ).

The donor car price is still open as there has been talks about importing the donor cars to Finland from other European countries. Couple of guys are working on getting the first donor right now so we'll hear more about that in upcoming days and weeks.

I hope you can now compare the kits. How much batteries and electronics is included in the 3k conversion kit? Could you post some info here?

I have had some thoughts about getting a year 2000 Volkswagen Golf for conversion when the Corolla proto has been done and eCorolla production has been started. The used Golfs are starting from around EUR 4000 ( USD 5787 ) in Finnish used car sites. That will push the total conversion price down a little bit but you have to switch the 8 years old chassis to a new one couple of years earlier than a 3-5 years old one.

I hope this helps and I wish you all the best with your conversion project!

Best regards,
Murska

Edit: fixed some typos — M