General Discussion in English (new threads)

Advantages/savings of electric conversion

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:47:11 +0000

Dear Members,
Have any of you made some calculation of savings?
My rough calculations shows:
1) lets take average car with average consumption 10L/100km with average 25000km per year with average 1.5EUR per 1L which makes 3750EUR fuel cost per year
2) to charge an electric conversion for a year for the same mileage my electricity bill would be around 750EUR
3) my saving is 3000EUR per year; counting of the cost of batteries and conversion 18kEUR I will get to the brake even after 6 years

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.)?

Battery Management System BMS

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:24:33 +0000

I wasn't able to find a proper discussion chain on one of the great bottlenecks of conversion, BMS.
So I invite you to share your experience and distribute information regarding BMS - commercial suppliers and open source industry.
I start by forwarding this link on a project of a fellow EV activist:

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

Best regards,
Kaisa

Budget EV converted car for less than 1000€

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:44:43 +0000

Hi, I'm just starting out with EV. And I am surprised at reading here that the costs of making an EV conversion is high. Can someone explain why this is the case? I've read online sites from the US reporting conversions from 3k? And cheaper if you have a donor car already.

Smart ForTwo 3xE (electric - converted on demand) - 9799€

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 03:03:27 +0000

Dear colleagues,
There was a discussion on one of the german boards. The result is, that our company has new product in portfolio: Smart ForTwo 3xE.

Here you can find a link to more information (in German and in English): Smart ForTwo 3xE electric

Link to our website:3xE - electric cars

Excuse me for these commercial posts… but I want to show you also, that it is possible to MOVE THIS AVALANCHE - it supposed to be also motivation for your great project (i hope it is!).

Conversion costs: about 6000 euro per car + batteries (in Poland)

Sat, 29 Nov 2008 18:22:25 +0000

Hello,

I come from Poland. I have read a big part of your discussion board (using Google Translator).
I do appreciate your great IDEA. It will make EVs available really for everybody.
Anyway - I have chosen a little bit more commercial way.
I think that commercial way will have more chances to result a success (more motivation !).

I have created here in Poland a company: "3xE - samochody elektryczne" (translation: "3xE - electric cars" - [http://www.tripple-e.com] ). Our main business is conversion of Internal Combustion Engine cars into Electric Vehicles. We are at the beginning, but we have gained a lot of "know how" when we have rebuilded our Peugeot 106 Electrique (original from Peugeot).

We have calculated the cost of conversion of typical car into EV:

Conversion cost (Corolla, Avensis):
Including all parts (vacuum pump, controller, dc/dc converter, charger, battery management system, gauges, …) is about 6000 euro

Batteries:
LiFePO4 (144V, 100Ah - max. range about 100km) for 8.900 euro
LiFePO4 (144V, 200Ah - max. range about 200km) for 16.700 euro

Car:
Toyota Corolla (year 2005) in Germany available for 8000 euro

SUMMARIZED:
22.900 euro (about 100 km max. range)
30.700 euro (about 200 km max. range)

Features:
- electric DC motor (144V)
- LiFePO4 batteries (low dependency on temperature)
- tranmission: manual (automatic will also be available in future)
- Air Conditioning: possible
- total range: battery cycles: >2000 —> it makes about 200.000 km !
- batteries will be stored under the front cover and in the trunk (to keep weight distribution in the car)

If you have any questions, just ask it here, write an e-mail (moc.e-elppirt|oruib#moc.e-elppirt|oruib) or simply call me: (Poland: 048)-783-393-393.

I have also one question to you. Did you solved already this issue: how to offcially register such car in your country?

I hope my post will start a constructive discussion about commercial part of conversions…

I do really drive electric car everyday - IT IS AMAZING!

My logo (polish version)

Best regards,
Rafal

3xE - electric cars

Project Update

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:38:31 +0000

Hi all, writing from Italy while making researches for collective EV conversion.
I wonder if you have updated details (in english) to be posted/shared on the forum:
- What components have you choosen? (engine, controllers, batteries, etc)
- which is the state-of-art of the prototype
- how make subscriptions to the project have you collected so far?

Actually I'm working with EAA europe to a similar collective Ev conversion so we could join our forces to get even cheaper prices from manufacturers.

Please provide such informations in english, be sure there are a lot of people all around EU who would be interested (in italy too) in participating in something similar;
So why not the EV tzunami can be even stronger?!

thanks in advance
Roberto

http://eletricars01.blogspot.com/

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:12:58 +0000

http://eletricars01.blogspot.com/

Price of the battery charge 0->100% ?

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:44:25 +0000

Hello,
I've heard about such a project in Finland and finally found it!

A stupid question - how much does it cost to charge battery from 0 to 'full',
assuming the average price for kWh at home in Finland?

Best regards,
Vitali

The road can feed the car.

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:58:49 +0000

The road infratructure can be reconfigured to charge the car battery.
This can be done first in cities on traffic stops with many alternative technologies like induction (MIT-witricity project) or with aimed laser + high temperature solar panel combination.

The billing can be done via existing mobile telephony networks. When the battery is loaded while on road the car can run longer with smaller battery. The electricity is already there for traffic lights etc. we just need to beam it to the battery and bill the user. We know how to do both. (Just think that electric toothbrush witch charges through the plastic cover + mobile SMS-payment for a soda machine)

Erno

New revolutions must start ASAP !!

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 20:00:06 +0000

Just take a look at Youtube for "Bedini SSG" or at Google for "Stanley Meyer".
Is is possible to run a regular engine just with the gases obtained from water by hydrolysis. Those are H2, O2 and HHO (hidroxy). This cam be made with mA of electrical current, allowing a regular alternator to produce the needed energy. This is related with processes that are called "over unity" because that appear to generate more energy than consume. This is not against the second law of Thermodynamics… One need to consider "open systems" then it is possible to explain the source of this apparent extra-energy.
Please, do some research… We in Brazil and in many other parts of the world are running regular cars using this king of systems. And, the result of the combustion is plain and pure water !!
If anyone want more info i can offer a lot of, just write on to thomassoares _AT_ hotmail _dot_ com.

Why one electric motor?

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:08:46 +0000

What I imagine is a small pan motor that fits next to and attaches to disk brakes. Although this will increase the sprung mass somewhat, the control of each wheel will give the electric car handling and grip only achievable from only the best of AWD vehicles. The other advantage is that more of the original components of a vehicle can be removed making room and reducing weight allowing for more batteries.

Super Capacitors

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 23:40:17 +0000

Nissan say that their Hybrid technology will incorporate ultra or super capacitor technology.
From an Engineering perspective this makes a lot of sense to me.
Firstly, regenerative braking energy cannot be totally absorbed by slow charging batteries. Super capacitors act as a fast absorbing energy sponge that can then trickle feed the battery. Further when acceleration is needed the energy is taken from the capacitors having such small internal resistance that energy delivery is instant and large.
Super Capacitors weigh less than a third of batteries and therefore a combination of battery / capacitor technology results in overall weight loss and thus an increase in efficiency.
A good example of this technology can be found at the link below.
I know very little about relative costs but the printed logic motors used in this Mini Cooper are around $32,000 each bringing motor costs alone to a total of $128,000. Totally impractical of course but it is a start. Regular cars would not require numerous or such powerful motors.

http://www.pmlflightlink.com/archive/news_mini.html

I would love to see the eCar incorporate super capacitor technology.

The sun can help

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:02:35 +0000

In many countries, in South America and Africa, the sun shine all the year. The cars should have fotovoltaic cels on the top to produce energy for mix with the electricity.

making more power

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 17:10:46 +0000

well,
i dont know if my idea is used on ecars today…

all streets have montains on the way.
ween the car fall the way, the car change the girs and use gravity to make more power using a generator

Another thing, maybe we can create one conical girs to control power more eficient.

for more info: jairo(a)supernovanetwork( dot )com

More technical information

Sun, 25 May 2008 06:14:11 +0000

Hi.

Very interesting project!

We hope to get a little more information from you as we are considering starting a similar project. The thing is that some of our members are some-what skeptical about the specifications of your converted car.

How can you produce an electric vehicle with such good specifications when the large automakers only can produce one with a range of approx. 80 km and a top speed of approx. 100 kph?

If we start a local EcarsNow project we would like to use the same donor car (Corolla) as you. This will hopefully mean a lot less work for us! Thus we would appreciate information on the following:

* Do you have the prototype car ready now? If not, when is it expected to be ready (and tested)
* How much will the prototype cost to build?
* Do you have any technical drawings of the prototype car (where will the batteries, motor etc. be placed)?
* How much weight will be added (and what about weight distribution)?
* What controller and BMS are you using?
* What motor are you using?
* What batteries have you chosen (including technical specifications on the batteries, Volts, amp, etc.)?
* Do you have a project timeplan that we can see?
* Any budgets that you can provide would be helpful!

We hope to hear from someone in your project team and get a little help.

Salut,

Andrew

So what is unique with this project?

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:51:15 +0000

Dear fellow EV enthusiasts,

What is so unique with this project?

Please, don't take me wrong, it's looks exciting indeed, but from the summary I couldn't quite follow how exactly you are about to mass-produce these cars. Could you explain this a bit further?

Also, if your plan seems to work fine in Finland, why to limit operations there? All respect to your country, but probably it could be a good idea to offer these conversions in other countries too, at least in the EU common market area?

Are there any previous mass conversions made in Europe, USA, or anywhere?

Best wishes,

Nikolas Bruno
Belgium