People from Lithium Balance, Denmark, visited us and had a workshop in Finland in the beginning of February. Lots of different aspects of battery packages were discussed: packaging, insulation, heating, crash security. The battery management system (BMS) should arrive from Denmark in couple of weeks.
Two sets of motors arrived from Azure Dynamics last week. Before this there were models by Vikke about motor installation cage where the motor, batteries and auxiliary devices will be attached. The real motor was fitted into the Corolla engine compartment during Sunday, the final installation cage is still under construction.
Corolla drive shafts don't match the Azure gear box. The gear box has 22 tooth coupling but the Corolla drive shafts have 23 tooth coupling, diameter and lengths are identical, one could really say it's a "near miss". The best solution would be to change the gearbox coupling specification for manufacturing the next ones. That would be cheaper for the conversion buyers and also faster than deal with it during the conversion.
Engine control unit (eECU) team was debugging the software and there was some activity on the bus, but the high voltage connections were not complete yet, so the motor didn't get to spin yet.
Eki spent lots of time under the Corolla measuring things for slipstreaming plates. The idea is to make the underside of the car as aerodynamic as possible.
Some ideas about vacuum pumps for brake boosters and open source BMS have been thrown around in the technical mailing list. We'll see which of them evolve further.
To be continued…
Best regards, Murska
