A third project?!?!

We couldn't stop with 2, so we got a third. About a month ago I bought a Prius with the intent of converting it into a plug-in. We bought a pack from enginer.com for $3000, and paid to have it installed.

Preliminary results are good - about 75mpg in mixed driving, much better than what you'd get with a standard prius. I haven't tested it in the hills of SF, which I think will be the true test. But in truth, if it could get 60mpg in the hills that would be amazing.

Mom & Dad are driving it out as we speak. Last report was that they were in North Dakota, and will be seeing Mt. Rushmore tomorrow morning.

Batteries!

So we (read: Dad) have done some testing just using a 12v batteries, and the lights work, faults are showing up where they're supposed to, etc.

Now we need to install the safety fuses to keep the Dolphin (ie. the combo controller/inverter/charger) from accidentally blowing up in testing!

But to really test it, we have to find some batteries. We've been going round and round, getting some good advice from the fella over at the US Electricar yahoo group, and I think we've settled on an overall approach: Buy some relatively cheap batteries, but ones that are let's say 100ah or more capacity. Add to that some inexpensive regulators (like the zener regulators) and a good smart charger to make sure that we top off all the batteries relatively equally, and that's about it.

We've been thinking of getting better batteries, such as the Penn/Deka gels that are commonly used in Solectria trucks, and adding an expensive BMS (battery management system). These would likely get us better range, and for sure get us longer life. But I keep coming back to the fact that batteries are likely going to change - a lot - whether that's lithium or super capacitors or whatever. So why spend a lot of time and money on lead? Plus we could accidentally ruin them, we want to reduce our overall spend on this project, etc.

So if anyone has a line on 26-28 cheap AGM batteries with good capacity, let me know!

Bed is off

Looks like there aren't any batteries :-( Was secretly hoping there would be a full pack of fresh LiFePO4 batteries under there waiting to be charged...





near the battery boxes under the bed...

Change 'o plans!

While looking for a motor, controller, etc., I came across this 1995 S-10 USElectricar in eBay. I saw it was only a 3 day ad, so I thought, "eh, I'll bid on it, what the heck." I asked a few questions and didn't get a response. Between that and the fact that it had a reserve made me think it wasn't going to work out, so I almost decided not to bid. But I thought I'd take the chance and bid anyway.

Turns out I won (winning bid of $3001). I finally connected with someone 3-4 days after it ended, and the gentleman explained that he was putting it up on behalf of his brother in law, who is a small car dealer in rural Ohio. Apparently he bought it at an auction without realizing it was an electric truck. Once he realized what it was, he asked around for a local mechanic to work on it, and no one would touch it. He didn't have an eBay account, so he asked his brother in law to post it, and voila.

Seemed viable I suppose, but it was odd that he didn't realize it was electric since it says on the side, "ALL ELECTRIC VEHICLE." So I held my breath, sent him a check, and after a little shipping hassle, received it yesterday (May 15th). Took a quick look at it and it *appears* to be all there - even some extra parts from (apparently) a spare controller. Whew!

So what is it, exactly? A company in the mid-90's made a partnership with GM to buy some Prizm and S-10 bodies ("gliders") and install a fully electric system, including a 3 phase AC motor. Since it's "factory" and not a conversion, it's pretty decked out for an electric car.

I'll continue to look for some cheap parts to convert the 91, but our focus at this point is going to be to get this thing running.

Any advice is welcome on this! We're just going to wing it & see how it goes. There is an *extremely* helpful yahoogroup out there that has published a ton of stuff on these vehicles, we're already starting to download some of the materials.

In particular, I'm trying to figure out how we can maximize the range/performance of this, but without spending $10k on LiFePO4 batteries. Any thoughts are welcome. I'd love to be able to drive it 40 miles, almost all on the highway, leaving 50% DOD on the battery pack to make sure it lasts a good long time. We may not get all the way there... But any thoughts on how to get a little further is welcome :)

You can see some pics in the link to eBay. Here's a pic of the extra controller (or
at least what's left of it)




















Here's a part that was sitting in the extra controller

Engine removal

Note - This was done back in April...





Here's the truck. Nice one, eh? A little rust here and there, nothing that can't be fixed.







and here's the evil gas engine...
kinda ugly, isn't it?













Disconnectin' stuff





Our little helper...

And 4 hrs later, engine is out!

First post

This blog is dedicated to our gas-to-electric conversion project. We are starting an electric car company of some sort, the details of which we haven't figured out. Any comments, thoughts, suggestions, etc. are *most* welcome.

We're planning to start with a small truck conversion using lead acid. We bought a 1991 GMC Sonoma 5 speed.