Thursday, November 12, 2009
Electric car conversions-Batteries
The heart of any electric car conversion is the batteries. You will need special batteries, called deep cycle batteries in order to make your electric car work properly.
These batteries allow you to charge quickly and discharge further than regular car batteries normally found in your vehicle now.
Pic -batteries pic?
They are called deep cycle because normal batteries would be wrecked by the frequent draining of the batteries used in the system. Think of it as pouring water out of a glass. A regular battery you can only pour about 10% of the water out, but a deep cycle battery you can regularly discharge down 30% or so.
You don't want to go lower than 30% down though. Topping up a battery that is to the 70% level is as low as you go.
Where do you find deep cycle batteries? We have been living off the grid for over 10 years now and have been living with battery systems to run our home for that long.
The same batteries used with solar panels and wind generators are easily fitted to electric car conversions. They are easy to find, but can get expensive if you don't know where to look. The plans show some great sources of free batteries too. That is a great savings since the batteries for an electric car can be one of the greatest expenses.
A bunch of high school students can do it, so can you.
The good news is because building or converting vehicles to electric, the parts including the batteries are becoming easily accessable for everyone.
Electric car conversions-parts list
It isn’t really a complicated process to do electric car conversions but you will need to obtain certain specialized parts.
You will need, an electric motor, deep cycle batteries, controller, battery charger an adaptor kit and various other small parts.
Pic- carpic
But first you are going to need a vehicle that you can do your electric car conversion with. Any vehicle can be used for this project, but some work better than others.
Heading the list are small cars and trucks as they are light and strong. Your first consideration as shown in the detailed plans is to find the lightest vehicle that will still do the job of hauling you and whatever cargo you carry around.
Next, you will want a large DC motor that will produce power for your electric car. The larger the motor, the more power your Electric car will have.
Don’t worry that it will be slow either. Many people have the wrong impression of electric cars; they accelerate as fast as any vehicle on the road, and travel easily at 50 mph.
What about batteries?
You will need to locate about 20 deep cycle batteries for your car as well. The plans outline sources of batteries, even free batteries that you can find easily. The same source will probably have free DC motors too.
It’s just a matter of asking.
Why do you need 20 batteries? In order to achieve a range of 200 miles you will need this many batteries.
A controller is needed to fix the amount of current flowing from the batteries to the motor which determines how fast you go. The controller is connected to your old gas pedal linkage for smooth control of the vehicle.
In order to charge your batteries between trips you will need an on board battery charger. That way you can simply just plug it into any common AC circuit and get charged up again.
For more information on electric vehicle conversions Click Here!
You will need, an electric motor, deep cycle batteries, controller, battery charger an adaptor kit and various other small parts.
Pic- carpic
But first you are going to need a vehicle that you can do your electric car conversion with. Any vehicle can be used for this project, but some work better than others.
Heading the list are small cars and trucks as they are light and strong. Your first consideration as shown in the detailed plans is to find the lightest vehicle that will still do the job of hauling you and whatever cargo you carry around.
Next, you will want a large DC motor that will produce power for your electric car. The larger the motor, the more power your Electric car will have.
Don’t worry that it will be slow either. Many people have the wrong impression of electric cars; they accelerate as fast as any vehicle on the road, and travel easily at 50 mph.
What about batteries?
You will need to locate about 20 deep cycle batteries for your car as well. The plans outline sources of batteries, even free batteries that you can find easily. The same source will probably have free DC motors too.
It’s just a matter of asking.
Why do you need 20 batteries? In order to achieve a range of 200 miles you will need this many batteries.
A controller is needed to fix the amount of current flowing from the batteries to the motor which determines how fast you go. The controller is connected to your old gas pedal linkage for smooth control of the vehicle.
In order to charge your batteries between trips you will need an on board battery charger. That way you can simply just plug it into any common AC circuit and get charged up again.
For more information on electric vehicle conversions Click Here!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
How to build electric cars
Learning how to build your own electric car is not really that difficult of a project. We did our own conversion of a 1995 Toyota Corolla in about 2 weeks at a cost of only a few hundred dollars. How did we do it? It really turned into a family project after it began, here’s how you can do it too.
What will you need to get started?
· Detailed plans on how to build your own electric car
· You can use any vehicle- gas, diesel
· A garage, shop or barn is nice, but not necessary
· Simple tools every home workshop has- wrenches, drills etc.
First off you will need a large DC motor (9 inches or larger) and a source of batteries. Note that AC motors can be used as well but they are a bit more expensive so we went with DC. They are easier to install too.
You can, of course buy all these parts brand new but this is the heaviest cost of the whole project so we suggest using the sources of free DC motors and free industrial batteries listed in the plans.
They’re not hard to find either and since a DC motor will run for probably longer than you will own your car, using salvaged motors makes sense. Your car will rust out from under you before the motor gives up.
We wanted to keep the costs down and figured this was a great way to do it.
After obtaining your DC motor and batteries you have to remove your gas engine from your car. Rent a hoist or find a friendly mechanic to lift it out for your. A few bolts and it’s free.
Leave the clutch and flywheel assembly and detach the rest. That will leave you room for batteries and DC motor mounting.
It is imperative that you only use a standard transmission vehicle for your conversion as automatic transmissions simply won’t work.
Don’t worry, you won’t even have to shift gears in traffic once the conversion is done. It will drive just like an automatic transmission, which is nice. Put it in gear and go. When you stop the engine simply stops too. It dosen’t keep idling, requiring clutching like a gas engine.
The accelerating ability takes some getting used to as there won’t be a vehicle in town that will take you off the line at stop lights. This is no slow golf cart you will be building here.
Learning how to build your own electric car is a lot of fun too. Putting together the controller and motor assembly is not that difficult either.
Your new Electric car will be able to go 50 mph and travel up to 200 miles on a single charge too. Pretty amazing.
Did you know that gas prices are expected to reach $7 per gallon next year?
Isn’t it time you got started on this project.
Build Your Own Electric Car is the best place to start on your own electric car conversion and learn all there is to know about how to build your own electric car.
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