- One of the challenges to making your own battery monitoring/metering system is keeping the high voltage pack isolated from the car’s 12v system. Sending the signals over fiber optics might be the trick: introduction to fiberoptics. Here’s a learning kit.
- Companies to Develop Electric Vehicle for Demonstration of Altairnano Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery System: press release.
- The birth of the Toyota Prius. Also for reference the hybrid entry over at Wikipedia.
- Plug-in hybrids are still gaining momentum. (this is good news: more batteries, means more research, lower prices, etc..). EVWorld reports that Hymotion, out of Canada, is releasing a plug-in version of the Prius and the Ford Escape hybrids.
Gas Hog Lincoln · 13 March 06
Time for something a little different.
Lee Hart has been a regular on the EVList, helping folks out with their electric car questions for years. Lee has even shared his design for an EV battery balancer with us.
Lee’s converted a few electric cars but he also does another type of EV conversion: converting songs, poems, and fables to be electric powered.
Today we head back to the 60’s for a little ditty I’m sure y’all remember…
- The Electrum series Spyder. A $69,995.00 EV running 300 volts of nickel zinc batteries in a composite body.
- Aerobatteries: Aerospace dry cell technology. (yeahbut…the website is one big image!)
- Your first electric car
- Driving the solution, the plug-in hybrid (PDF) artic.e from the Electric Power Research Institute’s journal.
- Darin is conducting more cold weather research, this time figuring out how to best warm up your car.
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- Been researching brakes after a nice email from Kendall suggesting that I could replace the back drums with discs. Hmm, that would be kind of nice I think. Here’s a few related links:
- Converting Ford Probe rear drum to disc brakes, performanceprobe.com (site really doesn’t like other browsers)
- All you ever wanted to know about brakes (probetalk.com forum)
- Braking in plain english
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- Pick the answer you think fits best:
- fun at parties
- fuel efficient
- safe in parking lots
- will need bigger stereo
- bug zapper
- Someone on the EVList has uploaded a battery handbook to this site. It’s a little complicated to get it: click the “free” option, then wait 30 seconds or so on the next page for the timer at which point you should see links for downloading it.
- General Hydrogen’s Hydricity pack looks interesting. Meant as a pop-in replacement for the battery packs in forklifts, industrial vehicles, and off-road equipment.
- Ergosphere on EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested) as applied to insulating your home (which I can relate to this time of year).
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- James sent along a link to this concept car. Looks like they are optimizing for weight over everything else…everything. Resulting in a 186mpg diesel. We were thinking the body would be fun for an EV conversion (lithium, ac, etc..). Bonus points if you can figure out how to get into the car.
- How carbon fiber works.
- Zeke’s not going to like this one: ventilated car seats can reduce the need for A/C and thereby improve fuel economy. (My dog loves his A/C)
- If you want to charge your EV with “clean” electricity, then check out the state by state listings of the Green Power Network. [via AltEnergyBlog]
- Bill would give hybrids the same small business tax breaks as big SUVs.
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- Open-Source DIY Plug-in Prius…in a Weekend. Part of the upcoming Make magazine Maker faire April 22-23 in San Mateo, CA. “Join the creators of MAKE magazine, the MythBusters, and thousands of tech DIY enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, science clubs, students, and authors at MAKE’s first ever Maker Faire!”
- New life for sulphated lead acid batteries? (PDF file).
“Over the years I have tried many chemical treatments supposed to rid a cell of sulphation. None of them made any perceptible difference. A strange and devious set of circumstances has led us to the successful chemical removal of sulphation from six lead acid cells. Not only are the circumstances odd, but the chemical used, EDTA, is benign– in fact, it is used as a human food preservative.“
- Vehicle-to-Grid Power: Battery, Hybrid, and Fuel Cell Vehicles as Resources for Distributed Electric Power in California.
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Peter's Solar Electric Van II · 28 February 06
We covered Peter’s cool electric van last October: the latest lithium batteries, homemade battery management system, solar panels, and even a wind generator for those times when he’s parked in a windy spot.
What more could he want?
How about an AC drive system?
- No, no, really, Zap will be selling their Smart Cars any day now!
- Does Ford have a better idea about sustainability? Series of articles from GCC.
- Darin’s getting into MPG graphs now. I can’t wait until he has an EV to play with.
- Flash and frugality, it’s gotta be tough to be an automaker these days: keep cranking out bigger/faster or try to hop on the efficiency train?
- VW’s diesel hybrid 250mpg car. Fun with carbon fiber composites.
- Looks like Ballard needs our help. Here’s my idea: they give us EV converters free fuel cells, or at greatly reduced prices, along with the support infrastructure to fuel them (home hydrogen kit?). We install them in our EVs, show the technology off, spread the word, ...(?), profit! Meanwhile Toyota and GM’s joint fuel cell research is ending due to lack of progress.
- Honda might be working on a cheap hybrid.
- Jim’s added some more repair/take-apart pictures to his Hi-Torque Electric motor site. I particularly like the photo of the siamese 8 inch motor install complete with Zilla controller.
