Battery undervoltage warning circuit · 29 October 06
Hello everybody,
Jerry has asked me to support him on this site by posting articles. This is my first time so please be patient while I get my act together.
There are big wires, big batteries and big currents in an EV. Sometimes things can go wrong and the sooner you know about it, the better.
Last year when I was a green EV-er I just thought it was OK to connect all my cables to the battery terminals without checking them or even cleaning the oxide off the lead. Everything was OK – for a while. then there was a pop and a fizzle on day and one of my terminals had melted and dropped molten lead onto the battery plates below. I was barely able to make it home and had to spend some time patching the hole in the battery and fishing bits of lead out.
I have been thinking ever since about some sort of device which will give me early warning about either weak cells and weak connections, that is, a high resistance link somewhere in my 16 long battery string…..
- Samsung has developed a high contrast (1500:1) LCD for in-car dash instrument use.
- Got an email from the folks at Peak Energy Solutions claiming they have a thermally stable, lightweight, high power density Lithium Iron Phosphate battery. No clue, from email or web site, on the size, availability, or pricing yet.
- Mitsubishi is stepping up their electric car research. Looking at the diagram it shows a “household charger plug” along with a separate “quick charger plug.” To take advantage of the quick charge you, or your office, will need 3-phase, 50kW/200V.
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- A couple new electric cars in the news lately, both on the higher end of the price spectrum. There’s the Obvio! from Brazil featuring lithium batteries and a 200-240 mile range, which will be sold in the US by Zap for around $50k. And if you haven’t heard about the Tesla electric car then you probably haven’t been paying attention. Checking in from $80-$100k it purports to have sports car performance and (or?) 250 miles per charge. Nice looking vehicle created by Lotus. Oddly enough the gallery shows a photo of it with a gas cap on the side…for the plug? Still, you’d think a purpose built electric wouldn’t have a gas cap looking thing on the side…
- Biofuels: Think Outside The Barrel – video presentation on biofuels with Vinod Khosla.
- Speaking of which, Saab has unveiled their new bio-fuel hybrid prototype. (no news if they’ll ever make it though) ““A hybrid system is not cheap,” points out Mr Elliot.”
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- Record flight set in airplane powered by 160 AA batteries. The aircraft stayed in the air for 59 seconds and flew a distance of 391 metres (1,282 feet). (thanks for the link Jerry)
- Over at OmniNerd they are taking an in-depth look at how to modify driving style, vehicle, and even fuel to optimize mileage (on a jeep).
- Lengthy article entitled The Oil We Eat. Interesting perspective on crops as energy storage. “Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1.” contrasted with, “In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten…”
- Not yet ready to slip into your car yet but work is being done on heat powered air conditioning.
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News · 24 June 06
Site updates are going to be light to non-existant for a while folks. My father was checked into the hospital and the prognosis is not good. I’ll be traveling and in and out of communications for a while. Update: he passed away on Saturday.
Of course y’all should keep on plugging away and helping each other as you’ve been doing in the comments. Lots of great information being shared, which makes the site/community all the better.
I’ll leave you with a few treats.
- TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) unveils their Electric Mini Car prototype. With specs such as, “A 346V battery pack powers the 40kW drive motor, and can recharge to 80% capacity in 15 minutes. The manganese Li-ion cells use lithium manganese oxide spinel (LiMn2O4) as the cathode active material, making the battery resistant to overcharging and providing high thermal stability.”
- Kusnetz’s Mac Prius. Looks mostly for entertainment purposed right now, no mad unix scripts pulling in data from the prius sensors to make charts or tweak performance. Hey, I’ve got an old mini kicking around somewhere at home…
- What did you do this weekend? Over at Random Foo he researched energy and power generation and came to the conclusion that the government could do a massive incandescent to fluorescent light bulb swap (at an estimate cost of $100M-$200M). This would save around 4 billion in energy over the lifetime of the incandescent bulbs (4.4yrs), almost a billion bucks a year.
- Speaking of which, the EETimes reports that Cree has produced a white LED with the efficiency of 131 lumens per watt. Your typical incandescent checks in with a measly 10-20 lumens/watt while fluorescent ups that to 50-60 lumens/watt. (of course LEDs are still on the expensive side).
- You convert your car to electric, replace the heavy factory seats with lightweight performance ones, and now you have a couple of extra car seats. What to do?
- “Electric cars have a saintly image but do they work in the real world?” From a Times Online article/review on electric vehicles. Pictured is the Reva G-Wiz, the same car our friend at Danny’s Contentment drives. Saintly?
- Speaking of news, last week’s “big” story was the Smithsonian removing the EV-1 from display just before the release of the movie, Who Killed the Electric Car. If you really have TONS of time to kill and want to read piles of wildly divergent opinions be sure to check out the Slashdot thread.
- Not to fear you still may be able to see a working EV-1 at the upcoming HybridFest in Madison, Wisconsin the 22nd of July. Of course most of the current models of hybrids will be on display, including some plug-in models.
- Ener1 will be talking to investors about advancements in hybrid batteries. This is good, we like seeing lots of companies with plans for new/better batteries. Gotta get us some of dem new carbon fiber nano tech super cap batteries.
- High gas prices are renewing interest in bicycles too. Zeke and I have been walking the 3.5 miles to/from work a couple times a week…trying to regain our svelte, non-winter figures. ’:^)
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- Larry’s 1982 Mazda B2000 electric pickup, along with wiring schematic. Here’s his EVAlbum entry (I really appreciate EV journals that provide schematics)
- A few more details on the upcoming Myers Motors’ NmG commercial electric vehicle. It’s a three wheeled commuter and it’s funtelligent (their words, not mine)! Here’s the specs.
- Someone posted in the comments a while back wondering about building our own Lithium batteries. I happened across a wikipedia article yesterday on lithium batteries. Maybe one reason we won’t be cooking our own lithium batteries is because the metal is also used in making methamphetamine! (scroll to bottom) Lithium batteries are certainly PRICED as if they were a rare drug. Here’s a wiki article on lithium ion polymer batteries.
- GreenTomatoCars.com – an environmentally friendly private hire service in London (extensive flash website, lots of little “info” things). More info from the Guardian.
- Transcript of remarks by Ford President of the Americas to U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
- A couple stories about Gordon Cooper’s Ford Ranger Electric Car: KLTV and News Journal.
- Red Herring has an interview with Martin Eberhard, the founder of Tesla Motors, about starting a new car company to make electric vehicles.
- Lumina launches a new warm light LED. Designed to be “a super-bright, very long lasting and energy efficient alternative to halogen and incandescent lamps but with the same warm, eye-appealing glow.” They also have a LED “light engine” designed for automotive technicians, called CentraL.E.D..
- Comedian Robert Newman’s take on the history of oil.
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Vacation · 10 June 06
We just got back this week from our (too short) vacation to California. It was GREAT to be somewhere that it didn’t rain around the clock. And, Sun, I’d almost forgotten what it was.
Saw a couple EVs and a bunch of Prius hybrids. At one point I was keeping track of how many Prius we saw vs. the new Ford Mustang. Along Hwy 1 the count was about even, being prime winding-road sports car territory, but once we were in city areas the Prius easily took a commanding lead.