EVTV.ME

Flatenem Series A123 Module

2012-02-28T10:51:00.004-06:00

This week we heard from John Hardy of the Midlands in the UK. John is about to publish a new book titled ICE FREE specifically on the topic of converting your car to electric drive.

He suggested a flat pack design and while a little rough and perhaps a little obvious, we pretty much liked the idea.

We've been talking about a flat pack for a few weeks to put under a Smart Car build or to test an A123 pack under a Speedster. This concept does well enough.

I suppose we jumped the gun describing the book, but I wanted a little context for the conversation, like who he was and where he was from. The book came up. The problem is it isn't precisely released yet, so you can't have one. But it should be on Amazon soon.

The other aspect we went on with in this video at some length and probably at some tedium was the JLD404AH Intelligent AH Meter. We actually found this meter BY ACCIDENT in a box of stuff we had ordered a year ago. We more recently found this DC Voltmeter that allowed you to set relays based on voltage and we kind of designed a bottom balancing circuit out of this very simply by connecting that control relay to a contactor and a 0.1 ohm 250watt power resistor. This little "bleeder" would bleed a cell at about 30 amps until it gets down to 2.50 volts, or really whatever value you set, and then disconnect the load.

But while rooting through a box of similar meters, we found this Intelligent AH Meter version. We had never hooked it up. And it was no longer available, and worse the documentation was no longer available.

But it was a pretty similar meter and we gradually were able to piece together how to work it. incredibly, the relays could be activated by Voltage on those as well. In fact, you could tie the relays to voltage, current, ampere-hours, or time in a way that is so flexible, you really can't quite work it all out mentally. It actually lets you set TWO levels an activation threshold and a deactivation threshold kind of like a thermostat.

A thermostat? Well yee. THis is the easiest example, which is unfortunate because this device does NOT measure temperature. But let's say you wanted to turn on a heater to bring a pot of water to a certain temperate and hold it there. Wouldn't it be nice to have a relay that would run the heater. IF the water is below 100 degrees for example, it energizes, turning on the heater. When it reaches 140 degrees it reenergizes, allowing the temperature to fall. But at 100 degrees, it comes on again. In this way, it cycles but without hystereses. It has a band gap.

That's how these relays work. And you can set them on an ascending curve or descending curve. And they can work on voltage, current, amp hours, or time.

The flexibility of all this hurts the head, so I won't pursue it. But it makes it a very handy little device.

We went back to the guy we bought this from and had a couple of weeks of discussion to get him to reprise it. We ordered a dozen, and put it in the video which we released Sunday noonish.

We also put a description and a way to order on our web site online store. By Monday morning, we had sold twelve. Of course, I already had two of our dozen on the lab bench. So we're not only sold out, but scrambling to get enough to fill the current orders.

This basically illustrates the ongoing need for instrumentation. We recently reviewed Valery Mitzikhov's EMW Dashboard. It turns out this hardware isn't done by EMW at all, but rather by Dmitri Butvinik, an online impresario we've crossed swords with before. The hardware literally came apart in our hands. And now that we know where its from, the odds of fixing the 5% accuracy problem are essentially none. I played with some GOOD hall effect sensor s a year ago and found accuracy to be a devilish problem. I assumed Valery, with a Phd in Physics, had some magic sauce on this topic since they used a hall effect sensor. As it turns out, no. He has simply bitten on a Dmitri device assuming it would report accurate current. It doesn't. And it can't. In fact it's a very cheap hall effect sensor to begin with. Dmitri and his followers are big fans of cheap.

In any event, we're going to piece together this AH meter, a 12v DC-DC converter to power it with full isolation from your pack voltage, a shunt that COULD be mounted with a bit of additional work, and a Operations Manual that yours truly has cobbled together to serve as some DOCUMENTATION for this device.

The device uses a shunt. We get rather inexpensive shunts from China that are 75 mv. Let's talk a little about current measurement. Everyone KNOWS all this, and in most cases know at least part of it wrong.

Basically to measure current, the most accurate and temperature stable way to do this is with a known small value of resistance. According to George Ohm, the amount of current through a given resistance is a function of the voltage you apply. Conversely, if you measure the voltage across a known resistance, you can calculate the current flow.

To measure high current levels, you want a very LOW resistance value so you dissipate a minimum of current as heat. The power dissipated will be a function of current level, times resistance, squared. So if you have a high level of current, you must have a very low value of resistance.

In the U.S., most shunts are machined to have a resistance where the full current level will cause a voltage drop of 50mv. For example, you might have a shunt that is rated at 100Amps/50mv. That means that if you run 100 amps through it, you would read 0.050 volts or 50 millivolts across the terminals as the voltage drop across that resistance. If we take that voltage and divide it by the current 0.050/500 we get the resistance of the shunt resistor - in this case 0.0001 ohms or 0.1 milliohms. Indeed a very small value. But if accurate enough, very useful.

Chinese meters almost always specify 75mv shunts. And so we are coupling this meter with a 1000A/75mv shunt. In the meter, there is a APuH value where you enter the full scale value of current - 1000 amps. And of course it has a fixed 75 mv input.

Because of this full scale variable, we can actually use ANY shunt with this menu. What you are setting is the number of amperes to display and to count in the AH calculation when the meter measures 75 millivolts. If we had a 500A/50mv shunt for example, it would never exhibit a voltage drop of 75mv until it carried 750 Amperes. No problem. Hook it up to the meter and enter 750 as the full scale current value.

Similarly, if you had a 100A/100mv shunt you wanted to use. How many amperes should you enter for 75 mv? Well, how about 75 amperes?

There are a couple of things to keep in mind here. First, it is just a fixed value of resistance. The maximum current that can be measured is a function of the METER primarily. In other words, we don't know what this meter does with inputs above 75 mv. So you want more or less to size your shunt so you never exceed the 75 mv.

The other criteria is that the power dissipated DOES heat the shunt slightly. If you run 1000 amps through a 100 A shunt, not good. It will heat it and that will affect accuracy and too much heating and the accuracy goes off permanently. But it is NOT precisely a problem to run 2000 amps through a 1000 amp shunt, or 1000 amps through a 500 amp shunt briefly. We just don't' know exactly what the meter is going to do with the information.

The other proviso is that the LOWER you go the more accurate you become. There is no point using a 1000 amp shunt in a buggy that will never do more than 200 amps. The scale is 75 mv to 1000 amps and so 1 mov of change in voltage represents 13.33 amperes. At a 300 amp shunt, each millivolt represents 4 amperes so you have a much more accurate scale, and you're not going over 300 amperes anyway.

Similarly, the 75 mv shunts are more accurate, all other things being equal, than the 50 mv shunts. You are simply using a wider voltage drop to represent the same change in current.

The EV community has faced a real challenge in finding current measurement and particularly kWh or AH accumulator/counters sized for our use. The only other market for such devices, aside from nuclear power plants, are solar power systems. ANd they tend to be 50 amp and 48v scale items. Similarly, some attention is paid by large boat and recreational vehicle owners. BUt again, 48v and 50amp or 100amp is pretty much the game there.

And so if you want to accurately measure 500 or 1000 amps and you have a pack voltage of 150 or 250 volts, there is really not much out there to find in the way of generic measurement devices.

The ability to measure 50 mv or 75 mv is actually chip based. There are some phenomenal operational amplifier chips out there to do this and have been for many years. The problem is that they are now ENTIRELY surface mount devices. I cannot find one that will measure both directions and provide a useful output in a larger chip format. And I cannot SEE much less solder SMT devices.

Hall effect devices CAN output higher values such as 0-5v or 4-20ma or even 0-10v that can be read with standard A/D circuits in multicrontroller devices such as Arduinos. But they become quite nonlinear outside of their defined range, and it is quite hard to find the zero point, even with temperature compensation. And so at these scales where we are charging at 25 amps and driving at 1300 amps and need to be able to measure both accurately, that can be difficult to do with hall effect devices. And not possible at all with undersized inexpensive ones.

We have used the Xantrex device for several years. It is kind of pricey at $250-$275. I cannot SEE the display in any lighting conditions. And the little terminal board in the back is very difficult to poke a wire into and get it to stay put. But we've lived with it. THe JLD404AH is the first meter I've found that does what I want, allows control based on AH, and that I can read.

But given the immediate dozen sales, I'm guessing we need to keep looking. Apparently, we are NOT the only people looking for instrumentation.

We'll try to expedite all current orders and get new stock in soonest.

Jack Rickard

The Cape Girardeau ENDURO.

2012-02-22T09:06:00.004-06:00

Of batteries and range and endurance and costs and complexities and batteries....

This week we continue A123 module obsession AND we do some minor work on the Cadillac Elescalade.

Apparently the A123 cell thing is of intense interest to at least some segment of our viewership. If developed, it would appear to offer some alternative cell strategies. However, these are not entirely without difficulties.

A couple of items. We continue to have lab anomalies I'm hesitant to report in detail. The reason I can't share these with you guys is you guys. You shred me every time I do with a laundry list of how I SHOULD have done the test.

We are accustomed to testing large format cells - 160 Ah and 180 Ah units with the odd 400 Ah cell thrown in. It's true I've done quite a bit of work in the last year in pairing two 90Ah cells for 180 Ah.

Suddenly dealing with 20Ah cells is just a different world. 1/2Ah or even 1 Ah isn't anything on a 180Ah cell. It's not really much of anything on a 100 Ah cell. It's a LOT on a 20 Ah cell. And so our procedures and test equipment, which I am ALSO always testing, gets a little bollixed up on what I'm doing at any given moment.

IS the decrease in capacity from 19Ah to 17.8 Ah due to test equipment or have I damaged the cell? Or not fully charged it in the first place?

As everyone who has gone into real cell testing has discovered, defining fully discharged OR defining fully charged is actually a little squishy. You can fully charge the cell using anything you want. Let it rest a couple of hours, and it will take more using the same metric. Similarly on discharge. A "bit more" starts to get hard to define at 20 Ah.

But we have had some mysteries. Like bottom balancing four cells to exactly 2.50 volts and then charging the pack. When we discharge it, they are all out of b a lance again. So we repeat the process and they are BACK in balance again?

How about draining a cell to 2.50v and then leaving it overnight with NOTHING connected to it. To find the next day it is ruined at 0.85v. Wait a minute. Recharged it works fine again????

We do not see these sorts of things with the larger prismatic cells. I would characterize these A123 cells as about as stable as a burlap sack full of cats. But I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

More reality. Yes, I know you all are all packaging engineering experts and I was made to WATCH the other kids during art class in the second grade. But whatever I do adds 1/3 to the weight and volume of A123 cells. You can pretty much figure that if it takes 10 cells and they weigh .496grams each that will be 4.96 kg. My package will be 4.96 x 1.33 or 6.6kg. So any increase in energy density you "imagine" from these cells is not only not possible, but if I'm doing the packaging there is a penalty here. A half sized pack doesn't get you half the range. It probably gets you 1/3 the range. So your 100 mile car with a pack that costs slightly MORE than half a pack probably actually delivers 1/3 the range or 35 miles or so.

Similarly the costs. Yes, it's $100 for resin. Let's try polycarbonate at $150. Or straw, at $90. Whatever I do, at least in prototype, dramatically increases the cost of these cells which STARTED OUT very pricey themselves. As their price has fallen, the percentage devoted to connectors and resin and molds and so forth has risen as a percentage.

So despite my obsession with these cells and posing them as a low cost alternative because of their high power output, reality keeps intervening to make it clear to me that this will NEVER be my choice for cells in a car. The large format leggo block 180Ah CALB is the battery of choice for me in designing a car at the moment. And I would list A123's as "problematical".

But that's not to say some effort making them LESS problematical isn't in order.

On the good side, despite my totally ruined mold, the 13.2v 120 Ah battery is testing well at about 113 Ah without any real overcharging or over discharging. I have mentioned some oddities but the cells seem to still be ticking along. But from what I am seeing I can see new insight into why some are so focused on top balancing BMS systems. They are a brute force way of making these cells do your bidding or appear to. I suspect there is another better way, but I'm still looking for it.

And the 13.3v package is looking pretty good to me in camp green and black. It is a little heavy at 36 lbs was it? But obviously durable. All cells are available at the top, perhaps too much so. A dropped wrench on this one would be fireworks. I might put some effort into a soft rubber "cap" made out of the silicon rubber mold material. Pour it on, let it cure, and pull it off. Then you make your connections and mash it back on to secure the terminals. Kind of a soft rubber hoodie for a battery.

All this is kind of stalling out our larger projects. But I confess I am having some fun. ANd it feels like we are just doing some things very differently from the OEM's and the very elegant high tech style so in vogue. But I kind of think "car stuff" out to be a little more rough and tumble along the lines of the SLI battery, which has evolved over 100 years - in fact we missed the anniversary of Kettering's electric start automobile 100th anniversary this week.

The 1912 Cadillac Touring Edition was first to eliminate the hand crank and opened up driving to everyone. Cadillac founder Henry M. Leland, who had already pioneered electric lights and electric ignition on his cars, worked closely with Charles F. Kettering, the inventor of the electric starter, to incorporate the device into his cars. The electric starter also was GM’s first electric motor – a core business today anticipating the growth in the electrification of the automobile.

Point is, that battery has been "evolving" for a century now. It looks the way it does for a reason, or a million reasons. It arrived in Darwinian fashion to be exactly what it is. And so using that as a starting point is not a bad, if slightly blind, strategy.

But new ideas are good too. And so we are casting about. We have used several. We used the alternating cells on the nylon threaded rod. I liked that, but it buried our terminals. We kind of stress tested it, which on reflection may not have been good medicine. But it got us to a pretty gruesome failure quickly which prevents spending more time on such a thing and then having it blow later.

We then mimicked the individual cell thing we already get from China. A word about that. I've heard a lot about just using similar boxes and similar terminals from China. Well, I've looked for them on Alibaba and I can't find them. If you can find who makes those, yes, I wold prefer to just buy the existing hardware and plastic extruded boxes, even if I had to cut them down a bit. Haven't found a source.

And this to the concept of ideas. An idea is not a general piece of shit on a napkin. They work better with measurements, specific product recommendations, and sources. "Expanding foam" is fine. But there are a brazillian. Similarly urethane resins, polycarbonate, silicon rubber, etc. ALl have different cure times, shore hardness, tensile strength, exothermic reaction, temperature tolerance, etc etc. ad nauseum.g

This is why I can be a little short with some of the arm chair theorists. If you've really thought this through by looking up at the ceiling, you're not in the same category as someone like Nabil or Peter who have hooked some of this up and then had an idea they don't have the resource to implement. And then if you're a Damien Maguire or Paul Holmes are someone in that category, just send me a list of parts you need and a delivery address and we'll wait for YOUR video.

I did include a segment of Damien Maguire's in this episode. If you were looking for someone to liven up the pace of conversation, Damien is more in my camp than out of it. But he does some interesting and of course tedious work on bottom balancing and shows you the ugly end of it on his BMW and so I included the entire video he uploaded to YouTube. I think he will find bottom balancing surprisingly effective in a lot of ways, and no easier than he thought.

I was reminded by the head of REAP systems, a leading BMS developer at the EVCCON that while bottom balancing might be more effective than top balancing, at least arguably, it was not very convenient. My response to him, and to Damien, is that in all the battery testing we've done, across several years and now locations, I've never once had a SINGLE LiFePo4 cell express ANY interest at all in my convenience. They are just curiously agnostic and apparently have no feelings for MY feelings whatsoever. But on the other hand, if I ask one to do the dive for the cause at my behest, they will head toward zero volts so fast you think they actually LIKE to give their lives in order to save mine. Valient. Just valiant. Splendid behavior.

This week I'm working on a new supur sekert module project. We are code naming this one the FLATENUM SERIES. It will be a flat pack designed to slide under Speedster Duh and ultimately get hooked up to it to provide 120v of juice at 60Ah. I have kind of a theory that this small Ah pack will act as a pack stiffener - holding the voltage up on acceleration. After acceleration, it would be restored by the larger prismatic pack to an identical state. This appears obvious. But it either may or may not be TRUE. We haven't really done such a thing. I would THINK it will work and instead of plunging to 106v on a hard acceleration we should maintain up at about 114 or even 116volts. This means more power through the controller to the wheels.

it should add about 200 lbs to the car, but in theory another 25 miles as well.

To make all things fair, i'll just quietly mention in passing that we are considering an addition to the Drag Race and Autocross at EVCCON this year. It will be a two hour race we will call the EVTV ELECTRIC ENDURO. It will run through a very SCENIC fall drive from Cape Girardeau up the hilly twisty U.S. 61 to Perrryville Missouri, thence across highway 51 to Illinois, where it will pick up Illinois highway 3 down the banks of the Mississippie before recrossing at the Cape Girardeau Bill Emerson Bridge back into town. And it looks like 127 miles on the map.

I think Speedster Redux can make it now and Speedster Duh likely will make it after the A123 addition if it works. But if you're working on an extender pack, battery trailer, etc there may well be a showcase for it in the EVTV Enduro. Probably a timed race rather than a true road race. Time and the ability to complete being the issue.

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I may try to arrange some charging in Perryville for those who want to try half of it, and still get back to the festivities without a flatbed. Yes, the entire concept is for this very beautiful scenic country drive to be just beyond your reach. An electric road race no one can finish. That's just the way my mind works. I would have been different had I been born a TALL instead of a ROUND. But I'm still around.

One other element that will apply to drag race, autocross, and endure - anti homolugation. If you have produced over 100 of these vehicles, you cannot compete other than exhibition only. It must be a custom conversion or VERY small run OEM with less than a hundred instances on the road. We remain TEsla Fanboyz too, but that's not really what EVCCON is about.

Jack Rickard

OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER AND A123 BATTERY CELLS

2012-02-13T11:32:00.006-06:00

What do you mean obsessive/compulsive?

This week we continue our obsession on A123 cells. I fear this obsession on developing a mechanical package for these cells to use in a car is going to cost me my entire viewership of our EVTV weekly show.

But we continue to pursue it for a number of reasons.

FIRST. We think this higher power cell opens the door to a different kind of power pack for electric vehicles. Not dramatically different, but just conceptually different. Our DIY crowd lives in a strange space of time, space, and money restrictions that VW and BMW simply do not face.

As a result, EVTV has lived in a strange grey zone of tension between those who want to build excellent electric vehicles and those who want to do it inexpensively. There is a little army of guys out there still building lead acid vehicles because they perceive the $3000 of lead cost as workable and $10,000 for Lithium as not. They desperately want to be perceived as "pioneers" in the electric vehicle movement. When I tell them they are not only NOT pioneers, but actually damaging to the cause, it drives them into a frenzy of hostility and abuse mostly directed at the messenger ME.

Let me repeat: lead is dead. IT is at this point a NOT very interesting science project. It is not a car. ANd it reenforces false stereotypes about electric cars among the public. If you have a lead powered electric car, please hide it from view.

But the desire for a lesser cost battery, and the willingness to settle for less range, just might be an itch we can scratch with the A123 MD1HD-A 20Ah pouch cell.

Here's why. This cell only has 20Ah of energy in it and in testing, really more like 19 Ah. But it can put out 20C of POWER and so it's POWER density is quite high. To drive a 1000Amp controller and motor, would only require three of these cells in parallel. A 60Ah pack would cover up to 1350 amps actually which encompasses the power requirements of every single vehicle we've done at EVTV including the eCobra.

And so a 100 Ah pack is actually overkill for a normal car with regards to power or instantaneous current requirements. But it is a smaller pack than we normally use.

As an exercise, let's redesign our pack for Speedster Part Duh. This vehicle is limited to 120v by the controller. If we did a 100Ah version of this at 5 cells in parallel, we would actually be a little less than that, probably 90-95Ah. At let's say at 120v, such a pack would of course have 10,800 kWh. But the weight of the cells, not counting any modules, would be more like 180 lbs instead of our current 450 lbs and could conceivably bring our wH per mile down to 200. That's a 54 mile range to 100% DOD and of course 43.2 miles to 80%.

The national average for a daily drive is 39.4 miles and 78% of the population can deal with a car that does 40 miles or less.

The car would be lighter. And the cost of the cells based on our last purchase would be $4770. The cost of the cells we HAVE in it now for an 80 mile safe range is a bit over $8000 with shipping.

And so we have lead acid, with 1200 lbs of cells and about a 30 mile range at $3000, the CALB 180's with an 80 mile range at 450 lbs of cells at $8000, and the A123 at 180 lbs and 43 mile range at $4800.

The A123 fills in nicely and the CAR actually PERFORMS better than either of the other options because of lower cell weight and so lower vehicle weight.

But perhaps most importantly, the initial cost is closer to the lead $3000 cost than it is to the CALB 180's $8000 cost. And the car is not only fully functional, but probably super functional as it will drive better at a light weight than it will with the CALB 180 cells.

IF you then like the car, and need more range, ADDING cells to the system is almost a trivial exercise.

And so we see these cells as allowing a whole new group of our viewers who mostly view, finally get started to build. That's a big play for us and a big play toward the adoption of electric drive for personal mobility worldwide.

REASON TWO. I'm just incensed at the hubris of Miet Ming Chang and the A123 group in accepting $249 million dollars and publicly dissing ANYONE not an OEM qualified in their mind to be an OEM right on their web site WITH my tax dollars in their jeans. I'm further incensed that they would lay off 125 hapless yucks the first time Fisker hits a glitch, saving themselves what $7 million a year in payroll while lunching at the Fish on their $249 million dollar grant.

I'm THEN incensed that they actually make the cells in Korea, and have MADE IN USA printed on them there.

And then I'm enormously entertained that FISKER has now missed the milestones on THEIR Department of Energy LOANS and have shut down their production and layed off 65 workers. This is a company A123 invested $30 million dollars in, and lo Fisker announced A123's cells to be the very highest quality available.

Now A123 has a rather diminished need for cells.

And so it APPEARS that the Asian factories, facing plummeting demand from A123, are actually selling the cells out the back door to Chinese traders. And there we purchase them.

Several people have alluded to the fact that these may be "reject" cells from QA or "seconds" or otherwise undesirable cells. I would note that EVERY person I have heard this from also sells competing batteries. It is just dehumanizing to watch the "who's ox got gored" scenario play out EVERY TIME in EXACTLY the same way.

Our examination and testing would tend to indicate that the cells we are receiving are brand new and of acceptable quality per the published specification. At some price, the performance is what the performance is and we find 18.5 to 19.5 Ah of energy density and a full 23C tested current capacity very persuasive at these prices.

So reason two is simply that it tickles my fancy to buy cells from China purportedly made in the USA from a US manufacturer who's head is so far rammed up their own ass you would have to e-mail them JPEGS of sunlight if you ever want them to know what it looks like.

REASON THREE has to do with establishing the ongoing market price of these cells. The factory and traders have to make some level of profit to continue making the cells at all. I don't know where the floor is. Our first purchase was a little over 2 months ago at $36 per cell I think. Our latest purchase in December was at $20 per cell plus shipping and paypal charges. Nathan Knoppenberg reported this week a quote of $17.40 FOB china. I asked my guy and he quoted $19.20. As these two quotes were from the same company and our viewers have already purchased several thousand cells from this guy, I kind of went ballistic on him. His response is that I can have them at whatever price I want to pay.

Lower pricing is good. You want to squeeze. But when you squeeze all the oxygen out of the room, understand that the supply might just disappear.. In infant industries such as this, while you are seeking the lowest price, understand that it is generally in your interest for these people who make motors, controllers, batteries, et al to remain in business and for it to actually be an attractive business for others as well.

In any event, CALB cells are at $1.20 per amp hour and TS/Winston/Sinopoly somewhere around $1 to $1.05. At anything like $19 and below, these A123 cells suddenly make sense in a lot of ways. At $15 they pretty much kill off the larger prismatics.

REASON FOUR - it may just be a better battery. A little over a year ago, in our December 6, 2010 blog entry "What heSaid, What I said" a professor Jay Whitacre of Carnegie Mellon University did a video addressing the Carnegie Mellon EV club and talking about batteries, battery management systems, chemistry, etc. This guy has had quite a career specifically with Lithium batteries going back to the NASA/Jet Propulsion Lab and a decade of it. In this video, he several times held up the A123 cell as the "gold standard" by which LiFePo4 cells should be compared. Since then, A123 has done several presentations to DOE as to how they have improved their cells, and mostly this 20 Ah cell. It is a LONG way from the little can cells used in the deWalt power tools.
(Incidentially deWalt as it turns out has a patent on a little BOTTOM BALANCING battery charger).

Now Daniel A Cogswell and Martin Z. Bazant of MIT have published a paper, Coherency strain and the kinetics of phase separation in LiFePO4 that would appear to imply that fracturing of the crystalline matrix in LiFePo4 cells may be DIMINISHED by the use of HIGHER current levels during charge and discharge. In other words, the harder you work em, the longer they last. I have for about a year now thought that the disconnect in the broad electric vehicle community that I feel is about really smart people NOT looking hard enough at these LiFePo4 cells because of their lowish energy density. They don't REALLY know why these cells work, and yet they are moving on to others that have none of the same advantages, for a few ma of energy. How about driving THIS chemistry to its limits first.

Our latest module uses a mold we made from a CALB 180 prismatic cell using Mold Star 30 Platinum Silicone Rubber from a company titled SMOOTH-ON. This took about 16 hours to cure but gives me a very durable but flexible rubber mold to pour cast urethane in. The material needs no release agent when used with urethanes. So you just pour it in and in 10 minutes pull it out.

The urethan resin we used this week (resin du jour as we try a lot of different ones) is their SMOOTH CAST ONYX which has a deep glossy black finish. It takes about 40 ounces in our mold. The bad news there is there is this stuff is $94 per gallon meaning we could do three batteries per gallon or EACH cell would take about $31 plus shipping just of resin. We probably need to find something less expensive.

Assuming about $10 worth of hardware, $31 in resin, and six cells at $26.50 our little battery costs about $200 each for 115 Ah. And our 36 cells in Speedster Duh, instead of the theoretical $4800, is more like $7200. Of course, that is with 120 Ah instead of the 100Ah described at the beginning. But you can see that the form and the cost of the actual modularization of these pouch cells is what it is entirely about. You can wipe out the advantage of them if you have too high a costs in the module. And of course you wipe out the advantage if the modules can't handle the current or lead to early cell death.

So we are doing more work on a module. But we had kind of hoped our viewers would do some work in this area as well.

We also took a first look at Valery Mitzikhov's EMW Bluetooth Dashboard for Android in this episode. MORE ON THAT LATER. This is a fascinating device with a few early version problems.

Yes, the audio is wretched in the first part of the show. Brain forgot to change batteries in the Juiced Link. We would not have even HAD a show but for our new backup TASCAM DR-100 recorder. But even there, he had the microphone pointed at the wall instead of at us and so the sound is like being in a bathroom. We'll do better. I hope....

Jack

2012-02-07T09:43:00.000-06:00

This week the Brain is off to see his parents in Southern California. They are not as young and pretty as they once were and indeed Lou is facing open heart surgery. If you are accustomed to prayer you might put in a word.

Leaving me loose in the shop by myself. Actually, I enjoy solitude and particularly in the shop. If I set something down, I can kind of count on it being there when I come back. With a single other soul in the building it is always remarkable to me. I could build a trick double throw me down quick disconnect air powered overspeed protected refrigistastitator flavis waven that no one on the planet but myself even knew what it was, much less have a use for it, and lay it down on a bench immediately on assembly.

If I turn and refill a tea glass, when I come back 12 seconds later, the damn thing will have disappeared completely. A search ensues. EVERYONE in the shop SWEARS they haven't touched a thing. 45 minutes later I find it on the SINK in the bathroom.

OH YEAH. Is THAT what that was? I was wondering? So I took it into the bathroom. NOW I know what you were talking about.

I actually had an incident this week, again with an object so nondescript NO ONE could have a use for it EVEN ME, in theory, but I did. It had been moved and when I complained I was told in no uncertain terms by the only other person in the shop that they hadn't done it. When I noted that there were only two of us, he became THOROUGHLY incensed that I would "call him a liar" and threw a total fit. Without missing a beat, he then noted that he had only moved it for "safety reasons" and because it was in his way. ???? So he was INCENSED that I would call him a liar, which I never did, and then confessed to lying about it, which he did.

I apologized profusely of course and noted that I wouldn't' for anything in the world have him offended in any way. And indeed to prevent any POSSIBILITY of a future occurrence, I invited him to leave the shop and our employ as quickly as he could assemble his train.

Alzheimer's is not precisely a disease in my family. Picture it more as a tradition. So I kind of feel like Helen Keller after her parents have rearranged the furniture for the twelfth time.

So I kind of had a good time this week, once Rod had been promoted to whatever he's doing now, and I'm rattling around the shop by myself. It has been wonderful. It's true I am not as good as those guys at fabrication and just being able physically to reach things and lift things and so forth. But I actually got quite a bit done, albeit in piddling ways.

Not really shown in this weeks' episode. I got some 4 AWG cables run from the Manzanita to some terminals under the truck tied in with the J1772 plug wires. This gives us much stronger cables to carry the current for our PFC-75. I'm so accustomed to chargers that put out 20 amps, that having a 75 amp monster is a constant reminder. The little 10 gage wires I had on it, normally overkill for charger duties, were getting very warm.

As many know, the Manzanita is NOT my favorite charger. But this particular unit we spent about $4500 on several years ago when it first came out and it is capable of 75 amps at up to 400 volts. That's pretty stout.
Despite Manzanita's assurances that they are all fully capable of 75 amps, we get 68 amps or so into this one from the wall. That's still pretty stout. And with a 400Ah pack, we need all we can get. At that high current level, it will still take six hours to charge this 76 kWh pack.

I've done something kind of goofy here and may pay the price. We've mounted the charger, and a DC-DC converter, on TOP of the polycarbonate lid of the pack. So now to get to my pack, I have to remove a lid with a n ever increasing array of wires and stuff on top of it. I added the little voltmeter we talked about recently from LightObject to it for example, so I can see the pack voltage at a glance. Turns out this little 5740TV voltmeter is really pretty accurate. I just love these things. I found an older JLD404 AH counter from these guys and got it set up in the lab and working and it is pretty nice. Voltage, current, hours, and AH all in one little device. Problem is, they don't sell it anymore. They sell a JLD404, but it does something else and no longer does AH. But we're talking to them about getting them again.

I also tied the charger to the pack INSIDE the box. This poses a little problem I hadn't thought through. I need a hall effect device and a shunt device for current measurement and in order to work, it has to be inside the loop of both the controller AND the charger. In this case, that now means inside the battery box. So my electric car is moving one piece at a time into the battery box in back. And I'm not sure I can stem the flow of parts into the area.

We did bleed the pack down using our Aurora Inverter - basically running the shop off of the 76 kWh pack for two days until the pack was drained. Then I used an old Thundersky 30 A charger I have laying around with big jumper cable clips on it, to individually charge each cell up to about 2.80v - then letting them fall back to about 2.75. We did this to all 57 cells until they all read 2.75 +- 0.05v. At that point, we hooked our Manzanita back up and charged it to 205 volts. This will be about 3.6v per cell and is high enough for my purposes. Again, I like to undercharge a bit and we have a huge pack here.

As noted in the video, we did build a little heater for the Vantage GreenVan. Brain had reported in from California that he had visited HPEVS and they were working with Vantage GreenVan on a LiFePo4 version of the van. We've been enjoying one for some time. But it has a little diesel heater that I'm scared to death to even turn on. So I wired my daughter up a little electric heater using two of the by now familiar PTC heater elements and a Kilovac relay.

And as promised, I show the damage done to our A123 module attempts and even pry open one of the cells to look at the very different looking cathode on this cell and talk a little about the patent disputes over this cathode.

I'm still mystified by our losses there. This week I've made TWO little modules with 6 cells in parallel more like our prismatics. They are champions. About 117 Ah - full spec 19.6 Ah per cell.

I DID notice something that is a little problematical in an electric car and kind of hard to test. If I fully discharge a set, and then immediately full charge it, it looks like ti has lost capacity and reaches a high voltage quite prematurely. If I let it then set overnight, I can add another 10 or 15 Ah to the cell the next day with no harm at all. This is NOT like our existing cells. It is quite strange behavior. And it might explain some of our damages in the modules. I was running it HARD to discharge it and pretty hard to charge it and doing it quite back to back based pretty much on what it OUGHT to take.

Of course, I don't want to have to leave my car overnight before fully charging it? That makes no sense.

IN any event, this week I'm working on a rubber mold to make cells that look like CALB 180Ah cells but of smaller size and HIGHER power of course. A 120Ah cell would have a current capability from our tests of about
2750 amperes. Imagine driving the Elescalade on 57 of those. 57 x 6 x $26.60 = $9063. That might seem steep but it is some less than the $25,000 we have in the back now. Of course, again that would be a scant 23kWh pack and we would probably be limited to 25-30 miles on such a pack. But it drives home the point of those high power cells, we could still drive the two Soliton1's to their limit easily with such a pack or an even smaller one of 90Ah for example. And so we can use less expensive battery packs for shorter ranges. Not my style, but an option.

The problem of course is that it would take quite a bit of "sweat equity" to convert boxes of individual A123 cells to our prismatics - including hardware, resin, and so forth. So long run, I'm not sure what would be saved. But many of our viewers aren't concerned about the long run. They're concerned with limiting expense in the right now. If they'll settle for less range, these cells appear to be an option.

The cells from VictPower seem to be testing much better than the cells received from OSN power. We're clearly up over 19 Ah with these. We are charging to 3.65 volts and discharging to 2.50. There is indeed some power between 2.50 and 2.00. We're content to let it remain there.

Jack Rickard

The Struggle Continues

2012-01-30T09:18:00.000-06:00

We're having a time in the short days of winter. Here at the end of January, there is a bit of light at the end of the tunnel as the winter at this point WILL end at some point. But we struggle.

This week, we look at the final touches on the Electric Swallow. This is a neat little car with a neat little body and we had fun doing it. I was a little annoyed over the throttle issues but we more or less solved it with a 12v to 5 v converter even though it wasn't as it should be by the book.

We did do something we are going to try to incorporate in all future builds, including the Elescalade. That is interlock our controllers using the little relay on David Kerzel's J1772 board that we use. This little board is $37 and it makes your car respond to proximity switch and copilot signals from J1772 EVSE. But it features a little relay. On this build, we routed a 12v interlock signal through the normally closed contacts of this relay. In this way, if you plug in the charging plug, the car is disabled and you can't drive it away.

We actually routed the same signal through the Xantrex so it could also disable the controller when the SOC got down to 10%.

The car drove well and Lee took off for Denton with no real issues. If you stepped on the throttle all the way the controller kicked out. I showed him where to put a little resistor on the 5v DC-DC to fix that. And he seemed happy when he left Saturday afternoon. The car drives very nicely and as predicted, by using the 100Ah cells and the AC-50, it is very spritely.

We were hoping for additional reports when he got home on actual range and acceleration as we had no time for them here before he needed to be back to work.

Unfortunately, he apparently towed the car all the way to Denton with the VW tranny in gear. On arrival, he found transmission fluid all over the passenger compartment and nothing working. We're hopeful he can get all that turned around but it's a setback after all this work.

Meanwhile, I blew experimental A123 module La Troiseme number two WIDE OPEN.

I've already heard from a number of viewers DEMANDING to know what happened. Well, I'm not sure and I'm not sure we'll ever know. We don't have a "script" like House. Whatever happens happens and I don't always know what caused it.

Before casting, the cells measured 77.75 Ah which I thought was quite good. We cast it in resin and let it cure a few days and discharged it - but we really only got 65 Ah out of it and that was down to 24volts or 2 volts per cell. We probably over discharged a couple of cells at that point. Then we put the charger on it. After 80 Ah it never did reach above 41 volts but it DID split the resin wide open and the most positive set of cells were hugely swollen and leaking electrolyte. Later, another set split it in another place. So at least two cell segments failed.

No fire. No smoke. But some heat. And the module did split wide open.

Module one failed in an interesting way as a result of something I just did wrong. I've been playing with these new light object voltmeter controllers. They have a voltmeter that sports two relays with two voltage set points each. You can use these for all sorts of things.

I was using it to switch the first prototype Troiseme to a load. Of course the load is very low resistance. The cables to the load are also very low resistance. But we were sampling the voltage at the wrong place. So when the controller closed the contactor, the voltage dropped to under 2 volts because of the drop across the cables. The ratio of cable resistance to load resistance is very low. When it goes to 2 volts, the controller opens the contactor. With the load removed, the voltage shoots up above 3 volts. This causes the controller to close the contactor.

And so what I set up was a series of perhaps 50 cycles from zero to several hundred amperes all occurring in 30 seconds until I could figure out what was going on and get it stopped. This caused a lightning display inside the battery module. It now shows full voltage, but any attempt to draw the least amount of current results in a total collapse to zero volts - maximum internal resistance possible.

With Swallow finished,we are working more on the Elescalade and have good progress there really. Rod fabricated a couple of 3/8 inch polycarbonate covers for the massive 76 kWh battery pack and box in the back of the Cadillac. We've mounted an Manzanita PFC-75 to this cover and a Vicro Megapack power supply we will use with six 5v 40A modules and one 15v 10 Amp module for a 15 volt output at 90 amps for our 12volt system.

We also moved the Aurora Inverter down to the shop. This allows us to hook up the 192v pack to this inverter and drain about 36 amps from the pack to produce 21 or so amps of 240vac right into our panel. iN this way, we can use the truck to power the shop. Because of anti-islanding circuitry in the Aurora, this will do us NO good as far as backup power goes because it won't make any if we lose grid power. Why they have done this mindless thing makes no sense to me. It does not achieve the safety issue they sought.

But in any event, it DOES let us drain down a pack and instead of wasting the energy as heat, we can use it to run the bandsaw and the lights. That's pretty cool.

After taking the pack down to 170 volts, we'll trim from there manually using a little setup from the batt lab.
I basically mounted a 12v supply, a 0.1 ohm 250 watt resistor, a contactor, and this voltmeter controller all on a little piece of the aluminum aircraft decking we've been using. We have one set of cables to carry the 30 amps or so of drain current and a SECOND set of voltage sense wires with alligator clips we will connect DIRECTLY to the batt terminals to prevent the oscillation that caused so much trouble with the A123 module. In this way, we sense the actual battery voltage instead of the voltage after the current drop. Again, this is caused by the very low 0.1 ohm load. It's actually about the same amount of resistance as we see in the connections.

We'll set the lower limit at 2.60v and the upper limit at 2.77v. In this way, the cell will discharge into the resistor until it reaches 2.60v. At that point, the controller will disengage the contactor. The cell voltage will creep back up slowly. When it reaches 2.77v, the controller will again engage the contactor and take the cell down to 2.6v again. This cycle will be repeated until the cell just can't make it to 2.77v. That should be about 2.75volts near enough.

In this way, I can connect this device to each of the 57 cells in turn and basically walk away. An hour later, that cell should be at 2.75v. At some point, they all will be. Then we'll charge the pack and set our Manzanita for the top voltage.

The J1772 receptacle has some pretty stiff wiring but the 75 Amp Manzanita will certainly heat that up. Fortunately, it is just a foot or so long. We've terminated that in some terminals under the truck right where the J1772 comes in at the gas cap. We'll run 4 AWG cable from there to the Manzanita to handle the 75 amps this charge really can draw if you put it close enough to a panel. And of course, we have 4 AWG cables from the Manzanit to the cell terminals, although with the charger mounted on TOP of the battery box, those cables are quite short.

Again, we're going to use David Kerzel's little AC31 board to do the magic and make use of his relay to do a couple of things. Interlock the controller again of course. We'll also probably use it to turn on the heater pump through a seasonal switch. In this way, in winter with the seasonal switch set, the charger will cause the pump to come on circulating our glycol in the system. We're going to put two little 250 watt rubber heater pads on our system that run off of 240vac. When the J1772 connector is in, this will use wall AC to gently heat the system - all night long in most cases. So the pump will run and the very low level of heating should keep both cabin and batteries reasonably above freezing and I suspect, running all night, really quite warm which is why we are using such weenie heaters.

During the day while driving, our much larger 14 kw heater running off pack voltage can be used as desired. But I don't want THAT much heater running all night. A thermostat failure and we could really heat things up and cause a fire.

So we'll have an alternate system powered by AC when charging.

Today's video is of a bit more reasonable length. Our 3 hour mini series are just too much editing for me, and two much video for you.

Warmest Regards;

jack Rickard

The International Module

2012-01-22T14:54:00.001-06:00

We've built precisely two of the A123 modules of the third kind. I shouldn't be excited over something we don't REALLY know if it will work. And it IS risky. We've locked up 48 cells in urethane resin that can never be dug out again. If a single cell fails, we just tossed $1230 worth of cells out the window.

Of course, if a single foil fails in one of our normal prismatics, I suppose things start to go bad there as well.

So I'm thinking of it as a larger prismatic battery of 40volts and 75 Ah - car sized at 75 lbs.

The interesting thing is that it was designed by a landscaper from the North Coast of New South Wales, a battery guy from a small OEM in Lisbon Portugal, and neither of them have ever SEEN it before as the first assembly was in Cape Girardeau Missouri. ; And none of us even know each other beyond a brief introduction.

Michael Murray of New South Wales sent in the BLENDER animation we showed in last weeks episode. It was a direct embodiment of a connection scheme first described to us ny Celso Menaia of Lisbon. And we added a bit of aluminum as a heat sink and some Dascar Plastics RP-40 urethane casting resin. Actually about a gallon for each battery.

I confess my heart was NOT in the module project initially. But something about the A123 cells kept nagging at me. Often, I know something is important by looking at it, but for some time I cannot come up with just WHY I know it is important, or important in what way. In that situation, I just keep fooling with it and at some point it will tell me.

What this does is open the door to smaller, lighter, cheaper battery packs for smaller, lighter, cheaper electric cars. And why is that important to someone building a $160,000 Cadillac Escalade Project? Well, there are a lot of viewers who are not going to build an Escalade. That's reality.

And we hear from a lot of viewers that are definitely going to build SOMETHING ,but seem stuck in "PARK" awaiting the signal to go.

We have been dismissive of lead acid cars as being "Science Projects" but in reality, that level of expenditure seems doable for most people, while the $17,500 required to do it our way does not.

I've been curiously unsympathetic. An aluminum john boat on a trailer with a trolling motor runs over $18,000 new now. So I remain curiously unsympathetic. My heroes, the real pioneers, routinely put down two or three times that for a build and are moving the token forward to change the world.

But it is of course true that all of this happens faster at a lower price.

So let's change the game. And that requires some different assumptions.

Let's talk about range. The lead guys swear they get 40 to 50 miles on a charge. This is where I fault them first. It's a barefaced lie. They do not.

They might get it in theory, but in reality, 30 or 35 miles might be the range of their FIRST test drive. ANd it goes down steadily from there to five or six miles two years later when they park it.

If we defined our battery as 120v and 75 Ah for 9000 wH, and 225 lbs, we could probably do 35-50 miles on a single charge REALLY. We would be a half TON lighter than lead. Instead of a two year life, we have potentially a 10 year life.

I believe you could build these modules for around $1400 each. Three would be $4200, which is very different from $8500 or $10,000.

And do you know what? Not only is range anxiety not an issue for me at 80 miles or 100 miles, but my wife has been driving a car with a 45 mile range for months now and it hasn't been a problem yet. We charge more often, but she really does NOT drive more than 45 miles per day.

The trick is the power output. The A123 cells we have TESTED to 23C - that is they made 475 amps in front of me while I was watching - from a series of three single cells. Yowsers.

ANd that means that despite it being a weenie 9000 wH pack, it could put out 1850 amps or so. Which is nearly TWICE what a Soliton1 will do and over THREE TIMES what the Curtis 1238-7601 can do. So we get not only FULL performance and FULL acceleration, but with a 225 lb pack, I would say OVER full acceleration.

Better, if you build a car this way, with this modest "test pack" in it and it all works out for you, but you need more range, what level of effort do you imagine you would face in wiring in three more of these? Picture a single Saturday afternoon.

So we think demonstrating this might just open up the EV project concept to a LOT of people that are avidly watching our show, but not actually turning a wrench at the moment.

This egregiously long and boring episode shows you how. We omitted the resin casting at the end, which is no big thing and we can cover it next week. But all the important and hard parts are there. It is a good bit of work. They do not assemble themselves. But we think it is a good design. Testing will tell. Note A123's own module is in recall as we speak. These things aren't easy. ANd I'm really NOT a packaging engineer.

We're also a little giddy with cash flow these days. In the past week, we've sold over a dozen sets of the battery strap kits. This is simply a 70mm braided strap for a CALB 100 or 180Ah cell, a Thundersky 160 Ah cell or SOME Thundersky 100 Ah cells. We also throw in two stainless M8 bolts and two zinc coated Nordlock washers - the combination that has worked SO very well for us in the past year or so. We mentioned we'd sell these at $7 each and we've moved about 1000 straps in the first week.

This is no big deal. It's a small thing. But God is in the details. Battery connections are a quick way to a stranded car. And we've kind of worked out over time how to simply avoid that entirely. We were getting straps from Australia, and now we have to get them in a relatively huge quantity from China in order to have them. But we think they're a huge improvement over the copper straps provided with the cells.

This is the longest show we've ever done. As Mark Twain said, I would have written a shorter letter, but I hadn't the time.

The close ups and the green chroma key have strained our editing equipment and software to the very limtis of what they can do.

Regards;

Jack Rickard

Braided Copper Ground Straps.

2012-01-17T19:18:00.001-06:00

Over the past three years we've paid careful attention to our battery connections. There's a reason. Even in the days of lead acid Trojans, it was not unusual to blow the entire CORNER of your battery case off with an almost explosive event over a battery connection.

These aren't terribly dangerous. But they're not very convenient either. Kind of like a rifle shot going off behind your ear. And you are stranded. Of course, you also lose the expensive battery.

So we mind our connections. I really rather liked the little bent copper straps we got with our first few sets of cells. And the steel M8 bolts and lockwashers were a HUGE improvement over the slotted soft aluminum screws we got with our first set of Seiden LiFePo4 cells.

And they worked well enough. But there were some disadvantages that just kept growing on us. The most worrisome is the lock washers. The threaded holes in the cells ARE soft copper and aluminum. The M8 size and 1.25 mm thread are really a pretty strong size in that soft material. But you cannot overtighten these or you will strip them and have to retap with a larger tap and use a larger bolt.

More to the point, however you tighten them, if you check back in a month, they have all loosened up an 1/8 turn. Some a 1/4. Not good. As they loosen, resistance starts to build, corrosion occurs, and at some point you blow a connection from current flow. And quite possibly a cell this way.

The problem is that a car vibrates going down the road. Worse, the bolt, wssher, strap, and terminal are all different metals with different thermal expansion coefficients. And every time we press the accelerator, we heat them up. ANd every time we release the accelerator, we cool them down. Constant thermal cycling and constant vibration combine to gradually work even very good connections loose.

The other area of concern is current inflation. By that, I mean that three years ago 300 amps was quite a bit of current. Then 500 amps. Then 1000 amps. Now with teh Cobra, we're doing 1200 and 1300 amps routinely. Now with the Escalaade, we're talking about 2000 amps - or was it 3000 amps.

Those little bent copper straps are good up to a point. But in China, an electric car with a 10 kw motor is motoring. Here, we're starting to look at 150 kw, 200kw and in teh case of the Elescalade, 400kw power plants. That's a lot higher current than we were dealing with just a year or two ago.

Over time, we've come up with a terminal connection scheme that has worked EXTREVELY well for us. We no longer HAVE loose connections AT ALL. We can handle a lot higher currents. We no longer are "prying" against the terminal with every flex of our battery pack. The whole pack is "flatter" and in fact looks a lot better. So what did we do?

1. Braided copper grounding straps as straps. These are copper of 50 sq.mm cross section. But it is tinned to reduce corrosion and increase connectivity at the terminal surface. They flex in the BRAID. So the encased part at each end is held flat to the terminal. As the pack flexes, the braid takes up the flex. There is just more copper in these too so they can carry more current.

2. A little upgrade on the bolts to 18-8 stainless steel.

3. Nordlock Washers. http://www.nordlock.com. This Swedish company has invented a wedgelock washer that is very hard, and features a kind of reverse CAM between the two active pieces. Each piece bites into the adjoining hardware to grip it, and then to LOOSEN the bolt, you have to work against the cam direction between the two washers. This actually INCREASES pressure on the bolt. They just don't back out. Not from thermal cycling. Not from vibration. They are ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better at keeping those connections clean and tight than the lockwashers we are so accustomed to.

4. Zinc coating on Nordlock washers. In a situation of dissimilar metals, in the presence of an electrolyte, you get a bit of galvanic action that causes corrosion. This can be diminished using a bit of Zinc as a "sacrificial anode" to give up electrons. So we use the Zinc coated Nordlocks.

We were getting our braided straps from EVWorks in Australia. This has been an excellent source of a number of components for us over the years. They appear to be currently undergoing some changes internally. We're not sure what all that's about. But we recently ordered some straps for our 400 Ah cells and received the wrong ones. Their response was bizarre. They've offered to change the text on their web site. And they don't have any for our 400 Ah cells and won't EVER have any.

Worse, they have recently had some new shipping deal that sent the cost of these way over $5 a piece by the time they hit the U.S.

So we had to cast about China to find a source for braided tinned copper ground straps.

We found one. And they made us stome straps for our 400 Ah cells. The problem is, they like to sell them in quantities of ONE BRAZILLIAN at a time. Now we are never going to need a brazillian 400a cell straps. But we do use quite a few of the straps for 180Ah and 160 Ah and 100 Ah cells from CALB and Thundersky. These are 98 mm long with 8mm x 13mm holes on 70 mm centers. So we talked them into making us a couple of hundred 400Ah straps if we ordered ONE BRAZILLIAN 70 mm x 8 mm straps.

They agreed. And four or five THOUSAAND dollars later, we have our straps and a lifetime supply of 70mm straps as well. And we love them.

We mentioned this on the show, and had three immediate sales of EVTV viewers who have builds going who needed small quantities of these straps. So we put together a little kit with a strap, two of the 18-8 stainless bolts, and two of the Nordlock washers - for $7 plus shipping. Our first three sets averaged about $30 for a $2 box and the UPS ground charges. Way different from shipping from Australia or China.

So we're going to offer these sets complete with the two bolts, two washers, and one strap at $7. You don't have to chase all this down the way we have had to. And you'll enjoy clean, tight, safe high current connections that actually make your pack look good as well.

This is one way to support EVTV and help us reduce the inventory on hand of ONE BRAZILLIAN 70mm braided copper straps.

There are also straps with holes on 60mm and 80 mm centers - the 8 mm holes of course. We can get those as well if anyone needs them.

Send me an email to jack@evtv.me with the number you want and your shipping address. I'll respond with a Paypal invoice with the shipping calculated - but usually $25-$30 here in the U.S. Each "set" weighs 0.19 lbs if you are into calculating such things.

Regards;

Jack Rickard

We've Gone Green

2012-01-16T09:32:00.000-06:00

To an optomist, the glass of water is half full. To a pessimist, it's half empty. Kind of a point of view thing. Of course, to an engineer, we have a curious instance of a water glass that's probably twice the necessary size, and undoubtedly mounted in the wrong place anyway. And is there any REAL necessity for it to be constructed of expensive and failure prone glass. ABS plastic would likely contain the water as well, within certain temperature constraints.

This week we DO indeed present for your edification, education, consideration, and approval, one each MILSPEC video, color green.

We had failed in the previous week to do so. And I suppose we should explain, though I'm not certain why there is such a necessity to do so. There is no program or plan here. We simply reached a Friday and had nothing to say.

We also had nothing done. I've been spending a stupid amount of time playing with something I'm not very good at in the first place, physical machining and packaging for these A123 cells. That causes me to rush a bit on the bits I SHOULD be doing and as a result, I've actually blown up a bunch of test equipment. I don't know if these were run of the mill failures or my failures in every case, but I've lost a couple of loads and a power supply in a week.

Throughout the week we work on various little things and either shoot pieces as we go along, or get them all set up to shoot quickly on Thursday and Friday. By Friday afternoon, we had NOTHING - everything we had tried to put together either had some weird failure with no explanation or we were waiting on a part, a vendor to explain why, or something similar. We went down the list Friday afternoon and all had incurable delays or halts to everything we had had a notion of doing that week.

So I went home. Had a lovely evening playing bridge and drinking wine with some friends of ours until quite late. And awoke Saturday morning with no video to edit. Nothing more complicated than that.

I must confess, that in recent weeks I've been a bit removed from our overall process and there are few cues in the shop that anyone is watching anyway. My e-mail load had dried up over the holidays as people, I guess, were enjoying the holiday. And I was feeling a little bit of end of year reflection on why we are doing this, what we are accomplishing with it, and whether it is really worth a 24x7 365 day effort. After all, I do have electric cars to drive at this point. What's the emergency, what are we REALLY accomplishing here, and why am I working this hard at age 56. Truth to tell, we're probably leading this industry by a full two years from where I had thought/hoped we were.

I know that is a bit hard to accept with daily announcements of OEM electric car offerings literally pouring from the screen. Hasn't the electric car revolution already happened and we are just mopping up the last of the late adopters and conservative majority on this one?

I fear not. More like we don't have the early tinkerers and innovators sufficiently and properly organized to sponsor an outdoor cookout even WITH the assistance of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). I'm actually a bit discouraged that we have been unable to move that token any further than it currently lies on the ground.

In any event, it's the end of the year. I think I'm going to slow down the pace and play with what strikes me. This week it is the simple addition of an experiment with green chroma key. I was all wired up for a prolonged battle with Final Cut Pro X over green chroma key. We got a largish piece of green muslin and a frame to drape it over behind us and shot the show on faith with nothing to look at.

There were a couple of tricks but really within an hour on Saturday morning I had figured out pretty much how it worked. And lo and behold, Brain and I could be ANYWHERE in front of ANYTHING with the flick of a mouse. I know this is a very basic technique to any of you advanced video professionals. But to us country boys trying to make our way in the big city, this is astonishing. And to have a weather map that is really a schematic diagram is pretty cool for some of these discussions. Without a schematic, my talking doesn't really make any sense at all.

I have also been hard at work on TWO different A123 modules. The first, actually described to me by Kevin Wong worked quite well actually. It had a couple of minor problems but was very easy to assemble. Unfortuantely, there's no point in showing it as we've already moved on.

The second was originally described somewhat vaguely by Celso Menai of Portugal. Celso IS kind of the battery guy with a small OEM that is developing a kind of tricycle car that is really quite captivating in the video he showed us at EVCCON. This theme was expanded by Mic of Oz - an Australian who provided an animation of it on Vimeo that I rather liked.

Actually in the time I SHOULD have been making video, I've made this module THREE TIMES in prototype form. The last has some 48 cells in a 4P12S configuration for a 40 volt 75 Ah module. It is 19.75 inches long, about eight inches high and about nine inches wide and weighs about 75 lbs. It represents a 3 kWh pack.

The prototype has spaghetti wiring on it for the Cellog 8S modules to monitor individual cell voltages. We bottom balanced the entire set of cells at 2.75 volts during assembly. We'll be charging it and discharging it to see what happens to the individual cells. Under load, poor connections and so forth show up.

This is kind of a leap of faith. We used nylon threaded rod and some pvc nuts and by following Mic's instructions and including a nut with every insulated piece, we think we've managed the clamping forces as well as they can be managed. But we do not want flexing between the tabs and the spacers in the vibrating environment of a vehicle. So we've cast the ENTIRE thing in the urethane resin we've been playing with.

Actually for the prototype, we have the opaque resin in the bottom and some nearly clear resin in the top and we want to see where we are. But the thing winds up looking like a 75 lb block of ice with spaghetti wiring out the top.

A123 is of course having their own problems with their over engineered cooling system. We did something quite different. I procured some thin 0.30 aluminum sheet from our ONLINE METALS supplier done in gunmetal anodize. Anodized aluminum is kind of peculiar in that it really doesn't conduct electricity very well, but it DOES conduct heat. So we made little panels of it with a 90 degree bend at the bottom just wide enough for two cells. We slipped those between each TWO cells with the leg pointing IN toward the center.

When we put the battery in the resin form, we pulled the panels down slightly to where the feet touched the form box ends. Then we poured the resin.

We'll wire brush the resin off these thin feet, exposing the aluminum.

In this way, each cell makes contact with a full sized plate of thin aluminum. That plate extends to the END of the battery where it hooks into this 1/2 inch foot spanning the height of the assembly. I do hope this wicked any heat from any of the cells to these exposed feet. At that point, for some applications this will be adequate. But you COULD attach a chill plate, a finned heat sink, or just place the battery in an aluminum box with contact at the ends between the feet and the box.

The resin, once hardened, should effectively isolate the clamps and tabs and cells and panels from rubbing, chafing, loosening, and otherwise wearing. This is what I consider and important and unfortunate part of the design. We no longer have discrete cells to work with here and no real access to them (other than the spaghetti on the prototype).

I'm actually ok with this. We don't have access to individual foils in the CALB prismatics we use. So not having access to individual A123 cells is not so very different, except that we have some in SERIES in this battery making up a 40 volt module.

Note also the lack of BMS. I intend to use these as true batteries. If they go bad, they go away. By bottom balancing them on assembly, I'm hoping to prevent failures. : But a single bad cell in this bunch means inevitable and almost immediate failure. We should really capacity test these as well before assembly.

I've ordered a little voltmeter with programmable relay from ColdFusion. I intend to hook this up to a contactor and load situation where I can connect a cell and walk away. When it gets down to a specific voltage, ti will disconnect the cell from the load. Assuming they arrive at nearly identical state of charge, this should take them down to an identical state of low charge. I should be able to read our AH meter to detect "short" cells. And the resulting cells can be combined into an already bottom balanced assembly this way with a pretty good confidence on the capacity as well.

Three such batteries would be a 120volt 75 AH assembly and would drive one of the HPEVS systems very nicely with 9000 wH of storage in a scant 225lbs of batteries. We think this would be a 40-50 mile total range or maybe 32-35 mile range at 80% DOD. That's not far, but many people do drive less than that each day, including yours truly and frankly. The bare cell costs, delivered to us circa 1/1/12, look like about $1250 per module or $3750 for the pack. With resin, threaded rods, hardware, etc, you might be looking at a round $1500 per module or $4500.

Why is this important? Well, lead acid batteries reportedly cost $2500 and offer a 40 mile range. We happen to know that delivered to your driveway, they are more often $3000 unless you are near a battery store where you can get a deal and pick them up yourself. And the 40 mile range is almost entirely made up - wishful thinking. Lead cell cars usually get 25-30 miles in the first two months, and then it drops horrifically over the remaining two years of life. And they weigh a 1000 lbs.

Three of these modules weigh 225 lbs. They really will do 40 miles. They have the advantage of long cycle life - over 3000 cycles. And 650 amps is nothing for these cells. Our tests indicate about an 1850 ampere power output from this module.

So instead of $10,000 for batteries, you pay a 50% premium over lead, and get the same range (actually better) , MUCH lighter weight, and much longer life. If you WANTED to add more cells later in parallel to double the range, it is trivial to do so.

We did order and receive some excellent braided straps from China to replace our EVWorks source in Australia. The shipping and duties from Australia had become really quite onerous and our final cost per strap was over $5 via this avenue in all cases and in the case of the 55 mm straps considerably so.

The shipping and so forth from China is actually pretty steep as well, I think our UPS was $686 on this batch and then UPS came up with some strange $131 brokers fee on the import of these. In any event, I got 1000 of the 70 mm straps we always use on the 100 and 180Ah CALB cells. And a couple of hundred of the straps for the larger M12 bolts on the Elescalade.

We mentioned that it looked like that put us in the strap business whether on purpose or by accident. THree of our viewers have ordered in the first twelve hours so I guess this will be worthwhile. We're going to put together a set of one 70mm strap, two 18-8 stainless 16 mm M8 bolts, and two zinc coated M8 Nordlock washers for $7 plus shipping. We'll work on getting some sort of page up that calculates shipping and totals and so forth to make it easy. The larger set for the 400 Ah cells would be $10 per set, but I would be astonished if anyone but us needs those at all.

What I call 70mm straps have 8x13mm holes on 70mm centers. The strap is actually 98 mm long and 24 mm wide of tinned copper braided wire with tinned copper on the ends. We'll put some photos on the web page when we get it up.

In the meantime, all of you that did send e-mail and Paypal donations this past week, fearing our demise, we deeply appreciate them. It IS true enough that if we don't find some economic basis for doing this, it cannot continue forever. But that's not precisely why we missed a week now. But operating with Brian and I and Rod in a dark shop in the cold of winter, we kind of lose sight that anyone is watching or that anyone cares. There's no shortage of video on YouTube we are well aware. And so our confidence in our mission naturally wanes. The encouragement is actually as important or more important than the donations, but encouragement in DECIMAL is of course the most sincere. I only contribute actual ducats when I actually want to support something. It's not just happy talk. And we assume you all do the same. So I was encouraged this week. Our viewership appears to be growing and we appear to have the requisite "stickiness" among a set of viewers that keep coming back. That means eventual success if we simply persevere.

We're hardly alone in our struggles. George Hamstra has 100 motors with no aux shaft as the result of an OEM failure (I'm telling you selling to OEMs is not all as great as you think guys) and Sebastien Bourgoius reports costs on the Shiva have driven them to an atmospheric $9500 for their megawatt controller. So everyone is having their version of a bad hair day at the moment.

But stay with us. If this thing with Iran doesn't get resolved here pretty soon, we could ALL be heading for a bad hair day at the pump. And we're just not sufficiently far enough along with all this to deal with it.

Jack Rickard

And a Happy New Year.

2012-01-02T10:39:00.000-06:00

We conclude 2011 with one of the most gruesome video edits we've ever done and a show that is two hours and 45 minutes in length. I suppose the question must come up, WHY.

Some of our viewers want more detail. And the A123 cell thing turns out to be a pretty big deal.

I should hate these cells and I very much want to detest them quite thoroughly. The company they come from, their actions, their attitude, their web site, their history, their dependence on gubbmint munny, almost everything about these people is anathema to me. That they are currently failing actually DOES give me satisfaction if not a bit of New Year's joy.

And so there is nothing I would like better than to finally receive some of their cells and slaughter them publicly for your entertainment and my personal satisfaction.

And truly it does puzzle me why they would make a 19 Ah cell and title it a 21 Ah cell. What would be DIFFERENT in putting a few more foils in it and making it a 21 Ah cells and calling it a 20 Ah cell????

In truth you cannot purchase these cells form the company anyway, and by the time they wake up to what's happening and sell them to you directly, they will of course then ask something stupid like $50 per cell for cells you can get from China for $20.

Ultimately, I don't know of course what the price of these cells is. They are made in an Asian factory. A123 doesn't need as many as they thought they did. And they are available. How much do they cost the factory to produce? Probably 60 cents per AH. For everyone to get their little piece, we are probably there at $1 or $0.90, But the factory is not going to just shut down as long as sales can be made.

And indeed A123 has actually licensed OTHER Asian companies to use the cells out of the same factories or to produce their own - mostly Japanese.

So my best guess is they ARE going to be available, and the price will slowly fall.

We have been doing some testing. This week we formalized that a bit. How much power WILL these cells put out and how much CAPACITY do they actually have.

It appears that most DO have a capacity somewhere between 18.5 and 19 Ah. And we actually have CONFIRMED output at 23C. That is, I have watched two separate and independent meters indicate currents of 475 amps twice from a single series of 3 cells starting at 10.00v. Their claim of 360 Amps or 18C is a LOCK.

And so a block of six cells, analogous to a 100Ah prismatic, can really do 1800 amps no sweat and we have actually seen a 2300 amp level with two meters twice.

What THAT means is I could actually drive the EleScalade with TWO 1000 Amp EVnetics Soliton controllers and two 11 inch Netgain motors at 2000 amps with a single string of 100Ah modules of these cells. That would be 57 x 6 or 342 cells. It would cost $9576 delivered. And it would be 19200 wH in size.
Compare this to our current 76kWh pack at about $25,000.

Now we would probably have a range of about 20 to 25 miles with the A123 pack and I think we'll be close to 100 miles with the pack we have. But we're over 1700 lbs in battery and box at the moment. The A123 pack would weigh more like 450 lbs all assembled in a box.

I have to admit that life won't' change much for us. Other than some demonstration projects, we would almost always go for the larger prismatic cells. That tough plastic case is just bullet proof. And I like my cars to go 100 miles. I see no sense in all the OTHER expenditures it makes to have a Cadillac Elescalade and then scrimp on battery costs - cropping the range.

But I think a lot of people noodling an EV, will find this attractive. Here's why.

Let's say it takes $17,000 to do the average conversion including batteries at $8500. If I can cut that to $4500 in batteries, that gets me down to $13,500. The car works. It runs. And I can always add ANOTHER $4500 in these cells later for more range.

I think they will get people into the game that just were not going to go there at the higher price.

I could pick up a Speedster for $20K on eBay, sell the engine for $2500, do the conversion for $13,500 and have a nice little sports car with 40 mile range for $30.5K smooth. That works for most people.

The other obvious application is racing. Low weight, high power, and don't worry about the range we're only going 1/4 mile. No brainer.

We did somethings with multiple cameras and closeup cameras that Final Cut X really doesn't want to do. So I wound up in editing hell. But in this episode, we actually show detailed step by step on how to build a little clamp terminal for these push cells, and then tested the cells.

See what you think.

We're hoping to find SOME economic reason to HAVE EVTV in 2012. Waiting eternally for the EV industry to grow up sufficiently to need an advertising medium insn't in my playbook at age 56. But I'm hopeful it will all come together this year.

Jack Rickard

Merry Christmas

2011-12-29T21:40:00.000-06:00

Well, we've been struggling a bit with the holiday season and some family illness that has kind of beat us up for time. But Brain and I did manage to get out a bit of a video this week to share, along with the help of some of our viewers.

Brain reminded me that it was Christmas Day of 2008 when we did the first roll of the original Speedster. We had started that first conversion in September of 2008 and we were rolling by Christmas. lots of little fixes between then and May when we did our first video.

Much has transpired in the three years intervening. In November of that year, again Brain kind of pressed for a weekly video. We of course assumed we could easily sell advertising on the show, Brian's always been pretty good at closing such as sale, and by assembling the interested parties in such a show, it looked pretty formulaic.

The industry itself turned out to be a little pre-emergent I'm afraid. We've kind of had a lockup between hopelessly small entrepreneurs selling nearly DOZENS of their product and equally naive larger funded companies who are just as naively insisting on selling only to a half dozen immense Original Equipment Manufacturers.

All of this will shake out of course and some more realistic approaches will remerge. We may have been a little early to the party. So the future of EVTV is kind of a race to see if my attention span wanders before it becomes profitable.

In the early days of Boardwatch I wrote everything and participated a bit in the industry to establish credibility. I actually wrote the only known version of UUCP in assembly language (because I could of course). We worked with modem vendors on features and command sets and pretty much invented the "sysop discount" which was universally adopted by modem manufacturers to offer a 50% discount to BBS operators under the theory that this would advance sales of modems to the callers to those bulletin boards in a world where the modems were not really standardized in those days at the higher speeds.

The EV industry is kind of locked down with all vendors awaiting a call from the OEM that will fill their dreams, meanwhile not selling ANYTHING as their cash dwindles toward zero. It's incredible. These auto guys have to be the dumbest beasts on the planet. SELL SOMETHING to SOMEONE SOMEWHERE. That's kind of the key to business survival.

Having a plan is good. But sitting there watching yourself become irrelevant because it didn't turn out the way you want is not it. If they would sell to who wants to buy, instead of only to their ideal customer, there is no telling where all that might lead.

We hope not to do the same thing. In any event, long term we do NOT intend to do all of it ourselves. EVTV will morph into a "magazine" of various views from various participants. In this issue we feature another installment of John Hale's Toyota upgrade and a fascinating bit from John Hardy of the UK who has devised a cunning thermal watchdog for your battery pack.

And that is rather the point. You don't have to swallow the whole hog to participate in the barbecue. Let's say you have FAILED to introduce the next automobile that changes the world and become GM overnight. You might have worked out the instrumentation to tell how many amp hours you've used. I find the latter more interesting than the former.

New insulating materials, new corrosion preventives, the NordLock washer is the greatest discovery so far at EVTV. And for most of our viewers one little tip like that can make watching worthwhile.

The heart of the question is how do you have and participate in an industry where all solutions are proprietary trade secrets you are trying to patent and make money from? If I see far it IS because I stand on the shoulders of giants. But if all giants keep what they know secret, and don't allow anyone on their shoulders, nobody sees very far at all now dow they?

Our economy has entered a very mean spirited "small" phase where our LARGEST corporations will bring in hundreds of Indian temp workers,layoff hundreds of veteran American workers, and do it all to make next months or next quarters numbers with no thought beyond that. It is ok to steal from each other. And any advantage should be guarded and kept secret. It is very much like the famine period setting of STONE SOUP which I shared with you earlier.

As we used to say in Boardwatch, the Internet DEMANDS a certain generosity of spirit from those who seek to profit from it, and it will punish those without it soundly. Recent goliaths such as Google and Facebook and recent developments on the Internet would tend to make this or even deny it. I don't think so.

And on a wider front I think it holds true as well. Those who carefully guard the little they have will lose even that. Those that start giving it away will be unable to give it away fast enough to keep it from piling up on them.

In this Christmas season, nothing has really changed. The original message holds true. It is better to give than to receive. And more profitable to share than to hide away and hoard. It seems with each generation we have to learn all this over again.

Merry Christmas.

Jack Rickard

The Mentos and Coke Powered ELEscalade

2011-12-20T10:08:00.001-06:00

More Swallow. More Elescalade. We've decided to abandon the electric powered ELEScalade concept and go with a new rocket powered package from EEPYBIRD that uses Mentos and Coca Cola.

The Elescalade we begin populating the large battery box in the back with 57 cells of 400 AH. These 400 Ah cells weigh 29 lbs each for 1653 lbs. With straps and cables and box, probably more like 1725 lbs. It does squat the ELEscalade down on its haunches.

But that also gives us 76380 watt-Hours of power.

The Elescalade has a curb weight of 5800 lbs and a gross of 7200 lbs. We're going to be over gross at 7550lbs and with an additional 1000 lbs of people meat, QUITE over gross.

Our 10:1 rule normally serves us very well and that would seem to indicate 750 to 850 watt-Hours per mile or a little under 100 miles range.

But we think we will do both MUCH better than that, and much worse than that, with this vehicle.

We haven't done much with this, as we have little to test with and some problems. The Rhinehart Motion Systems Controller has never achieved sufficiently consistent operation to offer any useful testing on the 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman. We have another vehicle, a 2007 Ford Edge in the 5000 lbs class offering perhaps more direct experience with an automatic. BUt this conversion was so badly done from the beginning - we kind of inherited it from Arnulf Larsgard when he folded his Iowa plans, that we've barely been able to get it into operation.

But we have noticed and more or less confirmed anecdotally a remarkable inversion in these higher weight vehicles. The Mini Cooper is 3550 lbs while the Ford Edge is over 5000. And accelerating that mass turns out to be hard work. In town, the Edge can use as much as a kilowatt hour per mile. The MiniCooper is more like 400 wH per mile.

But on the freeway, where wind resistance always cuts down our mileage on the light cars, things take a dramatic turn. The Mini Cooper drops from about 1.15 Ah per mile (420 watt hours) to 0.85 Ah per mile (310 watt hours/mile) at 70 mph on the freeway. Similarly, the Edge with the automatic transmission drops down to about 400 watt hours per mile.

This is a little counterintuitive. I don't think it is because they are so very efficient on the freeway. I think it is because they are so very INeffecient in town. Accelerating that much mass is just expensive. When you quit doing it, mere air resistance can't by comparison compete.

So we think we'll have something like 70 mile range in town. But will probably be able to drive the 120 miles to St. Louis rather easily in the ELEscalade. And it's six speed 6L80E transmission with a pretty serious overdrive in sixth gear could in fact extend that phenomenon quite all out of bounds.

The truck will no doubt be heavy.

There is a subtle point of temperature that might be worth stressing at this point. It was observed by the official BMW Mini Cooper electric program which I find interesting.

The presumption on battery cells is that they must be thermally controlled for safety and to avoid thermal runaway somehow and a fire. Our experience is that cell heat just has NOT been an issue and when we do make provisions for it, they are largely wasted.

That view is largely shared by BMW - with the corollary that we've also noticed - a decrease in performance in the cold. We've done little to quantify this. The listed 10-15% is so much smaller than the penalty with Pb chemistry cells that we almost celebrate it. But it is very real.

Then too, the LiFePo4 cells we use all seem to indicate NOT to charge below freezing - 32F or 0C. Truthfully, I thought this was a typo when I first saw it and although I've requested additional information on this perhaps a dozen times from various vendors, nobody has any specifics as to why this is or even whether it is.

But the Mini Cooper guys noticed that on some days of chill, their range fell below what was comfortable for their use. That's pretty serious. And they are talking about what they HOPE to see in the new electrics from BMW.

Mostly this revolves around battery thermal management but really HEAT. They want heated batteries.

And with batteries representing quite a mass, it is really better to START warm than to GET warm. So we're doing something really quite similar in the ELEscalade.

In a past show we detailed our electric "heater". This is made from a home tankless water heater of some 24 kW capacity. With our 190v DC pack, we're probably looking at 14 kW with TWO tanks and heaters really. So we will be able to warm our water using a pair of heaters in small tanks, and at some temperature cut out one of the heaters and at a second temperature cut out the other. As temp falls, the "other" would cycle back on. And so we can heat quickly, and then drop our energy use to "maintain" temperature.

This is part of a glycol water system that will be pumped through our cabin heat exchanger so WE can be toasty warm first. But then it will go through our battery box which would represent a pretty deep heat sink if it were cold soaked.

So we're going to make sure it isn't. We're going to have a second system that is made of small rubber flexible heating pads that will attach to the tanks. They operate on 240 vac and are a couple hundred watts each.

These "gentle" heaters will be fed the same 240 as the battery charger, and at the same time. Additionally, we will switch the 12v pumps on when charging. We'll qualify that with a "season" switch so it only happens in winter, not in summer. Or perhaps automatically with a thermostat.

In this way, when you plug your car in at the end of the day to charge it, the warmth will be maintained all night. Because of the continuous or lengthy nature of this, we want a fairly small and gentle heat in this case. The urgency is not so much to save power as we are on our wall AC, but recall that we only have to maintain it above freezing for the batteries and then of course for our comfort in the morning. A couple of hundred watts should do it if it is on all night.

Again, the mission of the ELEscalade is to be warm and toasty in the winter and cool in the summer. Actual motion is a secondary criteria on this build. And performance and range almost not even a consideration.
Oh, I suppose it's always a consideration, but secondary for this build.

In any event, it's a bit of fun to be underway and putting together the battery pack. The large terminals and M14 bolts and Nordlocks are interesting. MANLY battery connections. Speaking of which. EVWorks in Australia had these 55 mm braided copper straps listed for 400Ah Thundersky cells and we bought a bunch of them. We've had them sitting around for eight or nine months. They have a much larger terminal bolt hole of course to accommodate the much larger M14 cap screw, as compared to the M8 or 8 mm diameter terminal screw we normally use on the smaller cells.

Unfortunately, they don't work. These cells are not on 55 mm centers, but rather 67.5 mm centers. So they are too short. Incredibly, EVWorks threw us TOTALLY under the bus. While acknowledging the mistake, their solution is to remove the 400AH reference from the web site and thank you very much for the field report. They have NO straps suitable for 400Ah cells and no intention of getting us any. Sorry.....

Of course, their suppliers, whom they refuse to reveal but whom we of course found anyway, want a kind of a hugish 3000 straps minimum to build them. And we need about 70.

I'm so incensed by this cavalier attitude, as well as the truly egregious shipping charges EVworks has started charging, that we're going to look at just buying the 3000 straps, along with 3000 of all the other sizes, the bolts, the Nordlocks, and just going into the battery terminal connection business. That way I'll have them and you can get them without having to go to Australia for them. Ridiculous situation.

But truly, we love these copper braided straps. They are flexible and do NOT put pressure on the terminals when flexing. They work well with the Nordlocks which have become a central element of our terminal connection strategy. We simply do not use the copper bent straps sent by the manufacturers any longer.

For the moment, we've cut the end out of the straps so they are long enough to fit. They don't REALLY fit and we have kind of not quite enough surface area here for 3000 amps of current. But it will let us wire up the pack until we can get proper 67.5 mm straps in from China.

We got some 1/4 x 3/4 aluminum bar and some 1/2 x 3/4 aluminum bar in from McMaster Carr and we are starting our new strategy of clamping tabs together with 1/4 inch 20 thread screws for the A123 cells. There is nothing really innovative here. Numerous people do this more or less this way and describe it online and a number of different viewers have suggested this, albeit in one screw and two screw and plastic screw variants. Hopefully we'll have something to show this week or next. I've ordered 300 of the cells and once they are in, we can show several approaches at once.

Back to my Mentos and Coca Cola....

Jack Rickard

Chiseled in Jello in the Global Village

2011-12-12T09:11:00.001-06:00

It is true we are having a ball in the hinterlands of the Midwest, axing away at how to take any ordinary car and hack it into an entirely silent electric beast and make it do our bidding. While the rest of the world waits with baited breath and hopeful attention for developments from the global OEMsd, we are living and driving the dream and I have to tell you it IS fun and it IS worth it.

I'm doubly excited because it goes a little beyond whacking away in the garage on a hobby. I see a vibrant burgeoning new industry in custom electric cars that stretches out for decades and encompasses things the original hot rod custom car scene cannot even contemplate.

But like any frontier mining camp, it also attracts charlatans and mountebanks along with the adventurers and pioneers.

We were defrauded of some $9800 on a battery purchase from David Kois in April of 2010, along with at least 23 other people. Roy Mann led a group to take legal action and so we pitched in ANOTHER couple thousand ducats for legal expenses. They finally reached a settlement receiving some inventory they insisted represented 59 cents on the dollar, including MY 40 Thundersky 200Ah cells. Despite the irony of having to buy the cells, fund the legal attick, and then pay the rest of the group AGAIN for my cells, I agreed to do that anyway.

Didn't happen. In a behind the scenes maneuver AFTER the settlement, and after reaching an agreement with me on the disposition of the cells, Mann and Baker reached an agreement with David Kois, the ORIGINAL vendor who defrauded us, to have HIM sell the cells and tender cash. They handed over the goods, and Kois has INDEED started selling the stuff AGAIN. But he's keeping the money and refused for nearly a month to even communicate with the principals in the lawsuit.

We confirmed this past week that he had sold our cells AGAIN, and pocketed the proceeds. He insists he'll work it all out AT THE END OF THE YEAR. (Or whenever he gets some money from defrauding someone ELSE sufficient to both live on and pay off the current group).

I'm so disgusted I may never order from an American parts retailer again. Roy Mann is so disillusioned he has abandoned his gorgeous 1976 VW beetle.

Kois currrently operates a web site called CurrentEVTech.

We would urge caution in dealing with him however. He's very charming and got us twice, insisting on BOTH occasions that he's really a VICTIM.... The same claim made by James Morrison....

Meanwhile, we continue work on the Swallow and the Elescalade. We heard from Bill Bishoprick of Salem Oregon, applauding our work to update the Swallow. Bill originally engineered this attractive little notion of an EV. And we're a bit taken with it.

By far the biggest development involves batteries. Sinopoly has emerged as one of the most attractive vendors who never were. They have quoted $1 per AH to anyone who will listen for their cells, but we can find no one who has actually received the cells. Per Ecklund claims he knows a guy who has but we haven't stumbled on anyone directly.

Thundersky is really where all this started. Our first cells were some truly horrible SEIDEN cells. But very early we bought Thunderskies from Elite Power Solutions out in Arizona. Today they sell the GBS cells. But after receiving 70 400 Ah cells from Thundersky for the Elescalade Project, Winston Battery has informed us they no longer offer cells in the United States and their exclusive agent for North America is Balqon. We can't even get them to return a telephone call - or tell us what they want us to do with this commercial we keep running with a dead e-mail address on it.

This leaves China Aviation Lithium Battery Company as the only viable vendor we can find actually shipping prismatic cells - and they are kind of stuck on the idea of $1.25 per AH.

And so we are going to begin looking at alternatives. Headway has some new large scale cylindrical cells. Sebastion Bourgois did an interesting pack in his Porsche 911 from Headway cells and claims he likes them.

Most ironically, it appears that the American manufacturers who have so abusively dismissed us as little and ugly and dressing funny, and insisting that they ONLY sell to "OEMs" with such a hugely comical combination of arrogance and naiveté, seem to be mostly going out of business (Enerdel) or losing control of their product (A123).

A123 is very interesting to me personally. They had previously made some very twitchy little cylindrical cells that were probably truly dangerous in any application. We played with them and I could see no real use for them. We did make a little aux battery out of 4S4P arrangement and it went up in flames a month later.

They developed what they call a prismatic cells, we call them pouch cells. This is a little foil pouch 7.5 mm thick and about the size of our 100Ah prismatics. It has two tabs for positive and negative of course.

They entered these in a competition to power the Chevy Volt and Chevrolet chose LGChem's Lithium Manganese Oxide Spinel cells instead. The Lithium Manganese cells offer a little better energy density than the A123's and at the time, LGChem represented a much larger company more likely to reach full production in time. But Chevrolet may have chosen the wrong cell.

We certainly favor the LiFePo4 cell chemistry of the A123 20 Ah pouch as a safer chemistry. They have continued to work on these cells and have reduced manufacturing costs while increasing density and power performance as they went under a DOE program. Chevrolet has now selected them for the Chevy Spark program. Unfortunately, they don't need any batteries for that car until 2013.

Meanwhile, A123 had invested $30 million in Fisker stock. In return, Fisker selected A123 as their cell vendor. And they had told A123 that they needed cell modules for 7000 cars before the end of 2011.

Brain actually had a conversation a year ago with the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at A123. He was told then that the Prius fire and Davide Andrea was the direct reason they would not sell battery cells to hobbyists and custom car builders. But he also said they would be working day and night just to ramp up production for the Fisker contract.

As ti turns out, apparently Fisker did not build 7000 cars in 2011. They built maybe 1500. It's a little unclear what of THOSE were delivered to actual customers.

But its certainly thrown A123 into a tizzy. Despite an apparently firm contract finally with an OEM - General Motors, A123's stock has plunged. Their Initial Public Offering (IPO) of September 24, 2009 valued the stock at $17. It reached a high just a few days later of $26.74 per share. It opened this morning at around $2.07 - not the performance clean green investor dreams are made of.

And after receiving hundreds of millions in Croney Crapitalism government ducats to bring 5000 new manufacturing jobs to Michigan, the company reached about 900 total jobs before they laid off 125 last week.

That the company maintains their policy of NOT selling their cells and modules should be of intense interest to their board of directors and shareholders. But it gets more interesting. Suddenly, several Chinese traders including OSN Power Technology and Shenzen VictPower Technology are offering A123 MD1 HD 20 Ah cells. These showed up at $50-$60 each a month or so ago and really are not very attractive at that price.

We just ordered 300 at $20 each. They seem to average about 18.6 Ah per cell, not 20. But that's still about $1.08 per AH which seems to be the going rate of the Chinese prismatics.

They ARE possibly attractive at that price. They put a very high amount of POWER for their size - up to 600 Amps momentarily from a 20Ah cell. If you put six of them together, you get about 110 Ah that will pump 3600 amps if you have the packaging hardware to do that without melting or blowing up.

And therein lies a tale of course.

But what has really happened here with this "grey market" A123 cell? Are these simply "seconds" disposed of in a grey market? Perhaps.

More likely, and certainly it makes a more interesting story, let's imagine A123 contracting with Korean and Chinese factories to make their cells. Then they don't need quite as many cells as they thought they did because Fisker doesn't make quite as many cars as they said they would. What is the Chinese factory to do with all the cells piling up in the aisles?

A123 would not be the first U.S. company to lose control of its own Chinese supplier. One of the dangers here in getting the Chinese to build your DeltaQ chargers, for example, is that they might just improve it and sell it against you as an Elcon. We actually busted a guy in EVDL whining heroically about this very matter and pointing to the loss of "American" jobs (Canadian company) as the result. Actually the problem was not American jobs, as they had contracted with China to build their chargers, which they are claiming are "made in Canada."

As American companies have learned to play these games - hey we put a label on it and the instruction book and it is actually American made then - so have the Chinese. Hey we replace this cable with that and up the voltage and its a new charger.

Don't fall for the media demonization of the Chinese. It's the American companies that have brought this directly to our shores.

However it is happening, suddenly we can get some VERY power cells at very reasonable prices. As the volumetric density and density by weight do not actually increase at ALL the advantage is pretty slim. But you do wind up with a very granular device that can be combined in new ways to new shapes. And it does open the door to smaller packs of less range while also featuring less weight, less volume, and still sufficient POWER output to drive the controller and motor to their max.

And so it is incumbent on us to cover this development. More, we need to develop a modularization technique our viewers could use.

Again, if you have any ideas how to structure a process to truly vette a BETTER mousetrap/module, it's a pregnant time. I'm struggling to see how to do this. But I'm attracted to the notion of doing a better/simpler/less expensive/BMSless version of the A123 module.

It is an infant industry on the frontier of a new world of electric cars. IT's all graven in Jello. Yes, there are dangers. But opportunities as well. That's what a frontier is.

I'll make you the same deal I did the Internauts. I'll hang around till it's built. When the townies show up, I"m outta here.

That should give me a little work to do over the next 12 or 14 years I guess.

Jack Rickard

Public Radio International MARKETPLACE

2011-12-10T01:01:00.000-06:00

Nice little story on the 2011 Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention by Alex Chadwick. http://www.marketplace.org/topics/sustainability/rise-green-dragster

Jack

Jack and Brian in Wonderland - The Search for Alice.

2011-12-06T02:33:00.001-06:00

Lies, Damn Lies, and EV Industry Forecasts.

It starts with the rather bald implication that the American public is hungering for electric cars, and that the evil empire is denying them access to them for various vaguely nefarious and republican reasons. This huge, latent demand for a better technology, left unfulfilled and unrequited in the eternal quest for filthy euchre and the ongoing quest for global climactic rape and mayhem.

And somehow lurking in all that is the eternal premise that the wealthy grow wealthy on the backs of the poor working man.

If you could spend a day in my mailbox from THIS end, you'd understand why I'm old, cranky, and overweight.

In truth, the demand for a battery powered electric vehicle, not only in the United States but worldwide, is essentially and statistically zero and always was.

China, a country whose primary means of transportation for a century has been a bicycle, offered a more advanced government subsidy last year for electric cars than the United States and had a whopping 34 takers.

It IS true that those who DID lease an EV1, a RAV4, a Ford Ranger, or a Chevy S10 in the 1990s, probably overwhelmingly wanted to keep them.

Today, the Volt is under siege both as a non seller and a fire hazard. But Volt owners haven't gotten the word. They love the car. In fact, according to Consumer Reports, it has the highest vehicle owner satisfaction numbers in the business - ahead of the Dodge Challenger and the Porsche 911. Neither beast nor fowl, it uses both gasoline and kilowattage rather indiscriminately.

To know an electric car at this point, with modern Lithium ion cells, is to love one. But almost nobody knows them.

And so we have this bizarre Alice in Wonderland national debate, with almost ALL the voices on ALL sides of it, pro AND con, bereft of any experience with the vehicles whatsoever, and they entirely drown out the plaintive mews of actual owners who have actually owned and driven the beasts for at least two weeks.
Since their experience matches not the preconceived pro OR con notions, there is not really a slot on the evening news for their voices at all.

More annoying for me personally, is the entirely altered nature of business in America. An unintended consequence of the Internet. A decade or more ago, all businesses had telephones and answered them as a matter of course, taking all callers. They responded to electronic mail. And generally, they would sell their products to anyone capable of paying for them, in quantities large or small.

This is actually a necessary mannerism of commerce. Despite the 80/20 rule that all businesses live by, wherein 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers, the 20% age and die. Worse, they merge. And so you have to constantly replenish them from the great mass of unwashed 80% of your customers most of whom are in truth a pain in the ass. Problem being, you can't tell which of them is going to switch categories on you.

Today, we have whole industries with no phone number. They don't have a receptionist. Nobody screens the incoming call because no one takes them. E-mail addresses are posted, but no humanoid ever checks that mailbox. The sales process is very much more efficient because it is entirely outbound. There is no incoming over the transom business because there is no one there to take the order.

This is most forgivable in mature industries. Massive hedging in corn futures could be forgiven for being a bit clubby. There are a few traders who have been doing this as a family business for a hundred years or so. Ironically, you can call them and they'll take the call.

But in young, emerging, technically disruptive businesses, this is pretty much a page of lost opportunity and connections and relationships never made and never fulfilled. In other words, kids playing at having a business - usually with other peoples money.

So it is no great loss to the CEO of Enerdel. That half a billion in investor capital went away because HE was too busy in a business FANTASY to answer the phone wasn't really his money. And A123 can likewise VERY cavalierly claim to NOT do business with the great unwashed AS they watch their investors stock plunge below $3 - not a problem. OPM.

But the lost opportunities are a treasonous high crime and misdemeanor. Backyard and garage inventors Bill Hewlett, David Packard, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Paul Allen would simply be shut out today because they cannot "qualify" to get a phone call or e-mail returned, much less order a small quantity of whatever it is the companies offer.

So today, we have this ironic situation where we have plunging prices on American lithium batteries that can only be purchased from Chinese traders,which is ok because the American made batteries are really made in Korea or China ANYWAY while the American company is laying off workers in MICHIGAN prior to going out of business and being delisted from the Nasdaq ANYWAY and our main question is will these cells be available long enough for us to bother to design a module/package for sufficient to use in a car.

And if we did, and enough of you purchased the cells, would the cells then remain in production in China to fill THAT backdoor demand even though the original U.S. company went out of business entirely? Oh, did I mention they received $259 million of YOUR tax dollars to do all this? But they will neither sell to you or even SPEAK to you at this point?

American jobs? I'm sorry. Americans don't DESERVE jobs. They can't be bothered answering the phone.

Beyond ranting and raving about these developments, we're basically taking the win on almost everything we've predicted for the past two years. It is now becoming evident to everyone that General Motors sales projections, Nissan's sales projections, and all industry observers sales projections, have been nothing but fantasy confused by the ongoing propensity to offer a bare faced lie to anyone who will listen.

Electric cars offer a serious advantage to those who own them. The problem is those who own them are very few and not part of the national conversation on this topic. So in this Alice and Wonderland world, the only way anyone is going to learn anything useful about a modern electric car is to take a ride with one of the very few who have one. ANd that ironically is the same group that was building their own. The conversion guys generally ARE the low hanging fruit who are buying the Leaf's and the Volts, and parking them right next to their own efforts at an electric car in the same garage. But that's what's happening.

And so the bootstrapping of this technology to the masses is going to be a much longer and much slower process than Carlos Ghosn can imagine I do fear, despite his heroic work in this area. It remains an early adopter market. And will because the American public has learned to rely on information gathered first hand by their own experience. They have over time learned how to tell when the corporate elements of the world are lying .....
.....- you can see their lips moving.....

We continue to work on the Swallow - which is fun with an open VW chassis from 1968. We're making battery boxes and hooking things up left and right.

Jack Rickard

Elescalade LiftOff and the A123 LiFePo4 Cell Puzzle

2011-11-29T11:05:00.001-06:00

It's almost peaceful at EVTV. The EleCobra project is done and gone and by all accounts from Granby quite a hit points west and south.

This frees up room and time and we are at the end part of November when it is appropriate to stop and give thanks for our really crummy miserable weather of this time of year. Steel grey skies, spitting half-hearted precipitation and chill damp temperatures in an uncertain wind.

It makes the man cave kind of cozy with our enormous gas heaters filling the shop with the homey smell of my money going up in flames of natural gas.

As you know from last week's show, we have taken on a small project for Lee Morehead with the Swallow. We're finding a spider under each rock but have the chassis bare and on the lift and Brain is in more familiar territory with VW brakes and clutches and so forth. We're ordering a lot of little inexpensive piece parts and should receive both batteries and boxes this week.

We've also put Elescalade on the lift and we are carefully beginning the tear down process We had sent Elescalade to Slingblade for a hydroboost ectomy. Many GM vehicles have diesel motors of course and so they have developed a power brake and power steering system based on a hydraulic pump rather than vacuum. We already had a pump for the power steering on the Elescalade but for some reason they had a vacuum brake system on the vehicle. We have never done a car with the noisy intermittent vacuum pump and reservoir and I frankly do not want Elescalade to be the first. So we had Slingblade convert Elescalade to the hydroboost brake system.

This was a bit more involved than I thought. I had been told all we had to do was swap out the hydroboost unit. As it turns out there is a SEPARATE master cylinder and reservoir that also has to be replaced and in fact, the system uses a different pump with more fittings for the hydroboost. I have actually seen conversion photos where they use the same pump and simply hose it up differently. But there might be some advantage to stock hoses from GM. As the pump will be placed on the front of our 34 and 3/4 inch long motor assembly anyway, we might have to redo the hoses. But we START the conversion with a power steering and brake system that works off a quiet pump we can run with the electric drive motors and it should all work just fine.

The system did provide a couple of vacuum sensor inputs to the engine control unit. Hopefully, our HP Tuners system will let us turn off that fault code permanently.

The other area where I've taken some time to examine and burned down a few of the cells of course has been the A123 MD-H1 20Ah prismatic cell. This is kind of an interesting area, but fraught with new challenges I'm afraid.

Essentially ALL the OEM's have opted for these small form factor soft pouch cells with tabs OR in the case of Tesla, an even more challenging small cylinder of the 26550 variety and in vast numerical quantity. The implications of all this keeps me awake nights.

For one thing, the residual value of electric cars has historically been, and most likely will be, very different from ICE cars and not in a positive sense. As most of the components SHOULD be more durable than the ICE version, the cars should last longer and so depreciate more slowly, than ICE vehicles.

That said, the history is that they become near valueless on delivery. This is because most of the cars are orphans, with either bankrupt parents or an abandoned product line. In any event orphans.

But behind every electric car lies a battery and too soon and too often a dead battery. And while the American public is not acculturated at this point to living with an electric car, we ALL know ALL ABOUT batteries. From our first penlight flashlight to our latest cellphone or laptop, we have all paid the price for portability, over and over and over.

If you warranty the battery of a car for 8 years and 100,000 miles, then you have defined the life of the battery, all laws of physics thereafter held in abeyance. In ADDITION to the normal depreciation of the average car, you are also down whatever fraction of that 8 years and 100,000 miles you have used. And the ASSUMPTION we can make in looking for a total pack replacement after 8 years is that you will be screwed into the WALL by whomever sells it to you and TREBLE screwed if it is a proprietary pack.

Long term, I think this is the OEM equivalent of pouring gasoline over their own heads and lighting a BIC. By insisting on a proprietary cell module design and setting a warranty period, they pretty much PROMISE plummeting values the minute the car leaves the showroom floor. How does THIS work for anyone?

In addition to the usual software knots in the car's computers to make sure it is a Mr. Goodwrench approved battery pack, Tesla has actually gone to the trouble of PATENTING a totally nonsense module connector SHAPE. You can't really patent shapes. But by patenting the CONNECTOR for the individual modules, they pretty much assure themselves a proprietary pack forever. Third parties MIGHT be able to rebuild these modules, but no new ones could be made by third parties. The shape of the connector is nonsense. It has no merit AS a connector. It just IS a connector with a unique and unusual shape and so patentable. Someone at Tesla I'm sure is celebrating their brilliance on this one. Someone at Tesla should actually be promoted to "street status" and provided a final paycheck over it to my way of thinking. Long term this will haunt them for generations.

In any event, A123 is a battery maker and a MOST peculiar case. In any new and disruptive field there is an urge, certainly by the more advanced players to sort the world out into "good" customers and "bad" customers and the 80/20 rule being what it is, we would all like to focus on the 20. It almost never works that way, and won't here again. But particularly among the LEAST advanced, it is a mantra. I just had an e-mail conversation with a new electric drive company that is just absolutely FLUSHED with the glow of success from a SEMA showing that caused them a LOT of attention for an exciting NEW product that at this point I think we can rest assured does not exist and never will exist, and he's already sharpening his pen over which "well funded OEM effort" they will deign speak with. We can assume UNOBTAINIUM forever there.

A123 has a somewhat longer and more gorey history. But it's actually quite interesting. The company was formed by three people and a scantily garbed fish in 2001. A professor, Yet-Ming Chiang of MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering, an engineer, Bart Riley of American Superconductor, and a serial entrepreneur, Ric Fulop, met for dinner at the Naked Fish restaurant in July 2001. Professor Chiang had been working with a novel set of materials that appeared to self assemble into a very powerful battery.

The three agreed to launch an effort and by December, North Bridge Venture partners had turned their head and coughed $8.3 million. This further inspired Motorola and Qualcomm to join the party at $4 million and the company was off and running.

Along the way, Professor Chiang had also applied for a DOE Small Business Innovations Research grant and was awarded $100,000 for development of a nano phosphate cathode material. The group licensed both the self organizing battery and the nano phosphate chemistry from MIT on an exclusive basis.

As it turns out, the self assembling battery worked. But the batteries lasted a few dozen cycles and died. This was not promising. But the nanophophate material licensed as an afterthought showed unusually high power density. Professor Chiang published a paper on this and it actually caused quite a stir in the battery industry on a wide front.

So the company repurposed for the power cell. Batteries are generally described in two ways of interest - energy density and power density. We tend to be interested in energy density. Energy density is how much total power can be contained in a given weight and volume - the storage capacity if you will. More capacity, more range.

Power density is quite different. Power density has to do with how much INSTANTANEOUS power output can be derived from a given weight and volume. We talk of this as momentary or pulse power and it is often 5C or 10C - meaning 5x or 10x the amp hour capacity. A 100Ah cell that can put out 500 amps momentarily has a 5C power output rating.

This is the central tradeoff in Lithium batteries. More active material on the cathode gives you greater ENERGY density, but it slows the diffusion of lithium ions into and out of the cathode structure, severely limiting the power delivery capability. Thinner cathode materials provide more instantaneous power, but energy density suffers.

Chiang's nanophosphate cathode material had good energy density, but VERY high power densities of up to 100C. So a 2 Ah cell could momentarily put out 200A. Of course, it couldn't do that very long as it ran out of capacity very quickly at 100C. 60/200= about 18 seconds.

And where would this be most useful? Power tools like drills and screwdrivers tend to need a lot of power for a few seconds, after which they are often lain on the bench for minutes. A123 showed some cells to Black and Decker and in 2005 the company contracted for some cylindrical cells for their DeWalt Power Tool line. Later they added the main Black and Decker line to the mix as well. As an interesting aside, Black and Decker/Dewalt hold a very interesting patent for BOTTOM BALANCING lithium ion cells.

This gave A123 instant gravitas in the battery world and they were off and running. They eventually raised $131 million in venture capital BEFORE a very successful Initial Public OFfering.

In 2008, they did have a little hiccup. A company in Boulder Colorado had converted a Toyota Prius to an extended range electric by replacing the Prius battery pack with a pack designed by Davide Andrea. The company was Hybrids Plus with Carl Lawrence CEO at the time.

The car had been developed for a utility company and had burst into flames and burned to the ground while driving on the Internstate highway system. The battery pack was removed and sent to A123's headquarters and a third party company came in to do the forensics and determine the cause of the fire.
It was eventually laid off as an improper hardware assembly of a fuse and cable in the report. But it caused A123 to issue an entire document on proper module design in stellar cover your ass fashion.

The full A123firereport is here.

Davide Andrea went on to design the Elithion Battery Management System and wrote a book that could be titled "Jack is Wrong and you should send me money for my BMS and here is why."

A123 subsequently refused to sell cells to any conversion shops, one off car builders, custom cars, or hobbyist enthusiast and actually post a derogatory and very nearly actionable description of this on their web site. We questioned them about it and received an answer from the highest levels of management that they believe the incident contributed to their loss of the Chevy Volt contract to LGChem.

Which IS indeed interesting in a way. LG Chem provides GM with an intrinsically LESS safe Lithium Manganese Oxide Spinel cell that the A123 LiFePo4 cell just beats in all directions including life cycle and safety. IN any event, A123 just won't sell us or any conversion guys batteries.

But snubbed by Chevrolet, and worse, publicly noted as the LOSER in the OEM battle, A123 was desperate to get into electric vehicles. They invested $30 million dollars in Fisker Automotive, and would you believe Fisker found A123 cells to be the PERFECT answer to their battery needs. And so A123 announced they DID have an OEM car maker contract and others should look at their cells as well.

Fisker had promised a very sexy hybrid car. But like many startups, delays were the rule and the car didn't come out as scheduled. Worse, when they did finally begin shipping a few, it appeared that their all electric range had shrunk to 50 miles and in fact the EPA declared it to be 32 miles - LESS than the Chevy Volt. To suffer insult on indignity, they also found it got 20 MPG on the hybrid engine - worse than almost any economy car. So it isn't really very green. It isn't really very electric. And it IS very expensive - originally $95K but now north of $100K. And so beyond a few celebrity movie stars it has placed the cars with, there are no sales of Fiskers. They are currently trying to recast it as some sort of greenish tinted Bentley but there is really no place for this car to go.

So A123 has been working furiously to ramp up production to support Fisker, and now Fisker doesn't need very many batteries. SINCE we shot this video, A123 has announced layoffs of 125 workers in Michigan of about900 who were working there on the modules. In 2009, when receiving U.S. tax dollars of $259 million and state of Michigan grants and local tax abatements, they had promised 5000 jobs.

This isn't going well. And worse, it comes on the heals of the Enerdel meltdown. Also publicly traded, Enerdel had invested $59 million in THINKCITY, who miraculously found their ENER1 to be JUST THE TICKET for the THink car. Think didn't make the cut and has since gone bankrupt and is now apparently the property of a Russian entrepreneur. ENERdel was delisted from the NASDAQ last month.

We would predict Fisker is months away from also turning turtle on A123.

A123 has in the meantime been selected for the Chevrolet Spark program. But this is likely a year or two out in time for actual production - nothing in the next few quarters.

Which is a bit confusing. The company saves about $6.25 million per year by laying off this 125 people - assuming they are costing $50K per year each. They were obviously already trained to make the battery modules. The company has the $259 million in federal money. Why are they risking public ire and parody to save the $6.25 million? I would have probably had them garden, and work with the plants around the building or what not, sit around and train each other instead of cutting them loose. They promise to "call them back later." They most likely will be in another state later.

In any event, it appears the actual A123 A20MD-H1 prismatic 20Ah pouch cell is manufactured in Korea. The company also does have factories in CHina. And these cells are normally printed MADE IN THE USA incredibly, even though they are NOT made in the USA at all.

We originally bought 16 of these from a company called OSN Power at $50 each. They indicated they could do these in 500 quantity at $46.

We kind of posted a query on Alibaba that would alert us to these cells if they came up. And subsequently we heard from Richard Zhang at Shenzhen VictPower Technology Company They would sell A123 cells for $30 each in sample quantities and take PayPal for payment. AND in quantity 600 they quoted us $23.80 per cell.

$23.80 per cell for 20 Ah cells starts to look competitive. And Like OSNPower, Victpower is just a trading company. They sell birthday candles, flowers, tennis shoes, whatever you want to buy is kind of what they were wanting to sell. So we still haven't tracked down the SOURCE of these A123 cells, or found the real price for that matter. But it appears A123 is either backdooring production output to Asia, or they have lost control of a Korean factory that is simply selling the cells A123 isn't taking, anywhere they can.

It's an interesting problem. ANd an interesting opportunity.

But it goes right back to the original problem that A123 and Hybrids PLus faced, how do you package these pouch cells into a module that is safe and effective at driving a car. We would propose just buying the modules from A123, but it appears they would rather LAY OFF 125 workers than sell us the modules, and we have to guess if they DID, it would be at a ridiculous price to make us go away. So no rational world to deal with here.

So we think a module to use the A123 pouch cell might have life.

And packaging is probably my WORST area of non talent. In this video, I comically and ineptly describe how to make an A123 bomb for your car.

What I would LIKE to do is sponsor some sort of a design contest - something a LOT less work than last year's battery contest, where we get YOU guys to design the thing rather than ME designing something and all of you elegantly and with such charm e-mailing me about how I SHOULD have done it.

Perhaps we'll SELL you the cells at $50 each - 20 cells. You then send us the 20 cells in a module. Winning module gets something - 500 cells or something. ALL the cells that entered maybe. And we just buy module hardware from the winner. And of course encourage our viewers to do so as well. Ideas on how to structure this design contest are welcome.

Jack Rickard

Charges and Counter Charges in the land of the Swallow

2011-11-21T08:31:00.003-06:00

Some are spitters. Some are swallowers.

This week, we send the Cadillac Elescalade over to Slingblade for a brake conversion. This will allow us to use the excellent power brakes on this vehicle WITHOUT having to deal with simulating engine vacuum. Muc of GM's truck line of course features diesel engines and they rather fail to produce sufficient manifold vacuum to run such auxiliary devices. The Elescalade already has a hydraulic pressure pump to run the power steering. By replacing the brake pack with the hydroboost version used on the diesels, and swapping out this pump for an identical one with a few more ports, we can run both brakes and steering off the same pump AND keep everything completely stock in a sense. All parts readily available and recognizable. We've already made provisions to mount this pump on the aux shaft of our electric motor pack.

Meanwhile, Lee Morehead of Denton Texas visited at the 2011 Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention. He brought a vehicle, purportedly just needing a new battery set, he called a Swallow. Originally designed

by Bill Bishoprick of Salem Oregon, this is a very lightweight vehicle based on a 1968 VW beetle, with a custom body reminiscent of a Jaguar. In 1922, Wilson Lyons founded the Swallow Sidecar Company to make motorcycle sidecars. That grew into Jaguar and Bishoprick then named the car after them.

Originally 1650 lbs with 523 lbs of Optima Yellow Tops, the vehicle got a scant 30 miles range. We're going to replace all that with 253 lbs of China Aviation Lithium Battery Company 100 Ah cells bringing the curb weight down to just over 1400 lbs.

That was the original scope of the project. Unfortunately, we've gotten a bit into it and found a bad clutch cylinder, some very bad connections between the rear suspension and the pan, and a seized motor.

So we're going to upgrade the motor and controller to an HPEVS AC-50 and Curtis 1238-7601. We'll put in an Elcon charger to charge the cells. A brake line pressure transducer to manage the regenerative braking, and a set of Bridgestone Ecopia LLR tires to replace the low profile Toyos.

The result should be a very lightweight, slightly overpowered but balanced fair-weather vehicle. I think we'll be up in the 80 mile range even using 100AH cells. Lee originally wanted to stuff it with 180Ah cells. We just couldn't' figure a good way to get them all in there, and it would have brought us back up to about the original weight, which we think was a touch bloated. With some new seat work, we think we'll be at 1500 lbs or less and very sprightly. The car is destined for use by Lee's daughter.

Meanwhile, we have had a bit of a development in the land of chargers. This has been a pernicious problem since we first started converting cars.

Our first charger was a Brusa NLG-511 or 513. It is really pretty good at 3000 watts because it is endlessly configurable. You can set up multiple stages and have them cycle on time, amp hours, current level, voltage, really almost anything. It's quite good at measuring voltage and current.

Unfortunately, it comes from Switzerland - no support at all. If you burn one up you get to keep all the charred remains. And with the Euro exchange rate, they reached $4000 each. I was 26 years old before I owned a car that cost over $4000. Much less a charger.

One of the staples of the EV world has been Manzanita. This is a non-isolated charger. You CAN configure the CC/CV voltage but its not very accurate and the point moves around with the current level. You "tweak" this with a kind of blind pot. And the termination is actually done by clock. It's really not designed for LiFePo4 cells. It can be made to work, but you have to do it carefully and it's a bit tricky. They have an add on Rudman Regulator that serves as a BMS and controls this and there have been a number of "incidents" involving fires related to this combination.

They are also a bit pricey with a 30 amp version starting at about $2400 and the big 75 amp model going for $4750. A lot more power per dollar at the expense of configuration and control.

DeltaQ makes a lot of the chargers for neighborhood electric vehicles like the GEM and THINK and so forth. Because of liability issues, they simple will not sell or configure any of their chargers for EV conversions. And they complain bitterly that the Chinese firm Elcon has ripped off their design.

If so, Elcon has presented designs with much more useful and higher voltages than DeltaQ, and it must be pointed out that the reason they were available to be ripped off is DeltaQ was having theirs manufactured in China. This is kind of a double edges sword faced by many companies. You can have your electronics product made in China at much less expense than in America. But when you do so, you often find remarkably similar products showing up to compete with you, with remarkably similar designs, and often a few improvements to boot.

The Elcon is the low priced leader. We can get a 3000 watt version for about $900. We got a 5000 watt version for the Cobra delivered in one week. They will load up to 10 "charge curves" into the machine for you and you do have the ability to pick from these 10 curves. This gives you a little bit of a selection of voltages. And they work well and reliably. But if you change your battery pack or car very much, you are stuck with a charger that just no longer works.

In September 2009, Simon Raferty, a UK engineer started a thread on DIYelectric on a $200 build it yourself charger. This thread has now spanned two years and about 50 pages of comments - one of the more popularly read threads on the service. In it, he describes a simple buck circuit controlled by an Arduino.

The Arduino is an Italian open source project to make a small board with an Atmel multi controller on it. They added an IDE and programming language to it and a USB port so anyone could easily program these in C++ on a PC. They have produced millions of these and it has given rise to a stunning open source community involved in home automation.

Rafferty adapted the Arduino as a controller to switch a pair of IGBTS's to make a functional buck circuit that could charge at 320v and below to any voltage and current desired.

Enter Valery Miftakhov. Miftakhov sports a Phd in Physics from Princeton and has developed an interest in the EV world. He's started a conversion shop called Electric Motor Werks to convert BMW's to electric drive. But he was a little put off by the state of some of the components, and chargers rather immediately fell to view. And so he has set out to "productize" this open source charger system. He has further refined the design and published layouts for printed circuit boards, parts lists, schematics, etc. He sells a kit of components for $849. And he'll even assemble one for you for $1849.

The unit is ENTIRELY configurable, better it is also entirely PROGRAMMABLE if you care to play Arduino, and it will pump out 10kw of power.

Developing such things is actually non-trivial. This week, we test the THIRD version of this we have received, and note that it still has a lot of things hanging on the outside that should be hanging on the inside. But we tried it on Speedster Redux and its' 192v pack and the device worked superbly. The CC/CV switch was accurate and the termination at 9 amperes was spot on. It is reasonably easy to configure. And it was doing over 8000 watts. I think we could have specified a higher power level yet.

Given the product liability issues with chargers, this may be the way to go. Open source charger projects you can build yourself inexpensively, or of course get some one to build for you for a fee. You kind of have to assume the liability, which you really always did anyway.

Finally, we have located a reasonably priced source for A123 cells. These 20 Ah LiFePo4 pouch cells are mildly interesting. They are high power cells capable of 20C outputs and more. This opens the window to small battery backs and LESS range, but still able to deliver the current levels required for high performance.

It's kind of theoretical, and we intend to approach it with a bit of caution. But we're playing around with five cell 100Ah modules and we were charging such a battery at 100 amps. I got involved in a fascinating phone call with Bill Ritchie of HPEVS about their "Secret stuff" coming spring of 2012 and how that might play with an 818 World Car build from Factory Five Racing. In an Alzheimer's moment, I kind of forgot the batteries.

Brain noticed them when the smoke started billowing out of the battery lab. We used the occasion to do a real world test of a new Kidde ABC fire extinguisher that uses a yellow chemical retardant powder. I was impressed.

Reiterating one more time. If you overcharge these cells, they will cause a very hot fire. Fortunately we were HERE to stop it. They weren't enclosed but perched on top of a plastic box. They burned through the box and dropped into it, where they were struggling for oxygen. We're probably going to replace the box and put about a foot of water in it. In this way, future battery fires would burn through the lid,and drop into the water automatically starting the fire and automatically extinguishing it in one smooth motion. I can then just phone in or text in my part in all this.

The interesting thing going on here is that A123 will not sell to us directly. They DO sell through a company called Mavezin who supplies components for electric motorcycles. They quoted us a price of $65 each for these 20 Ah "prismatic" cells. That's 3x the rate of our current batteries thank you.

OSN Power sold us 16 of these at $50 each. But we recently found a source at a much lower price and OSN has lowered their price commensurately. We bought 36 cells at $30 each and they quoted $23.80 in quantity 600. You can get lower yet if you want 2000 of them. And that starts to get down to the going rate for LiFePo4 cells anyway.

What remains is that you have to do your own packaging. Our initial tests indicate some minor heating around the terminals that could become problematic at VERY high current levels. The essential demand for a good Battery Management System appears to be just as valid as it is for the Chinese prismatics - that is not at all. And so we are looking at module designs that would be light weight, volumetrically of advantage, and inexpensive. This is not an area where we excel and any number of our viewers might do better at this than we do.

I'm playing with cast epoxy resin "tops" that host the cell tabs and clamp them using lightweight copper bars/sheet. Once a mold was perfected for this, they could be produced much less expensively I would think than with CNC machined plastic. But I don't know. We may try to design some sort of design contest for this project. If you have any suggestions for how that might work.

This is a VERY interesting development. And timely. Thundersky appears to be self cratering. Sinopoly has not apparently sold ANYONE we know any battery cells. We have received notice from Winston Battery that they will no longer market cells in the U.S. and that this will be taken over by their U.S. agent Balqon. Balqon assures all callers they must purchase a Balqon BMS and in any event cells will be 60 days to delivery with full payment required up front. This leaves CALB about our only source for Chinese prismatic cells.

Meanwhile, despite their obstinate reluctance to sell us cells, A123 is losing oxygen fast. The problem is Fisker Automotive. Fisker is just not ramping up their car sales per plan and so inventories of A123 cells are stacking up. Fisker blames it on floods and bad leather shipments and all manner of things in classic GM fashion. But it would appear that their car gets somewhere between 30 and 50 miles of electric range, and after the gasoline kicks in it is 20 mpg and spewing carbon in all directions - all for $95K. Becoming available pretty much in the same time frame as Tesla's $77K all electric with 300 mile range. And so Fisker is more or less DOA without drastic action.

The A123 cells are actually manufactured in Korea. The manufacturer has their own agenda. And now Chinese traders have picked up the line from Korea and are selling the cells. And they have their own agenda. Methinks A123 is losing control of their design. I think they'll quickly find their price at about $1 Ah where everything else is, perhaps slightly below given the expense of putting them in modules.

We should at least examine the possibility of using these cells as an option. I don't know at this point if they are Chinese, Korean, or from Framinham Massachusettes. Increasingly, it doesn't matter. But it is some work to use them in a car safely. Maybe a plastic battery box with water in the bottom.....

EleCobra - The Thrill of Victory, and the Agony of The Feet.

2011-11-14T08:44:00.000-06:00

Sadly and painfully behind on my blogging duties, it is probably poor form to attempt a remedy with one massive update. But we do what we can. We HAVE been a bit busy with the roundup of the EleCobra prototype for Aptima Motors.

Recall, if you will, that I was vaguely disappointed in our performance at the local airstrip with the EleCobra. As it turns out, justifiably so. I'm pleased to report that we had quite a bit stronger car in the box than was immediately evident.

The week before last we took the EleCobra to Slingblade Performance in Anna Illinois to do some dynamometer testing on their Dynojet system. The results there were also disappointing. But we mounted a video camera behind the car and shot the actual gages up close while the acceleration tests were performed.

On return, I did something so gruesome I scarce recommend it. I exported the Winpep data in 100 msec chunks. We shoot our video at 29.97 frames per second and so 1/10th of a second corresponds to 3 frames of video. And so I loaded the videos and cycled through the runs 3 frames at a time, noting amps, volts, temperature,s etc from every gage on the dash, three fluke meters, and the Netgain Warp Drive Interface Module.

This is beyond watching paint dry. It's self abuse.

But it did pay off. We could note, for example, that not only were we NOT getting the calculated power, but apparently we weren't asking for it. The throttle input never exceeded 80% command.

Recall that we had struggled with a type 23 error reported on the Netgain Warp Drive Industrial. Mr. Bohm was prompt in providing us with a firmware upgrade on the controller. Better, the process of updating firmware was actually pleasant. Mr. Bohm sent us an e-mail with an attached file. We pulled the tiny SD micro card from the interface module and mounted it in an SD card adapter, and plugged it into a desktop computer. We could then copy the file onto the card.

We then reversed the process, inserting the card into the Interface Module. A simple menu item allows you to update the firmware to the controller, and in fact you can even update the firmware in the Interface Module itself if need be. The entire process from e-mail to updated controller was probably not eight minutes.

The Interface Module is a very handy way to set configuration items on the controller, but there really aren't very many. You get motor amps and volts limits, in forward and reverse. You can clear errors, and read errors. There's a "frame leak" option. And not very much else.

But you CAN select your throttle type. You don't get to change much on it, but you can select it. Our throttle is the LOKAR PEDAL the last option on the list. We believe when we updated the firmware we reverted to the default, CTS which is the FIRST item on the list.

So we were running the car error 23 free finally, but with the WRONG pedal. This had the unfortunate effect of lopping off the top 20% of our available power.

The scary thing about all that is that without all this testing, we never would have known. We would have been vaguely disappointed in the Netgain 11HV, the Warp Drive Industrial, and the EleCobra. But it ran well, and we could have gone for years. As a first prototype, we would compare it to WHAT? What SHOULD the power have been? My napkin scratch?

The central issue with one-off custom cars and prototypes is you never KNOW when you are done. Now that we've found the pedal issue, is there MORE things we are missing? More tricks that could this dramatically improve performance?

Our zero to sixty time dropped from 6.8 seconds, which isn't as good as Speedster Redux, to 5.8 seconds - making it the fastest car on our lot. That's a 14.7% improvement. What ELSE is in the car that will give me another 10% say? Scarey thought.

This week, we returned to Slingblade and things got better.

You can also see the results in the graphs below and I'll include a link to the actual elecobra.xlsx EXCEL FILE for the Cobra so you can see the data. There's actually a LOT more data in the file than we graphed and you might find some of it quite interesting.

I'm going to hear howls from the Dan Friedricksons and other lesser intellects on the disparity between the data from the fluke meters and the Xantrex and the Interface Module. Here's a clue. Each device has a different "sample rate" and we are snapshotting the numbers in 1/10th second slices. If you slide the numbers, they're all good, just not in precise line in all cases.

Since we insisted on publishing everything we did on the EleCobra, Aptima Motors, which has plenty of secret plans, has avoided making us privy to all of them for obvious reasons. But Bryan ANderson claims they have already put two additional chassis into work. They are going to integrate the battery boxes a little bit better into the new frame. And they are going to do a carbon fiber body for the vehicle. Bryan believes he can slice 400 lbs certainly, and potentially as much as 500 lbs from our 2961 curb weight. With a 5.8 second zero to sixty now, imagine the improvement with a 17% weight decrease. This should also have a dramatic impact on our 120 mile range. And I think he mentioned they are going to sell these cars completely finished at $85,000.

What I found very surprising was a rather significant level of interest from his EXISTING customer base of Cobra owners in the project.

I didn't have any doubt at any point that we could make the car roll forward using batteries and a motor. Frankly, no miracle there. Really anyone CAN do this. If you want to take an existing car and make it drive on batteries, the stuff is there.

Naturally, we wanted to do it with new and interesting components to make it interesting video. But my concern from the beginning was that the resulting car be "Cobra-like". And I struggle to define what I mean by that. Obviously it would be a new and different thing powered by LiFePo4 cells and a magnetic motor. But could it be done incorporating the feel and mystique and sense of this car, which has such a history and such a community of enthusiasts who so deeply feel the Cobra gestaltd?

Bryan Anderson claims to have built 2700 chassis in 25 years, the majority of which are Cobras. He seems to think so.

Our mission was to take an existing car as it was and convert it to a working prototype electric drive car. In this particular adventure, the loop is continued. Now Mr. Anderson can take what we've done, and go BACK to the beginning of the process. By making some fairly dramatic changes to the chassis, he can take off weight and do a MUCH improved positioning of the battery cells. With carbon fiber, he can lighten the body and if he dares, alter the front end to eliminate the aerodynamically perverse open front face of the car - vastly improving the admittedly poor aerodynamics of this particular model.

There are some more refined improvements available as well. If you are disappointed with our horsepower numbers, you probably ill understand what horsepower is. Our torque was very good, but it WAS a little constrained to the lower end of the RPM band - limiting somewhat the HP number you read on the dynamometer. Horsepower is an expression of radial torque RPM corrected. Simply increasing the voltage 20 volts would widen that RPM band substantially. By incorporating the boxes more integrally into the chassis, that is a very possible improvement.

We were at that under 500 ft lbs of torque. The Tremek TK600 transmission is the big guy in that line and rated for 600 ft-lbs. On reflection, it is POSSIBLE that a lighter, lower friction T45 or even T5 transmission MIGHT make the grade - decreasing our drivetrain friction losses as well as overall weight. The same can be said of the entire rear differential and axle assembly.

The production costs of the EleCobra are simply too high to be a viable vehicle in my estimation. But Aptima is intent on it and at $85,000 it would certainly be an interesting offering. With the changes outlined above, this would truly be a performance car by any measure, and I can say the view from the cockpit did grow on me over the course of this project. It will be very interesting to see this develop.

Meanwhile, we're back on the Elescalade and a couple of new projects. As described in the second video, we are taking a close look at Factory Five Racing's 818 World Car concepts. This is a two seat mid engine spyder sports car using the universally and globally available Suburu parts in either left OR right hand drive. David Smith intends to reach a younger customer base with this and enhance his already notable export business - he calls it a "World Car." Better, he is looking to a $9900 kit car price with a completed vehicle possible at a smooth $15,000.

This is very attractive. We can't make it electric and stay within $15,000. But an electric version of this modern, very aerodynamic and lightweight (818 refers to kilograms wet) could be very attractive at $25,000 or even $27,000 all in. If we could find a suitably NEW and interesting motor and controller combination, and perhaps a suitably new and exciting battery architecture to match, this could be the ultimate kit build electric car at a price more of our viewership can afford than say, the Elescalade.

I guess the question we would have is should we go for max range/performance or attempt a dramatic price breakthrough on such a build? Viewer thoughts on this would be welcome.

Jack Rickard

LRR Tires - Worth It

2011-10-31T07:47:00.002-05:00

The Aptima Motors eCobra is coming along. We are in the final days of this project. It rolls and drives well.

One of the concerns with this car has been the amount of power required to move it. For a two seat convertible sports model, it is a bit heavy at 2961 lbs - no interior or paint yet at that. But as we have added pieces such as the hood and trunk, the aerodynamics have improved and the power consumption has fallen to more of the expected levels just over 300 wH per mile - about as expected for it's weight.

One of the eyebrow raisers from receipt of this car was the large wide tires that came on it. Lots of rubber looks good and rides well, but it usually means higher rolling resistance. Very early in the program we ordered a new set of lightweight WELD wheels with a carefully calculated offset so we could run Michelin Energy Saver A/S low rolling resistance tires on this car. The issue was having the offset such that the tires still filled the wheel well and didn't look entirely odd on a Cobra.

Recall from our mystery surrounding the Porsche 550 Spyder and the Porsche 356 Speedster that we got a significantly better range and energy use from the heavier and rounder Speedster. Despite installing expensive aluminum rotors, calipers, low rolling resistance tires, and even ceramic bearings, we never did get the Spyder even close to the Speedster's ability to roll much more freely.

As kind of a joke we ran what we called the Soapbox Derby - simply rolling the two cars down the street in neutral to see which rolled further. True to our range results, the Speedster rolled dramatically further than the Spyder.

We can of course do normal range testing but it is quite time consuming and subject to variabilities out of our control. If a tractor trailer blows past you, cuts in front of you, and then slows to 7 miles per hour below your target speed, there's not a lot you can do about it in a small convertible. And the tests take hours and are much more accurate over a significant number of miles - 15 to 25 typically.

So we liked the quick indication of the Soap Box derby. But it didn't actually provide much data - just a distance on a hill. And you have to use the SAME hill. So YOU can't compare YOUR results to ours.

The way this is actually done in automotive testing is with a coast down test. And so we adopted the pretty standard procedure used in such tests - with perhaps less instrumentation and rigeur than is commonly done at the Chrysler Test Grounds. But we think it renders quite accurate information, and is reproducible by anyone anywhere on any car.

Basically, we go to a flat stretch of road sufficiently long to allow an acceleration to 75 mph and a subsequent unpowered roll to a full stop. Ideally, with very little traffic on it. We then accelerate to 75 miles per hour, and then remove all throttle input and place the transmission in neutral.

As the car speed decreases and passes through 70 mph, you take a time mark. As the point where it hits 60 miles per hour, you note the time from the 70 mph start time mark. As it passes through 50 mph, again take a time. And so forth until the car actually comes to a stop, noting the time each 10 miles per hour.

There is a human element using a stopwatch, and the incline of the road will affect the results, no matter how flat. So we run the test THREE TIMES in each direction, giving us six time sets. Then we average the times. We actually had little variation there.

The chart below shows this coast down test for the Michelin Energy Saver A/S tires/wheels, as well as for the Stinger Radial GTS tires that originally came on the car.

As you can see, the results are pretty similar at the higher speeds, where aerodynamics comprises the predominant effect. But as the speed deteriorates, the two curves diverge pretty strongly. Total time was a difference of nearly 30 seconds. That's quite a bit of time and quite a bit of distance differential for two sets of tires.

We also did some actual range testing. Excluding extraneous factors such as hoods and trunk lids, we really only have directly comparable data for 40 mph and 50 mph.

But the results are startling. At 40 mph our max range calculates to 152 miles with the Michelins and 124 miles with the Stinger tires. LRR tires typically provide a 3-5% increase in gas mileage. But in this case, starting with tires that are so BAD for an electric drive application, this was 28 miles further than the Stinger results - a gain in max range of 22.58%. This is frankly just huge. Not precisely apples to apples as they are entirely differently sized tires, but it's a real gain and we'll take it.

The results at 50 mph are less as there is slightly more of an aerodynamic component at the higher speed - predictably enough. But they are still substantial at over 14%.

A number of people have waned us to keep the eCobra cobra like. We don't know precisely what this means. But we think it has something to do with burning rubber. So we installed a line locker on the front brake line. This allows us to spin the rear wheels while applying brake to the front wheels. It worked well enough as you'll see in the video. As an added bonus, it makes a very handy parking brake.

We also did some very preliminary testing of 0 to 60 times using the pretty basics device provided on the GPS speedometer. It would appear we ran 0 to 60 mph in 6.77 seconds and 360 linear feet. We think we can improve on that with practice, probably down to about six seconds.

We hope to get the car over to Slingblade Racing this week for a full dynamometer test.

Jack

Going Down in Flames - It's Just an Expression

2011-10-26T09:00:00.000-05:00

Interesting week last week and growing interestingier as we start this one.

Last Monday, we were doing some range testing at 60 mph in the eCobra when the Netgain Warp 11HV let out all its smoke and ceased operation somewhat noisily.

This led to a crusade to swap the motor that I'm more than a bit pleased with as it was pretty much completed in three days. Netgain had a new motor to us in less than 48 hours and our penchant for installing and reinstalling things several times had of course led us to a pretty straight forward replacement from beneath without having to move too many other parts - transmission and drive shaft of course. BUt no batteries or major rewiring.

Unfortunately, we had no video camera operating at the time. So no cool video of the tower of smoke next to the Interstate. Oh well....

The other interesting thing to happen early THIS week is that we put the hood on the car. This is normally a not particularly exciting evolution and always toward the end of the build, when we are doing more driving that building.

In this case, it had a very strong effect. Recall I had been grousing about the rolling resistance, the brakes, and so forth on this car because it was taking between 1.65 and 2.25 Ah of energy at 215 volts to make a mile of distance. This is just horrendous. At the upper end this is like 475 wH per mile or more. And it had shot all my range calculations completely out of the saddle.

Actually, things get better with the hood on. This should be obvious to all, but I didn't think it would account for this much difference. It makes THIS much difference. As soon as the hood was on, we dropped to 1.409 Ah per mile - right in the 300 wH per mile range where this 2961 lb car should be.

I may have mentioned some efforts to develop something more consistent than our soap box derby for a coast down test.

We took the car un to 75 mph on a flat road section and put it into neutral. Time mark 0 was called at 70mph and the time noted at each 10 mph until stopped. We ran this three times in each direction, east and west, and then averaged the results.

The coast down test is conventionally used to determine aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. But it is difficult to do that with accuracy and requires humidity, temperature, and other factors to be truly accurate. But we think we can do a quick average procedure and have the curve and times as a baseline. This should let us compare to this baseline after changes for example. We'll put on the original tires and rerun it for example to see what the effect is.

This is a bit more trouble than rolling it down the street in front of the shop. But accounts for aerodynamics in addition to rolling resistance and drive train efficiencies.

Jack Rickard

Moore from the Land of Harsh 12v busses and Itty Bitty Batteries

2011-10-17T08:42:00.000-05:00

In this week's underdog adventure, we retrace our steps on the Aux battery and the 12volt subsystem.

We have a number of loads that need to be on all the time - parked or running. In fact, the number of these is reaching kind of alarming proportions.

The latest that slipped under the radar was David Kerzels' SAE J1772:2010 Compatible Active Vehicle Side Control Board Module This little device is $37 on eBay and is all you need, besides the inlet itself, to respond appropriately to any commercial J1772 EVSE and charge therefrom.

I love it. Not only does it do the necessary response to the EVSE to both trigger the copilot signal to start the charge process, but it also monitors the proximity switch (the little button on the charge plug) to stop charging if it is pressed. AND it provides a little single pole double throw relay you can use to detect it's state to do such things as interlock your onboard charger, disable the controller while charging, whatever.

The unit draws 20 ma, although we use the SPDT relay to also apply 12v to a string of blue LED lights ringing the billet aluminum fuel port on the Cobra. Good visual at the car that it is charging when the blue LED is on.

But the trick is, it has to have 12v ALL THE TIME, or you can't charge. No 12v to the board, no charging.

We are powering our Xantrex AH meter also with 12vdc. We've tried a number of near disastrous ways of powering this little device and the best seems to be to use an inexpensive (usually $10-$12) DC-DC converter module to take 12vdc from the car, isolate it through the 12v/12v converter, and power the Xantrex with it. Of course, if we are to account for IN amp hours while charging, we have to have it on all the time. Since I can't read it without the backlight, that's on all the time as well. It's a bit of a 24x7 load on the 12v system.

Then there's the ZevaII Fuel Gage Driver. I spend a lot of time exasperated with this device as it is tricky to install and calibrate. But I do love it. It does two things I like. First, it runs an ordinary fuel gage by counting ampere hours. You can use this device to fairly accurately monitor your LiFePo4 pack's state of charge using a familiar and already standard face - an ordinary fuel gage. We have a set of Speedhut Cobra gages for the Cobra and it comes with a fuel gage of course. Might as well use it. Probably NOT as accurate as the Xantrex, but easy to use and everybody knows what it means.

This device also outputs a pulse string representing instantaneous current. We can display this in hundreds of amps on our tachometer from Speedhut. Actually, we installed a small selector switch in the dash that let's us connect this output or the output of a RechargeCar magnetic shaft pickup to our tachometer. In this way, we can read RPM or battery amperes on the tachometer.

This is kind of cool A dancing set of digital numbers for instantaneous current is not really VERY informative. We're changing the current faster than the digital device can sample. But if we put the same information on a large analog needle, it is all different. We get a rougher indication of value, but a kind of more integrated "trend" visual that shows us the current going up and going down in response to our throttle inputs.

Finally, the ZivaII let's us set an alarm level and provides a switched ground output when we reach some low level of charge. We can hook that up to a warning light or power a relay with it.

But to do all that, it is ON for 24x7. In fact, if you remove power from the device, it resets your AH counter and your fuel gage will show full when it's actually had a number of amp hours used This is a worse situation than having no fuel gage at all.

So we tried using an aux battery to the ignition switch, and that voltage to in turn run a contactor that turned on our main DC-DC converter. This quelled the complaints from the Netgain Controls Warp Drive Industrial, but caused endless other problems. Most notably, we kept running down the battery when we charged overnight.

We added a manual bypass switch to bring up the DC-DC converter and recharge our dead battery. But the whole thing was a nightmare and we were going to have a totally destroyed battery within days.

We have tried an aux battery in the past - always to some bad end or other. We've had numerous people point out that if we lose our DC-DC converter, our car won't operate. Duh. What we've found is if we lose our DC to DC converter, we don't know it at first because we have an aux battery. But within a few minutes, the battery runs down anyway and our car won't operate. Plenty of weight, an inherent maintenance item, and same effect.

We're also warned of dire safety issues as a sudden shut down will cause us to lose power brakes and power steering and all manner of ills suddenly while hurtling down the freeway. Same answer really. But most of our cars don't have power steering, power brakes and so forth anyway. For the ones that do, for example the 2009 Mini Cooper Clubman Electric, we have a different solution - redundant DC-DC converters. Indeed the design of the Mini's startup sequence requires 12v of course, and we use one converter to bring it up, and when up it engages a second converter as well. When we shut down, we disconnect the big one, but leave the small one running.

The original problem on the eCobra had to do with the Warp Drive Industrial controller. It threw a series of errors when we shut OFF the controller at the end of the drive. This was very peculiar. But the controller stored the errors and so wouldn't operate the next time we fired it up. We learned to clear the errors with the Interface Module, but once we have all this working, we don't see really using this Interface Module day to day. A great troubleshooting device, it can't count Amp hours and doesn't really add much operationally. Certainly having to clear these errors prior to driving wasn't happening.

Ryan Bohm insisted this was caused by noise on the 12v system and wanted us to scope it. I have a problem with all that. What noise are we looking for? There is noise. And there is noise. And in fact, we find the 12v system in a car a very noisy place, and one of the primary culprits is in rather circular fashion - the controller. So I'm vaguely disinterested in noise in general. Assume we are going to have it in an automotive environment.

In this case, I had another problem with the concept. The controller worked fine - ONCE we had cleared the errors. Indeed, the errors only occurred when we were shutting DOWN the system. If the controller has an issue with "noise' in general on the 12v system, why didn't it throw errors while I'm driving down the street?

Our 12v system does have an unusual number of inductive loads on it. We have a prius pump, for the controller cooling system, a Derale heat exchanger fan of actually some size, again for controller cooling, and an XSTurbos turbocharger we are using as a cooling blower for the 11HV motor. At 435 cubic feet per minute, this fan draws 4.6 amps at 12v.

The windings of a motor are an inductor. An inductor resists changes in current. Current through the windings causes the expansion of a magnetic field around the windings. This field stores energy. When you cut off the current, the field collapses. This collapse induces a current in the same direction. And this can cause relatively huge voltage spikes. The spikes are hard to see on an oscilloscope because while they can be surprisingly high in amplitude, they are very transient. They only appear for a handful of milliseconds. I happened to have a very cool very fast 600v 100 amp diode laying around - about 10,000 X overkill for this test. But we hooked it up between our 12v bus and ground.

It had NO effect.

Ryan Bohm was able to duplicate the problem as he had a Derale heat exchanger as well. What he found was something very different. The fans have a bit of inertia in them. When you shut them off, they keep spinning for a second or two. And when they do, they act as generators. They were maintaining 4-5 volts, quickly decaying of course, on the 12 volt line.

The problem is that the ON digital input to the controller uses this 12v to signal the controller that we are indeed on. So we have shut DOWN our 12v supply to the controller, but the fan is producing sufficient voltage that the ON input is high - for a second or two. This causes the errors to be noted and stored.

We tested this by putting a diode in series with the fan. When it is shut off, the fan does generate, but the diode blocks the feedback into the line.

That pretty much fixes the problem, but as the Derale uses six or seven amps of current, I did not want a semiconductor in that line heating up and inevitably becoming a failure item.

As a workaround, we connected the fans with a relay and used the ignition voltage to energize the relay. In this way, when we turn the ignition off, the fans are simply disconnected physically fro the system. The 3-5v cannot reach the ON input, and the errors do not occur.

This was an interesting problem. But it had us running in circles for days. And it is probably beyond our concept that ANYONE can convert a car to electric drive. in this case, anyone can't, and indeed Jack could not for some period of time. So the "fix" is for the controller to be fixed where this is not an issue.

It does bring up the concept that all such loads ought to be on separate relays with separate fuses. Not a bad practice actually, and you will see this in most modern automotive fuse blocks. Lots of fuses, and lots of relays. There's a reason. But the controller should not depend on that to operate. Put a relay inside the controller if you like.

We also devoted a bit of time to a discussion of the Tesla/Panasonic connection. Tesla makes all this needlessly secretive and confusing with their constant claims of proprietary madness. But that's mostly illusion and press puffery. Panasonic did invest $30 million in Tesla and owns 2% of the stock in the company. And they are working together. But the original concept was for Tesla to use off the shelf cells that are produced in the millions for laptops, cell phones, and flashlights. With the acquisition of Sanyo, Panasonic is the largest manufacturer of those in the world, BYD perhaps excepted. on raw numbers.

In March of 2012, Panasonic begins the production run of a brazillion of their new NNP 3.4Ah cell. This is there New Nickel Platform. It's actually a Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide cathode material with a carbon anode. And the thing carries 12.24 wH of energy in a 46 gram package. This is something like 266 wH per kilogram. By contrast, the CALB or Winston type cells are more like 109 wH/kg in their optimum size.

This is very nearly two and a half times the energy by weight. And if our 444 lbs of CALB cells were these new Panasonic's instead, we'd be seeing 266 miles instead of 109 in Speedster Duh. As I've actually driven Duh pretty flat at 110 miles, I'm onboard.

Ergo the 300 mile Tesla Model S.

We also learned a bit about cycle life in these cells which is very encouraging.

Cycle life to the industry "traditional" 80% of original capacity is somewhere in the 500-800 cycle range. Not good. But if you look to 70% as the mark, it gets much better as the deterioration curve flattens out in a very unusual fashion. You're looking at well over 2000 cycles to that level. And 70% of 300 is still 210 miles.

These are not here yet. But I do not classify them as unobtanium per se. They have good prospects for being available subsequent to March 2012. Tesla has contracted for enough of these cells to do 80,000 cars over four years. That's 640 million cells. As it will also be the highest energy density of any 18650 form factor cell, it will undoubtedly be popular in a number of other applications - flashlights if no where else. And so we have a truly MASS market battery cell here. That brings in economies of scale. That's the game we need.

I don't relish making modules of all these little cells. But 2.5x energy at potentially a LOWER price within a few years from what we're now paying for CALB/Winsston cells could be a play.

In a much larger sense, there is a perception, espoused by Elon Musk himself, that the Moore's law of PC speed and bandwidth only applies to batteries in a rather sedate form of 8% per year or so. I've never completely bought into this. The creeping advance were in a product that had zero market and no cash flow. As soon as you add oxygen in the form of ducats coming in the door in substantial numbers, innovation in batteries is not that hard. There is tons of cool science laying around with the usual problems of engineering to a product level, but there simply has been no oxygen (money) to drive the productization. Panasonic has already announced plans for 2013 to bump this very 3.4Ah cell to 4.0Ah by using a silicon alloy anode in place of the carbon anode in this cell, for example. But if a fire ensued in the battery market, there are plenty of players and plenty of advances to come. I think Moore's law is alive an dwell in Batteryville. And a car with a 1000 mile range is not inherently a preposterous notion.

Stone Soup

2011-10-13T13:59:00.002-05:00

Several hundred years ago, in a war weary and torn rural England, there was a great famine. The war and the weather had conspired to fail the crop entirely and hunger was rampant across the land. So scarce was food that violence was a daily occurrence with the strong taking what they needed from the weak, and the weak imploring God to deliver them from this evil season.

Families hid what food they did have, even from their closest friends and neighbors. Children were warned to say nothing of an onion if there was one on hand for fear someone in need would beg share it. And a bitter, cold wind blew without cease.

A road weary and battle worn knight was trudging horseless across the land toward his home, many days travel by foot away. And as the day grew late, he was relieved to see the smoke from a small village ahead on the rural pathway he trod.

He stopped at the village well to drink and ask food and shelter for the night. He found there an ancient crone who eyed him with suspicion from head to foot. “There’s no need to stop here, Squire” she grumbled. “We’ve been had to the quick and the village is starving. We’ve no food for ourselves, less for strangers.”

The knight knelt drinking deeply from the bucket. “Then thank you mother for this drink from the well. It’s a relief and blessing enough. Tell me true, you’ve really no food in the village?”

“We starve.” snarled the crone. “And if able to grub a single root from the very frozen ground, one of you soldiers offers to trade our own lives in exchange for it. We live under a curse I tell you.”

“Dire!” said the weary soldier. “How you suffer. I can scarcely imagine. It sounds a tribulation beyond belief.”

“Believe it or don’t believe it. We’ve nothing to eat here. So best you move along.”

“That would be a cold and heartless act. With you all starving in front of me, to just move on without doing what I might. I’ll not. I’m a bit short myself, but what I do have I will to share.”

“Share, sire.” The womans chill warmed but slightly. “You have food to share with us?”

“I’ll do what I can, “ replied the weary night. “You’re right enough, it’s a hard season. Fetch me a pot old woman. As large as you can find. I’ll make you soup, meager it is. But nourishing. And you and I shall dine as best we can.”

“I have a pot. It’s fairly large. What soup will you make?”

“Enough of your whining. Fetch me the pot old woman. And hurry. We’re both going to catch our death of cold while standing here starving at each other. Where’s wood for the fire. I’ll get it on.”

“There’s wood aplenty if we could but eat wood. It’s over there by the stalls. I’ll fetch your pot.” Grumbling she shuffled off.

The knight sorted through the wood and found pieces enough not rotted to make a small fire. He knelt and carefully flinted it to life. The old woman returned with a fairly large pot of obvious heritage, but serviceable.

“Let’s fill it perhaps half.” He knelt to ladle the well water into the pot, and carefully positioned it over the fire just beginning to blaze.

“And what’s to go in it?” queried the old woman.

Just then, a thin lad of about fourteen joined them. “What’s doing here Auntie?”

“This stranger is set to make soup. Said he’ll share with us.” replied the old woman.

The knight carefully drew his bag to him and oh so gently withdrew a small bag made of purple velvet from the sack. Carefully, he opened the drawstring and extracted a small smooth stone somewhat lesser in size than a closed child’s fist. He very ceremoniously lowered it over the simmering water and dropped it in.

Carefully, he withdrew a second stone from the sack, and again carefully lowered it over the pot dropping it carefully to the bottom through the simmering water.

“Have you a stir?” the knight inquired.

The lad volunteered “We’ve a ladling spoon in our kitchen. Shall I fetch it?”

“Capitol idea my lad. A large spoon would be ideal. This soup requires a bit of a stir to extract the savor.”

The lad trotted off to his house to fetch the spoon.

“What’s this? Are you daft? You intend to have us eat of a soup made of two stones?”

Casting his eyes down, the soldier sighed. “ I said it was meager enough. But it’s filling and we learned to eat this poor soup at the battles. Hardly a king’s feast, but it will have to do for this day. And I’ll gladly share it with you.”

“Harrumph” growled the old woman. “Stone soup indeed. That IS mighty poor fare. I’m thinking you’ll have little off your hunger with that. And thin. With what flavor at that? And what to gnaw? You’re a poor cook Sire.”
“Perhaps. But I’ve done it enough and I’ll note it does for what it does.”

The lad returned with the spoon. “I’ve found it. A spoon to stir a pot for a king!”

“Aye and a handsome spoon it is lad.” The knight knelt and very carefully stirred the pot with a practiced circular motion.

The boy peered down into the now bubbling water at the two stones in the bottom of the pot. “What nature of stone is this that makes soup?”

“They are quite rare really. Mind you it’s not a mutton stew. But enough to live and quell the pangs. Given me by a ranking knight just before he was slain.”

“For heaven’s sake” cried the old crone. You canna make soup from two rocks I tell you.”

“I fear I have, and perhaps too many times dear mother. I didn’t claim you a royal feast.”

The knight again knelt and drew the now steaming liquid into the spoon and carefully raised it to his lips. “Not as bad as some. I’ve had better. But this will do.” he noted analytically.

“Give me that spoon you idiot. What flavor can a soup made of stones have.” The old woman slurped the hot liquid loudly. “Bah, it has no flavor at all. You know nothing of cooking. This thing hasn’t even the flavor of salt.”

Looking dejected the knight noted. “True enough old woman. It IS much better with salt. But I’ve none.”

“You’re a moron spluttered the old woman. Here, for Christ’s sake. I’ll fetch some salt. How do you think I’m to eat such a thin poor soup without even salt.” Stalking off toward her hut, the woman muttered the whole way. Encountering the town mayor. “He thinks to make us soup! The man hasn’t even salt.”

“Soup?” cried the mayor. “Whose making soup?”

“The stranger in the square there. A poor soldier at that.”

The mayor immediately trotted over to join the lad and the knight at the fire. “What say, you? There is to be a soup? And in these hard times?”

“Stone soup!” piped up the lad. “A BIG pot of stone soup. Needs a pinch of salt but coming along.”

“My word” considered the mayor. “A soup, made of stones?

“Alas, your excellency. It’s what we have. Good enough, I’ll warrant. But for my own tastes, better when a bit of cabbage is in season. It seems cabbage grants it that certain dear flavor of my mother’s soup when I was a lad like this one. Reminds me of home.”

One by one the other villagers trickled over to see what was about.

“Cabbage. I myself like cabbage in my soup. “

“It needn’t be much. And it needn’t be good. In a soup, even a bit of rotting cabbage can take on quite a life of its own.” offered the knight.

“Well I haven’t much. But perhaps there’s a bit of cabbage in my larder. Let me check it.” Off went the mayor.

Just then the old woman returned with a small paper of salt. “Here soldier. If you’re to make soup out of common stones, it should HAVE salt.” she proclaimed emphatically as she dumped the small portion of salt into the water. “Give me that spoon.”

She knelt and swirled the water expertly drawing forth a bit and slurping it loudly. “At least it now tastes salt, as a soup should.”

A thin elderly man stepped forward and peered into the pot. “You say, you’ll share?”

“It’s poor enough. But yes old father. You can join us to dine this night.” Responded the knight.

“He says he’ll share.” Trembled the old man to the woman next. “Me, I’m not so fond of cabbage myself. I like carrots in my stew. I might have A carrot to pitch. I’ll get it”

The suspiciously portly woman noted. “You really cannot bring the flavor of a proper soup out without an onion. I don’t have a whole one. But some shreds to fling. It’ll brighten it quite a bit I think.”

“Aye. And you have to pitch to eat I’ll warrant” noted the stablemaster cynically.

“Not at all mate. We have little in this thin soup. But I know times are hard and you’re welcome to what we have here.” replied the knight. “If you have naught, then naught it is.”

“I didn’t say I had naught. What you must think of me. You twist my own words. Did I say I had naught? It’s a cold time sure enough. But I’m not without entirely. Criminy a few mealy potatoes can be spared. That will offer some body to this thin soup.”

And so the cabbage and the carrot and the onion shreds were added to the pot. And in a short while, potatoes too. The roiling water swirled and scent began to rise from the pot and waft throughout the village.

One by one the villagers crept out into the street with lit pitch torches and the area around the well brightened. “What’s that smell?” exclaimed one.

“It’s stone soup. They’ve made a soup of stones.” Answered another.

“ A soup. Of stones?”

“It is. Smells wonderful. I’m starving here.”

“When will it be done?” yet another.

And again a reply “It’s soup. It’ll be done when it’s done don’t you know.”

The knight bent over the bubbling pot and inhaled deeply. “Ahh. How I long for the days when there was meat aplenty for a fine soup as this.”

“Meat? You must be joking. We’ve had no meat for a moon.” offered a young monk.

“I say. True enough. But a poor old piece of salt pork I’ve kept by and by.” Offered another. “It’s a rind really. And it won’t make a meal for a mouse anyway. I just keep it to look at.”

“I’ve a scrap as well. It’s true not anything to brag on. But it’ll chew.” Offered yet again.

And so into the pot it went. And soon everyone was scrabbling about the village, scouring a pepper here and a mushroom there.

As the torches gathered the night village square took on a lighted cheerful countenance. And someone brought out a fiddle and began to play. Soon there was music and a bit of dancing started.

“Is it soup yet?” and again, “When shall we eat of the soup. The smell is driving me faint.”

Finally the knight ceremoniously tasted the soup with a hundred pairs of eyes watching his every move. Nodding he offered the spoon to the old crone, who nodded with sage approval, having a good claim on very nearly inventing the soup. “It’s fair enough soup, if I do say so. It’ll do right enough on this chill evening.” noted the crone with all due modesty.

The knight carefully fished out the two stones and slowly wiped them dry, carefully placing them back in their velvet bag. “Not to break anyone’s teeth.” to howls of laughter. “Bring your bowls then.” Instructed the knight. “There’s aplenty for all.

And indeed, everyone in the village ate their fill that good winter night.

After everyone was safely asleep and sated, a small group of villagers crept into the loft where the knight lay, and quietly slit his throat and removed the velvet bag.

In the morning, the Mayor thanked everyone for participating in their long developed plan for the first annual stone soup celebration and assured everyone of regular stone soup days in the future.

The grocer ran a special on “stone soup fixins and garnish,” in full compliance with their original “stone soup recipe.”

The butcher too announced that they had special packages of “stone soup” meat cuttings designed to the original specification and traceable back to the exact first stone soup.

The village pharmacist sold salt at two prices henceforth, regular common salt and premium stone soup savory salt.

The blacksmith, under license of the city, would make a sterling silver “stone soup pot and ladle” for anyone wealthy enough to afford it, and of course having the stone soup license.

And the village passed an ordinance severely restricting the ownership of stones of all sizes, and of course requiring that soup be made only of official village approved stones, to prevent any contamination or ill health effects, for the safety and welfare of the villagers. Thus serving as a barrier to random illegal stone soup operations.

A special sherriff’s detail was established to ensure compliance with the stone soup regulations and a standing stone soup court was established to hear cases of stone soup malfeasance. Plaintiff’s and defendants were required to be represented by a qualified stone soup barrister.

And they all lived happily ever after… in the area that came to be know as the land of the stoned. Unlicensed import or export of stones into our out of this area was severely punished.

And travelling soldiers were outlawed entirely.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

2011-10-12T11:23:00.002-05:00

This week we try to catch up a bit on the eCobra project, which I would like to finish sometime in THIS life. This car has been a struggle.

The bad news is it has just featured some really difficult geometry to fit in a 41 kWh battery pack in a small two-seat sports car. I'm very pleased with the power plant. The Netgain Warp 11HV and the Netgain Controls Industrial controller are very strong in this 3000 lb monster. We haven't done any performance testing yet, but I can already tell you the performance will be very strong.

This week we tie up some cooling system issues and some instrumentation. And most of all wire in our Elcon 5000w charger.

The Elcon has emerged as the default charger by virtue of its power and price. It is NOT fully configurable and that poses some problems and the guys selling them have just enough information to be dangerous about the charger and are actually doing some damage out there to cars. Their cocommittant desire to sell battery management systems with them being part of the problem.

We need the Elcon's 5000 watts because we have a 41 kWh battery pack. At full power from 240 vac, this would still take about 8 1/2 hours for a full charge. So we can't really use a smaller charger. And this unit is physically BIG. By lifting the body almost off the car, we managed to squeeze it into the rear trunk area right behind the roll bar.

We also wired it into our J1772 connector and the little AC31 board David Kerzel of ModularEVPower provided. Given the mirroring of the proximity switch pin and the copilot signal pin between the plug and the socket, I can NEVER get them right. Sure enough, I had them swapped in our install and it would not charge. Swapping the wires on the little circuit board solved the problem. The car now charges quite well on the Clipper Creek EVSE we had installed for such testing. Our eCobra should charge smartly from any available SAEJ1772-2010 EVSE.

I prefer fully configurable chargers such as the Brusa, which you can easily change everything about the charge process including the stages, currents, voltages, rest times, etc. But a Brusa is close to $4000 now and this project would have required TWO of them. Eight grand for a charging system seems a little bit much since my first car I drove at age 16 cost me $60 cash money hard come by.

The Elcon at $1695 from Evolve Electrics just seems a better buy. But you have to specify voltage and charge curve algorithm. We've had a lot of questions about these charge curves. In this episode, I talk a bit about why we use curve 502 and how you can add a little bit of "configurability" by having 10 charge curve voltages stored in memory.

Here's an image of the 500 series algorithms they ask you to choose from. We picked 502.

The document basically describes a very simple charge curve, which works well for these cells. Basically, you pump all the current you can into the pack, until it reaches a certain voltage. You then HOLD that voltage by ADJUSTING the current, until the amount of current needed to maintain that voltage diminishes to some set value.

The spec on most of the Thundersky and CALB and Sinopoly cells actually does call out this value - 0.05C. This is 5% of the rated capacity in amps. So a 180 AH pack would cutoff at 9 amperes.

This is not one of the choices. But AH/30 seems to be. Since we are at 180 AH, that would be 180/30 or 6 amperes.

With 69 two-cell pairs, we are looking at a charge VOLTAGE of 251.85 volts. AGAIN and I repeat for the 40th time, this charge voltage has almost nothing to do with the fully charged voltage of the cell, which in all cases will be something less than 3.4 volts if you are indeed using LiFePo4 cells. It is part of a PROCEDURE to get you to that fully charged state. We use 3.65v rather arbitrarily. The original spec on these cells was 4.2v. Then it was lowered to 4.0v. I think it is now 3.8v. It doesn't matter, we developed our OWN procedure that seems to work better. I feel ever more validated as the MANUFACTURERs' procedure is clearly dropping a couple of tenths of volts per quarter as we go along.

In any event, the terminating CURRENT is an important part of this procedure. You do not WANT to keep putting energy into the cell past this point. With 502, we actually ARE overcharging the cell. But since we used 3.65v to UNDERCHARGE the cell, it all works out.

The proof is of course in the pudding. Twelve hours after charging, we are seeing a pack voltage of 230.4v. This works out to a cell average of 3.34 volts - exactly where I like to see it. 3.35 would be good too. But with this many cells, I actually feel better at 3.34.

One thing stressed in the video is to actually observe and measure the end of charge activity before entrusting your pack to ANY charger. This is kind of important - under the rubric that in any product shit happens. You don't want it to happen TO your expensive batteries. So its worth the time to go through the process with the charger a couple of times to make sure it is doing as you THOUGHT you had it configured to do.

In this case, instead of charging to 251.85 volts we actually hit a peak briefly at 253.4 volts. But it settled down quickly to right at 253 volts and maintained that very nicely. The current tapered quickly since we are charging at a low percentage of capacity. We were seeing about 22 amps IN to the pack from this charger and it appeared to be a very nice 95% efficient comparing the current into the cells with the current from the wall AC. I was quite surprised by that.

The current tapered nicely and the voltage was pretty steady, minor wandering in the 0.2-0.4 v range. As the current decreased from 22 amps down to six amps, the charger terminated abruptly at an indicated 6.2 amps. This is actually very good.

Bottom line is that bang for buck, this is an excellent charger operationally. It is a bit of a pain to order and configure. But once installed it works well and is quite powerful for the price.

We also discuss in this week's video the announcement pending from EVnetics of a monster controller they are calling SHIVA. This controller will crank 3000 amps peak and 2500 amps continuous using EIGHT 600 ampere IGBTS. It is pricey at $7500 and they are only going to make 25 of them initially. But it promises to become the immediate darling of the drag race community. It probably has little application in a general electric vehicle UNLESS you happen to be doing a Cadillac Elescalade with twin 11 inch motors. In that event, if you paralleled the connection to the motors and backed it up with some 400 Ah cells, you could probably do 1500 amps into each motor briefly and tear up transmissions all the way between here and Florida.

I think this going to be huge for EVnetics. That the vast majority of their sales will be Soliton Jrs is not the point. Everyone will know the upgrade path to the BIGGEST dc PWM chopper on the block. And I actually think they'll sell out of the 25 run quicker than they think. The Tim Allen/Tooltime riff on MORE POWER worked for that show and that comedian because he hit the nail on the head. Just because I don't USE all the power under the hood, doesn't mean I don't want it there. At $7500 it's just beyond the reach of most builds. But I would goess the drag racing community will waste no time neatening up their wiring with this little controller. As always, the package SEB does is just gorgeous.

The IGBT's have an interesting feature. They have internal temperature sensing. What this means is that the coder guy, Martin, can actually throttle this thing back very quickly and very accurately based on temperature. ANd what THAT means is the better you are at getting cooling glycol to this beast, the more power you can get out of it. The spec limitations are 4800 amps actually but they've got it cut back to 3000 amps. I don't know the voltage drop, but if it's a volt at 3000 amps you also have a 3000 watt heater. NoGiven the forward voltage drop on six IGBTs, that's still a lot of heat. But there's room there if you beg.... and don't mind blowing a $7500 controller every other race. it's all software...

We did talk a little bit about the Tesla party. What I didn't mention, but am looking into is the Tesla/Panasonic battery. March 2012 will be the first run of a new 18650 cell by Panasonic that is really quite a thing. It uses a couple of innovations. They call it their Nickel New Platform or NNP cell. It is actually a Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide (LiNiCoAlO2) cathode with a 3.6v voltage and 3.4Ah in a single 18650 cell. This works out to 46 grams and 12.2 watt hours or 265 wH per kilogram. By contrast, our cells are about 106-109 wH per kilogram. That's how you get a 300 mile range.

Interestingly, they have even bigger plans for March 2013. At that point they will do a production run of the same cell, but they intend to replace the carbon anode with a silicon alloy anode. This will boost the Ah rating to a full 4.0 Ah in this cell.

As to cycle life, there's some bad news but then some good news. To the standard quoted 80% of the initial capacity, this little cell will only do 500-600 cycles. But if you can deal with 70% capacity, it will go to 2000 cycles. And so given the 265 wH per kilogram, build in a little extra capacity. It will be a MUCH improved package over the Tesla Roadster battery module. And it explains the Tesla 300 mile range claim.

I found it interesting to note that since acquiring Sanyo, Panasonic may be the world's largest Lithium battery supplier. But it is also interesting to note that they are building factories to produce all this in CHINA. In fact, due to the strength of the Yen, they've dramatically cut back plans on a new factory in Japan.

Bottom line, the cell march goes on. Our 80 mile cars will soon be in the 250 mile range (really). But it will cost you. And of course, all roads lead to China.

Regards;

Jack Rickard

Excellent Days in the Land of EV's.

2011-10-04T08:51:00.002-05:00

First drives are always an excellent event. Weeks, and for us, usually months of effort in the shop eventually lead to a vehicle, still in some disassembly, but running out of excuses NOT to go drive. And then it rolls. The magic never lessens for me. It is always an exhilarating moment to see the car GO after months of being shackled to the lift.

In the days just prior to the EVCCON, the eCobra was reaching that point. It was my FIRST build where she I decided it was time to roll, it refused to roll. The thrill of victory. And in this case the agony of defeat as they used to say on ABC's wide world of sports.

After a roll, there are always new issues come to light that have to be worked off - kind of like the tick list on a new house. But I have never just had one refuse to roll at all. The eCobra crept off the ramp ok, but when we hit the pedal, it appeared to have a severe case of clutch slip and really just wouldn't go.

As I say, that's a first for me and I take these things poorly.

As it turns out, it WAS a slipping clutch, but not the clutch we were engaging. Rather, it turned out to be the clutch in the limited slip differential third member we had added to eCobra in an errant attempt to save weight, which turned out to be a thoroughly discouraging 7.5 lbs anyway.

This was discovered by one of our EVCCON attendees after two days of furious work by probably 50 people who looked at it at one time or another, including the builder of the original car.

In any event, Paul Lin had flown from Taiwan, DURING a typhoon, to be with us and to drive his car on its first drive. It was not to be.

In the few days since the event, we did get a new drive shaft made to accommodate the original third member, which had been reinstalled. And the vehicle was thereby made capable of movement.

We also had some controller issues traced to a very demanding controller who insisted that 12v be about 12v and noise free. We had to add an aux battery and rewire the way 12v comes up when using the ignition key to do that. I have a mini-white board session on this simple circuitry change in the video.

Once accomplished, we not only had a new drive to take on a sunny autumn day in Cape Girardeau, but we had a new camera to play with as well. We've been playing with a Contour Plus mini camera that provides excellent HD quality images but more importantly, an astounding 170 degree field of view - very close to the human field of view. Its a bit distorted, but hugely wide. And for shooting in vehicles, this is a huge plus.

Unfortunately the camera controls are pretty meager, there is no viewfinder, you don't really know what you're shooting, and the build quality is actually surprisingly poor given the $499 price. But we have persevered and learned pretty much how to work with it.

The result is first drive with a bit different video view. We think its engaging and another step toward putting you IN the car with us on these drives.

And indeed, first drive was exhilarating. Given his actually masterfully precise execution of an incredible array of details surrounding the EVCCON, Mr. Noto was privileged the honors on first drive.

Let me digress here just a bit to pass on some lessons hard won over time that have little to do with electricity.

I like people with good intentions. Your intentions should be good. Evil intentions are fortunately rare, but of course unpleasant.

It's nice to be among men of vision. A grand vision is a grand thing. Out of the box thinking is always a joy to observe and participate in. A meager approach to life from a position of want and need is not who we are meant to be. A grand vision assuming a universe of unlimited resource is much more productive.

Pleasant manners are of course most characterized by being "pleasant". Who doesn't like minimal confrontation and maximum pleasant.

And I like smart people. The bandwidth of conversation and ideas simply is more enjoyable at a faster pace. Having to stop and explain the obvious and the given or worse actually get into a debate over things that no longer need debate is frustrating and annoying.

But I can convene ROOMS full of very smart, pleasant people of grand vision with good intentions. Unfortunately, as a general rule none of them have ever actually done anything of note or had any impact on anything. Too often, they spend too much time thinking pretty thoughts of a grand future where everyone is pleasant and has good intentions.

Great effort too is admirable. One of my favorite films is Rudy. Maximum effort with limited tools - the underdog story. I cry like a baby.

But in the end, the thing I prize most of all is execution. Some very small percentage of our population is simply capable of making things HAPPEN. They can execute. If you aim them at a target, you can pretty much then walk away and begin the next process because you KNOW the target either no longer exists, or will not exist very much longer. They will assemble whatever resources are necessary, employ whatever tools are necessary, identify any further needs necessary, but when the smoke clears - target gone and ready for the next mission. To execute with precision is an art form.

I was privileged to work with both Brian Noto and Christopher Fisher on this EVCCON 2011. I really did very little toward the mission of success with this conference. And both simply had this process of "execution" down to an implicit act. And they were both so calm about it. It is a thing to admire. Minimum fuss. Minimum noise. Lots of smoldering holes where at times difficult targets used to be. And a pathological, at times even obsessive, attention to detail.

I would have those skills for myself but I am not, unfortunately, graced in that way. Having the attention span of a four-year-old is of course its own reward. But in the unlikely event that I DID miraculously grow up, I would that I were as these two guys.

In any event, the drive was fun. Despite the false starts, the first real DRIVE was a hoot. This car is growing on me. First, it's LARGER than the cars we've been doing. It is of course 3000 lbs - at least. We'll probably weigh it this week once the charger is onboard. I can kind of stretch out and it lets me sit up kind of high rather than "down" in a hole. Second, the weight causes the adjustable springs to be tweaked up pretty tight to hold the car up. And it glides along with authority - no jouncing around really. Like a heavier car - which it is.

The Netgain 11HV and Warp Drive Industrial are starting to look like a fortuitous design selection. Under the rubric that even a blind hog gets an acorn now and again, I think I had a lucky pick here. Better to be lucky than good. It moves that 3000 lbs out smartly. No real testing yet of course. But I think we may have something a little special here. Not a drag strip dominator. But it will feel good to drive this car and I think we will accomplish our mission of making things in that rear view mirror get small quickly and in keeping with the Cobra culture and concept.

We really didn't shoot much video of the convention. A lot less than I would have liked actually. But by stealing some photos from George Hamstra, and using some footage my daughter shot from her helicopter, we've cobbled together a recap of the convention that is hopefully both artful and representative. It is simply not possible to duplicate the conference on video anyway.

A number of attendees have requested access to the powerpoint presentations from various speakers. I've given this some thought. I may inherently have the right to do this but I'm going to pass on this. You have the attendee book listing the speakers and their contact info. This is their material they have developed and may quite likely use for a variety of purposes and conferences. It's not really mine to give. Contact those speakers directly with requests for powerpoint presentations and notes. This is a "convention" of adults and viewpoints and information sources and it is little enough to contact the owner directly with your requests. If they want to deal with that en masse, they can of course post a link here for general download. This is not something I should try to arbitrage.

EVCCON 2012 will be presented in the 32,000 sf ShowMe Center here in Cape Girardeau. We hope for a larger assemblage of enthusiasts and cars for this event. Registration opens today at $400 until June 1. For those bringing cars, we will discount this to $99 this year. We had 23 attendees and two vendors sign up on site at the dinner where we made the final decision and announced the second annual Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention. I would that we would have more speakers, more attendee delegates, and more cars at next years event. I would like to thank those who DID go through the rigors of bringing their cars this year - they were some absolutely inspiring builds.

We're going to work toward incentivizing this further. The builds were SO good I want more of them. Greed is a great motivator. So we're working on some more thought through "classes" of builds, some more considered judging, and some SUBSTANTIAL componentry prizes for winners not so much on the race side but on the car show side. It was clear attendees who DID go through the logistical nightmare of bringing their vehicle, took no small pride in displaying to the public, but I think to even a greater degree presenting to their qualified peers in the EV community itself. And so I'm working toward more formal classes of builds, more considered and qualified judging, and as I say, some substantial componentry as awards, along with of course the usual cheesy trophy. Rather than our promotional contest for the pile of components, I thinks we can do more by rewarding the GREAT builds I'm seeing out there with components and providing recognition for the incredible amount of work that goes into some of these cars which are not just functional, but in some cases border on works of art.

We will probably issue ballots to all paid conference attendees and allow them to vote on the "Best of Show" build. I haven't' quite worked out how to tally all that in time for the awards dinner. But I would like for EVCCON to grow into a place where you can bring and display your work to the approbation of your peers.

Enjoy the video. If you have any ideas on how to make EVCCON 2012 bigger and better, I'm all ears.

HERE ARE SOME INCREDIBLE PHOTOS OF THE EVENT taken by Duane Lindsey

Jack Rickard

CHRIS PAINE ADDRESSES EVCCON 2011

2011-10-01T12:13:00.001-05:00

Still catching up with all that happened at the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention EVCCON 2011.

One of the "featured" speakers of the event was Chris Paine. I often ask people how they got started in electric vehicles as kind of a warm up question. The most common answer is "I saw this documentary, Who Killed the Electric Car, and it made me really angry."

This answer comes up SO often, it is kind of a mantra among the people converting cars to electric drive. The documentary, and the first real availability of LiFePo4 cells from China, occurred almost on the same day. So the two are kind of inextricably linked. The enabling technology and the motivating force. I find this fascinating.

So we actually paid to have Chris Paine come address our first "convention" of electric car conversion enthusiasts.

The setting was supposed to be at my house. We were going to have kind of a private "car show" hood popper on the front lawn of the adjoining Southeast Missouri University River Campus School of Visual and Performing Arts. This is a very scenic setting literally right ON the banks of the Mississippi River, almost under the new suspension bridge which is very nicely lit at night. Jerrry Ford's band, a kind of 40's Big Band group of about 13 musicians, was to play and the local Port of Cape Girardeau was to cater the event.

It was thoroughly rained out.

So we moved the band and the food to the hangar where we were having sessions, and served dinner while Jerry Ford did his best to play Basil Poulidoris, along with the usual 1940's hits. The music was FANTASTIC and the food very good.

Mr. Paine tried desperately to devine the party line and get some guidance on how to tune to the audience. Instead, I kind of described who was here, why they were here, and what they hoped to do hear and left it to hime what to talk about and what to show by way of documentaries. He did ask which I thought they would rather see, "Charged" or "Revenge of the Electric Car" and I mentioned that "Revenge" would undoubtedly be the overwhelming choice.

Revenge actually has gone into distribution, meaning the control of the rights and so forth has passed to another entity and the film is scheduled to open in theaters in late NOvember, actually in St. Louis it will open on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving - a curious time to debut a film in theaters.

In any event, if a crowd shows up in theaters, this will cause some press attention, DVD sales etc and it is important that people turn out for the theatre release.

In any event, after dinner Paine addressed the group with a kind of alphabet presentation of various curious elements of the electric car universe and I would describe the audience as rapt. Kind of a special sermon to the choir in this case, he was very well received.

After some texting back and forth with his distribution manager, he decided to go ahead and screen "Revenge of the Electric Car." This is where rain plays a role. We were able to completely darken the hangar and had a nine foot rear projection system on hand for the sessions. The result was a sparkling clear presentation of the documentary.

The documentary was NOT what I expected. The first documentary was a little simplistic for my tastes with very bad guys and very good guys and presented in an almost fairy tale like simplicity built around that. But it WAS motivating and I WAS angry at the end so it was enormously effective.

Somehow I expected Revenge to reverse this into a big hooray for GM and Nissan who now of course have products.

Instead, what we saw was a much more mature and developed view of four players in the EV space, with four different visions of an electric car future. It was a parallel comparison in many ways bizarrely presented with a Gregorian chant background and MUCH higher production values and camera work than Who Killed the Electric Car.

The four players were Bob Lutz with General Motors and the Volt, Carlos Ghosn with Nissan Motor Company, Elon Musk with Tesla Motors, and Greg "Gadget" Abbott of Left Coast Electric Conversions - a small conversion shop in California, ironically specializing in 1957 Porsche Speedster Replicas.

The documentary cycled between profiles of these players quite artfully, bringing out a number of interesting and indeed crucial points in the development of an electric car that could be adopted by the market. Bob Lutz came across as a big booming guy with a vision and a very corporate way of presenting his product. Carlos Ghosn was an almost steely autocratic leader betting his company's fortune on electric cars surrounded by people who had only one answer for his every question - YES.

Elon Musk actually didn't fair too well in the documentary I thought, but I rather lionize this guy as he is very much out of the Internet school and Silicon Valley. He came across as very devoted to the cause, but somehow struggling to master the exigencies of automobile production and with an uncertain future.

OF course, the surprise was the essentially equal treatment of Greg Abbott - identified only as Gadget in the film. Gadget operated a small conversion business out of a warehouse in Los Angeles. He specializes in reproduction Porsche's, most notably 1957 Porsche Speedsers, converted of course to electric drive. I had two we had done on hand at the show, and Carey Hines of Special Editions Inc. had a roller on display in the vendor area, so this hit home pretty well.

Unbeknownst to Paine, there was a critical part of the documentary where they actually showed footage of Gadget's warehouse - TOTALLY destroyed by fire. His workshop, all the cars, tools, and equipment just totally wiped out. The documentary vaguely asserted that the cause had been traced to ARSON.

Our group let out a totally collective SIGH at the sight right on cue. On the screen we could clearly see that most of the cars were burned, but largely intact with warehouse debris kind of toppled all over them. But a single car was burnt TO THE GROUND. The blackened debris you usually see at a natural fire, was not only not present, but the entire scene was in the by now familiar whitewash white/grey of an INTENSE battery fire. And incredibly, they showed Gadget pawing through the debris and holding the remnants of his BATTERY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND CHARGER up for all to see.

I quickly surveyed the room and the dawning realization was so total, I do not believe ANYONE in the room missed any part of this. To the point that I never mentioned it at all during the remainder of the EVCCON. There is a saying "when in a hole, stop digging." The corollary is "when you've clearly won the battle, put down your sword." There's no point really in slaughtering the survivors. This film made this point, entirely accidentally, probably better than I have done in the past year. And I don't think any single one of our attendees missed it at all.

All that aside from begging the question "Who would bother to burn down a small electric car conversion shop?" For what?

After the screening, Paine noted that he had brought a few copies of CHARGED his other documentary about electric motor cycle racing that he would make available for $20 each. They were "Gone in Sixty Seconds" to borrow another film title and he seemed genuinely surprised at the $400 per minute. He'd only brought 20 copies.

He then asked that we turn out as a "buzz" audience and encourage others to attend the theatre release as this is most important to its' success. Everyone pretty much agreed to do that. Anne Knoppenberg asked if he would be interested in coming to speak and screen in Amsterdam. It was a comic moment when Chris repeated "Amsterdam?? Ahh..YES to that."

He also held up his cell phone and announced he had a text from Gadget who regretted his lack of attendance and promised to join us at EVCCON next year.

After the showing, despite the late hour, Paine and a few of the attendees retired to our downtown area to visit The Library, a local bar frequented most notably by young female college students from the University and featuring an able selection of potable spirits.

And a good time was had by all.

I am not a film critic precisely, but I would rate REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR a must see. It presents a more mature and developed view of the difficulties faced by the men of vision who are striving to bring this technology to the masses. It rather left the question open, and so does not provide the satisfying anger of the first documentary. But for my tastes, it was a better film and in many ways more useful, and thought provoking. That a small conversion shop was profiled right along with Tesla was the surprise element we simply did not expect.

I would urge everyone to see this film. I found Chris Paine very intelligent, and most gracious in all respects.

Jack RIckard

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE EVTV $2500 OPEN DRAG RACE

2011-09-29T08:14:00.001-05:00

On Friday, after a long day of technical sessions, EVCCON attendees turned outside to nice weather and a bit of a play day. We had a weigh station where attendees could get the weight and distribution of their cars, a drag race, and an autocross.

To spice it up, EVTV had offered a purse of $2500 to the fastest full bodied four wheel car at the event.

At the dinner Saturday night, I presented Ron Adamowicz with a check for $2500. His Warp Factor II Camaro, featuring two Netgain Warp 11HV motors and two Zilla 2K controllers turned in a time of 11.50 seconds and a speed of 91.20 mph to win the event - on airport ramp concrete which was a bit "grabby". The Team Haiyin Camaro is sponsored by the Haiyin Battery Company. Ron has an agreement to distribute these very small 6.5 AH high power pouch cells and describes them as perfect for racing. Ron did describe these $29 cells in detail at session on Saturday morning. More info at his Battery Shop web site. Congratulations Ron.

David Hrivnak was awarded a trophy for fastest production car for his 2008 Tesla Roadster posting a time of 13.13 reaching a top speed of 88.25

The race of the day was never actually run as they didn't go head to head. But Sebastien Bourgoius 1978 Porsche 911 featured TWO Netgain Warp 9 motors and an EVnetics Soliton1 controller came in at 14.66 seconds and 89.15 mph while our own 1957 Porsche Speedster Redux with ONE Netgain Warp 9 and the SAME controller posted a 14.75 at 78.5 mph. Next year we will have to run these two cars head to head. In fairness, Sebastien's car left the aromatic smell of burning clutch wafting over the crowd the full length of the raceway, while Matt Hauber chirped merrily down the strip in our own REDUX. No sympathy. Bourgois was IN our shop when we burned a stock clutch out on Redux and replaced it with a Stage IV Kennedy competition clutch. Nonetheless, on building his 911 he avowed a stock clutch would be adequate. Build and learn. The disparity in top speeds between the two cars indicates that once under way, the 911 was indeed fast. But until he gets a clutch, we can probably take him in the 1/8th mile.

11.50 // 91.20
1981 Camaro Drag Car - Ron Adamowicz

13.13 // 88.25
2008 Tesla Roadster - David Hrivnak

14.66 // 89.15
1978 Porsche 911 - Sebastien Bourgeois

14.75 // 78.51
1957 Porsche 356 Speedster - EVTV / Matt Hauber

16.75 // 80.70
Seven Illuminati - Kevin Smith

17.14 // 76.14
Car #128 ???????????

17.21 // 69.79
Porsche 904 Carrera GTS Duane Ball

17.69 // 67.40
1973 Opel GT - Charlie Rickman

18.54 // 73.49
2007 Toyota Prius Limo - Steve Woodruff

18.90 // 66.41
2000 BMW Z3 - Tim Catellier

19.12 // 71.42
1955 Porsche Spyder 550- EVTV / Brian Noto

19.81 // 68.30
1974 Porsche 914 - Rich Rodriguez

19.84 // 65.16
1981 VW Pick-Up - Jim Hanna

20.22 // 63.06
1999 Saturn SL1 - Daniel Lynn

20.29 // 54.50
1993 Ford Ranger - John Yecker

20.35 // 61.97
2000 Ford Ranger - James Edmonson

21.26 // 47.63
1960 Austin Healey - Fred Behning

21.27 // 58.86
1987 Dodge Daytona - Jason Horak

22.57 // 61.92
1957 Beck Porsche 356A - Eric Kriss

22.86 // 57.92
2001 Subaru Forester - Michel / Denis Bondy

24.02 // 54.43
1993 Geo Metro - William Dennis

24.82 // 44.33
Car #185 ???????????

25.18 // 42.53
2005 Porsche Cayenne - Daniel Yohannes

The other head to head we will have to run again is Richard Rodriguez's Porsche 914 at 19.81 seconds and our own 1955 Porsche Spyder 550 at 19.12 seconds. These DID go head to head and it was an exciting heat.

But as long as I live, I believe the definitive image I shall carry to the grave of "drag racing" is Steve Woodruff in a 2007 Toyota Prius STRETCH Limo - obviously the definitive drag racing monster machine. We believe this to be an EVCCON exclusive. You'll rarely see such in an NHRA event.

The objective here was to take a break from two solid days of technical sessions, get out in the sunshine and play with the cars. We drove each other's cars in the drag race where you could line up for run after run without restriction. Looked at the cars between heats. Talked about the builds. And drank Stag beer out of a keg TRAILER with spigots down the side. We had announcers and screens showing times which made it much more interesting as a spectator event. And we really didn't have to deal with the OTHER detritus of being at a real track on race day with a lot of other events. It was perhaps not as official, but a lot more fun and ALL about electric cars. And the car owners now know exactly what their cars/limousines can do in a timed quarter mile.

Rumor has it that NHRA is going to add electric classes to the big time drag racing circuit, making the weeny NEDRA/ECEDRA events rather obsolete on contact. But we think we can continue our own unique "drag race" as a fun day in the sun at each EVCCON. We hope to add a dynamometer to next year's event so you can weigh your car, get a dyno printout, run the quarter, and do the autocross. We'll offer a purse again next year and hopefully lure some other electric cars to compete with the purpose builts like Ron's Warp Factor II to spice up the show. But it's all about fun and electric cars.

There's just nothing like tanking up on a bellyful of Stag beer, playing with some high voltage, and going for an afternoon drive...

Team Illuminati was actually a pretty serious contender in the Progressive Auto Insurance XPrize held last year. They lost their transmission at a crucial point in the competition and dropped out. They again demonstrated this technique at the EVCCON Autocross track. You can hear it let go in the last seconds of this video.

EVCCON ATTENDEE PRIVATE FORUM

2011-09-28T16:09:00.002-05:00

Christopher Fisher has created a private forum on LinkedIn for EVCCON attendees to stay in touch. I kind of like this service as everyone has a photograph next to their posts and I'll e able to connect the face and name. No little kid "handles" and stuff on LinkedIn. More of a professional service.

EVCCON 2011

LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY

2011-09-28T11:13:00.000-05:00

Jack Rickard and George Hamstra at EVCCON 2011.

Electric cars rolling out of 100,000 garages across the land. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way....

I LOVED this photo....

Thanks George...

EVTV Build Your Dream Contest Winner Announced at EVCCON 2011

2011-09-28T08:03:00.004-05:00

The Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention is mostly over. Actually about 16 showed up at the house for Sunday dinner and we've had three or four linger till midweek - the convention that just won't end.

I'm drained and recovering. We have a TON of video and photos - actually it has me a bit overwhelmed. I don't know how to sort through it all and there's got to be 70 hours of video and so forth here. It would take months.

But we are going to do some announcements on the highlights.

First is the announcement of the winner of our EVTV Build Your Dream Contest. This thing has gone on for over a YEAR proving just how bad we are at holding a contest while making it up as we go along. Reminds me of the my old partner Phil Becker's favorite analogy. "We have the skills = we know how to make parachutes. We have the materials to make a parachute. We have the equipment to make a parachute. Now all we have to do is jump out of the plane, make a parachute, get it on, and pull the cord BEFORE we hit the ground."

I'm very pleased to announce that Brandon Hollinger of ampRevolt has won the EVTV Build Your Dream Contest with his proposal to convert a 1971 Austin FX4, aka a London Taxi.

Ultimately, the winner was selected by Internet ballot with our viewers making the selection. This was a great relief to me personally (I can't take the pressure). But I'm extraordinarily pleased with the result as you'll see.

The contest seesawed between Brandon and Mike Picard's 1952 Willy's Jeep for most of the summer. But AFTER we closed visibility on the horse race for the final two weeks, Hollinger put together a video appeal for votes he posted on YouTube. It's actually quite artful, and apparently made the difference in the contest as we had a sudden influx of about 500 votes in his camp.

The convention purported to start Wednesday evening, September 21 with an icebreaker welcoming reception. Two guys, Steve Conley and Mark Wiesberg, showed up Sunday, September 18th. Steve was driving a purple Prowler and went downtown looking for us. They were having a hot rod show downtown and assumed he was an entry. He was looking for parking and found $15 a bit steep but paid it. A few hours later he had won his class, barely aware by then that he had entered it.

By Monday afternoon we had 25 people in the shop poring over cars with various problems and having the time of their lives. And it grew in intensity from there.

By Saturday evening, EVERYONE was drained and exhausted. Brandon, due to obligations with his job as a musician in Pennsylvannia, was unable to join us until Saturday afternoon.

We had an excellent dinner Saturday evening at the historic Southeast University River Campus School of Visual and Performing arts. This is a renovated Seminary originally built in 1843 as the first institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi, albeit not very much west. Actually on the west bank. In the shadow of our gorgeous new suspension bridge, it is a scenic setting for the evening meal. Chartwells catered a just outstanding smoked prime rib and baked potato. Brain Noto had cunningly provisioned the August release of Silver Oak's 2007 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon which was superb. One of the contest finalists, Mark Emon, of St Michael's Winery had also generously brought a number of bottles of their white wine which was also received with broad approval all around.

We introduced each of the ten finalists with the exception of Ralph Tate, who had scored last and was unable to attend. And we introduced Mr. Hollinger as the prize winner. Sponsors Netgain Motors, EVNetics, and Recharge Car were all in attendance.

Mr. Hollinger spoke briefly on how he got involved in electric vehicles and where he saw it going over the next few years. His address was very self effacing and modest, but generally managed to bring the entire group of 160 at dinner to tears in rather obvious manner. Mike Picard, the runner up, seemed particularly tearful.

And why was I so pleased? I spent some time talking with Mr. Hollinger at Sunday dinner at my house and indeed he spent the evening there before his flight Monday morning. This is an enormously thoughtful and intelligent young man, very much on the left side liberal end of the spectrum politically, but with very reasoned process leading to some resentment at a number of the coercive things in our society but particularly the oil/OEM/government triumvirate that would seem to keep us serfing on the fiefdom of gasoline. He's really quite determined to do something about it with regards to championing the advantages of the electric car. And while a slender musician from Lancaster might seem unlikely, the Austin FX-4 will be his FOURTH conversion.

My own satisfaction is a bit more pragmatic. The guy is good with a video camera. That's how he won the contest. Obviously we want to follow up with updates on his build and that's a bit of travel for us unless he can be persuaded to document it by video for us. And he appears to be more than capable. Take a gander:

This was all done on the run. This guy has many talents and many blessings. We look forward to what effect the award of these components will have on the future of electric cars.

Our thanks to George Hamtsra of Netgain Motors , Sebastien Bourgois, of EVnetics, and Josh Stilwalt of RechargeCar - all displaying vendors at the EVCCON as well as in attendance at the dinner. Along with Masterflux, they of course sponsored the "Build Your Dream EV" contest.

I can't wait to see, and perhaps ride in this Austin FX-4.

Jack Rickard

Jack Rickard and Contest Winner Brandon Hollinger with the Pile Of Loot

EVTV on National Public Radio.

2011-09-21T07:45:00.004-05:00

Jacob Mcclelland of local NPR affiliate KRCU has kind of broken into the national story team at National Public Radio with one of his first national stories - about EVTV. Aired this morning, September 21, 2011 on NPR's Morning Edition.

Our congratulations to Jacob on getting into national reporting and our appreciation for this very timely story for us.

Our web site would be overrun this morning, but we host on Amazon's AWS service and it is very nearly infinitely scalable. So not to worry. This should spread the word to many more potential viewers. We'll see.

Using a service called WEB STAT I can actually see individual connections to the web site and how many are "online" simultaneously. I'm sitting here watch 160 simultaneous video downloads from the Amazon Cloud - a surprising number from RUSSIA and the UKRAINE. Morning Edition must be very early there.

It is a machine of beauty. Amazon's Cloudnet is bestially arcane to deal with, but a thing of beauty in operation.

The Amazon CloudFront Edge Network
To deliver content to end users with lower latency, Amazon CloudFront uses a network of edge locations world-wide. Amazon CloudFront uses the following edge locations:

United States
Ashburn, VA
Dallas/Fort Worth,
Jacksonville, FL
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL Paris
New York, NY
Newark, NJ
Palo Alto, CA
Seattle, WA
St. Louis, MO

Europe
Amsterdam
Dublin
Frankfurt
London
Stockholm
Paris

Asia
Hong Kong
Singapore
Tokyo

Jack Rickard

EVCCON 2011 - September 21-25, Cape Girardeau Missouri

2011-09-10T11:29:00.001-05:00

A little update on the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention. I got the program guide done and off to the printer. Hopefully it will be printed and back in time for the convention. But I thought some not coming might want to take a look and see what they'll be missing.

Enjoy.

Jack

Be Careful What you Ask For

2011-09-05T09:57:00.001-05:00

Six months ago we received a request for a quick list of parts to make a B&B Manufacturing Turnkey Minus 66 Cobra kit car into an electric drive vehicle. We responded that it wasn't quite that easy. The components required kind of had to be worked out based on what you wanted the car to do and it required a bit of thought. We were more correct in this than we realized. And therein lies a tale.

I have enjoyed and endured a variety of experiences in my brief life. Racing automobiles never was one of them. Vehicles of my youth revolved around farm and construction equipment and we worked on them of necessity. They were not a lot of fun frankly. So I never got into the passion for automobiles and specifically not the race scene.

The 66 Cobra was produced specifically for racing. And it is one of the more popular and enduring replicas, usually available in kit form. An entire culture has grown up around this mythic beast. But I was learning Z80 assembly language with Rodney Zaks at the time all that was going on.

But a clean sheet design using someone else's idea of what an electric car should do might be a challenge. Er, duh, yeah.

The topic has actually come up again with the same car. The answer is the same only more so.

This week we pretty much completed assembly of the battery pack for this vehicle. I think it illustrative of how one basic design decision/component choice drives three others, and those in turn three others until you are in a quagmire of components all deriving from the initial suppositions. Be careful what you ask for.

The basics go like this. There are three factors in an electric car conversion:

1. Range

2. Performance

3. Cost.

You can optimize for two. By way of example, the little spreadsheet I keep on component costs for the Cobra currently shows $42,519.40. No labor. A bit of outside fab. But by far and away just components. And it doesn't include the original cost of the "Turnkey - Minus" at all.

The original concept involved a car that would do a true 120 mile range, 120 miles an hour, and a 0-60 time in six to eight seconds.

To do 120 miles reliably, we have to have a 100% discharged range somewhere in the neighborhood of 140-150 miles. That takes a LOT of battery to do in a conversion - which adds WEIGHT. Weight is the enemy of performance. To launch a 3000 lb vehicle to 60 mph in six to eight seconds requires a lot of POWER. In this case, I calculate about 250 kw of power.

To do this, we chose to go with a Netgain Warp 11HV motor. Why? Series DC motors are just very good at producing torque, which is what we need to launch this beast. But they are power limited by the voltage you can run them at before brush arcing occurs. The 11HV features Interpoles - windings between the field windings that are aligned so as to neutralize the induced voltages in the windings NOT connected to the brushes so when they DO make brush contact they do not arc. This allows higher voltages, and thus higher power. THe normal Warp 11 is traditionally limited to 170volts. This HV version let's us go to a higher voltage, and so a smaller current for the same power.

But not much smaller. To get 250kw, at 231volts, we have to have over a thousand amps. Of course, when you take 1000 amps out of a 231 pack, it really is NOT 231 volts any more. It's more like 175 volts. And so we're back to needing more current.

We are going a bit out on a limb opting for the reallly still beta Netgain Controls Warp-Drive Industrial version. But it purports to do 260volts (actually higher) and 1400 amps (we hope). So even if our pack sags substantially, we can still be up around 250 kw total electrical power applied to the motor.

Of course, we don't want to burn up the motor. Our best effort at avoiding that is the addition of a cooling air blower. Not all blowers are created equal. But we can get 450 cubic feet per minute from a converted Garrett Turbocharger. Unfortunately, it is $350.

We also have to cool the controller - rather substantially. So big glycol cooling system.

But the biggest wrestling match is the battery cells. We have to have a lot of them in series to get to 231volts (69). That points toward a smaller cell. But what about current? We've done 1000 amps from these basic types of cells using 180Ah cells. Could they do 1400 amps? Perhaps. For a few minutes. But 180 AH cells are kind of bulky. And as it turns out, a lot of our spaces are pretty constrained in this car.

So we opted to strap two 90Ah cells together. That gives us a very different dimension and granularity of positioning to the cells. But it also means 138 cells total.

And that drives us to a LOT of battery boxes - seven that have to be fabricated and assembled. We go to Southeast Fabricating to do the basic foldup/weldup. But then we have to add angle aluminum, attachments, lids, paint, terminals, etc. It's a good bit of work with seven boxes. Two underneath only hold seven cells each. Another two hold eight cells. Etc. It turned into a wrestling match to fabricate, install, strap up, and wire all these cells more or less securely.

Unfortunately, a LOT of these cells then pose accessibility issues. We have a two tier box in back. You have to completely disassemble, in the right order, the rear top box to access any of the cells underneath. The two rib boxes underneath are a little easier. We made little doors on the outside of the car you can remove with five bolts to expose the terminals of the cells. But many in front are likewise rather a procedure to access.

So we bottom balanced those 138 cells rather carefully,, many in the lab before installation. We tried to pair higher capacity cells with lower capacity cells to diminish the variation in capacity across the pack.

And it wound up being a LARGE pack for a car this size. It weighs in at 973 lbs for the cells, not counting boxes and straps, and provides 41,607 wH of energy storage.

But that gets us several things. First, 300 wH per mile for a 3000 pound car is about the right 10:1 ratio we see in all our cars. If you've followed the Spyder/Speedster fiasco you will now be much smarter that range is not always range and indeed it is a very ethereal thing. But we've found the 10:1 rule pretty good in practice.

The 300 wH and the 41,607 wH work out to 140 miles at max 100% discharge. 120 miles would then be 36000 wH or 86% DOD. That's a little higher than we like but we're making tradeoffs here and doing our best. It will safely deliver 120 mile range in a pretty good variety of conditions. We're hoping he charges more often than that.

So you see the game we are playing.

Second, we get our higher voltage for the Netgain Warp 11HV. And finally we get our 1400 amps, at least for a few moments. We're hoping for a full 250 kw on the dynamometer.

Speedster Redux got us 147 kw in 2385 lbs for 62 watts per pound and does a zero to sixty in 6.5 seconds. At 3000 lbs, that will require 186 kw. But frankly we are hoping for some upside at 250kw, if we can pull it off. And there's a lot of slips between here and 1400 amps.

Of course, to handle that amperage we have to have a kind of massive high current relay. We took two fairly ordinary ones and coupled them together. In doing so, we hooked up quite a bit of copper plate to help dissipate the heat.

As to cable, the choice at these currents is between 2/0 and 4/0. The 4/0 would be better, but it is heavier. MOre to the point, it is harder to work with. With seven battery boxes, that's a challenge. And since we don't have any very long runs connecting all those boxes, we opted for the 2/0.

To keep the noise/EMI down, we have gone with Champlaign Cable Company shielded cable designed specifically for electric vehicles. Unfortunately, it's also designed to fetch $8.57 in ducats for each linear foot of the cable.

To fuse all that current, we use a Ferraz Shawmutt A30QS800-4. This part number indicates a 300vdc rating and a 800 ampere rating. It's not precisely a slow blow, but it will take 1400 amps for a few seconds.

As to a high current relay, we faced a bit of a problem. We used two of the Tyco Kilovac EV200 relays. The proper relay for this is probably their EV500 series, which will do 1600 amps for 10 seconds.

But the EV500, called "Bubba" is typically available for $1200 to $1400. Occasionally they come up on eBay at $350-$500 each. But the EV200, rated at 500 amps, are common as dirt at about $70 each. So we used two of those in parallel.

The current capability of the EV200 is kind of dependent on the size terminal lug connected to it. The terminal lug actually acts as a heat sink. So to do the advertised 500 amps, you need a pretty largish lug and cable. While we're ok there, more is better. So to parallel them, we actually used a pretty hefty piece of copper bar stock. This should help dissipate heat and allow our pair to do 1400 amps briefly. We'll see. At $140 instead of $1400, it's worth a try.

On the other end, we spent a couple of grand on lighter wheels and low rolling resistance tires, which did save us 10 lbs each on the front and 16 lbs each on the rear for 52 lbs. We also spent $1120 on an aluminum third member for the differential. Again, the weight savings was substantial

The result is our car is 32% battery by weight. But the components to do it would total over $42,000.

All of this from a couple of basic assumptions regarding what kind of car we'd wind up with. Had we said 11 seconds 0-60, and 80 safe miles with 100 miles to 100% DOD, we would have a much lower weight and cost and a much easier time fitting battery cells.

My experience with these cells comes out the same way every time. They want to make a car with 100 max 80 safe miles. Yes, you can get them to do more, as we have in Redux and now Cobra. But it grows exponentially more difficult and more expensive.

The question you have to ask, is what do your REALLY need and want in an electric vehicle. Everything in design is a tradeoff. There are no little easy answers. I can't give you a "kit list" until I've done the design and build, tested it, revised it probably several times, and so forth.

Will a go fast Cobra with a 120 mile range scratch the itch? Let's hope so. But be careful what you ask for.

Jack Rickard

Testing, testing....one... two ... .three

2011-09-02T08:38:00.001-05:00

The online milieu offers enormous opportunities for learning and information about topics of interest. In the early dreams of a global internet, this ability to pool the expertise of many individuals around very narrow topics of interest was one of the greatest boons foreseen. Unfortunately, in many ways it has turned into a cesspool.

There are a number of people out there successfully converting electric cars. I am disheartened to observe that the majority of them view anything they learn along the way to be a "proprietary secret" they can somehow leverage into untold riches from their little shop in what they see as a viciously competitive world.

Well, if you see it that way, it is that way - for you.

That mostlly leaves the online forums as a source of info about electric vehicles where roving bands of clueless people copy/paste what the last guy said into the next conversation - with a few typos and often some expert opinion on what it really means. This leads to comically large bodies of total disinformation misleading anyone who reads it into believing it is real. The pool of knowledge becomes a cesspool.

We attempt to counter that in two ways. First, we actually DO build electric cars, and we share all of it with our viewers. The good, and too often the embarrassing bad. To get the most from it, you have to watch over time unfortunately. The neat device and grand theory as to why that's just the tits in this week's episode may be followed in six months and a few thousand miles by an examination of the charred pieces and a rebuild using something else. Real world. I should apologize for it.?

The second prong of our attack on disinformation is to actually DO testing, not just talk about theories we've heard. And better yet, to demonstrate how to DEVISE tests you can do to learn first hand yourself. We encourage others to also perform our tests and report their results = either confirming or contradicting our findings.

Part of this goes again to the 12 blind men around an elephant. Corresponding about IDENTICAL cars, for example with Eric Kriss who basically built Speedster Duh, can be quite frustrating. Different results from two identical cars? Or maybe not so identical. And maybe not exactly the same test conditions... you see the problem.

Part of it is contrast and comparison. Most people don't HAVE two vehicles to compare. Indeed, often you have NO other frame of reference at all. You build your first electric car, and often take your first electric drive in it. Does it feel like it's supposed to? How IS it supposed to feel?

Our first car was the red speedster of course. It ran flawlessly. Oh, I guess I was a little disappointed in the performance. But it certainly kept up with traffic and was pleasant to drive.

Six WEEKS later, I was playing with the Kelly Controller software and noticed the minimum battery voltage setting. I see that voltage a lot so I must be at minimum voltage a lot. I wonder why?

I changed the setting to a lower value. Instead of 100v for my 108v pack, I lowered it to 90. Reset the car and hopped in for a drive. Backing out of the driveway in REVERSE I very nearly shot through the fence around the property in an almost uncontrolled acceleration. I immediately stopped the car and checked everything again. I reset the voltage to 100v and the car behaved quite normally. I changed it back to 90v and VERY carefully applied the accelerator. The car shot ahead like a rocket (comparatively speaking).

When the controller notes the battery voltage approaching the "minimum voltage" it cuts back current to the motor to prevent the pack from going below that voltage. Of course it does this several hundred times per second. As a result, when I applied throttle, it put out power to the motor until the voltage dropped to 100v. At that point it limited current to precisely the value necessary to hold 100v. If the voltage crept up, it increased current. If it began to sag below 100v, it would decrease current. And it did this so well, it felt quite smooth. The car operated flawlessly, at about 1/4 power.

The batteries DO sag in voltage when you put them under load. So by decreasing this "minimum voltage" all of a sudden I could get full power out of the device.

While this is almost comical, it illustrates the problem. No frame of reference. I might have gone two years before discovering this. Never really gotten excited about electric cars, which felt pretty tame up to that point. And so never shot our first episode - no EVTV. For want of a nail....

So I'm very sympathetic to the guy trying to build an electric car with no "go-by." No frame of reference or model to build too. It is ALL a discovery process.

We did this comparison between the Speedster and the Spyder largely as an exercise to demonstrate some of the components of range and specifically the impact of aerodynamics on range. Whey you get one range at 45 mph and a very different one at 75 mph.

But real world testing, as opposed to staged scripted test demonstrations, always have outliers and anomalies. In this case a huge one. A very marked difference between two cars with ostensibly identical drive trains.

The problem was that the aerodynamically slightly pudgy looking 356, which was also 200 lbs heavier, got DRAMATICALLY more range than the sleeker and lighter Spyder 550. And everything we tried made the disparity more pronounced.

We spent $3100 on running gear upgrades using really kind of extreme aluminum rotors and calipers, low rolling resistance tires, lightweight wheels, and indeed shaved some 60 lbs from the car, dropping the curb weight from 1905 to 1844 lbs.

Of cousre, we also learned that the Michelin Energy Saver A/S low rolling resistance tires on the Speedster weren't set to 42 lbs pressure as we thought, but a more squishy 33-34 lbs. When we aired the tires up, the Speedster got dramatically better, as good as 1.000 AH per mile at 40 mph steady speed. That's a 180 mile range.

Meanwhile, all that work on the Spyder produced improvements, but improvements so meager they are almost in the noise level of the test.

ENter by far our most popular test technique. The Soap Box Derby. We've received so many comments on this test that we are thinking of incorporating it into our race day at the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention (EVCCON 2011) I'm searching for some kind of incline or ramp we can use. In addition to the electric AUTOCROSS RACE and the electric DRAG RACE we have scheduled for Friday afternoon, I would like to have a SOAP BOX DERBY where we can see who's car rolls the furthest at 2 mph.

The Speedster will pretty much roll down the street pretty nearly to the house in neutral. The Spyder almost goes into reverse and backs up the hill. It barely moves at all.

We received a lot of input from viewers on this. My favorites suggestion came from John Hardy of the UK. This involves some residual pressure valves in the brake lines. In cars where the master cylinder is below the calipers, the brake fluid of course has a tendency to drain back down into the master cylinder and you have to pump the brakes to get the fluid back up into the brake calipers. On drum brakes, the wheel cylinder holds much more fluid than disk brakes. And these cars were all originally equipped with drum brakes on the rear, disk brakes typically as an upgrade.

So to keep the fluid from flowing back, they use a little check valve that maintains just a bit of pressure on the line to keep the fluid from flowing down by gravity. On drum brakes, this residual pressure valve typically provides 10 ps, while for the lest voluminous disk brake calipers, a more modest 2 psi. John's suggestion was that they had upgraded the rear brakes to disk but kept the 10 psi residual pressure valve from the drum brakes. This causing the rear pads to drag.

I loved it. Our master cylinder IS below the calipers and we don't have to pump the brakes so we must have that.

We went through the car and can't find one of these residual pressure valves anywhere, front or back - or of any value. But it was a GREAT theory.

We had the car aligned this week. I haven't' retested yet but I would be astounded if that made that much difference. Perhaps. But we did reroll the Soap Box Derby and no joy.

Several viewers have commented on the negative camber on the Spyder. I think it is slightly more visible on the Spyder. But all these cars have negative camber - the book is 2 to 5 degrees. The Spyder is more on the 2 degree side actually.

About all that is left that is obvious is the difference in the Ring and Pinion gears - essentially the "differential" on this car. The Spyder has a 3.88:1 and the Speedster has a 3.44 to 1. Eric Kriss spoke to a racing transmission expert who claims that could indeed do it. So it's our main culprit at this point.

It is unlikely that I would swap out the transmission to find out. The car runs nicely and has a 100 mile range now. But we will certainly stick to the 3.44:1 for future builds.

You always get a result from testing. But in the real world, often it can be weeks or months before you really know what it all means. Aerodymics still has the predicted impact on range. But why these two cars are so very different is so far beyond me.

We have a new Canon AHX1 camera we're trying out. It has built in XLR microphone inputs but we apparently did not adjust our audio very well because it is truly awful in this episode. My apologies. Testing, testing. ...one...two....three.

Jack Rickard

How Far Does Your Electric Car Go?

2011-08-24T11:33:00.000-05:00

How far do you want it to go?

Almost every discussion of electric vehicles STARTS with the concept of range. This is because it has always been the defining limitation of electric cars. In the early days of the Internet, electronic bulletin boards, and online communications, it was always "how fast is your modem connection."

Fast is relative. Incremental advances are NOT all created equal. The jump from 300 baud to 1200 baud was an ENORMOUS improvement. The jump from 1200 to 2400 was great. The jump from 2400 to 9600 was a good improvement. To 28.8 kbps was good too. And to 56.7k was a bit of a yawner.

Range similarly. The difference between 25 mile range (and falling) provided by Pb chemistry cells and the 80-100 mile range offered by LiFePo4 cells is ENORMOUS. From 80 to 200 would of course be very good. After that, I doubt that it matters to most.

Indeed, the average daily use of automobiles in the United States is 39.4 miles for about 14,500 miles per year. And over half the driving population averages under 26 miles per day. People just don't drive as much as they think they drive. But of course, owning a car means being ABLE to go as far as you like, not so much that you DO.

The internal combustion engine driven vehicles of course vary in range depending on how you drive the car. And they are about 12% efficient at translating some 33kWh of energy in each gallon of gasoline into forward motion. By far the majority of it is converted to HEAT and blown out through the radiator in the front of the car - each vehicle contributing to our warmth and comfort during the winter.

Electric vehicles are more like 85% efficient. But that efficiency is precisely what makes them MORE sensitive to just how they are driven.

In this weeks show, we begin a series of tests to demonstrate the factors in the vehicle design that affect this range for a given driving scenario. And we compare two cars that SHOULD have the same range, and somewhat mysteriously do not.

In my own opinion, we need to strongly alter our relationship to our vehicles and how we view them and relate to them. I do NOT actually fall into the camp where we should "suffer" for the sake of the planet. Technical problems usually can be attacked with technical solutions and this one is no different. Keep your Yukon or Denali for towing the boat to the lake or the trip to the nearby city to pickup someone at the airport. Take your long distance trips across the country as much as you like in your Escalade or Suburban. You aren't hurting ANYTHING because you are not doing enough of all that to move the decimal place. If typical, 95% of your driving is to the hardware store, the lawn center, the grocery store, the soccer field, and to school and work. And the mileage you are ACTUALLY driving in any one gulp is trivial - in some cases within Pb chemistry range.

But cars have become more expensive. In the 1960's, $4000 was a LOT for a car - picture a new Vette or a Cadillac. Today, $50-$80K is NOT stratospheric. That's the cost of a house in years past.

Now you wouldn't send a house to the junkyard after 9.6 years and build a new one. You might remodel the kitchen. You might do a little paint and carpet. But the very deliberately planned obsolescence from our friends at the automobile factory has led us to some ridiculous concepts. Today, you can TOTALLY REPLACE the drive train in any automobile - engine, transmission, and all belts and hoses, for LESS money than the SALES TAX is typically on a new vehicle. You COULD put an entirely new interior in a car for about $3000 - done by professionals. A paint job? if you want to be the rage at the next car show- $6000-$7000. But Earl Scheib DID make a fortune with his "ANY CAR - $49.95" paint job.

And so my intent is to pick cars I really like, and then just renovate them as needed. That pretty much precludes the use of steel bodies. I like aluminum and fiberglass because they don't try to become biodegradable and return to the earth as rust while I drive them.

With the advent of these LiFePo4 cells and electric drive trains, I can see simply continually upgrading a car forever. We'll not build it. We'll build it for life and we'll keep building it. As batteries become available, or controllers, or chargers, we will upgrade. If the paint fades and accumulates some scratches, we'll have it painted.

Back to the main topic of this week's show. Range. It does require the application of power to move a car at all. How far it moves is a function of how much power. There are several factors that determine just how MUCH power is required. Since your battery pack offers a FIXED amount of power, your range is the result of your relationship to those factors.

INERTIA. The tendency of a body at rest is to remain at rest and for a body in motion to remain in motion. Without other factors, if you had a car going 25 miles per hour, it would go 25 miles per hour forever with NO additional power. Friction, and other factors cause it to decelerate - eventually to a stop.

You have to apply power to accelerate to any speed, and other resistances will cause you to DECLERATE from that speed to zero. The amount of power required is a function of MASS. The greater the mass the more power to accelerate.

This is entirely separate from gravity. But when we combine gravity and mass, we can derive a very measurable quantity - WEIGHT. And so the amount of power required to accelerate to a given speed can be though of primarily as a function of weight.

GRAVITY is indeed one of the factors in electric car design. All roads have some incline. To climb a hill, you must move the mass in elevation against the force of gravity. In a downhill run, gravity can actually decrease the amount of power required to a negative number, and indeed you can recover energy through regenerative braking - converting both inertia and gravity into electrical power to recharge your cells.

AERODYNAMIC DRAG is actually one the most significant forces involved in range. As anyone who has put their hand out the window at 60 mph knows, the force of the relative wind can be felt as quite a strong force. That is aerodynamic drag experienced across probably 20 square inches of hand. In the case of the Spyder or the Speedster, that same force is multiplied by the 1.76 square meters of frontal area if you can imagine it. It is an enormous force.

The aerodynamic drag force can actually be given by the formula Fd=1/2 pv2CdA.

Fd is the resulting drag force.

p is the density of the fluid - in this case air and is slightly variable by temperature.

Cd is a "drag coefficient" typically derived from wind tunnel testing to account for the fact that for a given frontal area the drag will vary according to the shape of the vehicle and the resulting laminar flow of air across the body.

A is the total "frontal" area of the car. How big is the hand.

v is the culprit - velocity. It is squared. In this equation, whatever v is is multiplied by itself. If it is 10 mph, it equals 100. And if it is 100, it equals 10,000. This cruel fact is what caused such an enormous difference in power at 70 mph than at 40. Recall Jimmy Carter's 55 mph speed limit. It was not invoked to save lives - but rather to save gasoline. And as I mentioned, electric cars are MORE sensitive to such things than the gasoline cars because they are MORE efficient in the first place.

After inertia, gravity, and aerodynamic drag, we have rolling resistance. If you put your car in neutral, and push it out of the garage by hand, you are experiencing it's rolling resistance first hand.

The biggest component of rolling resistance is probably the tires. Large fat squishy tires give us a very comfortable ride. But the flexing of the sidewalls to accomplish this generates heat loss and makes the car difficult to roll. The larger the contact area of the tires with the pavement, the larger the rolling resistance. If you don't have pavement, and are driving on sand for example, it gets worse.

But there are drive train resistances as well. The friction of the gears in the transmission and differential add a bit of drag to the system. The bearings in the car support the entire weight of the car on the wheels while allowing wheel rotation. Whatever your car weighs, each wheel has to carry part of that and it does so primarily through the wheel bearings. They have friction, and give off heat. If you have one that goes "dry" and is not lubricated, it will generate enough heat to melt steel.

This week, we did some testing of the 1957 Porsche Speedster Electric we call DUH, because it was our second speedster build - part deux. And we also tested a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder electric replica that we consulted on when it was originally built by Duane Ball and Scott Smith, and subsequently we bought the car.

We tried to eliminate INERTIA and GRAVITY from the test. We did this by driving a substantial distance of about 20 miles at a steady speed. Not accelerating and not decelerating pretty much eliminated the application of power for the purposes of inertia - just what we needed to get up to speed in a few hundred yards out of the 20 miles. And even that was largely cancelled by the recovered energy or lack of force required for the distance we decelerated.

All roads have slope. We divided the 20 miles into two halves and did them in opposite directions on the same road. This should pretty much cancel the effects of gravity.

Leaving aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance. We tested both cars on the same route and nominally at the same steady speeds of 40 mph, 50 mph, 60 mph and 70 mph. Let's look at the results.

If we look at these results, a couple of things jump out at you. At 40 mph, the Speedster gets 19.69% greater range at 158 miles than the Spyder at 132 miles. Also curious is that this advantage decreases to 9.3% at 70mph with the Speedster coming out to 94 miles and the Spyder at 86.

That brings up two questions: Why does the Speedster have greater range? And why does this disparity vary with speed?

And these questions jump from curious to bizarre when we look at the two cars.

Weight:
Speedster: 2035
Spyder: 1903

Coefficient of drag:
Speedster: 0.40
Spyder : 0.20

The Speedster should be LESS efficient than the Spyder by quite a bit. I confess the references to Cd on the Spyder are slim. There were only 90 of these vehicles built originally and wind tunnel testing wasn't a big deal in those days. But just looking at the two shapes, you would expect the Spyder to be dramatically more slippery through the air. Both vehicles have a frontal area of 1.76 square meters.

As we took the weight largely out of the picture by eliminating Inertia and Gravity, that's not a big mystery.

The cars are similar in other ways as well. They both have 36 China Aviation Lithium Battery Company cells of 180Ah per cell. They operate at the same voltage. They have the same High Performance Electric Vehicle Systems AC-50 motor. They both used the Curtis 1238 three-phase controller. In this, the Spyder features the 650 amp -7601 controller variant while the Speedster has the 550 ampere -7501 controller. But we never went over 200 amps in any event. Both controllers were set for 5% neutral braking and 500 rpm taper. These are controller configuration items controlling the amount of regenerative braking.

They both now use the same hall effect accelerator.

They DO have different transmissions with the Spyder having a 3.88:1 ring and pinion and the Speedster featuring a 3.44:1 ring and pinion. But the other gears result in almost identical final ratios between the two cars. Alll the testing was done in fourth gear. There was a 100 rpm difference at 60 and 70 mph but almost identical rpm at 40 and 50 mph.

The Spyder features a GPS speedometer and the Speedster features a cable driven speedometer calibrated in MPH. Or should I say miscalibrated. There is a 2.3 % difference from the GPS which we assume to be true distance and speed. This is undoubtedly part of the mystery, but doesn't quite cover the question in degree I'm afraid. It is less than 2 mph and that kind of gets down into the noise level of what I can maintain as far as a steady speed on an Interstate highway with traffic. We used the distance measured by the Spyder for all calculations.

The clue is in the disparity between the 40 mph results and the 70 mph results. If aerodynamics accounts for 1/2 the difference between the two, and rolling resistance the other half, as we increase in speed the aerodynamics should increase as a percentage of the total as aerodynamic drag increases. Rolling resistance may increase, but not as a square function and really not by much.

In this case, the difference between the two vehicles decreases from 19% at 40 mph to 9% at 70 mph. What this tells me is that as aerodynamic forces become a LARGER percentage of the total problem, the difference between the two vehicles DIMINISHES. And so the difference is NOT attributable to aerodynamic difference at all. It must therefore be attributable to rolling resistance.

The Spyder has a set of 165/65 R15 Khumo tires on it. The Speedster features a new set of Michelin Energy Saver All Season 185/60 R15s. It also has some Moon Eye wheel covers which might lend a bit of aerodynamic assistance.

The Spyder started life as a WIDE FIVE option from Beck Speedsters. This is historically accurate but problematical. There aren't many wheels drilled to FIT the Porsche wide five pattern. So Duane had put a set of 911 aluminum wheels on the car with an adapter that moved the wheels out about an inch. This caused the wheels to rub on the body fender in front when steering. So they jacked up the front of the car - probably hosing up the aerodynamics in the process.

In any event, I never liked the setup in the first place. And there were "noises" from the rear of the car. I kept telling Brian I had a brake dragging but he never could really find any evidence of that.

In any event, we contacted AIRKEWELD. They make a very interesting aluminum brake rotor that has a billet aluminum hat that bolts on - allowing them to do any wheel pattern and offset desired with a very lightweight rotor. They couple that with a Wildewood aluminum caliper. This little puppy would reduce our unsprung weight by about 18 lbs. Aluminum rotors and calipers are not nearly as durable as steel and we would not normally recommend their use on a car. But this car features regenerative braking anyway. We don't really use the disk brakes much at all. So we think it would be a good upgrade for this particular electric car.

We add a lightweight Weld aluminum wheel in a Ford 5 by 4.5 pattern. And on this, we'll mount a low rolling resistance tire. The Michelin Energy Saver A/S curiously is SOLD OUT NATIONALLY. You can't get em - anywhere. Brian has confirmed with Michelin directly that they do not exist at the moment. They are a little mysterious as to why this might be. We suspect they are redesigning for even lower resistance.

Tirerack.com tested low rolling resistance tires on a Prius and Michelins got the highest mileage at 53.8 mpg, compared to the Goodyear Insight that comes standard on the Prius at about 51.5 mpg. But the Bridgestone Ecopia rated just a little behind the Michelin and is $25 per tire less AND they are not unobtanium.

The Bridgestone and Weld combination is about 2 lbs lighter than the earlier Porsche style aluminum wheel and Khumo. The Bridgestone Tire weighs 17 lbs and the wheel a little over 12 lbs.

Unfortunately, AIRKEWELD is an American Company. ANd like all non-Chinese American companies, they cannot manage to get an order in a box and shipped from Arizona to Missouri without at least three tries. We got the long axle version on the rear hubs when we had specified the short axle. We got the wrong brackets for the front. And we go the wrong brake lines for the rear. ANd we got the wrong brake pads for the Wildewood calipers in the front. It has been a total comedy and we have now received our THIRD shipment from these guys. The parts were ordered in June and received in late August (on three different dates of course). And they were $1800, which approaches 10% of the cost of the original vehicle roller.

But they were very nice and the units are just gorgeous. We should have them on this week, and be ready for retesting. It will be very interesting to see the results.

We are also installing some Silicon Nitride ceramic bearings on the rear axles of the Spyder. This is a standard 6306 bearing which normally costs $12.95. The ceramic version is $325 each. But they are good up to 2550F and have significantly lower friction. I guess I think we are stringing the bounds of reality here at a $650 upgrade to avoid bearing friction. But the Illuminati team claim it is their secret sauce on their vehicle which gets very good efficiency on the highway and is nearly 3000 lbs to boot.

We don't do very well with secrets at EVTV. If you have any, tell them to someone else if you want them to remain a secret.

Jack Rickard

Shorter and LIghter - Should Jenny Craig be Part of EVTV?

2011-08-14T10:13:00.002-05:00

Somebody called to see if I would be around this week. My response, unfortunately so. You see, I always wanted to be a tall. But it was the whim of genetics and my own proclivity for good food that decreed I should be a ROUND forever.

A short show this week. And I like that. Somehow, we've crept up to two and a half hours. This is longer than a feature length film by nearly an hour. We're going to try to shorten things up. We've reached the limit and I'm spending most of the weekend editing video.

This week, we do a little bit of news, and show a test of our Netgain Warp11HV motor prior to installation. We also mount our Tremec TKO600 transmission.

The transmission mount is a little more free form than I like. The Cobra came a bit blank. There was a cross bar under the car, which turns out to be in the wrong place, and a hole cut for the shifter - almost in the wrong place. The rest of the transmission mounting is just sort of left up to us.

We bought a low profile mount for the rear - just a block of polyurethane to shock mount it really. We had a local race car guy build us a little brace for it. We'll have to cutout the existing brace and lower it so the drive shaft can clear.

Danny, the race car builder, suggested we could save 100 lbs by replacing the third member on the differential with an aluminum one. But when we checked with his supplier, he said he didn't have one for THAT Ford 9 inch. Apparently a Ford 9 inch differential covers a multitude of sins.

For the front of the transmission, we fashioned two small brackets that bolt to the bell housing and a pair of Mazda RX7 polyurethane shock mounts we found on eBay for $77.

We'll install the motor to the bell housing and fashion a similar plate/mount for the front of the motor with another pair of these shock mounts.

Hopefully, the drive train will then be pretty securely mounted aft, middle, and foreword. We'll need to have a drive shaft made specifically for the vehicle of course.

The convention draws closer. Brain has devised a 20 booth vendor floor and I understand they've signed four at this point. We're quite pleased that Special Editions Inc. will be bringing a Beck roller to show. We've used several of these in the past and they just make a great platform for a simple electric vehicle conversion. Best of all, they are truly head turners.

I came out of the local Schnucks grocery store with some cheap Champagne and cheese and crackers headed in a hurry to a hastily thrown together bridge game, since I managed to get the video up by Saturday afternoon this week. There were eight people gathered round the Beck Speedster we call Part Duh in the parking lot. They were marveling over the car and had twenty questions about it. Understand they did not even know it was electric. Just the iconic shape of the car still works 54 years after it was introduced. We have no Porsche badging on it. We have the moon eye hub caps. It isn't a Porsche. It says Porsche nowhere on it. They truly had NO idea what it was. But they were instantly drawn to the car.

I did note that it was electric drive and pointed to the very subtle ELECTRIC emblem we had made to match the small SPEEDSTER gold emblem on the front fender. And they more or less went berserk.

Brain had a similar adventure last week when he took the Spyder 550 to a car show in Sikeston. He came back with a SECOND place trophy. I don't know what THAT was about. But he returned with a sunburn as the attendees wouldn't let him step away from the car for about four hours. They Spyder is particularly good at these events as you can open it up like a clam and display all the componentry almost like it was layed out on a workbench.

It goes slowly, but we are working with Special Editions on a special frame for a Beck Speedster. This will be quite a departure in a number of ways. I like rack and pinion steering for example. And independent rear suspension. But there is talk of turning the axle around for a mid-engine version, which would free us for more room in the rear for batteries. Best of all, we are going to have it done of aluminum, which should shave a couple of hundred pounds off the weight. I've always liked the Beck Speedsters because they have a frame under them sufficient to mount a Ford F150 instead of the usual VW pan. But in truth, it IS overbuilt and overweight for our needs.

And this next week we should receive a set of running gear for the Spyder we are trying out that will eventually be part of the next Speedster build. Airkeweld makes an aluminum cross drilled rotor and they can put any hat on it we want - I think we got 5 x 4.5. We already have a set of Weld lightweight aluminum wheels for it. For the front we can use the Wildewood aluminum calipers as well but for the rear they do not make such with a parking brake on it. We have to have a parking brake. They are much more important on an electric car.

On the Spyder this will be a particular advantage. Duane had some 911 wheels on the car he liked but this required an adapter that sets out the wheels an inch or so. As a result, the front end has to be jacked up so the wheels clear the body. All in all not to my taste. So the new running gear and wheels will let us get the wheels back inside and the front end down - while saving about 150 pounds on an already light car. As this is almost entirely unsprung weight that goes away, I'm looking for GREAT things by way of improved handling with the front end down where we want it and this weight savings.

If any of it works, that system will be migrated to the new Beck aluminum frame and we should save somewhere between 300-400 lbs overall. This is actually an incredible amount. Speedster Part Duh weighs 2035 lbs now and could be down to 1650 or so eventually. All of this BEFORE we take on the body at some time in the future.

It also has passed little notice but the DOT has now approved polycarbonate windshields. I like glass. But the weight savings here too are substantial. And I already did have to replace the windshield on Duh because of a flying rock. None of that with polycarbonate. Yes, they haze. But there are now very effective polishes you can use to clarify polycarbonate more or less endlessly. We've used them on the Lear 24D for years. If they are good enough for a Mach 0.78 jet, they should be sufficient for a Speedster.

And it really is about weight. I was enormously validated when Brian ran both the Spyder and the Redux in the autocross at Carlisle. It was NOT close and it was repeated several times. The lap is about 30 seconds and the Spyder, with much lower power and acceleration, just killed Redux by 3 seconds every time - 10% of the course.

This of course was PRECISELY the lesson learned in 1955 with the introduction of the Spyder on the racing scene of the day. It was much less powerful than any of its competitors, yet it won every race it finished that year.

With an internal combustion engine, the cost of these weight savings simply don't make much economic sense. For an electric car, they quite do. And as a result, we're finding common ground with the race car guys.

We have developed a fondness for the Michelin Energy Saver All Season tire. This tire has the lowest rolling resistance of any tire on the market. Unfortunately, it appears it is not ON the market. They are sold out NATIONALLY on this tire. No estimate on restock dates. You cannot get them. That's going to slow our thunder on the Spyder.

Fortunately, we already HAVE a set of them on some lightweight Weld wheels for the Cobra. And we're going to do an interesting experiment there. Not only do the Michelin's feature a lower rolling resistance, but our total weight on the Weld wheels/tires is 31 lbs each. The existing wheels and tires that came on the car were 42 lbs on the front and 48 lbs on the rear. We save 22 lbs on the front and 34 lbs on the rear for 56 lbs total going to these lighter tires/wheels. So we are going to do a range comparison on the car by running say 100Ah exactly on each set and noting the mileage covered in those 100Ah. I think it will be significant - more than you think. Maybe 5 or 6%.

All these sorts of things are quite cumulative. An LED tail light bulb here and a tire there, it all adds up. And it all counts in the end car.

Not to mention the weight of the driver.... there was a solid reason that Brain drove both cars at Carlisle.

Jack Rickard

The Joys of Fantasy and the Sharp Edge of Truth

2011-08-08T09:33:00.000-05:00

This week's show is kind of a hodge podge. Again we are heat limited in Missouri as to actually doing very much.

We completed the rear battery boxes on the eCobra and moved to the belly boxes on each side of the vehicle behind the exhaust pipes. We did do a bit of cable work with the 2/0 shielded cable we've adopted to limit noise. I repeatedly call this TWO AWG in the video. Not sure why. It was always 2/0 and in fact that's mostly what we've used for electric cars over the past years.

The underside of a car is a handy place to put cells out of the way and has been a tradition for many years. We have a 1994 van with all cells mounted underneath in a rack that hangs so low as to make the vehicle look impractical, which it probably is. Even the Tesla Model S has all batteries slung underneath.

The question of course comes up - what happens when it rains? I don't have an answer actually. It's kind of a moot point in an open cockpit roadster methinks. But a curious question nonetheless.

We actually did inherit a Ford Edge that was such a mess I have not mentioned it. We've fixed a few things, but are a long way from having much. The automatic transmission lurches alarmingly at all speeds. It needs 600-700 watt-hours to careen a mile down the road. Weighs 5000 lbs. One of the things we found was a truly curious propensity to build battery racks out of angle iron that lips over the top edge of the cells. This is quite heavy, quite strong, and secures the batteries quite famously. Unfortunately, it brings the frame iron within a tiny fraction of an inch of the terminals and I view all this with abject horror. Please don't do this. It is a very effective technique for lead acid or AGM 6 or 12v cells, and it is probably suicidal with LiFePo4 cells. In this case, one rack underneath had the cells laying on edge facing forward with the terminals toward the front of the car and entirely open. Kind of like a battery snow plow using the terminals to break up the snow. I've never seen such a mess.

We're gradually working some of the issues off this monster SUV, and my wife has curiously fallen in love with it, so I'm letting her drive it, but every time I see it lurching and careening down the road I wince.

In the case of the eCobra belly pans, they are enclosed. The cell terminals are actually quite distanced from the box walls. And in fact we have a piece of Weyerhauser Colorfast Deck to cover the terminals inside the box. This is a recycled plastic decking used for porches. It has enormous dielectric and of course physical strength. It's a little heavy for this purpose, but quite effective.

The boxes do have external terminals. We put a boot on them, but they are I guess open to the elements if placed underwater. I suppose we could do a placard DO NOT RACE THIS CAR IN FLOODED AREAS across the trunk. But I really don't know what would happen.

We do talk a bit about the OEM sales numbers. I've already been corrected by viewers who have accepted "spokesperson" numbers from the OEMs as being more accurate than mine. I don't know quite how to react. I am frankly skeptical of any company that HAS an employee who's title is "spokesperson". In many companies, the CEO is the "spokesperson" almost by definition. In those that have dedicated professional "spokespersons" there is actually a reason. They are very good at making barefaced lies look and sound very much like open truthfulness. That's why they were hired for the position. It's all a little circular.

EVTV has no "spokesperson."

So why have I adopted this anti-OEM position? First, I just don't like blatant dishonesty. It is annoying. And it's not effective. It puts a company in an adversarial relationship with their customer base. Not good.

But I see damage from this particular set of realities. First, the Nissan Leaf is by all accounts an excellent electric vehicle. The Volt is gasoline powered, but as best I can tell, a technological marvel and a pleasure to drive and own I am sure. I have NOTHING against these vehicles per se and do not denigrate the efforts of some obviously enormously talented engineers who created them.

The price/value proposition is a little vague. And that's a problem.

First, they are electric drive "conversions" in a sense. The Chevy Volt is essentially identical to the Chevy Cruze, but with the hybrid "range extender" drive train. The Chevy Cruze features a MSRP starting at $16,525 and gets 26 mpg city and 36 mpg highway. The Volt features an MSRP starting at $39,145 and claims 60 mpg. The problem of course being I could buy TWO Cruze models and still have $6075 left over, more than enough to buy gasoline for BOTH of them for about a year and a half. Oh, and I still have to buy gasoline for the Volt.

????? What kind of thing is this? Is there any wonder GM sold 24,648 Cruze's in July, and 125 Volts?

The spokesperson spin is just bizarre. First, Chevrolet is retooling to expand production to 60,000 units per year. But nearly a year ago they claimed they were expanding production capacity to 110,000 units per year. Like our Congress in reverse, Chevrolet is now professing a CUT of 50,000 units per year is an INCREASE. I need to hold a seminar on comparing numbers to determine which is larger and which is smaller. I think I could make a fortune just in auto executives and politicians.

GM actually sold 214,915 vehicles across the line in July. Volts of course comprising 0.0582 PERCENT of that total.

They also claimed that the Volts that were sold spend an average of 13 days at the dealers. Quite comical, this average does NOT include the Volts NOT sold. And there are plenty of them. A recent poll of Chevrolet dealers was discontinued after the researcher determined that ALL of the first few dozen he called indeed had Volts in stock awaiting drivers.

The "spokesperson" also claims they can sell all the Volts they can make. Of course they can. At some price. Some where. New cars just don't go "unsold" forever. They are disposed of in some manner or other eventually.

Why am I on about this? We are largely shaped by the perceptions of the public, which is largely shaped by the broader news media. The next shoe to drop is the "What Happened to the Electric Car" story. The same group of reporters touting all of this for years now will turn about face without a BLINK (they are kind of like Spokespersons in this regard) and seize on the story of the "bloodbath" in electric vehicle sales complete with stories on stranded motorists who just didn't make it home. Stay tuned. We are just weeks away from this.

And since it will then be proven irrefutably that American drivers do NOT want electric cars, we can move on to other tasks. The plans of automakers who didn't get to market so fast can be "extended" and eventually back benched so far as to be effectively removed from play. And producing no electric cars, we'll all sit back to await the fall in battery prices that will never occur because they won't be producing any.

A dark scenario. All over a car that was never truly electric.

By establishing the value of the Cruze in the market, and offering the Volt at over twice the price, what is the value proposition to a buyer? Very poor. So how is this a good example of an electric car? Not to speak of it's propensity to burn gasoline?

Won't matter. It is what it is. Complete with plausible deniability. "We tried."

This makes the ground harder to plow for any would-be participants including Tesla. But startups? The funding will dry up as if it were never there. Battery technology? Ditto.

This is REALLY most damaging. The higher the expectations, the more dashed the reality.

And in truth, these cars simply do not fit the business model of the automobile manufacturers. Nissan a year ago was braying like a donkey that they had the cost of the battery down to $9000. Last week they were quoted on a single module replacement in the UK at $682. As there are 48 modules in the pack, you are north of $31,000 replacement cost in a car priced at $32,768 - again roughly TWICE the cost of the identical car coming off the same production line that is NOT electric. This is an apparent 350% markup on the batteries. Guys, that is NOT an unusual markup by Mr. Goodwrench on an automobile part. And that IS part of their business model. Every fan belt, every filter, every spark plug, every gasket. It mounts up to a PILE of parts in the life of a car. And done at the dealership, it amounts to a HUGE amount of consumables and a lot of the profit in making the car.

Where is Tesla in all this. They're kind of a clean sheet of paper. But you will recall that at one point in their development, they were purportedly selling a two seat sports car for $109,000. The problem was it was costing them $146,000 to make each car NOT counting R&D. And there's no "consumable" downline except the battery pack. Most of the repair parts on the car would come from Lotus - whether or not you bought them through Tesla.

So they started over with the Model S. I believe that the people in this company truly believe in the electric car, and I have a deposit down on a Model S without even knowing what the pricing on the car is. Remarkably, 5600 other people have made the same leap of faith. But I have to wonder about the battery technology and what we do when they fail. A brand new $77,000 car with ZERO resale value? A $75,000 battery replacement cost? What?

In any event, the "early adopter" phase of electric cars would be marked in theory by a 2.5% market share. On our normal 15 million per year production, that's 375,000 cars per year. That's an achievable number. But it HAS to be made from cars that are appealing to early adopters. And $16,000 economy cars, complete with lipstick and high heels, just aren't.

It might be counterintuitive, and even ironic, but I CAN afford $77,000 for an advanced technology all aluminum frame electric car with a 19 inch display and seating for 7 in a European sedan. I CANNOT afford $42,000 for a Chevrolet Cruze. This is the heart of the "value proposition" of which I speak.

David Hrivnak drove his EMIS Avalanche from Kingsport Tennessee to our facility to show what he's done with this and make his case for his position as one of 10 finalists in the EVTV Build Your Dream EV contest. Unfortunately, while we did a complete walk around on this very interesting experiment, El BRAINO left the audio off on five walk around segments that are subsequently OMITTED from this week's show. My most sincere apologies to Mr. Hrivnak, who nonetheless did a great job describing the project.

The blizzard of surreal is not limited to the cars. There are announcements daily, a blizzard of press releases, and the most GORGEOUS images on the World Wide Web, of componentry and technology for electric cars that extend belief. Tragically, they either do not EXIST, are a heroically stupid idea, a solution in search of a problem or all the above in some combination. Unobtanium punctuated by unnecessary in many cases.

I LOVE the idea of inductive charging. Have since Nicolas first proposed it. I would love to have a highway system replete with it. I can see it in my mind. What I cannot see is it in my garage. A 10% efficiency penalty works out to 15 cents for the eight seconds it takes to plug in a cord. That's $67.50 per hour wage. If I offered a position for a qualified technician to go from garage to garage across the land plugging in cars, how many applicants would I get at $67.50 per hour? Answer: ALL of them.

Meanwhile, the very small scale tinkerers and innovators plug away in their garage, trying to get a 14 year old BMW to whisper into life and turn into a magic carpet. He thinks he's alone. And he's pretty sure it won't work. He's terrified of the batteries - their cost, their safety, and how to use them. He saved $2400 by not buying that hydraulic lift - already a serious mistake. The running gear and body is NOT quite in the shape he thought when he bought it. And he really doesn't have much of a plan about that air conditioner.

And most discouraging of all, there are all these REAL engineers out there with REALLY COOL stuff like $35,000 AC drivetrains, inductive charging, wheel motors, highly engineered battery modules, and THEY really know what they are doing and can make cars that would be REALLY cool. You want proof? You can see it on the web...

How am I supposed to respond to this? You see, in my world, this guy is a hero, Netgain actually sells motors, batteries are GOOD things, and a Federal budget CUT is a SMALLER number....

That's how VERY out of it I am.

We're going to put our head down, make cars that drive like magic carpets, and videos that have some SERIOUS audio problems. And we're going to keep doing all of that until we win. If it takes five years, I was hoping to live five years anyway. If it takes ten, I'll have to quit smoking and lose a few pounds..

Days of Wine and Roses

2011-08-05T09:26:00.003-05:00

This week we welcome Mark Emon of St Michael's Maryland as our special guest. Mark operates St. Michael's winery and brought us an interesting Seyval/Chardonnay and an equally delightful Chambourcin.

I'm frankly not a fan of North American wine grapes and hybrids. I love to drive the Porsche to a local Missouri or Illinois winery for a bit of lunch and a bottle of vino, but generally you have to enjoy the drive and the view and the setting. The wine is rarely a treat.

But Mark's offering was actually pretty tasty and we polished off both bottles before we quite done shooting this week's show. So if we seem happier about the state of the electric car this week than the news quite merits, there you have it.

Mr. Emon is one of our 10 finalists in the EVTV Build Your Dream EV Components contest. Recall that we are giving away 50 CALB 180Ah batteries, a Netgain Warp 9 motor, an EVnetics Soliton 1 controller, a RechargeCar magnetic pickup, a Masterflux Sierra electric air conditioner and of course a case of Stag beer to the winner. We had offered the opportunity for finalists to come to Cape Girardeau and appear on the show to set their appeal, American Idol style, directly to the viewers and consequently the voters in this contest.

Mark is in the midst of converting a Porsche 914 Targa to electric and he took the opportunity of the visit to sign up for the Electric Vehicle Conversion Convention (EVCCON) tendering his registration fee noting that he is bringing his green Porsche 914 to the convention. A challenge as he has yet to complete it and it is his first conversion.

But he's already planning his second and kind of counting on winning the pile of loot to compete an experienced BMW for his wife to drive.

My simple demonstration of opening a box with a Thundersky battery in it that we had had on hand since October of 2008, manufactured in August of 2008, and measuring the open circuit cell voltage of 3.300 which precisely matched the 3.300v of the Thundersky 400Ah cells we received the day before. This cause quite a stir. There is an entire little army of pseudo poseur engineers over on the DIYelectricjunk forum immediately sprang into action spraying messages in all directions describing what I did and did not do, what I should of done, and why I had it all confused and totally incorrect.

What I found terribly interesting in this, beyond the sheer number of them and the intensity of their howls of outrage, was how MUCH they appeared to know about what I do and don't do in testing batteries. On reflection, while I find the entire concept of typing nonsense into the screen on topics you know absolutely nothing about both annoying and slightly nauseating, but the level of disconnect was a little jarring.

Partly my fault. I actually have a greater interest in battery technology than I quite do in automobiles. My father had a variety of not very good construction equipment rolling stock when I was a stripling and it rather fell to me, somehow, to maintain this rolling collection of wreckage - none of it young nor particularly appealing when it was. So the concept of "working on cars" for pleasure is not a thing I share with our viewership. I hadn't changed my own motor oil for 30 years when we began this mission.

Indeed, while I have long been fascinated by electric cars, I don't even count them as viable - until the advent of these batteries. So for me, it is ALL about the batteries, and from that, the cars, and extending further, a convenient solution to an inconvenient problem. ANd in fact, the more I look, the more problems I find, some really QUITE alarming, that simply adopting personal transportation that is seven to eight times MORE efficient at converting energy to forward motion essentially solves very neatly and very nearly completely.

Most problems are simply intractable and require a lot of chewing around the edges from a variety of directions to even steer toward a solution. Electric personal transportation really IS kind of a magic bullet. With a couple of admittedly ambitious assumptions, some of these problems simply evaporate.

This is something akin to banishing the U.S. national debt by banning turtle racing, and of course the insidious wagering on turtles that goes with it. Or curing cancer with T-shirts. Imagine if we could eliminate child abuse by simply backhanding mouthy kids? Or relieve traffic congestion by coughing a lot?
Or wipe out unemployment by buying more Chinese baseball caps.

For some pretty serious problems like the largest transfer of wealth every recorded in the history of the world, from the U.S. to the middle east, this one really IS that easy. Get 20% of the population to drive 20% of their miles in electric cars and the problem doesn't ease - it disappears entirely.

To avoid a devastating collapse of the global financial system caused by spiraling gasoline prices headed our way just a few years hence, same solution. And same result. It pretty much just goes away. Not a problem. Was a BIG problem. Now, no problem.

It even solves problems that AREN'T really problems. I guess I am a bit agnostic about global warming. But electric cars offer a partial solution even to this - a very convenient response at that. And I suspect that 300 million autos all huffing 60 lbs of atmosphere per gallon into a cloud of nitrous oxides, particulates, and carbon monoxide may well have something to do with currently popular and problematic diseases that just weren't heard of 75 years ago. The place would in any event be clearer, prettier, and not smell so bad.

So it's a very appealing situation. But it all derives from the batteries. And I do a lot of twizzling with these batteries. But I doubt that it makes very good video or would ever get me to go viral on YouTube. It's just something I like to do in the back room, and even the people on EVTV with me really don't know what I do back there, or why I go do that. So how do the chirping magpies lined up by the hundreds on the DIYelectric telephone line know so much about it?

Of course they don't. But that's partly my fault. I don't really video very much of it. So their suppositions of what I do and don't do and so forth are generated entirely in a vacuum, which doesn't explain how they come up with so MUCH of it. But enough about them, more about me.

The demonstration on camera was of course simplistic. It was made for video. It communicated the situation very clearly. We had just received a brand new shipment of Winston Battery Company 400 Ah cells. And I had some Thundersky 90 Ah cells from nearly three years ago still in the box. So I had one of our visitors from the Netherlands dramatically open the box and measure the open circuit terminal voltage of the cells, and compare them to the cells just received.

IT NEVER OCCURRED TO ME that the DIYenginiers did not even comprehend the relationship between voltage and state of charge. THAT's how lost we are in the conversation here.

But of course I had taken out cells numerous times over the three years, and measured the same thing, and checked exactly how many amp hours were in them and how much charge they would take and what charging to various voltages does and on and on and on. Who but me would care? How many ions can dance on the head of a pin really IS the question, but it has no easy answers and whatever I measure there is more to measure tomorrow. And all if it is terribly time consuming. It takes hours. I don't even want to watch all that.

In this episode we did at least do a simply test to show open circuit cell voltage after a too brief rest, and how it changes over the state of charge of the battery. Does it make perfect sense and operate very predictably? Absolutely. Would it make a good fuel gage? Not really. Can it be used as a fuel gage anyway? Yeah, kind of.

And of course, the cells have the same capacity and there is no cell drift, and no "balance" problems and so of course the magpies are enraged because most of them are working on Battery Management Systems in hopes of selling them and making a brazillion dollars on the EV "craze".

First, there's no craze. Lacking any concept of business at all, if they sold any they wouldn't make any money. But the thing they're working on nobody needs anyway. And that's a hard thing to face.

It all brings up a broader question we faced back in the early days of the Internet. I think it was Mitch Kapor of Lotus (smart guy, my goodness he was tough to even be in the room with) who likened it to 12 blind men surrounding an elephant. Each would feel up the elephant and argue vehemently with the guy next to him as to what it looked like.

The Nissan Leaf uses a Lithium Manganese Oxide battery. They actually call it Lithium Manganese Spinel because the term oxide is almost perforative with regards to thermal safety issues. GM uses a slightly different manganese oxide cell from LG chem.Tesla actually uses a Lithium Cobalt Oxide battery, probably with a nickel current collector. We use Lithium Iron Phosphate cells from CHina.

There are several reasons NOT to use Lithium Iron Phosphate cells from China. In the past, they have not been very consistent in their manufacturing process. Second, they are most commonly available in these largish prismatic battery cells we use. This is kind of a "commodity" approach to batteries like your standard AA battery that is ubiquitous in small electronic devices. There is no way to really have a "proprietary" battery technology with AA cells. And of course, you have to communicate in Chinglish, wait 12 weeks for your cells, and the whole business model is just a mess. Dozens of "trading companies" all claiming to own factories they don't own, technologies they don't own, and market them in a language they're not at all familiar with. And the very basic issue of energy density OR power density is slightly LESS in LiFepo4 chemistries.

So I know of NO OEM who has even LOOKED at these cells. Never were on the table. I see absolute awe and worship in the body politic of electric car users over the "laboratories" at General Motors and Nissan and Tesla. WHile it is not in their economic interest to dispel this myth, there is no magic behind those doors. And they certainly aren't going to spend a lot of time looking at a slightly LESS effective chemistry that they can't use to create a proprietary pack anyway. Again, this stuff takes HOURS, and DAYS, and WEEKS, and MONTHS, and then YEARS to test even to the basics. You can automate it and speed it up to a very minor degree, but not really.

So it occurs to me, if the level of understanding of these cells is SO VERY POOR within our own community of people who actually do buy them and use them, and we couple this with the very natural propensity of OEM's to maintain a level of trade secrecy about their "magic sauce" which must be the batteries, we have a perfect storm. A total VACUUM of knowledge about current lithium ion cell technology. A perhaps PERFECT VACUUM. Picture 2800 deaf dumb and blind men about an elephant who don't even CARE what it looks like, they just are certain the guy next to them is a moron because he neither speaks, hears, nor sees.

Gotta love it. But after several years of studying almost entirely the LiFePo4 Chinese cells, and in truth with very LITTLE knowledge of the oxide chemistries (and even less interest frankly), I am slowly coming to the conclusion that we have accidentally stumbled on the very best cell technology for electric cars, and our good fortune was entirely driven by the REFUSAL of anyone else to sell us cells. These little bricks are REMARKABLY durable. They will suffer ANYTHING and put out IMMENSE levels of power from a simple stack of aluminum and copper foil no more complicated than a book. You simply have to observe TWO rules of thumb that are QUITE absolute. You CANNOT overcharge these batteries. And you CANNOT over discharge them. And if you observe these two, they most likely will last FOREVER, and suffer any indignity with absolute charm. And none of the OEM's are even aware of them.

Peter McWade sent me two elderly HiPower cells this week. Not my favorites anyway, he claimed these were abused. They were wonderful. Still OVER their 100AH spec and going strong. One was totally discharged. One was totally charged. I don't know if this was a test of the cells or some sort of bizarre test of Jack. But I marveled anew at how even the worst of these LiFePo4 cells are just very very good.

Jack RIckard

2011-07-26T10:16:00.002-05:00

This week we feature Richard Rodriguez's excellent Porsche 914 Targa build. Richard shot an excellent video walk around of this car, which does 100 mph and of course over 100 miles range using somewhat unusual Voltronix batteries from Flux Power. Flux Power was started by the ex-CEO of Aptera Motors.

One of our viewers suggested we show how little is really inside the $3000 Clipper Creek Level II Charge Station and so we did. We went a bit further. We gathered up all the pieces you would need to build an SAE J1772-2010 Electrive Vehicle Service Equipment (EVSE) 60 amp charge station. All in, it is right about $900 and would would probably take 2 hours to assemble.

David Kerzel's modularEVPOWER.com J1772 control board is of course what makes it possible. But we found an enclosure with TWO 90 amp contractors on eBay for $299. This gives you an approved enclosure and approved contractor for your box.

We also added a GFI 60amp circuit breaker for $117 including shipping. It's a Siemens ITE BF260 model.

Of course, you need a plug and cable. We get the 70Amp model with 8 meter cord from Chennic for $175 plus shipping.

Beyond that you're into optional switches and a $2 automotive relay. The contractor works on 120vac across its coil. We use the 12v automotive relay to apply this voltage on command from the modularEV control board.

Here's a little wiring diagram that might help you put all this together.

David Kerzel was sufficiently wowed by our combination of his billet aluminum J1772 socket and the billet aluminum gas cap, that he's going to get the caps, and make a totally integrated gas cap/J1772 socket with LED lights and his little control board to sell as a package. Would have saved us some work and having seen his machining work, it will undoubtedly look better as well. Since the caps are about $130 and his billet socket is $160, the board is $30, the little device is likely to be a bit pricey, certainly over $350. But it would provide a very nice total solution to mount on a car for J1772 compatibility. And it would be kewell.

We also talk about the CABLED study from Coventry and Birmingham in the UK. This is real data collected by satellite. And it very seriously calls into question the question of infrastructure. Most EV proponents are campaigning vigorously for public charge stations in their cities. We have been a little reluctant on this, and at this point we're actually against it. Getting the government, federal, state, local et al, to fund charge stations no one is going to use seems like a bad approach. Level II charging is best done at home and so is generally done at home.

We can see some utility in Level II charge stations at your place of employment. Tax credits for employers are I think already available but this area should certainly be pursued.

But public Level II charging never did really make any sense at all. Walmart is going to install 830 charge stations. It's goofy. I'm only going to be in Walmart for 45 minutes and I wouldn't even bother plugging in the cord if I DID accidentally get one of those parking spots.

We need Level III charging spots between cities that can bring our car to 80% in 30 minutes. This would allow intercity travel. I can deal with driving 100 miles (two hours) and taking a 30 minute break, particularly if coffee is available. It would be a rather leisurely drive and we'd be talking 300 miles in a day perhaps - 400 if you are aggressive. But it would allow cross country travel. And the number of these stops is within the scope of do ability even across the land.

The batteries will already do it. We need a CHARGER on the car that will talk ChaDemo or Level III, when adopted, and that is non trivial. It's not just a communications issue. The Level III will be a couple hundred amps at up to 400v DC. But it can be done.

Gas stations are the obvious place for this, and you will have to pay for it - probably through the nose. But I'd pay $20 for a quick charge that would get me city to city. Still a bargain compared to gasoline.

I think this is the "charge station" we should be focused on. Free electricity at the mall just doesn't work for me - unless I happen to work at the mall. The only ones to benefit from Walmart's charging stations would be Walmart employees with electric cars.

Here is a link to the J1772 spec as revised January 2010.

Jack Rickard

The Blind Leading the Blind.

2011-07-19T09:33:00.004-05:00

They say that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man would be named King.... I guess I'm not convinced...

This week we ran our longest show ever, and had to cut much of that. It's feast or famine here, depending on what parts come in or are available. Right now we're buried. We really finally after months of waiting have the necessary batteries for the Cadillac Elescalade, but are working furiously on the eCobra at the same time.

We actually cut a good bit of the show and put other bits off to next week. But it was still a bit of a press.

Mark Kriss, brother to Eric Kriss contributed an interview with Ludmilla Ng of Sinopoly Battery Company. Sinopoly, recall, is Thundersky Battery renamed, and currently in a furious legal battle with Winsston Chung. The company accuses Chung of submitting FORGED documents in the legal proceedings and it is all a little beyond me regarding the battle.

But the "news" buried in all that is some new "black" Sinopoly batteries that are something of an advance. The 66 Ah cell is 10% more energy than the previous 60 Ah cell, but it is ALSO much lighter at 1.8 kg vice 2.5 kg. And to Eric Kriss's interest, the 200Ah cell is in the same size and weight as the previous Thundersky 160Ah cell. Winston Battery Company does NOT have access to this factory and does not offer these cells.

Ludmilla insists that they are going to continue this increase in energy/weight at a very aggressive 10% per year. And they are pricing at $1.05 per Ah for less than 10,000 Ah and $1 per Ah above that, which rather undercuts CALB and even Winston Battery. Sinopoly appears very aggressive.

Eric is the star of this week's show. He had a very unnerving vibration in this drive train of his Beck Speedster electric. He removed the motor and had the flywheel, clutch, and pressure plate dynamically balanced, reassembled, and is all good to go now. In this weeks episode, we assemble the adapter plate, flywheel, clutch and pressure plate on the eCobra, and again mention the importance of doing this.

It is a very simple spin balancing procedure, and does NOT reqquire a magician machinist to perform. Most NAPA auto parts places, but also almost all full service autoparts dealers, do a set stable of routine machinging for automobiles. Most commonly, turn rotors and drums, and indeed do this very routine flywheel balance. They basically assemble the flywheel, clutch and pressure plate into one assembly, and mount it on a spin balancer. They then gradually remove material from the back of the flywheel with a drill to bring the whole assembly into balance. It's typically less than $100. But don't even bother installing without doing this.

In our Speedster Redux, recall that we burned out a clutch with the 1000 amp Soliton1 and replaced it immediately with a Kennedy Stage IV racing clutch and 3000 lb pressure plate. They arrived overnight and we had them IN the next day. Unfortunately, we neglected to do this basic machining, and indeed we have a slight "buzz" in our drive train. Not bad, but not likely to improve either.

Eric does a walkaround of his very excellent Speedster build, pointing out the improvements and changes he made ot our Speedster Duh design. Most notable was his use of 200Ah cells. As we have driven Duh 111 miles on a single charge using the 180Ah cells, this would imply a max range of his Speedster of 123 miles. That puts his 80% range at 98.4 miles. And that's pretty good. Ours is 88 miles so he gets a safe range increase of 10 miles - very substantial.

He also takes us on a drive to a car museum to view a 1908 Bailey Electric. I kind of got the impression they spent more time with the curator looking at the Speedster than with Eric looking at the Bailey.

This kind of build was what we were wanting to foster as our mission. A highly desirable car in its own right, that happens to be electric, and built in a very workmanlike fashion that you might expect in any factory built car. When people see this, and you driving it, with a 100 mile range, pleasurable performance, and NO gasoline and NO mess and a CLEAN engine compartment, the reaction is universally positive.

We also had some fun with J1772 this week. One of the old guys that renovates buildings for me here in Cape did an install of our Clipper Creek J1772 charging station. We plugged it into the Mini Cooper, pressed the button, and it immediately started charging per design.

We also received a beautifully machined custom billet aluminum J1772 inlet port from David Kerzel of modularEVPower ($160). As we have an enormous billet aluminum covered gas cap for the Cobra, as is customary on Cobra's, we endeavored to marry the two. This is the only gas filler cap I can imagine sufficiently enormous to actually put a J1772 inlet inside of. And I managed to squeeze in a soft LED light ring as well. We used Kerzel's little circuit board to simulate the J1772 copilot signals but also to work the proximity switch and light the LED ring. Very cool.

Mounting it to the car was a little gruesome, and complicated by the fact that you are going to be plugging in and unplugging daily for years. The inlet had to be recessed BELOW the fiberglass of the car so that the cap could be closed, while sticking upt THROUGH the fiberglass sufficiently to allow the plug to lock into position. We made an aluminum mounting plate and used the mounting screws for the cap, along with some spacer nuts and washers, to stand it off very securely. Kerzel had actually machined tapped holes for #6-32 screws into the rim of the inlet piece. Very nice job.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is implementing rules requiring noisemakers for electric cars. I would urge you to ignorre this stupid law. Passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress, this addresses the potential for blind people to be run over by electric cars they can't hear. We've investigated and found the total number of blind people so far massacred in this way - Zero. in fact, there have been no injuries and we cannot find a verifiable story of a close call.

In any event, we think they got the cart before the horse. We do not think blind people should be allowed to drive AT ALL, electric or not. And what difference it makes whether the car makes noise or not is entirely beyond us.

So these learned people, our very best and brightest, cannot do ANYTHING about spending our money like drunken sailors and whores to the extent that they are now BORROWING 40% of the annual budget, but they do have time and common cause to address something that is, and has never been, a problem at all, with an almost unanimously adopted measure to require YOU to do something hysterically embarassing in public to accomplish NOTHING.

Most advocates and organizations, faced with such tyrannic stupidity, organize a letter writing campaign to Congress to make their views known. And they provide everyone a sample letter so they will know what to say?

We rather presume our viewership is exceptional in that they are probably bright enough to write a letter. But for those of you who need it, here is a sample letter to your Congressman on this very considered issue:

Dear Congressman/Congresswoman Pluketthamner:

You're fired.

Warmest Regards;

Sincere Registered Voter in Your District

It's brief. It's to the point. And it can be encoded in Braille very easily so they can read it with their fingers...

I suppose you could even send it by finger directly.....

Jack RIckard

Batteries and Things

2011-07-11T08:19:00.000-05:00

After a week off, we did get a video out this week. It's a little hosed up. I have the new Final Cut Pro X editing software and it has a few problems I'm struggling with.

We had some news on the J1772 front. Clipper Creek actually made some sort of internal error and SHIPPED us one of their charge stations in exchange for money - about $3000. This is NOT a 70 amp charger as I said in the video, rather a 40 amp model CS-40

It uses the white Yazaki connector. It's pretty sturdy. And it's $3000. This will give us a baseline for J1772 charging.

For most of our viewers, somewhat more important is being able to fit your build so that you can charge using J1772 - and perhaps at a somewhat lower cost.

We have published the basics in the past with a couple of resistors, a diode, and a switch with a J1772 receptacle. David Kerzel is the President of the EV group down in Florida and a hobby machinist. He's done a lot of small engines and so forth. But today, he has ModularEVPower, a web site offering J1772 components for home builders and he has come quite a ways very recently.

We received one of his machined billet aluminum J1772 charge ports at $160. We can get these ports in a plastic model for $75 from China. But I am a sucker for machined aluminum pieces on our cars and this is very gorgeous.

Second, he has brought the resistors, diode, switch gig to a new level with what he calls an Active Vehicle Side Control Board at $30 each. This actually uses the proximity switch in the plug to activate the charging process. Once the switch is closed, it does the voltage divide down to 6v on the square wave to start the EVSE sending 240vac power. It ALSO closes a relay that has the common, the normally closed, and the normally open contacts all available for your use. You can use this to interlock a charger, light a light, or whatever. Very nifty and I think quite cool.

Finally, for $230 he has the guts of a the J1772 Electric Vehicle Service Equipment or EVSE - the EVSE Control Module.

This is what you connect to the plug end proximity pin (5) and pilot signal pin (4) to perform the J1772 interlock sequence. It features a switch allowing you to set the output current level which is encoded properly in the 12v 1 kHz square wave. It also has a 12v output to energize the contactors. You'll need a 12vdc power supply and contactors to switch the 240 vac phases, and you have, for less than $400, the equivalent to the Clipper Creek EVSE at $3,000. Of course you also need the plug and cable, which is about $175, and an enclosure. A GFI circuit breaker in the panel would be a good thing. But certainly for about $700 plus enclosure you can build your own. We use replica gas pumps. You can use a pumpkin if you like.

Duane Ball and Scott Smith engage us with a video report on the Porsche GTS (904) build they have been working on. This is the latest Chuck Beck replica of a 1964 Porsche race car that slightly over 100 were ever made. Special Editions has been putting them out and sold OUT of their first set of these. They have increased the price of this roller now to $63,000 to meet demand - that's with no engine. Duane has essentially completed his build to the point of first drive/EV grin and is working off some DC-DC converter issues and a problem with his tachometer sensor. Waiting for a VIN number in New York. But the car and build are gorgeous.

We also did a bit of battery testing this week. I have moved my test bench from the home garage to the new facility where I have LOTS of room and now quite a bit of electrical power. And so we did a bit of cell testing.

I obtained 16 of A123's 20 Ah M1 HD cells. This is a 20Ah pouch "prismatic" cell that is definitely a Lithium Iron Phosphate variant, which we like and use. The spec sheet has it at 3.65 and 2.0 v. We found it operates just as our Thunderskies with respect to voltage, charging and discharging although the climb and dropoff are a bit alarming at the end. That may just be our inexperience with such small 20Ah cells.

In any event, their claim is POWER and they do indeed deliver it. We were seeing sag voltages of less than HALF what we get from the Chinese variants for the same current load. They are very stiff. In American fashion, they don't quite put out 20Ah as advertised. We like the Chinese style claim where they call things 20AH and provide 21 or 22. Not on these.

Of course, A123 has been unbelievalbly snotty about the whole thing. We got these from OSN Power, a Chinese company ironically, They sample at $50 per cell, or $46 in quantity.

Two problems here. One is that they are heroically expensive at $2.25 per amp hour. Chinese cells are going to $1 Ah very quickly now. And secondly, they would have to be mounted in modules of some sort, which incurs some work, some expense, and some weight.

One of the advantages of these cells is a 127 wH per kg energy density, along with the power. Any weight from the module build would detract from that - and any expense would exacerbate teh first disadvantage.

If we can figure a super cheap super light way to do all that, we may pursue a build with these. But it would be to get titillating video. I don't see them as an alternative frankly. They are just too expensive and too complicated to use. They might get you a few more miles down the road, but they simply cannot compete with our lego block cells we use now. If you want to build a racecar, perhaps. But a viable vehicle? I don't personally think they warrant either the price or the complexity. They are incrementally better at some things with an exponentially higher cost to deploy. We have followed this company for years, and they remain a LOSER in battery development. The only company they've really sold on the cells are very small outfits and Fisker and they did Fisker by giving them the batteries essentially - a $30 milion investment in Fisker if they would use their cells.

John Plasma Boy Wayland and Rich Rudman have done something similar with Dow Kokam Cells and for the same reason - power output, once John's "Dream Came True" and they gave him the cells gratis. Kokam also designed a module for them which they had most of built at a custom plastics CNC plant (again gratis) with hardware done by Jim Husted. The result is about 10 lbs of module for 16 of these cells, pretty much negating the density improvement and is just hysterical. Forgive me, I just had to laugh. This is so overengineered and overbuilt to no known purpose that I can't deal with it. I SAY that overkill is ALWAYS appropriate. In this case, they have taken this concept to extremis and beyond. You HAVE to see this http://photos.plasmaboyracing.com/LiPol-Module/assem

If we have to do all that to use Kokam or A123 cells, it likely won't happen. But I have some ideas for something lighter and less costly ( cost is no object when using other people's money). I don't know when we'll get to them.

Innovation Party

2011-07-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

Despite my last post regarding the miniscule number of actual electric cars on the road, and admonition that we are firmly at the BEGINNING of the tinkerer/innovator market stage, the wider press frenzy and flurry of OEM press releases has had an effect of urgency. Although remaining largely unobtanium, the blizzard has certainly spurred the aspirations of the more inventive among us. And it solidifies my feeling that there is a lot of electric car to be yet built. Basically, we don't know what the future vehicle looks like.

This is a bit startling when you think about it. Not only do we have new batteries finally, but innovation in this area continues predictably enough. But on things like the Electric Motor, what can really be done that hasn't been done in the past 150 years?

Actually, a lot. Several viewers have pointed me to some startling innovations, largely coming out of the United Kingdom.

Electric drive trains share the basic problem ICE drivetrains for automobiles exhibit. A typical 15 inch wheel and tire rotates about 750 rpm at 70 mph and correspondingly less at lower speeds of course. Electric motors do not operate well at 750 rpm and are really unwell at 50 rpm. We say they develop full torque at 0 rpm, but that is a little misleading. What they mostly develop is heat at those levels.

The "sweet spot" of course is much wider at perhaps 2000-3500 rpm for most motors of AC or DC. And so in direct drive applications, you will often see a gear ratio of 8.25:1 in a single speed gearbox.

Converting existing cars, the single speed 8.25:1 gearbox is largely unavailable. So it is usually easier to just retain the existing manual transmission.

A couple of problems there, none insurmountable. First, many desirable vehicles don't have a manual transmission. Would you believe the most popular vehicle of ANY make is still the Ford F150 pickup truck? ANd would you believe they just don't make them with manual transmissions any longer? Unobtainium.

There is weight and efficiency loss through the transmission, and one of the most popular questions we receive at EVTV is the continuous suggestion that we bail on the transmission and go direct drive.

Direct drive poses some all around problems, but by far the largest is this matter of RPM matching.

Basically, this would involve a drive train somewhat like the Tesla Model S with a motor IN an axle with gear reduction linearly between the motor and the wheel. All doable. All expensive. All custom.

There is actually an alternative - magnetic gearing.

Magnetic gearing does an rpm reduction and a torque multiplication based on magnetic coupling using rare earth permanent magnets. Magnegear is a good example. They do a rotary magnetic gear reduction for the oil and gas industry drilling operations.

These are frictionless, very low maintenance and very volumetrically attractive notions. But aren't electric motors mostly about magnets and magnetic fields. Yes, Johnny, they are.

The video above describes a company with a technology for magnetic gear reduction, but their Pseudo Direct Drive takes this a step further - putting the gear reduction IN the motor. By combining magnetic field windings with a series of rare earth magnet rotors, they do both the motor thing and the gear reduction in one package.

In this way, you can have a motor spinning at 2500 rpm and the shaft of the motor spinning at 500 rpm in a very small package.

Yasa Motors carries this a step further. Robert Lewellyn does a take on this I found engaging.

They are cloyingly careful not to include any details in their description, but it appears to use a three phase Sevcon controller to spin an outer rotor of a few neodymium magnets that then induce current in a series of wound armature coils - effectively doing the gear reduction with an output of 750 NM of torque in an incredibly small package. Better it appears you can STACK these pancakes to get whatever power level you want.

Forget wheel motors. By putting these inboard with a short shaft, you can get all the advantages without the unsprung weight and durability issues.

So electric motors for electric vehicles really do have some peculiar needs and requirements. And there is indeed room for innovation in such a mature technology as electric motors. I find both of these technologies utterly fascinating. But they share a common theme - a 3 phase space vector inverter.

We don't really have one.

I have gone on about bottom balancing since late 2009 in a world of top balancing BMS gurus who insist I'm a whacko. Now WHAT OEM has MORE experience with Lithium Cells than ANY other?

The answer will NOT surprise you. DeWalt. They've been using these cells in power tools for years now. And as it turns out, their BOTTOM BALANCING PATENT rather predates anything I might have ever said about this.

I also said that Akio Toyoda, Chairman of Toyota Motors might have FELT the Winds of the Future but he could not BE the Winds of the Future. Apparently he does not agree. The company announced at their Las Vegas Dealer meeting that there would be 35 Tesla/Toyota RAV-4s built in 2011 with a product introduction in 2012.

Purported to equal performance of the gasoline version, the vehicle should have a 100 mile range and drive much like the ICE version.

The company also announced the 2012 launch of the Scion IQ EV - a 65 mile per charge city roadster about the size of the ill fated Daimler Smart ForTWo. Again, no pricing or planned production numbers.

They do also plan a plug-in version of the Prius with an electric range of 14 miles. So Toyota seems to have gotten electric religion, at least at the press release level. Next year in Jerusalem. Always next year...

I must say I find both these pure electrics from Toyota attractive.

Jack Rickard