redrumloa wrote:
Electric Vehicle of course. I was holding out for a Fuel Cell vehicle, but that seems way too far off and costly. I am now very seriously considering doing an electric conversion myself.
I was starting to look into that myself. Our old car is starting to get to the point where we have to put $300 a year into the motor and that seems like a good time to change the whole drive system!
But looking around it seems expensive to convert. I was looking at brushless motors the other day and I can't see why they are so much more expensive than brushed motors. Maybe it's because they're newer, maybe it's because you can pack more copper into them, maybe it's a premium they charge for the extra efficiency, whatever...
Another thing is energy density of the batteries, and how far do you want to go? Lead acid is cheap and lithium sulphur is ... well, both expensive and not in production.
Vehicle weight is another important consideration. Just a back of the envelope calculation says it takes 40 kiloWatts to go from 0 to 30 mph in 4 seconds for every ton.
Anyway, I've just joined the local EV club and I'm looking forward to seeing other peoples conversions. There is probably an EV club down in your neck of the woods too. These clubs seem to attract nerds and electrical engineers. Can't understand why.
