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4500 km in a Tesla: Lessons from the Road

19/1/2015

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Some of you may know that I have just spent the last 2 weeks or so driving the length of the country with #LeadingTheCharge in Steve Wests’ Tesla Roadster and Model S and also Carl Barlev’s Model S too.  Through this experience I have come to appreciate the electric car in a new way and taken some lessons away to incorporate in my own EV build.

The first thing is actually the driving experience.  An EV is quieter, smoother and simply easier to drive.  It is more restful and more confidence inspiring.  When you press the throttle things happen.  No thinking about it, no downshift, no roar, just movement.  Now of course the Teslas are no slouches and so the comparison is somewhat unfair to my current daily driver but, when I mashed the pedal on my gas car to overtake another car, I seriously thought something had gone wrong with it at first.  I now miss that immediacy of response – quite a lot in fact.

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Recharging in Wellington before the Ferry crossing to Picton
An EV has full torque through most of its rev range and additionally it has regenerative braking.  This means that for most purposes an EV can be driven with just one foot.  Acceleration and braking are both done on the same pedal.  Hill driving is a very different experience as you don’t end up doing the brake/throttle ‘tapdance’ in the same way.  The brake pedal is just for when you stuff it up, or when the navigation is lagging a little behind the actual turns in the road.  In the Model S the brake lights come on with the regen.  While this is probably a very good idea it can also make you look a bit stupid to people following.  It makes you look like a brake pedal rider or at the very least a timid driver.  Maybe I will hook up the brake light output or maybe I won’t but if I do, I might make the high stop pulse or flash under regen and only light fully under actual brakes.

On the topic of regen, sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is not.  During the trip I had the opportunity to drive a car converted with the HPEVS AC51 system.  This vehicle had been wired with a switch to select between ‘standard’ or ‘economy’ modes.  In economy mode the power is limited but also so is the regen.  This can be switched at any time and so I experimented a little.  What I found was that the standard mode was nice in town and the economy mode was nice on the highway.  Why?  The regen is great in traffic where you are concentrating and doing a lot of stop-start driving as you don’t have to ‘tapdance’.  On the highway this actually can become tiring (without cruise control) as you are constantly ‘balancing’ the throttle.  In economy mode you can reach the top of the hill and just let it coast down the other side using gravity to build the momentum while you take a brief rest from the throttle pedal.  If the hills are a bit tight then just flick the economy switch back to standard mode and take advantage of some regen instead.

Cruise control in an EV is amazingly steady.  The speed will not vary no matter what hill climb or descent is presented to you. The always available torque and the regen will take care of it all for you, instantly.  If your donor vehicle has cruise and you can make it work then I very much advise you take advantage of it.

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Type 2 (blue) to Type 1 (white) adapter cable
Charging: this is probably the biggest lesson I took away.  It sucks to have to wait for your car to recharge.  Solution; buy the most powerful charger you can afford suitable for your pack.  I have taken the option to install a Brusa for the programmability but even though it is a 3.3kW unit I will only be able to draw about 2.0kW due to my relatively low pack voltage.  A 3-phase charger would be awesome and cut the charge time to just 2 hours but at some horrific cost.  Selecting a charger is not as straight forward as it seems as there are voltage and current limitations that my see you only able to use a portion of the chargers capability – as in my case.  Another issue it the charge socket.  New Zealand seems to have defacto standardised on the J1772 Type 1 (single phase) charge plug as found on the Nissan Leaf and Holden Volt but ideally we need a nationwide roll-out of the Type 2 (3-phase) socket.  In Europe there is a ‘bring you own lead’ paradigm that minimises vandalism damage to the charge stations (i.e. stolen copper cords) and standardises every charge station across the board.  Time will tell where that goes in NZ but I will be keeping my Type 1 inlet for a while yet until the Type 2 becomes more prevalent.  At that time I could change over or simply purchase a Type 1 to Type 2 lead to take with me on my travels.

So, that was my takeaway lessons from 2 weeks on the road.  I have a bit to do on my own car still but I am enthused, if a little hamstrung by the effects of a house move, and ready to finish it up.

Happy New Year.

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At Bluff, South Island, New Zealand
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Showcase Build - 2003 MX5

26/2/2014

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The build has begun.  The car as mentioned is a 2003 MX5 NB model which has a few nice things that earlier models don't have, like the spotlights for instance.  I was looking for this car for quite a while and I came up trumps.  I bought the car sight unseen from a guy in Nelson and had a great time driving it back up to Auckland.

I was almost sad to start tearing into the poor beast but the gas engine has to go to make way for nice clean electrons.  I started the disassembly at the beginning of February once I knew that the motor/controller and batteries were on the way from the USA and China.
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The easy work of dismantling the car happens pretty quickly and then things slow down considerable while trying to overcome design issues like where to mount the battery boxes, motor mountings, electric power steering pump location and wiring, where to mount the charge when you find out it is bigger than you thought etc. etc.  Check out the facebook page to follow the day to day tribulations.  www.facebook.com/emotionev
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Xmas is coming

3/12/2013

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Santa is bringing me a new car for Xmas.  Actually I have to go and get it, but same thing.  I have finally found the right car to begin my MX5 conversion and not before time.  I am looking to impress with an HPEVS AC35x 2 with a 16kWhr pack of CALB's.  Performance should be 'adequate'.  Actually it will have to take back seat to my first job, a plug-in Prius conversion using a kit from Plug-in Supply in San Rafael, California.

I've been having a terrible time getting sales people in China to communicate with me regarding battery purchases.  Winston Battery was actually very good and was chasing me to complete the order but I was delaying while trying to get shipping arranged at a good price.  When I finally did come to place the order, the young lady had left the company and I can't get a reply from anyone any more.  Their loss, or at least it would be if I could get CALB to take me seriously too.  I can only assume they have bigger fish on the hook and my miniscule order does not even make them blink.  Too bad - I might be the biggest battery purchase in New Zealand by the end of the year - How would they know.  As it stands it looks like I will be slightly overpaying by purchasing SINOPOLY locally from a solar energy supplier.

In the meantime I have been adding a few more parts slowly to the store.  Of most note is the addition of the Mini K HV relay intended for precharge applications.  This little 20A, 400v relay also has application as a KSI relay and even a switching relay for heater cores or DC/DC converters.  It is still a bit pricey but much less so than the Kilovac contactors, which are a bit overkill for a heater core at 500A and 600v.

Merry Xmas



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EVCCON 2013

24/5/2013

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EVCCON 2013 (6-11 Aug) is rapidly approaching and yours truly has been volunteered as keynote speaker this year.  Finding inspiration in these tough economic times is pretty difficult but that really is the role of a keynote address. 
The theme for me will be around how starting a new business and getting the word out can be a very lonely task and sometimes one has to wonder if it will be worth it in the end.  We are in the very early days of EV adoption, particularly in NZ, but we have quite a few things going for us here that gives me hope that we can be a world leader once we all get the EV grin on.  I hope the audience is as excited by the possibilties as I am.

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Eco Day - reporting in.

10/3/2013

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Here we are getting set up. Still pretty early for a Sunday, around 9:30am.
Eco Day expo went well.  Absolutely stunning, hot, and
cloudless sky.  Lots of traffic through the EV display and questions, questions, questions.  Theo's documentary was a bit of a hit and lots of interest in his car too, especially after featuring front page of the Western Leader and on TV3's nightline.
Mark Yates of Juicepoint brought along the LEAF and was freely offering drives to all and sundry; I must take him up on it one day. Phil Buckley from Formulae brought along the cart for show and tell too.  This is a pretty sophisticated little beast featuring a curtis AC controller hooked up to 48v of 55Ah AGM batteries.  He is keen to investigate with us the possibility of changing over to lithium but it would represent quite an investment as he has something like 22 or so carts.  He would be able to offer longer format races though and hopefully cut the costs of ongoing battery replacements.
The real kicker of the day would have to be the organic sausages from the BBQ stall that set up right behind us, but the woodfired pizza van was pretty good too!

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Eco Day - Sunday March 10th

6/3/2013

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We are busy getting ready fo the Eco Day at Oympic Park in New Lynn on Sunday - 10:00am 'til 4:00pm.  Our advirtising flag just arrived and an offer of a 3m X 6m pop up marquee has just been gratefully accepted.
Theo will be there with the Sera and Phil Buckley will have the EV carts on display.  Rob McEwan of APEV should be joining us and he will be launching the PlugIN website to one and all.

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New arrivals...

24/2/2013

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The courier arrived this morning with a very welcome package of a Curtis 1314-4401 connection cable and software. We will now be able to view and tweak controller parameters on the Curtis 1238 controllers as used in the HPEVS kit (see our featured product).
Allan Miller will be the first victim of our ministrations and we will see if we can release any more potential from his setup, maybe over the weekend.


Also, new in store is the vacuum loss switch. This is a nice, compact automotive grade device that uses a diaphragm snap switch to turn on a light or a relay.  If wired in parallel with the park brake or low brake fluid warning it is possible to illuminate the handbrake light as a warning.

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This version grounds through the body but we will shortly be recieving a different version with a second tab for a remote earth.  Thread connection is G1/8 (1/8 bspt) and spade terminal is standard 1/4" (6.5mm) so fittings are readily available and wiring it up should be a breeze.

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MX5 motor adapter kit

19/2/2013

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Work progresses on the MX5 adapter.  We got the gearbox digitised last week and finalised our casting design and machining drawings.  Projected weight looks favourable in comparison to other products and we will be competitive on price too.

As you might see, we have some working ideas for the accessory end of the motor too.  We hope that we can retrofit all of the existing ancillary equipment (alternator, power steering and aircon) on to one mounting plate using a specially designed serpentine belt to drive it all.
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