For quite some time, I've had vague plans of getting an electric vehicle of some sort. When I put the solar array on my roof a couple years ago, I intentionally oversized it so I'd have enough extra to charge a car and still have (roughly, of course) net zero electric use.
Until recently, the thought has been to get a Karmann Ghia and do a traditional straight-ahead full electric conversion. However, I have the chance to buy a 1964 1/2 Mustang in good shape for very little money...and that's led me on a rather interesting investigation. I came across a Web site of a guy with a '66 Mustang who replaced his alternator with an electric motor, and uses it to take some of the load off the internal combustion engine and get a gas mileage boost. (No perpetual motion; the motor is battery-powered, with the batteries charged from a wall socket and regen.) I know I wouldn't at all be happy with such weak sauce for a system, so I've done a lot of research and thinking about various options, including many that I've figured out wouldn't work (bigger motor with Gilmer belt, mounting the motor to the front of the crankshaft, etc.). I'm now down to a last hope, but one that I think might actually not be unreasonable. I should take a moment and describe what I have in mind for the goal of the project: something with a driving experience not unlike the Chevy Volt. It should have an all-electric range of a couple dozen miles or so, and a total range limited only by gasoline availability. After the batteries run down enough, it should work like a traditional hybrid, with at least some regen braking and acceleration assist. And if it winds up being more than merely "peppy" when running with a full battery charge plus the internal combustion motor, that's fine as well. ...and this would also be a good place to mention that I'm fully aware that everything is about compromises, and the farther one strays from the beaten path, the more one must compromise. So, with that out of the way, the idea is to keep the internal combustion motor and its transmission basically unmodified, and to mount the electric motor inline between the transmission and the differential. My hope is that, if I approach this as an high-performance direct-drive all-electric system with a big enough motor and controller, the "only" compromises will be cost and the expected complexity of a high-performance system (cooling, power transfer, that sort of thing). That is, design it as if I were creating a direct-drive racer (though perhaps an entry-level one rather than a record-breaker) with the electric motor mounted to the (appropriately geared) differential, and then connect the ICE's transmission to the forward end of the electric motor with a shortened drive shaft. My biggest question: is this completely crazy? Am I setting myself up for an expensive white elephant? Some of the questions and compromises that I'm already aware that I'm going to have to face... Picking a motor and controller that can handle the load of direct drive: what do I actually need? I'm kinda drawn to a dual AC-35 setup; would that work, or do I need even more? Could I get away with less? Again, I don't need something that'll win races, but I'm well aware that I might need something race-worthy just to get something that won't melt and / or burn up under low-speed current loads. What kind of gearing am I going to need for the differential? Can I get something low enough with stock options, or would I need a custom differential? This would also obviously affect the gearing for the internal combustion engine...again, are there reasonable stock transmission options, or am I going to need a transmission with custom gear ratios? (The car currently has a three-speed auto, which I've long since assumed would go.) How programmable are the motor controllers? I have in mind using the internal combustion motor's vacuum pressure rather than foot pedal position to set the electric motor's power when in hybrid modes, and I'd probably want different mappings depending on battery charge -- and, of course, there wouldn't be *any* vacuum in pure electric mode. I pay my bills by doing database programming. That's a different beast from this type of embedded system, I know, but I'm not afraid to dive into a new language...assuming it's something that's possible. I live in the Valley of the Sun, so I already know cooling is going to be a problem. Worse, I have no garage, so the car is going to be outside in the heat when charging. I'm assuming chill plates will take care of the controller(s). The car doesn't currently have A/C, so I'm thinking of getting something that runs purely electrically, and making it oversized, and running a duct to the batteries and motor (in addition to the cabin). When plugged in to the wall, I could then run the car's A/C to keep the batteries happy; when driving, the A/C could provide cooling to the batteries and electric motor both (with, of course, an increased load on the system and thus worse total efficiency). Would that kind of cooling be suitable for the motor, or will it need its own cooling system? I'm not worried about wasting electricity by running the car's A/C from the wall socket; the panels on my roof already produce a ridiculously embarrassingly generous surplus. I think that pretty much covers all my biggest questions and what I'd anticipate for the first round of questions from y'all. So...am I crazy? Thanks, b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140717/6fdc6e2e/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
