Electric vehicles-Conversions

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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

If you dig out your old french vocabulary book you may pick something up from their website

https://transition-one.fr/

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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by Skull »

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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by mickthemaverick »

Skull wrote: 21 Oct 2019, 09:04 SUPER BATTERY
That does look impressive - if it's true!! :?: :?: :?
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by Mandrake »

Skull wrote: 21 Oct 2019, 09:04 SUPER BATTERY
Large on hyperbole and short on facts! And sourced from the daily mail... :lol:

I haven't heard anything about this supposed breakthrough through the more reputable sources I follow on battery developments so I think it's safe to say this is bunk, and even some of the commentators on the daily mail article think so.

Metal air cells are not new, however they have some major drawbacks which have not been solved yet, and the toxicity of the electrolyte is not one of them.

I would also take slight issue with this comment in the article:
Aluminium, on the other hand, is the planet's most abundant metal. Many of the factories that refine it from ore or recycled junk are powered by green, renewable energy, such as hydro-electric dams.
Aluminium the element is very rare if not non-existent in nature, Aluminium is found in oxide forms like Bauxite, and it takes a LOT of electrical energy to process it into elemental Aluminium metal. So much so that aluminium smelters consume a large double digit percentage of the total electricity supply in some countries!

While a few aluminium smelters in the world may be powered by green electricity that's certainly not the case in the UK with our predominately gas fired electrical grid. So I'm not sure that the numbers back up the idea of championing aluminium electrodes as the green savior to get rid of Lithium and Cobalt.
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Well if affording a Tesla is out of reach, you could do what this Simone Giertz from Sweden did.

Buy one with a few others, and then.....

turn it into a Pick-up



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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by bobins »

Re: The Super Battery.
Is there actually a limit to what is considered safe and reasonable regarding EV battery capacity, or is it a case of - the ideal Ah is n+1 and it's only physical size that presently contains the battery capacity ?
Presumably the various motoring bodies wouldn't be too happy if everyone was tootling around with 30-odd gallons of petrol in their tanks* as it's just a risk too far (collision - explosion - etc), do the same considerations come in to play with EV batteries or is it just a case that 'that could never happen to an EV battery......' ?

* - I realise there's not a huge deal to be gained from having a 30 gallon tank :wink:
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by andy5 »

mickthemaverick wrote: 21 Oct 2019, 09:16
Skull wrote: 21 Oct 2019, 09:04 SUPER BATTERY
That does look impressive - if it's true!! :?: :?: :?
I wonder whether Neil Woodford would be interested in investing in this project.
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by white exec »

On battery capacity (for cars), I guess once you've reached around 500-600 miles (pretty much what you could drive in a day) and a re-charge time of something less than 3-5 minutes, there isn't much point in wanting too much more.

If battery technology does improve dramatically, the benefits could be reduced weight and space taken up.
"Plug in a fresh Lithium Crystal, Scotty..." :idea1:
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by mickthemaverick »

Sorry Chris, the lithium crystal was beaten every time by the Eye of Harmony for me, that has got to be the way to go :?: :-D
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by white exec »

Bugger! :gt:
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

I thought the USS Enterprise use Dilithium crystals to power the Warp Core (and, therefore, the Warp Drive).
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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by Mandrake »

white exec wrote: 22 Oct 2019, 08:46 On battery capacity (for cars), I guess once you've reached around 500-600 miles (pretty much what you could drive in a day) and a re-charge time of something less than 3-5 minutes, there isn't much point in wanting too much more.
Good luck with that one Chris.... :rofl2:

Let's calculate that.... 600 miles from an average of 4 miles / kWh would require a 150kWh battery. Charging a 150kWh battery in 5 minutes (assuming you could charge at the full rate for the entire time, which you definitely could not, charge rate always tapers past about 80% and at those power levels would be thermally constrained too) would require 150 * (60 / 5) = 1800 kW or 1.8 Megawatts - more power than the Tesla Semi-truck will charge at with its monster 1MWh battery.... :rofl2:

Totally, utterly infeasible and impossible for so many technical and practical reasons. You couldn't even lift the cable required to carry that much power in a single cable. (Tesla semi is probably going to use 4 or 8 separate cables for it's 1.2MW charging ! Fine for a large commercial truck, no good for a passenger car)

Maximum charging speeds we're likely to see on EV's for the foreseeable future are 150kW on cars using a 400 volt battery and 350kW on cars using an 800 volt battery - which will likely be limited to sports cars like the Porche Taycan which at the moment is the only 800 volt EV on the market.

Both the 150kW and 350kW CCS charging standards already exist and have some deployment in the real world but there are next to no cars that come close to utilising their full potential - the Taycan can fully utilise the 350kW charger, the Tesla Model 3 can get about 125kW out of the 150kW chargers, but most EV's are limited to either 50, 70 or 100kW at the moment, and there's only 2 or 3 that can do 100kW.

This is a good example of how trying to emulate diesel/petrol fuelling simply doesn't make sense, and people holding out for ridiculous numbers are going to be disappointed. Do you really need to add 600 miles of range in 3-5 minutes ? Of course not. Lets back up a bit to some more reasonable numbers and see how it works out.

Lets cut the range to 300 miles - you can achieve that with a 75kWh battery, and that's exactly what the long range Tesla Model 3 has - 75kWh and about 310 miles range.

If you could fully utilise a 150kW charger (the Model 3 is a 400 volt system so can't use a 350kW charger) you could fully charge it (ignoring taper) in 30 minutes. In practice you would not try to charge past about 90% as the last few percent takes a long time and your total journey time is always quicker on a long journey if you stop at 80-90% and move on even if it means an additional stop over a multi-stop journey.

So realistically you might charge to 90% in 27 minutes and get 280 miles range from it. Is that good enough for 99% of people ? Unless you're a complete road warrior then yes! I think it is.

Even if you can average 60mph over a 280 mile journey (which is nearly impossible, if you're going between motorways and cities and back) that's over 4 1/2 hours driving between stops. I don't know about anyone else but I don't even want to drive 4 1/2 hours between stops, period. And that was before I had a kid to worry about and keep amused in the car... :lol:

Provided you can synchronise a food/toilet/kids stretching their legs stop with a good, fast, available charging location the charging is not an inconvenience as you would have needed to stop anyway. Who knows, maybe a few charging enforced rest breaks on long journey's will reduce the accident rate related to driving when overtired!

The analogy I keep coming back to is that dumb mobile phones could last a week between charges but didn't do much. Smartphones came out and can only last 1-2 days between charges but do 10x as much, and there is no improvement in sight for battery life. However do you REALLY need the ability to go for a whole week or more between plugging your phone in to charge ? Not really. And would you give up the functionality of a smartphone just to get a weeks battery life ? In my case, no...absolutely not.

EV's are a little bit similar in that yes, charging on a long journey is not as convenient as filling a petrol/diesel tank, and it never will be however there are other benefits that counterbalance it, including not ever having to go for petrol/diesel when you are driving locally and can charge at home, (my fuelling time is about 20 seconds a day because that's the time it takes me to plug in at night and unplug in the morning) a quieter, smoother, more torquey engine, lower maintenance and potential for less to go wrong etc...

When I had to replace the exhaust on my Xantia recently and was struggling away under the car in the cold cramped conditions it only served to bring home to me how much I hate exhaust work and how glad I am EV's don't have exhaust systems!! :lol:

There are certainly a number of things I will NOT miss about maintaining an ICE when that day comes, and exhausts is one of them...
Simon

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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Volkswagen electrifies classic Type 2 with e-Golf powertrain
Modified classic van offers 125 miles of range from electric hatchback's battery and 134bhp motor


Plenty examples of electric conversions of the VW microbus/camper on you tube and elsewhere, but this is a bit different in that Volkswagen America have been involved along with EV-West from California, with the aim of showcasing conversions based on their e-Golf powertrain.

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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Easy......3 minutes to Convert a Volkswagen T3. :-D



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Re: Electric cars-Conversions

Post by white exec »

\:D/
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