>A Little Local Coverage…

>

EVTV is distributed on the Internet of course, using Amazon’s Cloudnet service. We now have regular viewers in 115 countries and about 45 percent of our viewers are outside of the United States and Canada.

Even here in the United States, the vast majority of our viewers are of course where the vast majority of people are, California, Texas, Florida, New York etc.

Missouri is quite centrally located, but hardly one of the “blue” states. The climate or environment is mostly a matter of curiosity over the weather during deer season. It’s actually a great place to live – the Heartland. But electric cars are not really all over the place here. A few golf carts and indeed a couple of GEM’s on the road here. But it’s not Yorba Linda as Rush would say. Actually, this IS where Rush is from.

So we have the odd, but often pleasant reality of a very international, even global reach. But hardly anyone here locally in Cape Girardeau even knows what we do or why we do that.

I left Cape at 18 years of age to see the world and seek my fortune. Things went well, and about 10 years ago I returned. I have many friends here from my early days, and it does indeed engender a sense of belonging, and history, and indeed to a degree tradition.

Of course there were a lot of people moved in here during the 28 years I was gone. And it’s true I may have changed some over those 28 years.

But I’ve been back some time now. But I’m a bit of an oddity to most of the locals that didn’t know me before I left. And the general rule is that I’m a lot more fun to talk ABOUT than I am to talk TO. I hang out in my garage, make my own whiskey, shoot golf balls into the river. I’ve mostly eschewed formal dress. I have no visible means of support. All in all an odd character.

And so I’m kind of the weird old guy that lives down in an older poorer section of town under the bridge, talks to himself a lot and is always tinkering with “radio waves” and what not.

But Jeff Cunningham, a local television anchor and feature story writer for our local KFVS television station kind of took an interest in what we were doing a year or so ago with the electric Porsche replicas and did a short spot on us in his FULL THROTTLE THURSDAY segment where he talks about cars. It’s a popular local segment.

A couple of weeks ago he came down to see what we were up to so we showed him the shop and let him drive the Mini. He’s a “car guy” and likes cars generally and has had some success with an occasionally irregular feature he calls “Full Throttle Thursday.”

He did a pretty lengthy story on us for the local news station – over four minutes – and I thought it quite good. In the past, local television news reporting on electric cars has been pretty garbled. But it appears to be getting better. He fully understood and artfully conveyed about all that could be conveyed in a spot this length. I was quite pleased with the story. http://media2.ev-tv.me/kfvs5.mov.

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http://EVTV.me

>Buyer Beware

>Not much going on this week. We’ve been suffering component and supplier setbacks and it is a reminder of the environment we are unfortunately in.

The James Morrison EVCompnents case is devolving into a legal morass that has gone on for a year now. Forty three customers were bilked outright of their money – checks cashed but nothing shipped in a kind of bizarre bankruptcy fraud exit model designed by Mr. Morrison. In a world where Marthaa Stewart can do six months without being charged with a CRIME other than lying to the government (technically a Constitutional obligation actually) no one in Washington State has ANY interest in this case, including the judge in a filed lawsuit who has just continued the case for another couple of months.

But we’re having it here left and right. Our PAIR of 400 watt DC-DC converters from Chennic, which they market as an 800 watt converter, made it about a week and failed. We have piles of failed components, and often the reason they are failed is mostly Jack Rickard. So we submit very few warranty claims. In this case, they had only operated for aweek. It’s true we were operating at the top of their range voltage wise, but we WERE within the published specs, and they published them, we did not. They seem to agree, but want us to pay shipping for the replacements, which is actually more expensive than the devices in this case. You already know the details of DHL’s comical 12 day express delivery. DHL informs us the refund must be applied for from the shipper. They have decided it’s too much trouble and have declined to refund our delivery on the ORIGINAL DC-DC converter.

It just comes down to people selling things, and when they go wrong, they just don’t want to do what they said they would do BEFORE you bought and paid for it, after it’s actually happened,

What’s amazing is they just don’t even blink about it. The excuses are not even creative. It’s just they don’t want to do the expense and what are you going to do about it? It has become a WAY of business.

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We contracted with Jim Husted for two controllers and two 9-inch motors at $14,000. We changed our minds and at George Hamstra’s anxious urging, given the visibility of this project, asked to change this to 11 inch motors. WE supplied both motors at our cost. Revised pricing: $14,000. ?????

Oh well, Jim’s an artiste, and kind of a starving one at that. We had kind of fumbled around on what transmission and of course changed horses, so to speak, mid stream. He HAD had a shaft made, but not much beyond that at the time. So whatever.

But the six weeks became six months, not a near miss. And last week we were assured it was going on the truck the next day, and of course please send a check. We noted we would send a check when Fedex had the item and we had a tracking number. Whoops, did we say TOMORROW. Oh, we don’t have any brushes for it. So much for Jim’s vaunted testing. He had never run the motor. Had no brushes for it, and apparently had no intention to ship it.

Finally this week they were shipping it. The freight? $1750 or thereabouts. Seems like a lot as we shipped motors and transmissions and so forth for $600 or so before. But the final result IS heavy and comes in a box five feet long. But he was REALLY REALLY going to ship it now and to prove it, he sent me the bill of lading and copy of the check to fedex – $1350 or thereabouts – forgetting that he had just invoiced me $1750 for freight.

Busted. Instead of an apology, I heard a litany of all he had to go through to build this motor, the weather being bad, losing his cat, problems with the wife, and all he’s striven to DO for this community over the years. Nothing, not even an apology, over the $400 disparity But he DID want me to know it would be ok if I also split the cost of the brushes – which somehow, someway, in his mind, never was included in the $14,000 estimate, for two motors he didn’t provide – WE did.

The ability of the human mind to rationalize all arguments in favor of their own pocketbooks is just without limit.

We also heard from Dennis at Crystalite. No the motor is not ready, and that 3-6 month estimate was perhaps optimistic. He assured me that companies do that in the United States MILLIONS of times per year. Oh, and rather than cover the cost of the controller, his boss had decided that they were spending enough on the motors, and whatever we discussed in the beginning, they had “decided” that I should pay for the controlller.

One of the things we discussed early on was the controller. At one point I actually cancelled the entire concept because they wanted to use a Kelley controller. Now we have used Kelly controllers and throttle pedals and a few other things in the past. I would not say successfully. The controller on the original speedster more or less worked, but it did have heat issues. And we had a couple of the throttles fail outright – again Kelley simply ignored their own warranty and explained they weren’t going to do that because they didn’t know how the throttle was used.

But we’ve also had a number of reports from viewers who had worse experiences with Kelley than ours. And while some of them were clearly operator error (turning on the maintenance switch with the ignition on is one way to blow any controllers input caps) there were enough of them we had decided to avoid their products generally.

So Cyrstalite was going to do their own controller or had another one in mind and wanted us to do this wheel motor thing. I was absolutely clear there would BE no Kelley in the car. They agreed. Six months later, all that has fallen through and they just HAVE to use the Kelly controller. Oh, and I have to pay for it.

We have put off a project I already had some $20,000 in, specifically to accommodate THEIR insistence that we should do it with wheel motors that were not only unproven, but had never ever been built or attempted by them. A six month delay, and THEN they want to change the game in all respects. And they’re “shocked” that I dont’ want to play anymore. I’m very happy to have not funded the motor part of this fiasco.

I have no idea what we’re to do or when with the Smart ForTwo. Mercedes Benz has since replaced Penske group, which sold all of 5200 Smarts in the U.S. last year. Mercedes Dealers are going to represent Smart and the hopes for the vehicle are actually pinned on their Smart Electric. This is actually a great move and a great car. The Smart is a fascinating vehicle with the absolute worst internal combustion engine and transmission I’ve ever seen and examined in person. By replacing it with electric drive, it becomes a great car almost by accident. It doesn’t belong on a freeway at all. But for city driving and parking it is actually a design example.

So six months later, the electric Smart ForTwo project almost doesn’t even make sense. The manufacturer is going to do what we were doing, and indeed is actually delivering cars before we got started. Thanks Crystalite.

EV’s have actually developed into a bit of a hot topic over the past two years. And everyone wants a piece of the action. That makes us, and you, a target. And not everyone is in it for the love of the game. All emerging industries attract a share of opportunists and fast buck artists. And the business ethic of even established firms has just eroded over time and economic pressure where it’s basically ok to do whatever you want to do in dealing with customers.

Its not ok. And ironically, I’ve never heard of one actually succeeding. The irony is that bottom feeders never do leave the bottom. With NO success stories to point to, it always mystifies me why the concept attracts so MANY players. But here’s the real deal. You cannot grow a business to success on the “there’s a sucker born every minute”
school of business.

This is not so Jesus will love you. Veteran entreprenuers viscerally know that the realistic margins that can be achieved on the value add of any product, never quite covers the cost of new business. What this means is that to succeed and grow, ALL businesses, and there just arent’ any exceptions, have to have a flow of cash from residual returning customers. In fact, this is so ingrained that a signficant and indeed usually central element of valuing any business is a concept called “good will”. This is an accounting attempt to value the “momentum” of a business based on a loyal customer base who return time after time for new purchases without the high costs of advertising, marketing, etc. They already have your number. And they need another one. Their friend needs one too. After awhile, they really need to keep a couple on the shelves.

This is true of ALL businesses and often MORE true of those you wouldnt’ think so. Running a hotdog stand is just selling hotdogs to random passersby. Anyone who has ever run one though can tell you that it doesn’t work at all unless you are at the SAME place at the SAME time for your regular customers whom you quickly get to know and have something to say to or ask about EVERY time they show. The new business is almost a distraction. You need it, but it isn’t where your bread comes from.

EVTV is a good, though counterintuitive example. You would naturally assume that our mission is to get more viewers. Actually not. Our mission is to make about 6 billion viewers go away. Leaving us with a handful that are intensely interested in electric cars. Not people who think electric cars are cool. People who think about electric cars all the time. That’s a market. Every time someone watches one of our videos I’m out a quarter. If they watch once and go away, I’m not out that much. If they stay, they must like two hour videos about ultracpacitors and DC-DC converters and how to implement J1772 for $300 dollars instead of $5000. Since most of the six billion don’t know J1772 from Jay Leno, they have to be “fired” as customers.

As to advertisers, we are having a hard time getting industry players onboard, and actually attracting bizarre requests for general ads. We can’t advertise weight loss on EVTV no matter how heavy you guys really are. Why? We can’t do them sufficient value add to make them “stick” as an advertiser. We would have to have a constant flow of new ones. There’s no business there. We have to find products and companies that will actually benefit getting the message to THIS group of viewers. Otherwise, we are selling too hard all the time and the cost of hte new business will ALWAYS swamp the value we can add…

Unless.. .. we MIGHT be able to pad the freight a little…..

Oh, the show. An introduction to capacitors and we build an Ultracap aux battery to smooth the 12v system. We got the motor temperature switch hooked up to the Soliton1.

OH and the best part, not really stressed in the video because we hadn’t really tested it at the time…. We now have a FULL SWEEP fuel gage, this is a beautiful little lit fuel gage whose needle goes from about 5 clock position to about 7 clock position the long way around, tied to the Zeva2 AH counter. We can easily compare this with our EVision AH counter. It appears to be QUITE accurate, quite visual, and very familiar to those who have driven a car before. It is a little counterintuitive and non obvious as to how to set this up, but if you pursue it persistently, it works MARVELOUSLY. I know it seems ordinary. BUt it is a breakthrough to me.

Finally, we give you a peak at our new showroom. We now have three porsches, two gems, a Green minivan, and a 2009 Mini Cooper in electric drive. And we’re starting our Cadillac Escalade project. Both for reasons of cost, and as importantly for reasons of space, we just can’t keep acquiring electric cars indefinitely So we’re going to open a show room, kind of phyiscally modelled after Special Editions’s new show room we saw in Bremen Indiana. And we’re going to backdoor out our completed works to make room and funding for new ones. So I guess, in an odd way, we ARE in the electric car business. Since you all are builders, you probably wont’ find it of much interest regarding a car purchase, but you might like to stop by and try our NINCO FOUR LANE slot car track. We have two Speedsters, a Spyder, and two minis on it at the moment.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>On The Road Again….

>Well, we kinda/sorta have the Speedster Redux back on the road again. We’re a little ginger with the new motor/controller combination with the brush seating issue. But even at a 2000A/sec slew rate we got a 10 second 0-60 time. Hardly anything to brag about I’m afraid. I think we can improve it, but the much touted performance hoped for is probably not to be.

I’d guess because we’ve become a tad bit obese – probably a little blood pressure issue as well. I don’t know if that’s me or the car.

In any event, we are a portly 2385 lbs with the additional 21 cells in the car. Our front/rear distribution has moved a tad to 38/62 from 40/60 in Speedster Part Duh.

The heavier weight makes it a smooth ride and the center of gravity is sufficiently lower you can indeed feel it. The electric speedster never did “roll” in a turn nearly to the degree of the ICE version, but now it just doesn’t lean at all.

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The Chennic chargers we’ve used very successfully at lower voltages in the past didn’t last the week. They just crumbled in front of us with an audible and alarming snap crackle pop sound eminating from the rear engine compartment for 15 minutes. No smoke or fire. But no 12v either.

We’ve replaced the Chennic with a homebrew – three Vicor bricks obtained on eBay. Tom Alvary has pointed out that these come from Troy Gaud who in fact works for Azure Dynamics. The legend goes that they ordered a brazillion of these from Vicor for an Azure Dynamics DC-DC converter and are remaindering hundreds of them on eBay at $24.95 each. Such a brick direct from Vicor would be about $172.

The VI-251 series is supposed to be a 150v input 12v output module. It should handle 85 to 215 volts. But according to Tom, these are ‘special” made for Azure and indeed they are marked for 200v input. He tells me that he has it on authority that they are good from 130v to about 250v. They put out 200 watts each.

So we cobbled three of them together on a heat sink for a steady 12v output. Unfortunately, with the headlights on we’re doing about 11.4 volts and the EVnetics Soliton1 errors out and shuts down. Jeffrey Jenkins notes 11v is the trip point in actuality and indeed, our HID headlamps might kick it down that low when coming on. So we had a problem.

Fortunately, the Vicor bricks can be trimmed for different output voltages – all the way DOWN to about 2.5 v but up as well to about 13.2v maximum. We put a 470K resistor between the T terminal (trim) and S+ terminal (sense positive) on each of the three bricks. The result is 600 watts right at 13 volts.

We are further advised that anything we can do to stabilize that 12v rail would be a great boon to the Soliton1 and indeed some concern of DESTROYING the Soliton1 on noisy 12v spikes. I rather think that should be EVnetics problem, and point out that the automotive spec indeed is to operate down to 9.6v. But it gives me a good jumping off place next week to start talking about capacitors and ultracapacitors.

I’ve put this off for some time. And I’d like to put it off further. I fear my views on supercaps are going to seriously disappoint many of our viewers. And it appears its kind of like the regenerative braking thing. I’ve got Siemens and Maxwell and several universities all publishing reports of 30% gains in efficiency. Iv’e been playing around with it a bit, and I guess at this point I think it is ENTIRELY BULLSHIT. And i mean ENTIRELY. No such gains. And they leave clues in every report – mostly noting that even HIGHER gains can be obtained with regenerative braking and with the “proper algorithm” to predict regen periods and driving cycles.

We seem to paint ourselves into these corners with great regularity. I read all the typing I can. Get all excited. But if I can’t make the meter move, I can’t make the meter move. And all the kings horses, and all the kings men, cannot show me HOW to make the meter move, except to suggest longer and longer strings of tasks I can endure that somehow with JUST ONE MORE THING will get it there.

So I take on the dragon. And for months get screamed at by everyone who’s ever been in an online forum and just KNOWS how it is and how its supposed to be and cannot imagine WHY Siemens or Maxwell or whomever, with ALL their brilliant and educated engineers who ALL eat right and exercise regularlly and are much trimmer than me and have LOWER blood pressure to boot – people who clearly are NOT little and ugly and whose wife dresses them funny.

And I don’t know, my knees hurt and my elbows hurt and I just don’t know if I want to charge in on another fairy tale deflating confrontation with the entire population of the planet. So I’ve put this off and put it off. Maybe I can put it off some more.

But ultracaps DO make marvelous filters. And I think we have an astounding insensitivity to just how much electronic noise these cars make and how that impacts everything in the car. Worse, it is very difficult to deal with in that it goes to longevity – ie DC-DC converters for example. But also controllers and batteries in general. And so it’s hard to make a case for something that preserves the life of your components for 20 years when the car is two weeks old. How do I explain it and worse, how can I prove it and finally, how can I show THAT on video. We struggle to communicate the BMS issue with CARS bursting into FLAMES all around us.

So its not a topic I really relish.

We do hear from a lot of viewers about the Lee Hart Batt Bridge concept. It’s easier. I still kind of hosed up the explanation on the video, but close enough for government work. The issue here is we don’t use them. Actually we do. We just don’t do it that way.

Speedster Redux has an old version of Victor Tichonov’s EVision and it performs the batt-bridge function quite well actually – displaying an LED bar graph that comparies one half of the pack to the other. I myself am going a different way with a Roving Networks sensor and some Objective C software on a Macintosh that will give me the same dislpay.

But neither of those are really available. And the Lee Hart Batt-Bridge is both easy to implement, and costs about a dozen dollars. It accomplishes most of what the BMS crowd is trying to save us from – sudden infant cell syndrome where a cell mysteriously fails of its own volition. We haven’t had much of that, so we’re not quite as tuned into the need as they would like us to be. But the concept has bare merit. And for $12 you could implement this and it would probably work to accomplish that.

In any event, I’ve had so many requests for a detailed explanation that I finally did one. The original writeup and diagram has always been online and really covers it as well as it needs to be covered.

During our ride, we went out to the airport and happened to catch my daughter Jennifer in the act of committing aviation in our little MD-500C helicopter. This was another one of my little obsessions where I spent a million dollars on a $300,000 helicopter to wind up in the end with a very solid little $300,000 helicopter.

Probably spent that on the daughter as well. IN any event, after a VERY rough adolescence, she has emerged as a remarkable young lady on the Dean’s List here at Southeast University, majoring in anthropology and she’s been taking helicopter and scuba diving lessons. She likes the field work and presumes to displace Indiana Jones in the search for the Holy Grail and so needs to learn to scuba dive, fly helicopters and the rest of the James Bond repertoire to adequately compete. I’m actually very proud of her and might advise Harrison Ford to keep his grungy little deHavilland DHC-2 Beaver out of harms way if he knows what’s good for him. She’s already got a pretty heady reputation locally for bar brawling and sport fighting – but I’m hoping Southeast University can put a little polish on that. I do digress. My own fault. She really WAS cute at the Tai Kwon Do gig at age four. I just had no idea it would take….

Enjoy the show. 105 minutes as I recall…

I understand that the Jimerico dual 11 motor ships this morning… Hopefully we’ll have it in hand by the end of the week.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>This is the longest show we’ve done to date at about 2.5 hours. Kind of beyond “feature length movie” all the way to “made for tv mini series.” I fear it may be an endurance test.

But we did some neat things. We did describe in at least vague terms the theory of operation of a DC series motor and what a PWM controller is actually supposed to do. These little chalk talk sessions are risky. Too little detail and I get clobbered by every designer on the planet on all the stuff I’ve left out, including the part they consider MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL. Too much detail and I just walk away from those without the basic electronics and electricity fundamentals. Actually those are the viewers we’re doing it for. The designers already know how it works.

So it’s kind of a no-win for everybody. But I do read my e-mail and respond to what I can. And a basic undestanding of a series DC motor is in order and a basic understanding of a PWM controller and why that’s what is almost always used is useful for some viewers. It kind of sets up the background of what we’re looking for in a GOOD PWM controller and what is not so terribly important.

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And that sets us up for the review of the Soliton1. There are no perfect controllers and I can spend the next hundred blog pages and a career in online video listing all the things I wish this controller did. Excitement about additional features that just need a LITTLE MORE to be perfect is a sign you have a good product.

If everyone dogpiles you with ways to fix what you’re doing, you must be doing something right to get their attention. If you do something and nobody complains, then it probably wasn’t worth doing at all. I suppose the same could be said of videos.

But watch the video. We basically howl in glee over the Soliton 1. It’s a great package and I can say that without reservation. Since the video was made, we’ve done some further testing, and found a few peculiarities. But we’ve also demonstrated 1000AMPS for real out of this thing. Measured by the Zeva and displayed in real time on a new 10K tachometer I had to get just to show 1000 amps where I could see it for sure.

Bottom line is the physical package of this Soliton1 ought to get a design award somewhere. Sure it’s big. It has to heat sink a 1000 amp switch 8000 times a second.

The configuration software is what configuration software OUGHT TO BE universally. It’s very easy to configure and you can do it with any computer really, LInux, Mac Windows. It’s very intuitive and for what it accomplishes, really quite simple. Late in the video, I even found provisions for updating the software via a text file upload through the browser interface. I really COULD have used a Mac laptop to upload the update.

Wiring it in was probably the easiest hardware install we’ve had of ANY controller. I just detest the crimp pin connectors we always have to deal with on these things. Do the terminal strips look a little old school? Sure. They’re also legible, readable, and large enough even for my eyes. And you can make sure you have a good connection.

In operation, we have some questions. A mysterious but effective limp mode has appeared when we were trying to use a motor temp switch input. The device is CURIOUSLY sensitive to 12v. 11.6 volts just doesn’t cut it and it throws errors if your DC-DC isn’t up to Soliton’s expectations. The RPM cutout is a little touchy. But these are minor. In operation it will really draw 1000 amperes of current from the batteries and apply some portion of that at least to the motor. It will do this at 188 volts, and we’re told at up to a little over 300 volts. And the “control” is really quite smooth with regards to low speed control and you can easily configure the pedal, the power curve resulting from pedal input, and the build rate (slew rate) of the application of power.

Today, we did some 0-60 tests and got 10.0 seconds flat with a kind of portly 2385 pounds of vehicle, plus 450 pounds of people. So we were over 2900 pounds. That’s at a slew rate of 2000 amps per second.

As our brushes seat and we gain confidence in this setup, we’ll gradually increase that slew rate. The max is 25000 amps per second which would get us from 0 to 1000 amps in about 40 milliseconds. I’m going to guess we get a pretty nice 0-60 at something shy of that. As I said, we’re currently spending a leisurely 500 ms to build to 1000 amps.

Our ambient temperatures are sub freezing right now. The Soliton and the motor hardly get to body temperature. The pump doesn’t even come on – with a 40C snap switch on the pump ground.

So on packaging, configuration, installation, and operation this Soliton1 looks like a winner all around. They are regularly updaing the software. In fact, if you watch closely on the video we “update” to version 1.2. Actually we’ve already updated again to the January 9 1.3 release. So minor input/output questions etc. are easily dealt with in the normal cycle of things. We’ll be unlikely to come up with much they are not already hearing from their growing user base.

We’ll have a bit of a drive, and hopefully a much SHORTER show next week wrapping Redux up. We’ll talk about a few things and update you as they get worked off, but we’re pretty much done with the Speedster Redux rebuild. We added 21 cells and 350 lbs but we should be able to do 150 miles in this thing now.

We’re planning on taking both Speedsters and the Spyder to the Carlisle Kit Car and Import show in May in Carlisle Pennsylvania.

We learned a bit about the Soliton1 on this build, and it is with much relief and joy I must say. Because what is coming next will be the most daunting build we’ve ever considered and it must needs be doomed to failure on so many fronts I get weak in the knees.

And that is the 2008 Cadillac Escalade EXT. This will use DUAL Netgain Warp 11’s and DUAL Soliton1 controllers.

Voila! First pictures of the completed Jim Husted (Jimerico) dual Netgain 11 assembly. He’s painted them gloss black with polished metal accents to match our vehicle. He asked us a number of times for what “EVTV” logo we wanted on them. I asked him to just “sign” the motors with his signature instead.

The idea has apparently grown into a new SIgnature Series. Very well, let it be scribed on all temple walls and obelisks throughout the realm, EVTV is using the FIRST of the new Jimerico Jim Husted SIGNATURE SERIES motor, based on TWO of the Netgain Warp 11 models in our Cadillac Escalade EXT build. They look gorgeous and we’re hoping to have them next week.

If you think we have a secret plan for this vehicle, you’re reading messages from God in cloud formations. We do not.

We have an assorted collection of ideas and notions we’d like to try out on a large vehicle to see if it can be done. We want to wind up with an effective ride for 4-5 adults with some cargo space and a good all season environmental experience – full heat for winter, including heated steering wheel, seats, and heated washer fluid, AND full blown air conditioning literally blown up my skirt through the seat cushions.

We’re going to try to develop:

1. An effective blower cooling system for the motors.
2. A REALLY effective hot water heating system from available junk.
3. A heated battery box.
4. Most likely a largish sized ultra capacitor box.
5. Pretty good sized Vicor DC-DC converter.
6. An aux shaft accessory plate with our Air Conditioning compressor and a fluid pump for both power brakes and steering.

I kind of plan on buying a couple of benches just to mount the transmission, the motor, the Solitons, the cap box on to get all of it running and do a little bit of turn testing BEFORE mounting it all in the vehicle.

So this promises to be a long conversion, with a lot of interesting new things – automatic transmission, etc.

Stay with us. There’s more to come…

Jack RIckard

http://EVTV.me

>Speedster Redux and the Zeva2 Fuel Gage

>

This week we go a little bit more in-depth with Ian Hooper’s Zeva2 fuel gage driver.  I’m quite enamored of this little device which he apparently is still building by hand.  And improving.

In the latest incarnation, he’s solved the fuel gage direction problem by using a 20 turn potentiometer.  The direction is indicated by which side of pot center you are on and the discharge rate, or really capacity of the cell, is indicated by how far from center you adjust it.

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There are two other features I’m particularly excited about. First, it provides an instantaneous current indication as a series of pulses designed for a tachometer. A pair of little microswitches allows you to set your pulse count as in four cylinder, six cylinder, eight cylinder, etc. And the device automagically and with NO calibration puts out pulses to correlate 100 amps with 1000 rpm.

We set this up with a switch on the dash to switch either our normal RPM from the RECHARGECAR magnetic pickup on our motor, or this Zeva2 current output. I can switch between them at the press of a button.

I cannot express how much of a difference this makes.  Digital displays of rapidly changing current loads are just not very useful.  They update at the update rate of the display, and the result is just a dancing number, meaningless and without form.  When you put this on a BIG needle on a BIG gage, suddenly, it has all the missing rate and direction information – trend if you will.  We may only hit 1000 amps briefly.  But we’ll get to see it.

Actually, as it stands, we won’t.  We have a 6000 rpm tachometer and so our max display would be 600 amps.  I have a 10,000 rpm tach on order with Speedhut.

The fuel gage output is a rough AH count.   It uses a hall effect current device to measure current and integrates by summing instantaneous current outputs over time.  I’ve read endlessly how inaccurate and “drifty” this is.  Methinks they are letting the perfect delay and obscure the good.   Comparing hall effect output at different temperatures to the more conventional current shunt meters such as the TBS ExpertPro, I’ve found them within fractions of an AH after 100 amphours in and out.  Yes, it differs.  Yes, they drift.    But we’re not building a piano here.  PLus and minus an amp hour would be plenty.

But charge and recharge errors can be cummulative over time.  We don’t want to “get lost” on our pack SOC.  The answer is of course to reset the counter at the end of a charge cycle.  It would be nice if this were done automatically, but it is easy enough to do.

Unfortunately, the Zeva2 is a little crude in this respect.  You simply remove 12v power from the device and it resets. Also unfortunate, if you hit your maintenance switch to do some maintenannce, it also resets the device and you lose your AH count.

The solution was the addition of three components:  A LiPo battery backup, a diode, and a switch.  The LiPo powers the box when it loses system 12v.  The diode keeps the little LiPo battery from trying to power the car in this event.  And the switch lets us reset the device when we want to.

The Zeva2 is also a bare PCB with the hall effect mounted directly on it.  So we need to get it out of the weather.  That requires a plastic enclosure.  Since the conductor has to pass THROUGH the hall effect device, it also requires a couple of LARGE gland nuts or nylon domed cord grips to pass the cable through the box.

Finally, the Zeva2 provides an adjustable LED warning light driver you can use to turn on an LED when SOC reaches an adjustable level.  This is a five volt pullup with a 1k resistor.  We’ll have to use a MOSFET or Darlington or some sort of thing to convert that into a 12v switch to actually do something useful, like disable our controller or switch a resistor across our throttle output to put it in limp mode.

I would prefer the LED circuit to actually provide a 3A relay.  But it is what it is.  At $179, that’s pretty good.

In this episode, we also show some progress on Speedster Redux.  Our belly pack worked out pretty well, we have it installed beneath the frame quite securely.  This aluminum structure only projects 1.75 inches down, still leaving us with 7.5 inches of clearance, and provides room for 11 cells.  That’s a 36 volt pack at 180AH for 6480 wH or an additional 28 mile range, more or less.

Matt Hauber engineered a front battery box allowing us 18 cells vice the 16 we had at that location in Speedster Part Duh.  And he built two rear battery boxes featuring 11 cells each instead of the 10 cells in each box we had in Duh.

We moved the Soliton1 to an aluminum shelf mounted to the motor and adapter plate.  This shows off the Soliton1 look very nicely.  It also made room for six more cells up on the shelf with a terminal strip and easy access to the cells and connections.  

We’re also using EVWorks braided cell straps, with our own M8 bolts and NordLock washers to strap up.  These are working out marvelously.  The straps make a very flat, very strong connection between cells and the Nord Locks have just been a find.  They really grip it – forming a very tight connection that does not seem to loosen at all over the brief period of time we have been using them.  Infinitely superior to the lockwashers we once used.

For 180AH CALB cells, the 80mm straps seem to be the most useful.  Occasionally a 70mm strap is necessary to keep from humping up.

For cabling, we’re using some yellow 2/0 from Genuindealz that is really quite good.  It’s tinned and intended for marine use.  This makes it just about all you can squeeze into a 2/0 lug, but if we DO do 1000 amps briefly, I want the metal to handle it under that insulation.  It certainly was a pleasure to deal with the 1AWG we used a lot of in the much higher voltage, much lower current Mini Cooper.  But Speedster Redux probably needs the larger, albeit stiffer cable.  It’s too bad I can’t get this tinned marine cable in the proper International Orange color.

In this week’s show, we also show my somewhat crude mounting of a J1772 inlet in the Mini Cooper.  I’ve grown to like the solid feel of the J1772 Yazaki plug.  We have it on the Texaco Fire Chief Plasma Ball Charge station now.  And we’ve added an interesting voltage/current/power meter from http://www.lightobject.com to that charge station.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>This week we welcome Anthony Bagnulo as a visitor from Ottowa Ontario. Anthony came down for 10 days to work with us and see the EV thing first hand. Apparently, we’re not showing the full metal jacket EV building experience in sufficient detail.

In this edition, we have a bit of fun with an oversized plasma ball and digress into plasma ball history and a description of plasma. This will be our indicator to indicate a live cord on the Texaco Fire Chief J1772 charge station.

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We also update Speedster Redux which is what we’re calling it now. A simple controllerectomy has gone beyond major surgery into a total rebuild. We have a lot of fun stuff going on with it and are really having a ball building this one.

Matt Hauber has just gotten to be quite good at eeking out the final millimeters from a battery box. He worked in two more cells in the front of the car, two more in the rear battery boxes. I added 11 underneath with our “belly pack” which so far has worked out surprisingly well. We have up 1.75 inches in the center of the car from a 9 inch clearance.

Additionally, we decided this week to mount the Soliton1 over the motor, and I must say, it does show off this really quite gorgeous design very well. It also freed up the shelf where we have installed SIX MORE CELLS and a terminal block along with some gland nuts for routing. The result is a very neat installation and a cell total of 57 for a nominal pack voltage of 191 and a pack capacity of 34,380 watt hours. At our previous 225 wH/mile rate, this would indicate a max range of 153 miles.

Unfortunately, we’ll be a little over 200 lbs heavier and so roughly 2400 lbs on the road. But it sure has me scratching my head what a 1600 lb version with carbon fiber and aluminum would do.

The center of gravity should be much lower and the polar moment should be somewhat reduced – both good things in Sports cars.

The power available will also be basically TRIPLED. This is almost obscene. The Mini gets up very nicely at 100kw and 3500 lbs. This 170kw estimated at 2400 lbs on Speedster Redux is just overkill – bad design to my way of thinking frankly. But Matt and Brian are talking about taking it to Monacco for the ALT FUEL races in April. I don’t know about that.

Implementing J1772 in the charge station is a bit more of a task than in the car. But I like to cheat. I’ve kind of genned up a circuit I’m toying with. It won’t make the 1khz square wave to indicate current available. But it would detect a change from +12v to +6v on the control pilot line as we implemented it in the cars. Understand this would NOT actually comply with SAEJ1772-2010. But it would allow us to hook up to the car with a safely dead line, press the manual switch at the car, and thereby energize the charger without having to walk over to the pump and flip the switch. The plasma ball should be sufficiently visible to tell us we succeeded. And this little circuit could be replaced at any time with a more robust one that actually implements the standard.

If you see any obvious errors, I’d like to know about it before I build and test it. It’s a simple comparator. If you press the switch in the car, the 12v through the 1K resistor will drop to about 6 volts from 12v. That will trigger a transistor to turn on a small relay that in turn energizes the two contactors that apply both phases to the J1772 cordset and of course one of the phases to the plasma ball. The manual switch on the side of the Texaco Sky Chief will still work as well.

We’re also working on instrumentation – even though this vehicle features the EVISION it had previously. We received our Zeva2 fuel gage driver and added a matching Speedhut fuel gage to the dash. This gage sweeps through about 300 degrees of a full circle – giving us a lot of definition. The second version of this sensor also features a tachometer output for instantaneous current.

It needs some things. It needs a battery backup so you don’t lose your AH count when you hit the maintenance switch on your pack. And it needs a reset button so you can synch it up with a full charge once in awhile to reset the cummulative errors that inevitable with this device over time. We’re going to do a segment on building a little box with all that in it next edition.

Enjoy.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>Tesla’s Dirty Little Secret

>We’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m a bit of a fan of the Tesla Model S. I’ve taken a significant position in their stock and in fact have done well enough in it that it will basically buy me a Model S. Put in my reservation this morning actually.

I recently received another version of the oft repeated request that we examine making battery modules out of itty bitty batteries after the fashion of Tesla. We typically get 100-110 wH per kilogram with our stodgy old CALB or Thundersky Prismatic cells, while Tesla enjoys 200 mile ranges and over 200 wH per kilogram with their magic sauce battery pack.

There are actually a number of reasons.

The first, is that making that number of connections flawlessly is a herculean task. And as you know, I’m suspicious of connections anway. I actually did by a spot welder and have experimented with it modestly, and we do play around with this a little. I have some K2 cells on the way and we’ll probably let Matt weld me up an equivalent battery and do some tests just for your entertainment.

The second reason is that that higher energy density requires quite a bit of cobalt in the cathode. Cobalt is expensive, it is hard to come by, and my problem with it is it is a little bit negative temperature coefficient wise. They are not thermally safe to my way of thinking, at least not in the league with LiFePo4.

Then too, they tend to have limited POWER capability. About 2C is what you can do to these cells, and so you do have to have a lot of them.

But none of that is the real reason I eschew these cells. Tesla of course uses Panasonic 18650 cells. These are little cylinders of 18 mm diameter and a length just slightly over 65 mm.

Let’s take a look at a spec sheet for Panasonic’s typical recent 18650 lithium ion cell.

Here’s the real problem – 300 cycles. LGChem version of the same cell – about the same. Actually, LGChem states >75% of minimum capacity, further fudging the factor.

The bottom line is these are 300 cycle batteries. We could reasonably expect 3000 cycles. A world of difference. Why would I pay DOUBLE the cost of the same size pack, to get 1/10th the life?

The cycle life is the central issue with these cells. It is true that they offer a serious weight and volume advantage over lead acid or NimHd cells, making an electric car viable really for the first time to my way of thinking. But of course the price difference is discouraging. More discouraging is having a reasonably operating lead sled car that in three years is uselss without a new battery pack. LiFePo4 cells pretty much are a lock to 7-10 years if you don’t murder them with a BMS. That makes the operation of the car a very different expense.

So after weight and volume, my big item is cycle life. And 300 isn’t really any better than lead. Tesla never really mentions the life expectancy of their proprietary pack.

I think I’ll like my Model S when it arrives. But I’m not going to be very happy paying Tesla for a proprietary pack every three years. That’s the dirty little secret nobody is really talking about. And the Roadsters haven’t really been out there long enough for it to come up – though there HAVE already been some under-warranty pack replacements.
It should make Tesla very profitable selling razor blades for these cars – a recurring revenue stream.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>First Show 2011

>Well, we have posted our first show of 2011 and it is pretty good, if I mention it myself. An hour and 48 minutes.

We had recently posted a couple of photos of a horrific electric vehicle fire that occurred on an Oslo Ferry, burning up the car, the car next to it, and extensively damaging the ship they were on.

It was an almost suspiciously serendipitous occurrence then that a couple on an around the world tour in an electric car, just happened to be passing through Cape Girardeau Missouri the very next week, and in an identical car from the same company. As such, we got to both examine the car in detail, and put our shop at risk by allowing them to charge there overnight and unattended. Living dangerously.

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Predictably enough, the car features a REAP Systems BMS controlling two Brusa NLG chargers. I found it odd that with sufficient chargers to be running at 20 amps, the car only charged at 9 amps. The laptop Hjalte hooked up to the BMS actually had a MARVELOUS and very informative display – if it were not for the part about burning down cars, buildings and battery packs, I think I would like this REAP Systems thing.

I found it EXTREMELY interesting that they noted that two of the cars had burned up and that the company, who could program their car remotely, had set it to this 9 amp value because of the fear of the fires. Second clue, they also noted that the company was very unhappy with this BMS and would be changing to a new system from Lithium Balance.

So it appears Soren Ecklund’s public pronouncement of an adapter cord being the cause of the fire on the Oslo Ferry was a bare faced lie to cover his embarrasment, and he KNEW FULL WELL the real cause of the fire was the REAP Systems BMS. He already has plans to replace them, and to TRY to preserve life and limb on this world tour vehicle, he’s remotely programmed it to cut the charge current in half – unnecessarily DOUBLING the charge times for this poor couple’s journey.

The irony of course is that the Brusas, well able to charge this system at over 20 amperes, would pose no fire hazard at all if they could just put them in automatic mode, which Herr Ecklund could easily do by satellite if he had a clue.

Splendidly poor behaviour by a conversion shop on all fronts and I might as well publicly decry it as a sterling example of cowardice in the face of very nearly nothing.

But the visit with this lovely couple was very uplifting and we had a great time. They joined us at the house Sunday evening for dinner of Beef Stew which my wife actually does extremely well.

We also received 50 of the CALB LiFePo4 180AH cells this week and 30 of the 100AH cells from their new CALIB facility in Pomona California. Notably, we ordered those on December 23, received them on January 6, didn’t have to do squat about shipping/import duties although of course we ultimately paid for it, and paid on American Express. Keegan Han has been a delight to work with and we can recommend this battery source quite enthusiastically. You can pay easily with recoverable funds in the event of mishap/nondelivery, we got them in two weeks, and they are direct from manufacturer.

It also provided us an opportunity to compare a brand new cell fresh from China to our existing stock of 180AH cells which we received in October 2009 – some 15 months ago. Voltage of the new cells: 3.300. ALL of them are at exactly 3.300. Voltage on the cells that have been stored for 15 months: 3.298. ALL were 3.298 or 3.297. The myth of self discharge and all you need to do to care for these cells in storage: BUSTED. If you see someone online going on about charging and equalizing and so forth to preserve these cells: note as moron and disregard all future postings.

Brain and Matt have been struggling to make my dreams of Porsche Speedster Belly/Battery/Box come true. They won. It projects a scant 1.75 inches below the existing frame of the car, is quite secure, holds 11 cells, and is essentially invisible. I had plans for the cables to and from: unnecessary. Our wiring tunnel bisects the box – an obvious fact I had mislaid mentally of course.

So we are at 171 volts and 51 cells on the Speedster rebuild. I haven’t mentioned it to Matt and Brain yet, but I have an idea about mounting the Soliton1 on top of the motor, freeing the rear shelf for another six cells, which would bring us to 192volts and a pack size of 34,560 wH. We would undoubtedly have a shot at a 150 mile drive on a single charge.

AND about 175kw of power to the motor, including sag, for 234 HP to the wheels. This is OVER THREE TIMES the power we recorded on the dynomometer in this car previously. It provided exhilarating acceleration and top speed then, so I’m not sure what the point is. Perhaps will take on Tesla at Monte Carlo in April????

We also mounted a J1772 connector in the car, our two rear battery boxes holding 11 cells each, and are just generally making famous progress on this rebuild. It will be grossly overpowered and a bit overweight to my tastes, but with a very different level of range for bragging rights.
Really more of a can we instead of a should we, I do fear.

We’ve also started a new Texaco Fire Chief charging station for the 601 Morgan Oak facility, with J1772-2010 plug in this case. We’re going to have a couple of Kilovac contactors for the phases, a 12v power supply to control them, a NEMA 14-50 in addition, a power meter, etc. It should be good for giggles – a better thought when drinking heavily of course.

But that’s what we like to do – get liquored up, play with high voltage, and then drive our cars. Not PC, but whatever.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>Looking for an Interesting Visit

>We’ve been in contact with a somewhat interesting pair who are on a worldwide tour in an electric car.

Hjalte Tin and Nina Rasmussen left Compenhagen on June 25 on a 41,000 mile trek in a Nissan QashQuai converted to electric drive by AFUTURE Electric Vehicles They are driving around the planet on a year long odyssey and plugging in where they might.

This morning, they are at a campground in Poplar Bluff and advise us they could use a charge and a place to stay. So we expect them this afternoon and we’ll have them join us for dinner.

The AFUTURE Nissan Qashqai is an SUV converted to elecric with a range of up to 250 km. Recall that this was the car that burned up the ferry in Norway. I hope it doesn’t do in our shop. BMS all over the place driving two helpless Brusa chargers. It will be interesting to have a look at the configuration.

The couple is detailing their tour on a web site called MotoMundo

They are on their way from Dallas to St. Louis and someone from our own Gateway EV has arranged for their charging there. Then on to Detroit in time for the Detroit Auto show.

I rather gather that AFUTURE is funding all this to demonstrate their cars. They seem to be trying to raise as much media and press attention as possible and doing a fair job of it. I would as soon paddle a canoe around the world but it is interesting that they are doing it I suppose.

In any event, we look forward to an interesting visit. We’ll let you know what we find. Maybe we can shoot a segment or something for next weeks’ show.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me

>J1772-2009 Charging for Your EV

>

This is our last show. Actually our last show for 2010. We’ll meet this weekend to decide what to do about 2011.

In this episode we continue the fascinating work of building battery boxes for the Speedster. While not an exciting topic, in converting almost any car to electric drive, most new builders are surprised to learn that making the car run on battery power is almost trivial. But 50% of the work centers on placing batteries and building structures to hold them.

The other 50%? Almost entirely environmental. Heat. Cooling. Lighting.

Mounting a controller and motor and getting it to run – you can nearly enough phone it in.

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So to avoid making this episode a total yawnfest, we’ve decided to tackle a probably useful element we promised almost a year ago when we did our episode on the new J1772-2009 standard/plugs/connectors. That is, how to wire your car to actually do J1772 charging.

With the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf finally shipping….er…. more or less shipping….we think you’ll finally begin to see some J1772 charging stations begin to appear.

We build our cars to charge quite automatically from either 120VAC single phase or 240vac two phase power. And we almost always use a NEMA 5-15 recessed male connector on the car so that we can universally connect the car anywhere and to virtually any ordinary household extension cable – albeit you do generally want to use a heavy one.

This is mildly illegal in most respects. First, NEMA5-15 is entirely meant for 120vac operation at 15 amperes or less. In practice, we charge the Speedsters at about 25 amperes and 240vac. We simply make up a cord or “adapter” with a NEMA L6-30 or NEMA 14-50 connector on one end, and the usual NEMA 5-15 female on the other.

This is not good frankly. But it is very convenient. If you go to gramma’s house, you can still plug in and get a toke on her good juice, even though there’s no charge station there. We buy the best cables and connectors we can find, and while they get warm, so far no incidents.

But it isn’t really kosher. And soon it will even be a disadvantage. As J1772 charge stations start to appear, at the least in the garages of friends with Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volts, and potentially public charge stations as well, we would be left out of the party.

For a “standard” I am perplexed by how “closed” all this is. The greed is palpable as the charge station vendors strive to “protect” their ground so they get prices as high as $5000 for what is little more than an AC receptacle. The “standard” does provide some safety features to keep the cord dead until it is connected (which I put in our Texaco Fire Chief charge station nearly two years ago). And the plug and connector ARE kind of quality. But it is amazing how difficult it is to find the basic connector hardware – nearly a year after adoption.

Indeed, SAE itself has been piggishly greedy – you can’t find an SAE J1772-2009 PDF online anywhere. They are “selling it” on their web site with digital rights management and dire warnings about copyright infringement. Copyright infringement on a public standards body? This is just inexcusable.

In any event, there IS a conspiracy to control these charging stations and maintain high profit margins on the charge stations. The connectors are a couple of hundred dollars each depending on how long and what kind of cable. None of it warrants $5000 or even $2500, I don’t care how many approvals it carries. And the whole concept of having a licensed electrician and permit to install it is laughable. Some of them actually just plug into an existing NEMA receptacle just as we do with our cords. In any event, adding a 60amp or 100 amp circuit breaker to your panel, and running a piece of AWG10 orange 3-wire plus ground to a convenient place in your garage, is work ANYONE can do AND SAFELY.

There are numerous home wiring books at the local hardware store, the wire, the NEMA receptacles, and the circuit breakers. And in almost all localities you are entirely legal to do such wiring ON YOUR OWN RESIDENCE without license or permit.

But back to the car. If you buy a J1772-2009 inlet connector and mount it on your car, and connect the two phase pins and the ground pin to your charger, you won’t ever be able to charge your car at any of these charging stations.

This is because the car has to provide some “signals” to the Electric Vehicle Support Equipment (EVSE) aka Charge Station to turn it on. These mysterious “signals” are actually trivial They are actually a single diode, two resistors, and a switch. Here’s the diagram:

Click on the diagram to blow it up.

For those who find wiring two resistors, a diode, and a switch, a challenge, you can buy ready made adapters from Rush Dougherty at http://www.TucsonEV.com. He has the connectors you’ll need anyway, including a nice plug with a full 8 meter (25 foot) long cord. And he has made a little adapter box with switch and light as well.

With our wiring, or Rush’s box, you simply connect the J1772 plug to your car, and then turn on the switch. This drops the sense voltage to 6 volts in the EVSE and triggers the unit to turn on the 240vac power.

When you’re done charging, you hit the switch to shut OFF the power, THEN remove the cord. Very much a safety improvement over our current methods.

And it will allow you to configure YOUR electric vehicle to use the new charge stations wherever you find them.

In a future video, we’ll go into some detail about how you can set up a J1772 charging station of your own, for HUNDREDS of dollars instead of thousands. We’re just going to add a cord to our Texaco pump, and switch on the power manually after you connect the cord as we do now.

But another viewer, David Kerzel of Modular EV Power LLC is working on a printed circuit board control circuit for a home charge station with all the bells and whistles of J1772-2009. We’ll follow his progress and hopefully have something to show in a future episode for you to build your own charge station at much less cost. His design will use all UL listed components in the contactor and connectors and so forth, and he intends to include instructions on how to get it permitted and inspected and approved if that be your hearts desire.

See you next year.

Jack Rickard

http://EVTV.me