AC Propulsion: Making Gas Cars Electric (Tom Hanks video)

Ouch, $50,000 for the conversion, that's 2 Prius plus the cost of the car to put the conversion in.

 

Too bad they can't convert any cool cars. I would love my s2k w/ EV setup.

 

Have you checked?
What makes it cool?
I'd love to convert a MR2 to all electric.

 

AC Propulsion does the Scion xB, whose looks I dislike, but you can find someone to convert just about any car. There's a guy in Florida who converts Porsches. Batteries are a limiting factor, though. Lead batteries are not too expensive, but they are heavy. Your range is severely limited by their weight. I think you can get 30 miles range with a Porsche with lead batteries. Don't quote me on the exact range, but it's not a lot. Lithium batteries are light enough and compact enough that 200 miles of range is posible, but those are very expensive.

AC Propulsion is a pioneer, but not the only place to get a conversion EV. Your s2k probably can be converted to electric.

That's assuming they actually materialize. Meanwhile you're driving a stinker. (Not you, personally. You'll be driving your Tesla. :rockon: But the person who takes this advice and waits for a more affordable EV.)

If you've really got the bug for electric, you just gotta jump in there. Spend the bucks for a conversion, or settle for the limitations of an NEV or a Xebra. My Xebra has serious limitations, but it's allowed me to drive electric (except for out-of-town trips) for a year and a half now. If I'd waited for something better I'd still be waiting now.

As for the xBox being over half the price of a Tesla, that's true, but it's a more "practical" car, with about a hundred times more cargo space. The xBox is a family car. The Roadster is basically a race car. A bigger problem with the xBox is that it's only available to residents of California.

 

the video said they would CONVERT ANY CAR

as far as price goes... what were you really expecting??

something that provides a HUGE benefit to you and the environment at 50% off?? i mean, lets be reeeeel.

EV's are the bleeding edge and needs to be mainstream and the ONLY way that is going to happen is either

1) for people to sacrifice. pay more for the car than its true value in order to get the word out and make it popular and drive the price down AND INCREASE THE QUALITY FOR SOMEONE ELSE

2) get the government to HEAVILY subsidize EV's for the masses. let the Uncle Sam foot 50% of the cost so you can get one for $40,000 instead.

ahhh Hell!! if talking handouts, make it 75% that way we can get one for just slightly more than the cost of a Pri.

might as well, but then again, the government would be spending money on something worthwhile...ya... WHAT AM I THINKING??!!...

never happen

 

Of course anyone can convert any car to EV. Just that... by the time it is properly converted, it would be cheaper to just buy a Tesla.

 

If you drive a typical car for 100,000 miles and get 22mpg and pay $2.50 per gallon, then you're going to drop $11,363 in fuel. At that rate, you would have to drive 500,000 miles to break even. But, consider at their price they are doing ALL the work. If you could arrange a work share option, or even do all the work yourself, I would geuess you'd be able to cut the price in half. Also consider this is likekly a new startup and as they do more cars the price will drop... and if competition comes online....

 

Remember when the Prius was just becoming popular (with the introduction of the 2004 model)? The anti-Prius folks were harping on about how you could not "save" money by buying a Prius. They argued that the Prius cost X dollars more than a "similar" gas car, and you'd have to drive from here to the moon and back to "pay for" the "hybrid advantage." Remember that?

And we all said you don't expect to "save" money when you buy a Jag or a Rolls or a BMW. You buy those cars for reasons unrelated to the financial ramifications. If you want the cheapest transportation, you buy a reliable, late-model econobox. We bought Priuses, we all said, for other reasons:

We liked the technology, or we wanted to make a statement about personal responsibility towards the environment by reducing our carbon footprint, etc.

Well, it's the same now with EVs: Most EV drivers (like myself) have bought our cars because we wanted to quit using gas. Their limited range, and the limited speed of most of the affordable EVs mean that they work best as the primary vehicle in a two-car household, with a stinker to fill in when we have to drive farther than the range of our EV. The cost of batteries means that under most circumstances, a used econobox stinker would be cheaper transportation. And under pretty much any circumstances (at the present price of gas) a used econobox stinker would be much cheaper than an eBox or a Tesla Roadster.

But people don't buy eBoxes or Teslas to save money on gas. They buy the eBox for the same reasons most of us bought our Priuses. Technology, environment, carbon footprint, etc. Some people buy the Tesla Roadster for the same reasons, but some just buy the Tesla because it's the most powerful car anywhere near its price. That was the genius of Tesla Motors: They've built an electric car that actually competes in its class. If you want a race car and a Ferrari is not powerful enough for you, you buy a Tesla.

If the government gave a rat's nice person about the country or national security, they would invest in battery and ultracapacitor research, to make those technologies more affordable, and then stop subsidizing the big three's destructive and corrupt practices.

 

All right. I have no immediate plans to go there, but it's possible. Or if you are ever planning to be in Seattle, send me a PM.

 

Spokane you mean?

 

the real driving factor behind the price is the battery. they're using the 18650lithium ion packs commonly found in laptop batteries etc. even though they"re cheap, to have a car that can keep up with the rest, your EV needs roughly 120v, 400A motor. that'll run you 30k+ in batteries, plus the controllers needed to protect lithium ion battery packs. its relatively cheap labor, its the parts that're so danged expensive.


someone needs to perfect a cheap 18650 li-ion 3.7v 2000+mAh battery. then this conversion will be worth it.

 

do you know the voltage/amperage of the tesla's electric engine? my early calculations were that a 120v 400 A system would need roughly 5000 cells, and range would be roughly 100 miles max (although that depends a lot on the vehicle weight). its amazing the tesla can get 240 on not much more battery.

 

Oops. Of course you are right!

Tesla chose to use the cheapest and lightest available lithium battery, which happens to be an unstable chemistry, so they had to use very sophisticated battery management and cooling.

LiFePO4 is a stable lithium chemistry, so it does not require the same level of management, or special cooling. However, it's a newer chemistry, so it is slightly heavier, and it is more expensive.

Continued development might bring down the cost and improve the energy density.

The power (acceleration) of a car depends on the wattage that can be delivered to the electric motor. The range depends on the total amp-hours of the battery pack. My Xebra gets about 3 miles per kWh, measured at the wall outlet. Not sure what the efficiency of the charger and batteries are.

From this pdf document, the Tesla battery pack operates at a nominal 375 volts, stores about 53 kWh of electricity, and delivers up to 200 kW of power. The pack stores the energy equivalent of about 8 liters (just over 2 gallons) of gasoline.

I read some time back that the Roadster goes 245 miles on a charge on the EPA's combined city/highway protocol (but this might have been before they changed the protocol). Actual range can be more or less, depending on how it is driven. That's roughly 5 miles per kWh, but it's measuring from the battery, whereas with my Xebra I'm measuring at the wall outlet. So the miles per kWh are similar. My charger is probably pretty efficient. My motor is probably not very efficient as electric motors go. My slower speed loses less energy to wind resistance. The Roadster is a more beautiful car, but my Xebra gets more attention, and my Xebra has a lot more passenger/cargo space and does not require me to sit with my butt practically on the floor.

 

well one thing i found out the hard way, as have you, is that anytime multiple batteries are used, a charge leveling/equalization (something that insures each battery module is charged and discharged at an even rate) and BMS (battery monitoring system) are just about required. i am also getting over 4½ Miles/KWH and that is the charge from the wall as well.

and pushing cost down is something the government can do and do immediately and the grand cost of the plan would come no where near what any other bailout would cost