First lithium-powered electric car on PriusChat?

battery failures have not popped up in many discussions... most complain about the lack of speed...because of regen, you can not go faster than the "programmed" speed even when going down hill. i have a small valley i traverse on my way to work when i cross the Deschutes River which includes steep grades on both ends and still cant go faster than 37 mph.

many have modded their Zenns by reprogramming them disabling regen. this allows freewheeling. top speeds now hit 45 mph with coasting up to 55 mph. like the Prius, regen provides very little power back to the batteries and contributes to motor overheating. (some tested regen on level surfaces and found that it provided less than 2% increase in range. they did not elaborate on how they were able to get such accurate measurements but the one guy who actually hacked the system first did appear to have extensive knowledge on motor controls, etc.)

on mine, i have the 35 mph upgrade and it has shown some overheating problems so i am switching out the motor in a month or so. it works fine up to about 15 miles, but the motor starts to get hot after that. it runs at up to 14,000 rpms, so the dealer thinks its should be reinstalled. because it is not factory installed, they have had to readjust the shims on a few of them after they have settled. etc... we will see...

as far as range. im rated to do between 15 to 40 miles, temperature dependent. lead acid charge levels a greatly affected by temperatures. (there is also another mod in going strong in montana and iowa where its cold to use heating blankets on the batteries to help extend their range in winter... a few have reported excellent results... not a lot of data on the extra power needed to do this as of yet)

real world, i have done 25-30 miles in a day many times with nothing more than say a 2-3 hour top off charge without any worries of range issues. without an ammeter, i can say that my charge indicator is completely useless. it has 6 pips and does the flashing last pip like the Pri's do, but i have also made a 10 minute stop somewhere after the last bar started flashing, come back out and im up to as many as 4 bars... granted they disappear fast, but you get the picture

all in all, i would like more speed, more range... heck i would just like WHAT THEY HAD 15 YEARS AGO!!!! but i guess that would be asking for too much...

i cant understand that somewhere, somehow, someone would see 15 year old RAV 4EV's selling for more than double the sticker price and say...
"wow... there must be a market for them if they are selling for that much... maybe i should take advantage?"

i guess as long as there is a question mark at the end of that statement, nothing will ever happen.

 

the range estimate is based on a battery chart that came with the Zenn. 15 miles would be at 0ºF.... that is as low as it would ever get around here. max range is at 82ºF... even with temps as low as the 20's i still probably had 20-25 miles of range.

and yes the charging is opportunity charging... i would love to be able to do all my errands at once, but appointments AND more importantly my 11 month old son simply does not do well on the road that long so jaunts are usually best. he is now to the point that long periods of time in his car seat makes him antsy more than anything, and he has never been one to sleep in the car.

as far as charging, even if i am only home for 5 minutes, i plug it in... well maybe not 5 minutes, but if i park in the garage, i always plug it in. hey, why not, it takes about 20 extra seconds and with Ry... sometimes, a bottle, diaper change, or other unplanned delays happen...

as far as the method of charging i dont know. the fact that two batteries are in front and 4 are in the back means that pack charging is less likely...i will inquire

 

Please note that all of the below is based on my experience driving a 10-year-old Twike. I'm sure the newer ones are even better... getting one, OTOH... that takes some doing. Zap Xebra definitely wins this category.

I do not know about YOUR freeways, but often OUR freeways in Illinois (especially in Chicago during 'rush' hour), 53 mph would be fast enough. Not that I'd take a Twike on it. In the '05 US Twike repair tour Stephan Meiser (the German repair engineer) did take 433 on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago... they're insane/unaware of American's driving habits... photo of 433 on LSD with the Chicago skyline at the website in my signature... speed limit on LSD is 45mph, people routinely drive 60-70mph.

It's not scary -- most of the time. Whenever I'm feeling slightly cocky, I'll drive between 45-50mph on the flat and pass the gassies, and I have had 433 up to 57mph once on a slight down grade (at midnight, with nobody else around on fresh pavement). I stopped pedalling at about 53-55 mph as any little vibration transfers to the front wheel and the steering starts oscillating. Now THAT's scary. Most day's my top speed is between 35-40mph. Gusty winds, high humidity (windscreen fogs up, especially if pedaling) and night (due to reduced vision/glare from oncomming headlights) are the scarier times to drive a Twike... unfortunately these events often occur together :-( A firm grip on the steering tiller is required.

The tyres/axel/shocks & struts are motorcycle equipment -- obviously not your standard American bike tyres, but heavy-duty none-the-less. I drove 433 all winter in Illinois, and we've had some of the worst potholes this season.

Nope, due to the use of motorcycle components in construction, you'd be much better off getting a real velomobile due to the weight, even if you stripped the batteries, motor, etc. 433 weighs between 500-600 pounds without anything in it.

The Twike I was a pure velomobile though. You'd have to change the bicycle gearing in the Twike to enable more gears (it only has 5, and you can only really use 1st gear at 10mph - plus... less than that, it's easier to get out and push... just as when you try to ride a 1-speed bike uphill).

The go-one3 has a kinda EV option using the BionX kit for electric assist up-to 20mph, though on the website it talks about warranty voiding, etc. The Twike wouldn't have a problem with a 'middling' hill -- it was born and bred in Switzerland... I hear tell they have some hills there... call 'em "The Alps"

M@

*****
Be the change you wish to see in the world -- m. gandhi

Commute Suck? :mad2: Twike it, you'll like it! :wub:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/twike

 

Ataway to go, getting started with EV batteries!

For me I am waiting on Li batteries with nano-technology, possibly with a diesel ICE. As you have said, the old Li cobalt oxide (Li-ion - not a clear term) chemistry is an accident waiting to happen. See http://www.valence.com/assets/flash/safety_video_large.html . Same problem with the li polymer construction.

The newer LiFeP are thought to be completely safe (will not go exothemic and cause thermal run-away). This sounds like what you are using. Their shortcoming is their higher internal reistance. This limits both their charge and discharge rate.

The latest chemistry is Li batteries with nano-technology, which have a super-low internal reistance and have bodacious charge and discharge rates (like 10x). As far as I know, the batteries are only made by A-123 company, an American firm A123Systems :: Home . I used these cells in a recent product design and tested their 70 rated Amp ability... not blowing smoke! Also 10x service life is advertised. But short these cells and prepare for a lot of sparks, but no fire from the cell.

As an aside, our country needs to be aware of a travesty foised on us from Chevron/Texaco via COBASYS, their subsidiary. Although long-winded, this is a must read. See EV World Blogs: Personal Perspectives on the Future In Motion COBASYS owns the patent for the NiMH battery chemistry (all of them, even international) and refuses to license them for locomation purposes unless they are in a small format, which makes them impractical for PHEV's. Chevron/Texaco wouldn't effectively shut down PHEV production would they?? :faint: Congress wouldn't cave to corporate financial "campaign support" would they?? Fortunately, along comes A-123, which finally maks Li cells that are ideal for PHEV's. Lets keep a keen eye for a corporate takeover of A-123!

 

having the same range in winter would be nice. i have the "upgraded" lead acid gel batteries... my winter range for the most part was around 20 miles on the colder days. have had very little "summer" here so far, but have done as much as 28 miles and still had plenty of charge left so not sure of the summer range yet.

in winter, i do have to charge a few hours (i can get like 70-80% in around 2-3 hours) sometimes to do what i need to do, but has not really been much of a hassle yet. with my son, i have to make pitstops at home anyway to feed him, change him, etc. when he was younger and still on the bottle, it was easy to drive and feed him since he was allowed to sit in front, but now that he is doing solid food, feeding him on the road is no longer an option.

the Zenn along with any LSV is a compromise, but no regrets here. i reaffirm my decision as the right thing to do daily.

 

Dave, do you have the AC or DC motor on your Zenn? I've been told the AC motor gets ~10% added range from regen, but that regen doesn't help for the DC motor.

 

i have the DC motor and it comes with regen enabled... i originally started with the 35 mph 12 HP DC motor, but it overheated too much. so had it taken out, put in the standard motor and it was reprogrammed to do 35 mph (Zenn is actually designed to do 40 mph).

The AC motor was an option mentioned at the time of my purchase but would have had to wait and it was like a $3000 option.

when my software was reprogrammed, regen was disabled. realistically, regen is like the Pri... only less so since the car is much lighter, estimates to added range due to regen is 1-3%... but disabled regen allows me to coast downhills at up to 45 mph (im sure faster if the hill was steeper) when before, i would go no faster than about 37 mph no matter what.

now i meticulously track my performance and since the motor change, i am MORE efficient than before, but that i attribute to less power and torque in the standard motor, causing less acceleration which in turn drains the battery slower.

in an EV, the speed you drive makes all the difference in the range you get. estimates run from 20 to as much as 35 % reduced range when driving 35 mph verses 25 mph.... in my situation, the range i get (now about 25-30 miles at 60º) is more than enough to do nearly everything i want to do with it. i wont know until the heat of summer what the max range is since the best battery capacity for me happens at 82º F and up.

 

Huh. I've only been able to put 15 miles on mine before the automatic slow-down kicks in. But then I've only had it a few weeks and I hear there's a break-in period. A few times I've put 11 miles on it after 3 bars so maybe I could have gotten good range on those days if I had tried. (Not that the bars mean anything anyway. )

 

there is supposed to be a break in period for the batteries of 40-60 charges... i did get less range at first, but it was pretty cold by then so hard to say what was break-in and what was just temperatures.

weight is a factor, today, including me, the Zenn carried around 450 lbs today, but still drove 22 miles without range issues

 

Yeah for sure if you need a 40 mile range the Zenn is not the right choice. My daily commute is 11 miles round trip. Occasionally I need to go 9 miles one way and there's a charging station there. So it's a great fit for what I need. And it goes nicely with my solar panels. Cool about the Li batteries on your Zap by the way, and sorry for hijacking your thread.