PHEV Conversion

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ Oct 9 2007, 10:08 AM) [snapback]523087[/snapback]</div>

Congratulations on your Zenn purchase and from now on you will do much better for the enviroment and ecology than myself with my converted to PHEV.

Enjoy pure electric driving!!!

 

Horacio:

i cant even begin to tell you how much i admire your ambitions and accomplishments. i wish i could do what you are doing but i am not in a position where i can lose any of the storage space. but its people like you that will create the synergy needed to bring about a solution that i can go with as well.

by all means, i am not giving up on a Plugin and i am eagerly anticipating your results...i guess it must have something to do with the custom license plates... hehehe

 

After the Maker Faire this weekend, I will be able to help you with your conversion.

I want to put free CAD drawings on the Priusplus pages so you can email them to your local metal shop and they can make a battery box for you in a matter of hours for about $200 bucks.

The wire harnesses are simpler now so they can be pre-made during the week while you watch TV.

I use to have a heavy box that lifted so I could get my spare and it was just too stress full on the Prius. I now went all aluminum and removed my spare tire to save about 100 lbs and my Prius is much happier now.

Finally, since this is open source stuff I am looking for some volunteers to see if we can figure out how to make a mount that uses existing bolts in the trunk so we don't have to drill any holes in the car to hold down the box. This will make the conversion removable as if it were never there. So you can resell your car but keep your kit for the next one.

Later we really need to figure a cheaper way to charge the batteries. $1,000.00 to $2,500.00 for a charger is way too much. There has to be a home brew one that can compare in quality out there somewhere.

The goal is to get the cost of these conversions down.

If I am able to help you I want you and I to document your conversion better then mine was so there are no more gaps and it will be easier for the next person.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ibcs @ Oct 29 2007, 03:11 PM) [snapback]532057[/snapback]</div>

It would be nice if you can elaborate a little more on this topic. What type of charger r u planning to use or already have, and what type of electrical source r u planning to use to convert from ? to ?.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ibcs @ Oct 31 2007, 04:00 PM) [snapback]533102[/snapback]</div>

Keep in mind this is a pretty small pack. 5 would give you 250V at 5Ah. A typical PbA pack is ~20-22Ah, although in PbA you will probably lose 25% of that to peukert effect. The second problem is that these are only really designed to deliver 5A. They can deliver up to 15A, but it looks like that voids the warranty so presumably reduces lifespan. The prius can draw up to 150A, although I think most peoples PHEV packs only provide a max of around 60A due to paralleling.

So, to meet the Ah requirement you would need 3-4 parallel strings. To meet the discharge requirements (assume 60A) you would need 4-12 strings (12 to keep at warrantied 5A). Next problem, paralleling NimH cells causes big balance problems, so you will need a pretty sophisticated and probably expensive battery management system to manage both the charge and discharge of the pack.

You are probably much better off looking at the Nilars that the calcars folks are looking into (and working on a simple open source BMS for).
http://nilar.com/index.php?pageID=33&languageID=1

Rob

 

If you have not already, you may want to join the phev email list:
http://www.eaa-phev.org/wiki/Maillist

Looking at the recent archives, you will see a number of posts on the progress of the Nilar Cal-Cars/PriusPlus conversions. I think they are making pretty good progress, but still need to come up with a BMS solution.

Rob