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Originally Posted by bennelson
It's a great concept.
The charger and controller are really both in the exact same place in the circuit with the batteries, so the cabling would be pretty simple.
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Yea I didn't think of that, that's another pro, you can use the same cables to battery.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bennelson
Do you think there would be any safety issues with power going to the controller while charging? I have a big physical disconnect I unplug while charging/parking/showing off my EV so nobody can accidently turn on the car or make it move.
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Of course the motor should be disconnected while not driving. I know that most people have a contactor to disconnect the whole controller from the battery pack. But I see no big drawback with putting that contactor after the controller instead. The drawback I can think of is that when you mount the controller in the car and connect the batteries to it, a great spark at the terminal will occour if you haven't precharged the capacitors.
So either you always prechage the capacitors when connecting the batteries, or you have an additional switch/contactor between the controller and the batteries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bennelson
You only ever use the controller and charger one at a time, and on-board chargers are nicer to be able to pick up a charge when you can out in public.
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Exactly, you get an on-board charger without sacrificing a lot of space and weight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bennelson
The whole device would be a little more complicated. The other trouble might be that if your charger breaks, so does your controller! Kinda like the old combination TV/VCRs - I've seen a ton of those thrown out because the one part broke!
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Haha, I know what you mean, but since they electrically only share the capacitor-bank it is not very likely that the melfunction of the charger would cause the controller to stop working (or vice versa). Of course if you also share some of the control electronics (i.e. the microcontroller), it's another thing. But you don't necessairly have to to that, and it doesn't give you much cost savings.
Also since I plan to build it myself, repairing it shouldn't be hard
