I just past 10,000 miles of electric driving. It took 3 years because I have a small commute, but I drive the midget almost every day. The car has required almost no maintenance during the 3 years. I built it that way because I knew that the novelty of owning an electric car would wear off and I’d prefer to just drive the car rather than constantly work on it. So my approach was to do it right the first time. I had the luxury of having the money to do a conversion and buy the important components, not try to invent them. I bought a Soliton Jr controller, lithium batteries, and an Elithion BMS. The BMS has made a large difference in my required attention to the car. It keeps track of the batteries during charge and discharge. After putting about 50 miles on the car, I just plug the car in when I get home, and the next morning, the charger light is green, and I have fully charged batteries. I don’t monitor the cells at all. I can connect my computer and look at the cells if I want, but they are doing fine, and the BMS will tell me when they don’t. It will tell me when one cell gets to too low a voltage, so if a cell does go bad, I’ll know when it tells me. My original range was 112 miles. I typically charge before I get past 60 miles so I don’t push the batteries. So far, no issues with 5-year-old Thundersky cells. The BMS also keeps track of the total energy used while driving. I use its analog output to drive my original gas gauge (through an custom circuit) so I can tell when I’m getting close to needing a charge. I wanted to post this for a couple of reasons. The first is to report on the now 5 year old batteries. I won’t ever get to test their total charge/discharge cycles, but I can report on overall life. The second is to hopefully show that not all electric builds are “works in progress”. I don’t want to be negative towards people who are working on improving their cars, but I built mine in less than 2 months, and haven’t needed to work on it since. Again, I had the luxury to put $12,000 into the car upfront. I just want people to know that this can be done, and not be a constant maintenance issue. I hope I haven’t offended the many people doing this on a budget, that is a real accomplishment. I sort of cheated in my build. You can visit my site to see more of the details of my build.
