10,000 Miles of Electric Driving

[fb_bf]

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.

[Baltothewolf]

It's not a 'cheat' at all! You just had the money, so why not micky mouse everything is what I would say. It's pretty awesome you were able to do this, I wonder how much money you have saved on gas (taking into account electricity used to charge the car) over the 10k miles.

[Daox]

Congrats on 10k of worry free miles. This is definitely a great success story.

[jray3]

That's excellent for a conversion. We've done over 50,000 miles of i-MiEV driving in the past three years, but have barely passed 2000 miles in the Karmann Eclectric. I hope to finally graduate from flooded nicads to lithium in 2015. Then the Karmann will become a true daily driver for me, and my wife can park the minivan more often.

[fb_bf]

Going electric is still expensive compared to gas savings. I doubt I'll ever be able to justify the upfront costs of the conversion with gas savings. Still, I have solar panels, and I'm able to drive 3,000 miles per year from the energy produced by the sun. That is pretty amazing! At the same time I power my house.

Frank

[Baltothewolf]

Originally Posted by fb_bf

Going electric is still expensive compared to gas savings. I doubt I'll ever be able to justify the upfront costs of the conversion with gas savings. Still, I have solar panels, and I'm able to drive 3,000 miles per year from the energy produced by the sun. That is pretty amazing! At the same time I power my house.

Frank

Well if you were gonna go out and buy a new car due to the old one blowing an engine, wouldn't it make sense?

[fb_bf]

I forget that I've owned used vehicles all my life and I fix them as well. Converting an old car to electric will be cheaper than buying a new car. You need to be able to do some serious mechanical modifications on a car. It also helps to understand how an electric car works. Today you can use the internet to learn how to do it. There are plenty of people who will help you. Sometimes, you can find cars on E-bay that are so cheap it would be better to just buy them. I saw 2 new 2012 Ford Focus electric cars for sale at about $17,500 each. That is a great price for a new electric car.

Frank

[oil pan 4]

I didn't think that an electric would require constant maintenance.
Just oil changes and greasing the drive train and running gear. Which should be every 15,000 to 30,000 miles on the oil changes and at least yearly on the grease.
Fill the batteries with water once or twice a year if flooded lead acid.
Charge daily.
If you want to buy your electric vehicle, do it soon while gas is cheap. As soon as gas goes back over $3.50/gal every one will freak out and want electrics again.
Now is not the time to sell an electric if you want to get rid of yours.