Another EV in the garage!

[LostCause]

That is an awesome electric car. It looks like it's straight out of Total Recall. What eMPG have you been getting?

- LostCause

[MetroMPG]

Yeah - you must have a kill-a-watt.... Got to start posting your eMPG so I have another 4 wheel EV to compete with

[Daox]

Very nice find Ryland.

[Ryland]

My brother is has the Kill-a-watt as his house right now, but I might just take the comuticar for a spin down to the library and pick up another (Wisconsin libraries received a grant years back to carry at least 3 watt meters), I've been charging it with a regular battery charger to make sure that each cell is fully charged, so that when I charge them as a set they will all be at the same place, the on board charger uses about 400-450 watts, but I didn't have a way to see for how long, the watt hour meter will help with that, then I'm not sure the best way to convert to mpg, or if I should just mpkwh (miles per kila watt hour) to leave it on a level field with other EV's, but first thing I need to do is get insurance on it.

[bennelson]

Collectors and Hobbyist plates are a sneaky great deal in our state. You only pay for them ONCE - keep that car doing forever!

Love the hubcaps on that thing! Already aeromodded! (not sure that matters much at 30 mph )

I also would be interested in how many watt-hours per mile or eMPG you get.
I think it's fine to convert watt-hours to MPG - you ARE competing against the gassers, may as well use their numbers and beat them at their own game!

The average guy on the street knows what MPG is, but is clueless about WH/M.

[TomEV]

With my Citicar, it has been just under 250 wh/m. New batteries helped - with the old, expired batteries it was closer to 330. I live in an area with flat terrain, and a 25 MPH speed limit, so conditions are about optimal for this setup.

One of these days I'll create a garage entry... Sort of stuck on 'what to name it'.

[Ryland]

got some touch up paint, turns out it's "7up green" the standard color 7up trucks are painted.
Ordered a pile of LED's, as it is the parking lights draw around 40 watts, brake lights add another 40 watts to that, with these LED's I should be able to drop that down to just under 5 watts + 4 watts for the brake lights, going to leave the head lights stock for now, but while sitting at a stop light at night it'll be nice to have the turn signals work.
Also have plans to order a PakTrakr, a gauge that hooks up to each battery, telling you if a single cell is getting lower then the others, and giving you over all battery health.
I've only driven this car in to town 3 times, and already I'm hearing from people, the guy next door heard about it last night from the mayor, and someone else asked if it was me they saw me driving "a wedge" thru town.

I also added more photos to the link in post #3

[MetroMPG]

Haha. The electric 7-up cheese wedge. How big is your town (how many people)?

You sure the Pak-Trakr will monitor at the cell level? I thought they just monitored individual batteries in the pack.

Sounds like fun. I just don't drive the FS at night. Not until the DC-DC converter is installed. I've been completely without lights twice this winter. Whoops.

[Ryland]

You are correct, the paktrakr will only monitor each of the 8 6v batteries, but it will tell me if any of those 8 batteries is falling behind, or doing other weird stuff, it should also allow me to make sure that as I reach the end of my range, that I don't over discharge any of the batteries, it's really easy to charge individual 6v batteries, so I'm hoping that by doing that I can get them to last longer.

My town is about 15,000 people + 8,000 collage students.
The biggest problem I can see so far is that to get home I have to travel up hill, half a mile at 15-20mph, compare that to my normal cruising speed of 30+mph, this is where it would be nice to have regenitive braking, because as I head in to town I have to ride the brakes to keep it under 35mph going down hill (25mph speed limit), I also talked to an industrial design student who wants to design a wood body for my CitiCar as a school project, he wanted to design a body for his electric bicycle, but thinks the CitiCar idea is more practical.
LED's should show up today as well, hoping to get time to change the rear axle oil that should be done once a year.... I doubt it's ever been done.

[MetroMPG]

Problem with regen (aside from being difficult to implement on a series DC motor) is if you live at the top of a hill is you'd be regenning into a fully charged pack (assuming you charge @ home).

Ideally if you have an EV with regen, you want to live at the bottom of a hill, so when you're coming home with a low pack, you can top it up a bit before you stick it back on the charger.