David's 2001 Civic EV (80-100 mile range; 65+ MPH; 8 second 0-60)

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by Daox

What did you do for insulation around the pack? 1/2" XPS or something? Pics?

I second the cabin heater, I do that in my normal cars and its great! It'll also help your wh/mile.

I will post some pictures of the material later tonight. It's two pieces of corrugated plastic with flexible insulation sandwiched in between. Since installing it I have not seen the pack go below 39F, even when it was 10F out. I also have the exhaust from the charge venting into it which helps in heating it up at night.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by TheSGC

... A grill block might be a good idea for the winter, that might really help my heat issues

Huh, you haven't fully blocked it yet? on an EV?
I ran an almost full grill block all summer without melting the ICE.

A grill block will help, it will also retain heat in the engine bay longer when parked. When I leave work the engine is still 5-10 degrees Celsius above ambient from my morning commute.

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Huh, you haven't fully blocked it yet? on an EV?
I ran an almost full grill block all summer without melting the ICE.

A grill block will help, it will also retain heat in the engine bay longer when parked. When I leave work the engine is still 5-10 degrees Celsius above ambient from my morning commute.

I use the air in the summer to cool the motor and controller so blocking all year round isn't an option. I'm going to pickup more corrugated plastic this weekend and build a grill block and see what that does.

[darcane]

My Grill Block



I found it a little challenging to make a grill block that didn't look stupid with the stock grill. I picked up a cheap eBay grill that had a criss-cross pattern on it ("Civic Type R") that made it easy to mount the coroplast to. With the black coroplast and the black grill, it's almost invisible. Lower grill block was much easier to attach.

Both are just zip-tied in place and easy to remove in the summer and reinstall in winter. I leave the upper on year-round.

[Cobb]

Guess thats the advantage of having a gas and electric engine? Using both, neither generate enough heat to need active cooling?

Maybe you can wrap your motor and speed controller in copper coil to attempt to water cool it and in turn use that water for heater?

Originally Posted by TheSGC

I use the air in the summer to cool the motor and controller so blocking all year round isn't an option. I'm going to pickup more corrugated plastic this weekend and build a grill block and see what that does.

[TheSGC]

The weather was good enough today to motivate me to do some EV work. I finally installed my EV Display onto a Pillar Pod:


I purchased the EV Display this past summer/fall and it's been living in the cup holders ever since. I was planning on installing it into the dash, but I found the Pillar Pod a much better solution. It only too me 30 minutes to install it this afternoon and I think it looks great.

[Daox]

What display unit is that? I assume its more than just a voltmeter.

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by Daox

What display unit is that? I assume its more than just a voltmeter.

Its called the EV Display from CleanPowerAuto. It's a AH counter, Voltmeter, Current meter, State of Charge meter, temperature sensor. It's programmable so you select the AH capacity of your pack and the voltage that it reaches when you high Constant Voltage Stage of charging.

It also has a USB communication port that streams the data over a serial port. I'm going to install an Android In Dash unit so I can have full navigation built into the EV and write apps to log the data from the battery and the Zilla controller. I'm also thinking about an app that estimated the range left based on driving speed, current from the batteries and remaining capacity.

[Cobb]

Yeah, we were expecting something more informative like the center display of a gen 2 prius. Hell, those little cell loggers display a hell of a lot of info on its little postage size screen and t even includes an alarm and back light.

[TheSGC]

Originally Posted by Cobb

Yeah, we were expecting something more informative like the center display of a gen 2 prius. Hell, those little cell loggers display a hell of a lot of info on its little postage size screen and t even includes an alarm and back light.

I'm doing some research on what kinds of Android in-dash systems are out there and what will fit in my EV. I want to have a decent informative display that will show me various aspects of the EV. It's going to be a long project, but it will add to the coolness of the EV.

I want to do more car shows this year, so having "integrated" EV systems will hopefully gain more interest.