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Old 02-27-2008, 10:25 PM   #11 (permalink)
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I know of a number of different Internal Combustion Engine car pushers for electric cars.

The idea is that you zip locally around in your electric car. When you need to go out of town, or long distance, you hitch up your gas or diesel car pusher to get you there. Sort of the other way around from the thread starter.

Here is one of many different car pushers people have built.

My motorcycle runs off the same motor that Mike's 5th wheel on his Insight uses.

The first time I pulled away from a stop sign, I also experienced the "baseball pitching machine" effect. I have a new (non-bald) rear tire that I will put on once weather gets nicer.

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Old 03-18-2008, 12:46 PM   #12 (permalink)
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I've started thinking about this subject lately too, especially after seeing MD2000's set-up. I recently aquired an x-360 e-scooter and the rear end looks about right to go under my metro. Probably need a motor upgrade since it is only 350w . I would intend on using it for ICE-off low speed (<40mph) cruising and use the ICE for accelerating and hwy use. Seems like the ICE is in a pretty efficient mode under 75% throttle accel anyway and not so much at light throttle cruising. I'd like to talk my boss into letting me try one of the brushless E-tek motors and drives for this .

Batteries will be a problem though. Don't want too add much mass to the little car.
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Old 03-19-2008, 07:42 AM   #13 (permalink)
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was thinking about this last night - the idea of building a pusher ( either electric or ICE) seems like a great way to get the flexability. but what about building your OWN hybrid.

I was thinking aboiut the old 4wd Subaru Justy.
it already has a rear axes / suspension. I wonder what it would take to seporate the rear from the front engine and put an electric back there?

you would have plenty of modes of operation - EV only - Hybrid - ICE. only could do Regen and even chrage the batteries while driving ICE.

Weight would be a big issue - as you have 2 entire engine systems - but if you are really advanced - you could swap out the motor for a Motorcycle 4-cyl.

Hmmm.. if i only had space - time - money - and the skills to do it.
LOL
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Old 03-19-2008, 08:49 AM   #14 (permalink)
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I still think a trike would make a great DIY hybrid vehicle.

Get a motorcycle with a working engine and transmission, mate it to a front wheel drive car front end - put an electric motor and batteries on the front.

Poof! A hybrid that can be pushed with the motorcycle engine and rear wheel or pulled by electric power with the front tires.

Here's something similar:



Look close at the black and white photo in the upper right. You can see it's just a motorcycle and front wheels put on there.
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Old 03-20-2008, 08:28 PM   #15 (permalink)
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I thought that it was interesting that the Aptera uses an electric drive similar to a motorcycle rear or my E-Wheel, timing belt and all.
http://www.aptera.com/details.php
Notice the bridgestone Potenza, the same LRR tire as the Insights use.

Many front wheel drive cars have a simple trailing arm suspension.
If the electric motor could be mounted so the rear suspension hinge point was where the motor output shaft was located, the suspension could move through the full range of motion and the timing belt tension would be maintained. The motor would be mounted to the chassis so it would be sprung weight, and the wheel would only be a bit heavier. Using a brushless motor would be best to eliminate the brush friction when the motor was not powered up.
I will be playing with that concept later this year.
The pusher trailer concept should work fine in principal, but I don't like the added length, and the added difficulty in backing up and parking.

A light weight 3 wheel trike like the Aptera, looks like a great configuration. The only thing I would do different is to have the front wheels also lean into turns, and maybe have some pedals so the passenger can contribute to the ride.
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Old 03-27-2008, 08:17 PM   #16 (permalink)
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I've been thinking of the same thing to use as a replacement for 1st and maybe 2nd gear. Been seeing 24/36/48V motors for sale for cheap, thinking to hook that up to a 5th wheel.

I spent a fair pct of my driving in 25/35 mph zones with many lights/stop signs I EOC quite a bit (esp now that I'm pumped up to 40psi ) and try to time the lights. I also come across a bit of stop and go, which wreaks havoc on my mileage.

It sounds like it'll only really be good as a 1st gear replacement, and big weight addition.

Mike, I didn't see on your website, do you have an estimate on weight for the wheel assembly? And were those 300# worth of batteries just for the booster 48V system?
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Old 03-28-2008, 05:42 PM   #17 (permalink)
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Check out www.99mpg.com
He has an electric driven wheel built in to his modded Insight.
Very cool sight
S>

edit: & by sight I mean site, or i suppose In-sight...
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:39 PM   #18 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MD2000 View Post
The pusher trailer concept should work fine in principal, but I don't like the added length, and the added difficulty in backing up and parking.
I wonder if it would be possible to mount a pusher on a 1-wheel trailer using an in-hub motor. 1-wheel trailers have less length and don't have the problems with backing up and parking that a conventional articulated trailer does. The single wheel on these trailers is a caster, so you would have to move forward enough to straighten the wheel out before applying power to the in-hub motor.
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Old 03-28-2008, 09:59 PM   #19 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sharp21 View Post
Check out www.99mpg.com
He has an electric driven wheel built in to his modded Insight.
Look up three posts and there's your man...

I like the creativity of all these ideas, but with their complexity you might as well build a conventional hybrid system.

The belted starter/generator seems most promising. A motor is essentially attached to the serpentine belt. Power is sent through the engine into the transmission and out the wheels. Obviously it is not ideal due to the added loss of the engine, but it can't be beat for simplicity.

MD2000, how did you come across those Prius subpacks? Did you buy a whole battery pack and split it apart, go in with other people, or come across them individually? If you don't mind, what do you estimate the price of each subpack to be worth?

Quote:
Originally Posted by basjoos View Post
I wonder if it would be possible to mount a pusher on a 1-wheel trailer using an in-hub motor. 1-wheel trailers have less length and don't have the problems with backing up and parking that a conventional articulated trailer does. The single wheel on these trailers is a caster, so you would have to move forward enough to straighten the wheel out before applying power to the in-hub motor.
If modularity is desired, why not create a unit that attaches solely to the hitch? A single drive wheel attached to a linear actuator could lower vertically to the ground. When it is no longer needed, it can be unhitched. The whole idea is that it is rigidly attached and extremely shallow.



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Old 03-29-2008, 11:17 AM   #20 (permalink)
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I got used Prius battery packs whenever they were available. A gen one pack has more subpacks, but the size and interlocking feature is different between the first gen packs and the second gen packs. The used packs go for between $600 to $1200 on e-bay. There are 40 subpacks in the first gen, and only 29 in the second gen. The second gen subpacks have higher current internal connections and of course they should be in better shape with less cycles on the newer packs. $600/29 subpacks would put the price per subpack at ~$20.
Of course the shipping is not considered.
$1200/ 29 brings the price to $41 each.

While the e-wheel was a lot of work, I chose that route so that I could easily return the car to stock if it did not work as planned. Now that I see that an small e-wheel can give me a 40+ mile EV range, I would do it all differently.

The trailer concept has a few other issues.
1. side scrub on turns
The caster concept does not lend it self to a simple drive system, while it does work well for passive support.

When I mounted my e-wheel, I got it as close to the rear wheels as possible to allow the wheel to be mounted on a pivot that would only need to move up and down. I determined that at my mounting position, only 1/4 " of side scrub would occur on the sharpest turn that the car would do.This is acceptable, and is what allowed me to mount the thing in such tight quarters. I have only 1/4 " on either side of the assembly. As soon as you move the drive to the rear hitch area, the side scrub on a rigidly mounted wheel starts becoming a big factor, and a simple up down action will not work when you try to turn a corner. This means that you would have to allow a side to side motion of nearly a foot. If the thing also wants to lift off the road, you have a pretty complex attachment system.
2. The down force
Substantial down force is required to get sufficient friction to push the car.
We normally don't give this much thought, since the cars weight is supported by the 4 wheels, so there is plenty of down force. The insight has low rolling resistance tires, and even with all the batteries it is still lighter than most cars. I have 130lbs of down force, which works quite well on dry clean roads,
But If I try to take off from a stop and I am on sand/grave/, wet/ or snowy roads, it just kicks out sand and stones at the poor guy behind me, so I constantly have to be mindful about where and when to use it. Once moving, that issue goes away.
A trailer with 2 wheels, and all of the batteries should make a nice pusher, as it puts a the battery and motor weight on the trailer drive wheels, and with a regular ball hitch also takes care of the side to side motion required.

On the wheel motor concept, I would expect that any reasonably priced wheel motor (is there such a motor?) would have trouble generating the required torque to push a full size car.
This is why most prototype wheel motor cars use 4 motors.

I like the concept of a two wheel trailer with dual motor drive one for each wheel, with some amount of gear reduction to increase the torque to a level that would provide adiquate acceleration.
Lots of things to consider.
http://peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Hybrid_Adapter
This guy put up a peswiki after reading about my car.

The whole e-wheel assembly weighs about 80 lbs, the batteries are 300 lbs.

I am leaning towards what seems to me to be a better solution.
Say you start with a FWD car, with a trailing arm rear suspension. This would include most modern cars.
You make a custom aluminum timing belt pulley that is made to exactly fit the id of the cars standard wheel rim. It could be tig welded to the rim, and would protrude 1/2 to 3/4" towards the spring. The drive motor would want to be a Brushless motor to reduce the drag when un-powered to a minimum. The body of the car in the rear trailing arm attachment area would be where you would mount the motor, with the drive shaft exactly in line with the rear suspension pivot point. This puts the motor weight on the chassis so it is sprung weight, and only adds a bit of unsprung weight to the existing wheel. The timing belt tension would not change through the full suspension travel, and you can size the motor drive pulley to whatever final drive ratio you like. This concept could be the simplest to do, and it seems to eliminate all of the issues that the e-wheel or trailer have, while also solving the unsprung weight issues that any wheel motor designs would have.
I have the Blue Insight rear end to play with, so I may give this a try if I can find the time, energy and $$ to pursue it.
I have acquired an Insight motor, which may be a nice drive motor for this concept.
http://www.99mpg.com/workshops/mikessaturdayhybri/

I can envision a switchover system to hot swap the Insight drive electronics from the stock IMA motor to the modified IMA rear drive motor.
I did not get the Insight power electronics with the motor, so if anyone has the power electronics from an Insight that they are willing to part with, let me know as I may be interested.

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Last edited by MD2000; 03-29-2008 at 11:57 AM..
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