+5 average mpg boost with mini 150 watt phev setup

[Cobb]

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[Daox]

Could you give some more info on the setup? What components are you using? How long does a charge last?

[MetroMPG]

Subscribed for more details!

[Cobb]

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[radiantthought]

So, I'm confused, how is this improving your gas mileage? Are you using this to somehow charge the IMA pack? Is this just an enhanced starter battery? Are you still using the enginer parts? A lot of things are still very unclear to me. I'm seeing lots of parts whose function isn't very clear.

My attempting to make sense of things has lead me to this guess. It appears you're using an ac->dc battery charger to charge your SLA batteries, then running those into an inverter, which is connected to a pc power supply, which is then hooked to a dc->dc converter (referred to as an amplifier in the video) to jump up the voltage to the IMA pack spec.

If this is the case, why deal with the inverter + psu middle-man and not just connect your batteries directly to the dc->dc converter? Also, you mentioned something about solar panels, yet none were mentioned anywhere in the video. What role do they play in this? You also mentioned "the starter battery will store the excess", the excess from what? Sorry if any of these questions seem dumb, I'm just trying to understand what I'm looking at.

Also, where are the people who call it a 'mini phev'? I googled the term to try and find out more, and I found articles about people doing things with Mini Coopers, and your post here is the #2 result. Another post of yours from insight central is #3. In fact I'm going to go read that insightcentral thread because I feel the answers to most of my questions will be in there.

[ksa8907]

He is augmenting the alternator with a battery pack he charges from the grid. If I understand this correctly.

Thisnis something I have thought of before, and may still possibly build for my senior project. Of course, more automated.

[Cobb]

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[oldtamiyaphile]

Originally Posted by Cobb

This I think proves the solar panels use to supplement the alternator will help more as the starter battery has room for some extra power.

I my experience, a healthy 120Ah starting battery accepts <5Wh from the time the engine is switched off to the time the controller enters float charge. I don't need to tell you that's too small to ever measure the MPG gain.

[Cobb]

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[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I my experience, a healthy 120Ah starting battery accepts <5Wh from the time the engine is switched off to the time the controller enters float charge. I don't need to tell you that's too small to ever measure the MPG gain.

This behavior is specific to EV's and hybrids, personally if you can fit a small solar panel to trickle charge your car I recommend it for any car and especially EV's.

In the case of the insight the DC-DC is less efficient than you may think because of the lead battery and also there are loads using Cobbs setup that now do not require the DC-DC to fire which is what increases FE, add to that Cobb likely drives like a hypermiler so the effect is even more exaggerated.

This makes me think even more strongly that a 14v deep cycle FLA belongs in every EV and hybrid, no inverter needed until the battery would deplete.

Cheers
Ryan