Virtual alternator delete.

[teoman]

I suppose if you had a massive loss in the cable, you could not start the car...

[redpoint5]

Well I did hit 160A starting the car, which is about 100A lower than normal peak when starting.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by teoman

I suppose if you had a massive loss in the cable, you could not start the car...

I measured parasitic draw again just for good measure and found it to be ~54mA in the TSX.

Yesterday I drove to the petrol station about 10min away running on just the LiPo battery. My meter read 15.44v when connected directly to the battery, and 242W consumption while the car was running with HVAC/radio/screen/etc off.

I attempted to start the car after filling up, but it didn't quite have the juice. I'm not sure if it's because the meter was inline with the battery when I attempted, or if 10min of running was enough to draw it down to the point it won't start the car. I connected the Pb battery to start it and complete my trip.

The alternator seems to target 14.3v, and either my LiPo is too small of capacity, or there's too much resistance in the wires, but 14.7v is the most I can get to show at the other end of my 10 AWG wire run. 5 minutes of running and voltage settles around 14.3v.

I can get about 4Ah out of the 5Ah battery before the alternator kicks in and holds the voltage.

[teoman]

Why not have your caps in place of the original battery?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by teoman

I suppose if you had a massive loss in the cable, you could not start the car...

Originally Posted by teoman

Why not have your caps in place of the original battery?

That's my next step... and possibly buy a bigger LiPo battery and shorten the wire run, or put in thicker gauge wire. The difference between my voltage at the battery and at the cars ECU suggests I'm losing too much somewhere in between there. I'll calculate that loss next time so I can properly engineer a solution rather than wing it.