What would be an ideal EV drive train set up?
 

Hi,

I skimmed through Doax's Prius plug-in thread, trying to find the brand of batteries used in the Enginer kit. And I'm thinking of trying to build an EV car from scratch. :eek: And I realized that I am just scratching the surface on learning about EV drive trains.

So, what would an ideal EV drive train look like? And by ideal, I mean it should be elegant, robust, and still is reasonably priced. I'm thinking that a pack size of ~24kWh would be a minimum -- the Aptera 2e (if it ever gets built!) would have a ~20kWh pack which in that incredibly efficient design (weighing 1,500-1,700 pounds) and would go 100 miles with 2 people, luggage, A/C on, etc, and 120 miles with one person with less stressful conditions.

If my math is right, a 24kWh pack made up of batteries like the ones in the Enginer kit, would weigh ~650 pounds.

Also using the Aptera as a guide, the motor(s) would be ~75kW total, if the weight was similar.

I am also thinking that a supercapacitor would be part of an ideal set up. The biggest challenge with this is the expense and the operating voltage of the supercap. Apparently, a high voltage supercap is ~$16K all by itself, whereas a 50v unit is ~$1K.

For all my info on the supercap, I am using the Carnegie Mellon "ChargeCar" project as a reference: ChargeCar PLEASE watch the video on that web page if you are at all interested in this subject! It is a little over an hour -- you will not be wasting your time.

So, the major holes in my knowledge are:

the charger

the battery management system

the motor controller

...anything else?