Batteries - EV Conversion

I had a guy touch base with me with a complete package for a 1/2 ton Dodge truck that he wasn't going to use. $58,000.00 At the risk of offending your sensitive natures. F__K THAT. Okay, at that price it did include a new battery.

I actually found a "package" sans battery for $6500. 96HP (72Kw), 144 volt, controller, inverter, & charger. A rough calculator estimates the

They make an adapter for that motor to tie two of them together, so 6500

• 6500 + 500 + battery and I'm close to the minimum of 20 grand.

I could put the truck back together with a remanufactured (not repaired) engine that is a match to the OEM with all new parts on top and in front of the motor for 6 grand. I just don't have the time for that.

I still think I am looking at putting it on a trailer and hauling it to a salvage yard.

EV just doesn't make any sense financially at all. I don't have the knowledge to boot strap a wrecked EV into it. That is the ONLY way I've seen anybody do an EV conversion even half affordable.

To be fair that 90HP package would be fine for a small light car like a first gen Miata or an old Chevy Luv, but for anything substantial it would just incite road rage in other drivers.

That being said, I keep an eye out for a first gen Miata with a blown motor and good chassis at a deal. I passed a couple years ago, but now I wish I'd snatched them up. I like the old pop-up head lights with the bug eye conversion. There was also an outfit in California with that made a fastback hard top for them. Extreme aerodynamic improvement and it already wasn't bad with the top up.

Why not offer it "free to good home" in hopes somebody else has the resources to fix it and the need to use it? I don't think you stated the location or model year, that would be relevant.

EVs make sense only in rather limited use cases. Sounds like yours isn't one of them.

bob prohaska

"The sheet metal behind it is all perfect for its age. 2013 Dodge Ram

I rarely if ever offer anything for free anymore. To many vultures out there who profiteer off of it, rather than people with a real need who would appreciate it. I used to, but I grew weary of chasing off carrion eaters. If I stumble across somebody, but not to the general public maybe.

Apologies for the oversight....must have skipped it.

If you have the time that seems like the most productive use for it. If it could be put back on the road for something close to the cost of a similar used truck it sounds worthwhile. A straight, rust-free body is irreplaceable.

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

Its all good. If it wasn't more a rant than a creative post it would have stood out more.

My initial thought was to be good to a renter who had been good to us, and may come back to the area at some future date. Disposing of a vehicle without any cost to myself. That it turned out to be a rather nice truck was a bonus (and a curse). Scrapping probably pays for the time I will have in dealing with it since they gave me the title.

Its a curse because if it wasn't decent I would have no issue with dragging it up on a trailer and hauling it to a salvage yard. Straight body, haven't noticed any rust, and the interior is intact. All the bits and pieces laying in the bed to put the grill back together look okay too. I have a hard time just "throwing it away," even if I'll get paid for it.

There are people who cruise the marketplace, craigslist, next door, etc looking for opportunities to profiteer. I don't have an issue with it on principle if they are not vultures preying on the weak or tweakers looking for a quick buck to buy an 8-ball. There are legit salvage and rebuild buyers as well. Unfortunately when I see far more of the former than the later when I offer something cheap or free to help somebody out.

I'm not against a good deal, but I am against theft.

Yeah, putting a new reman engine in it would the most labor, but the least cost in materials to put it back on the road. I'm still actually leaning towards an EV if I can find the right stuff. The Chinese are leaps and bounds ahead of the US EV market. I can buy a new Chinese

You are welcome. I hope you got some entertainment from the reading of it. At least as much as the stress reduction I received from writing it.

Any hope of finding a decent used engine?

An EV is a worthy experiment. Thought about it myself. But a handmade conversion won't be worth much, even if it works, to anybody but the originator once the experiment is complete. The learning curve for the new owner is going to be steep. From the numbers you mentioned earlier that sounds like it might get pricey, ~20k or something. A used standard production EV can be resold for most of its purchase price unless the battery drops dead.

I very much like the idea of an EV built with commodity components as opposed to the proprietary designs prevailing in the marketplace. A pickup truck seems on the face of it a good platform; lots of space and no severe performance demands. But, it's a big project in time, knowledge and money.

One of my neighbors had a Tesla, which mysteriously dissapeared. When I asked what happend, I was told that in hot weather the car turned itself on when parked to run the AC to cool the batteries. That was a wrinkle I never imagined.

Likely there are more 8-)

Thanks for writing, and good luck....

bob prohaska

Its always possible, but the OEM for this was a 4.7L V8. A remanufactured 4.7 is 3 grand or less. The balance is that you aren't supposed to reuse the intake ($900), and you should use a new water pump, alternator, gaskets etc. Stuff that can leave you stranded use new. I figure with incidentals it might run another 3 grand in other parts. 6 grand. Maybe less if I spend more time shopping. I know plenty of people buy used engines or repaired grade engines, but I wouldn't go with less than a reman if I went that way. Its to much work to have to do twice in short order.

I asked one of my drive suppliers if an industrial high voltage inverter could be used for an EV controller. Polyspede makes them rated upto

I've never noticed my wife's Niro powering up anything to cool the batteries. It gets parked in the garage, but this is SW Arizona. The garage gets quite hot in the summer. It has to park inside the garage, because that's where I installed the charging station.

FYI: Anybody with fair to decent household electrical knowledge can install a level 2 charger. I went with a Schumacher, because it was considerably less money than the Kia/Hyundai charger. Level 1 chargers can just plug into a wall outlet.

Bob La Londe snipped-for-privacy@none.com wrote: [snip]

Ok, understood.

Those horsepower numbers seem exceedingly large. Is it really required? I'm thinking in terms of 100hp peak, 20hp continuous at most. It might require a multi-speed transmission, but that's key to efficiency anyway. Am I overlooking something? A 12 kg LiFePO4 battery can deliver about a kilowatt for a minute or so. Do you really want 250 of them?

bob prohaska

Well, we are talking about a full size pickup truck in my case. Like I said if we were looking at a gen 1 Miata or a Chevy Luv we could get by with the readily available 90HP 144 volt system. Might even feel peppy with the fact that electric motors start putting out near full torque from a relatively low RPM. When you look at working vehicles things change a bit. Even my S-10 pickup developed around 200HP (190ish if I recall) with its 4.3L V6. At even 120HP of the Sonoma I had before the S-10 with its 4 banger it was a dog. It would do freeway speed... down hill with a tail wind. LOL.

An extended cab Ram 1500 is going to be around 5000lbs. Maybe heavier with batteries. Motor is lighter with EV but batteries take that back. Now I don't need highway speed, but there is no real torque benefit to lots of gears. Not much anyway. Most EVs drive in 1 or 2 gears. I think most just have a single speed gear box. They do not even have a shiftable gear box since you don't need gears for reverse. Highway speed would not be needed for me, but I don't want some road raging socker mom ramming me with her mini van or SUV or at best riding her horn because it takes me half a minute to get up to speed.

When you get into full size pickup trucks I am thinking 160-200HP is about the minimum for hauling a load and accelerating at a reasonable rate even if you never drive over 55. I am aware that Chevy put the

For comparisons, all of my gas and diesel 3/4 ton trucks have developed over 300HP, and my current one supposedly bumps over 400HP. I don't think 200ish is unreasonable for a full size half ton extended cab. I mentioned that industrial inverters are available in larger sizes for reference, and because larger electric EV motors are readily available, and not oversized for their applications.

My real insight though was, "What if we could use industrial motor inverters instead of auto industry proprietary distribution inverters?"

Those horsepower numbers seem exceedingly large. Is it really required? I'm thinking in terms of 100hp peak, 20hp continuous at most. It might require a multi-speed transmission, but that's key to efficiency anyway. Am I overlooking something? A 12 kg LiFePO4 battery can deliver about a kilowatt for a minute or so. Do you really want 250 of them?

bob prohaska

--------------------------------------- My 91 Ford Ranger has a 105HP 4 cylinder engine that can barely get it to

Jim basically made the same point as my long winded reply.

Horsepower is horsepower. I want to make a surface street work vehicle out of it. Around here that means I'll have to do 55 once in a while to get everywhere around town. I also want to be able to haul a little bit with it.

If I was using it as a tractor substitute around the property it might be different, but I have a tractor already.

Having owned a few trucks, all used for work, some rarely going highway speed, I can't believe I'd want less than 200HP on tap, but if the price was right I might live with 160ish.

Now if you want to get silly look at this beast.

Then look at the price.

Almost certainly much heavier. LiFePO4 commondity batteries that can deliver 200 mechanical horsepower are going to weigh close to a ton. Lithium-cobalt and variants will be considerably less massive but more expensive, more fragile and more destructive if they fail badly.

EVs benefit from a shiftable transmission exactly the way IC vehicles do. The transmission minimizes current draw when torque is needed and minimizes voltage required when speed is needed. Their omission is a matter of cost control, not design optimization. The only thing they don't need is a clutch. The current minimzation is especially important, because electrical efficiency is inversely proportional to the square of the current draw.

Clearly you can, but now that I understand your performance desires the project is going to be pricey indeed. It isn't unreasonable to _want_ 200 horsepower in an EV, but as you've discovered it's expensive. The project isn't impossible, but it's cost ineffective and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Silly styling aside, a Tesla Cybertruck is close to the best-performing EV truck possible now. I'd be curious to know how it compares to what you're looking for. Or maybe the Ford F150 Lighting.

bob prohaska

Yep. Stupid expensive. Actually I've been doing more and more research (between changing tools) and there are some compromises, and some vendors who are just weird. 200HP is NOT an unreasonable amount of power for a full size truck. Even a half ton. Its really a practical minimum. 0-60 of nearly 20 seconds makes you an obstruction on the road. I DON'T WANT LIKE GET A WOODY FOR IT WANT 200HP like its something special. 200HP is really kinda lame for a truck. Taking my dad's old Bronco and stroking it out to 400+ cubic inches and 400+HP is a want. Its also a lot cheaper than 200 EV horsepower. LOL. 200HP is a NEED for a practical truck even at "surface" speeds. I suspect we are going to continue to disagree on that, and that's okay.

Interestingly the 96HP 144V option seems to actually produce 120 Peak HP. Probably only good for a few seconds, but...

Batteries are always an issue, but if it had 50 miles range it would be adequate for its intended use. Everything is expensive, but batteries seem to be about the biggest drain on the budget.

Silly styling aside, a Tesla

You are right of course. Maybe not exactly, but the principal is certainly still true. I would not be a fan of dropping an EV motor in front of a Dodge automatic transmission. I'm not even sure it would operate without being hooked to the Dodge computer.

My real insight though was, "What if we could use industrial motor inverters instead of auto industry proprietary distribution inverters?"

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Would the regenerative braking when you decelerate be acceptable?

I've worked as electrical tech on some EV projects as well as the Segway. The wiring for the prototype electric motorcycle for [mumble] was very simple, battery to controller, controller to motor and throttle to controller.

Writing this is competing with Bob Dylan at Newport on PBS, and he's winning. OK, pledge break.

I needed expensive special tools to crimp the connectors. Since then I've collected them at flea markets. Testing required recording voltages, motor current and temperature. I mounted an industrial datalogger on the motorcycle "tank", a laptop with connected DVMs would work in a car or truck.

A sometimes overlooked problem with Lithiums is that the battery suddenly stops drawing charge current when full, and the charger voltage may spike up, especially with a solar controller. I burned out an inverter that way, and am now experimenting with voltage-limited charging to somewhat less than

Bye, I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

They were crimped instead of soldered to better resist vibration. The end of a solder joint is a stress concentration in stranded wire, and copper work-hardens. High current makes wires magnetic and may slam them against steel structure unless restrained.

I became involved in automotive electronic testing in the mid 1970's when emissions laws and fuel economy forced the shift from mechanical to electronic engine controls. Previously the only electronics in a car was the radio which they bought, the voltage regulator used relays and intake vacuum mechanically matched ignition timing to load.

There wasn't an available pool of design knowledge, aircraft and military standards were too expensive although their concepts could be adapted, so the companies hired new EE grads with little practical experience and they learned by trial and error, mostly caught in testing before production. I'd at least seen how the military ruggedizes electronics as a repairman and made an effort to learn the practical aspects such as switch contact voltage and current ratings and expected cycle life.

A Ph.D. project manager issued a braking deceleration test specification to the 8 digits of his calculator. He knew the math well enough, but he'd never built anything himself and didn't realize that affordable components have a tolerance range.

At the time high precision resistors for analog computation cost $5 and up apiece, I bought the still accurate instrument they had been tested on when its data connection became obsolete. A disdain for hands-on technician work was fairly common among electrical engineers, in contrast to mechanical engineers who all could run machine tools.

My education was a mix of theory and lab practice. As chemists we learned how to calculate the uncertainty level of measurements well enough to defend our results in court.

Amateur radio is an exception, an operator might be the chief engineer at a large tech company or even the King of Jordan, and amateur experimentation was sometimes at the leading edge of technology, such as tracking Sputnik.