Charging at work

When starting this project, one of the design criteria was determining the required range of the vehicle. It was decided that it had to be able to get me back and forth to work without charging -- in case I had to turn back when I got to work for some reason (sick kids at daycare, etc.).
But most of the time, I would drive to work, charge, and drive home. This ensures that the batteries are not over discharged and should greatly extend their life (and reduce the overall cost per km traveled). That is why I made sure to get approval to charge at work before choosing a car, batteries, etc.

I approached the manager of building services / facilities last summer. He readily agreed to provide a solution when the time came. I contacted his office this week, and with approval from security, we've found a convenient parking space where a plug is already in place. Building services will simply ensure that it has two independent 20A circuits.

Meanwhile, I can park there and use one of the two plugs (switching from the charging the batteries at the front, to those at the back, at lunch time). So I'm taking the car to work tomorrow:


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Modified Vehicle Inspection -- Out on the roads.

Yesterday I went to the local CAA to get the car inspected as a "Modified Vehicle" as per provincial standards. The report they produce is then sent to provincial authorities for review and approval.

Once approval is received, a mechanical inspection is also done to ensure all the details are covered.

It was a nice 13Km ride out there, my first on Montreal highways. No trouble getting up to speed, nor keeping up with traffic.

The people out at the CAA are very professional and quite nice. Obviously, they don't see too many electric cars go through there. I had a bit of a surprise, however, as they had spoken to the provincial engineer who will be reviewing the report: they had been told that the vehicle should be considered "hand-crafted" (fabrication artisanale), instead of "modified". This means it has to meet today's standards, instead of those from 1972. For me, this will involve the following additions:
- Daytime Running Lights
- A third brake light.
- Parking brake indicator light on the dash.

I had actually planned on installing running lights (LED Fog lights in the front air-intakes) and a third brake light, for safety's sake -- its just a shame that now I have to do it.
The parking brake indicator shouldn't be too bad, as there is a spare indicator on the dash anyway -- it will just be a matter of running an normally-open push button switch under the parking brake lever, though the 12V on-circuit and to the light.

In addition, the car didn't meet the modified/hand-crafted criteria for the following points:
- Right-side high beam intensity is too low
- Left-side headlight fixture, while correctly aligned, is wobbly.
- Passenger compartment is insufficiently hermetic with regards to the battery compartment: above the drivers left knee.

While these are inconveniences, they should be relatively easy to fix.
- The high beam is probably a crushed wire or rusty contact -- the filament seems to work fine.
- When I adjusted the left fixture last time, I knew it was wobbly, but it holds its alignment correctly, so I let it go.
- The hole in the firewall is known, but not a safety concern since I use sealed batteries: I had already planned on fixing it -- its a bit drafty!

After the inspection, I headed off to a public scale to get the car weighed -- unfortunately it was closed, so I headed home. The batteries only started sagging heavily under load as I tried to get back on the highway, 25km into my trip.
So to stay out of trouble, I got off at the next exit and took the side-streets home for the last 3km.

All in all it was a 32.5km outing, for which I am quite satisfied. After a 4hour charge, I was back on the road for another 20.5km outing in gale-force winds, in which the car was very stable on the highway.

Home at last

The Ghia arrived today.

After the explanation to my eldest daughter (3yrs old) that: "No, Daddy's blue car wont go vroom-vroom", we were off for a quick circuit around the neighborhood.

We are all very pleased.

On the road!

A quick jot around the neighbourhood to see if it let out any magic smoke: none. Back to the garage to 'work out' a bit of a snag on the clutch/firewall with the 6oz sheet-metal adjustment tool. We also installed the bargraph voltmeters I had cooked up: http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhmzznh8_6g795t582

We hit the road again to get the car up to speed: the design goal is twice 15miles @ 60mph per day, with charging at work in between.

I was a bit excited, so didn't note anything with any scientific rigour, but while cruising it seems to draw less than 100amps at 60mhp on 144V of Deka 8G31 gels sagged to 130V -- and that's with flattish tires and 14F temperatures. This comes out to 100A*130V/60mph = 217Whr/mile at the pack, which is looking very good.

It climbed onto the highway on-ramp without any problems and we merged in at speed and had no problem keeping up. We also had no trouble maintaining speeds of 40mph on city hills (I could have been accelerating up the hill).

So the next step is to cart it back from Richards (90 miles from my home), get it inspected, and start using it for my commute: hopefully before earth hour strikes this year.

Near completion

Richard emailed me last night with some exciting news:
"The car is basically complete."
There are a few details to iron out, but everything is in place and ready to test.


Here are the pics!

The front compartment:

On the back left, against the wall are the heater relays. The back right has the Delta-Q 72V charger and beside it, against the wall is the circuit breaker / emergency disconnect. The battery heater thermostat, white, is clearly visible. Each battery has power leads and fused instrumentation leads.

Here we can see the heating pad across the back of the back two batteries. The aux battery can be seen on the right, in the nose; beside it is the DC/DC.

The "plug":

There is a twist-lock for the chargers and a standard plug for the heaters


The rear compartment:

On the firewall of the rear compartment is the aluminum heat-sink/mounting board. On it can be seen from left to right: the inertia switch, the control relays, the potentiometer box (throttle), the controller, the contactor, the measurement shunts, the kill switch relays, the power-fuse and 12V fuses. Again, each battery has power and instrumentation leads, heaters and a thermostat, a charger, and of course, the motor with its RPM sensor on the back-shaft.

The instrument cluster:

We can see the pack voltage, battery or motor amperage and motor RPM. Below these is the programmable timer for cabin pre-heating.

The instrument cluster, heating plenum and wiring ducts:

Behind the programmable timer is the heater-box and the plenum which leads to the windshield defroster vents. In the corner, we can see the curved wiring duct which protects and isolates the driver/passengers from the high voltage wires which need to run between the front and rear battery boxes.

Controller has arrived!

The Logisystems controller arrived on Feb 5th. I drove down to Ottawa to deliver it to Richard and review the state of the car.

It looks great, the heating system is in, batteries are all in place, so is the front charger, DC/DC, aux bat and relays.

We reviewed remaining component placement and interactions, as well as front-to-back wire routing through the cabin; and instrumentation connectors.

I brought the old gas engine back to Montreal with me: it will find a new home as part of someones VW project.

Sorry no pics.

Battery Racks

Richard has been working on the battery racks, and reinforcing the rear motor compartment.

This is a view of the rear battery racks:

You can see the new plates which come down from the firewall, and along either side, this will has some rigidity to the rear bumper and boxes. There will be three batteries on either side of the engine. You can also see that the rear apron has been welded back on, the trunk latch, however, still needs to be relocated.

Here we see the front battery racks:

That battery is simply a group-31 sized test box used to validate the fit: 2lbs instead of 70lbs! There will be two batteries at the top, and four across the bottom. This front compartment will also be home to one charger, the DC/DC converter, 12V accessory battery, and the heater relays. The spare tire will have to be relocated.