EVcast #244. There's No Batter In Batteries!

Thanks once again, Nikki and John, for a good show!  I enjoy y'all's EV tutorials (or are they called Tudorials in Britain;-)  I do have another question for John- why does it seem so hard for a car to swith battery types?  I do understand that different battery chemistries require different methods of charging and monitoring- but it seems like this would not be a hard software or firmware upgrade for a controller- or are these being built in too much of a proprietary fashion to allow such flexibility.  For example, let's take Darell the EV Nut's RAV4 EV- once his NiMH batteries die (hopefully not for a few more years;-), it is my understanding that unless he is able to find another batch of these NiMH batteries, he is out of luck.  And, if these type of controllers cannot be upgraded or reprogrammed, are the newer ones coming out more flexible in this regard.  It would be nice, for example, to purchase an EV with a cheaper set of batteries, say Lead-Acid, but have the option to upgrade later once prices for Li-Ion come down.

And the link to John's site is:  http://www.gifford.co.uk/~coredump/

Interesting site to visit.

quote comment add new comment

Nice to hear about one of the most famous EVs ever: the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV)! To know a bit more, here's the Wikipedia page about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Rover

Some cool data about it:

Total production: 4

Total cost: $38,000,000

Weight: 463 lb

Motors: two DC (1 front, 1 rear) 190 W each. The electric steering used two 190 W motors.

Battery pack: two 36-volt silver-zinc potassium hydroxide, 121 A·h.

By the way, the reason astronauts had to open the boxes where the electric components were housed was to remove moon dust from the cooling fins. An out-of-this-world ride, indeed!

quote comment add new comment

Paul,

That's why I'm reluctant to sink any money into a good running but old EV like a Rav 4, Solectria, Ford EV or GM E10 commercial conversion. These vehicles are also AC with the exception of the Rav 4 which is brushless DC.  If the inverter fails it's going to cost a whole lot of money to replace them because you're looking at a whole new upgrade of inverter and motor. This is because, in the case of the Solectria, Azure Dynamics doesn't make the model that goes into the old Solectria models anymore and the only solution they offer is a complete motor and inverter swapout.

Rick, from the oil capitol of the World, Houston, TX.

quote comment add new comment