July, 2007

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Hacked Serial Cable Details and Bad Relay

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

A few people asked me about how I hacked together a serial port since AC kit people will need this in order to configure the controller correctly. I basically took three 16 gauge wires (smaller would be fine) and soldered on crimp sockets at the end of each one. I also added heatshrink tubing so that adjacent signals wouldn't short out. The picture above shows the three wires plugged into the top three pins on the 8-pin connector on the controller.

Kits 100
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Is GM Playing Games with the Volt?

Plugs and Cars

As I've blogged previously , I want to believe as much as the next guy that the Volt - GM's announced plug-in hybrid - is real. I believe enviros have spent way too much time pushing for higher CAFE standards and ignored alternative methods of getting clean cars on the road. The enviros gave up on electric cars, let the automakers and California off the hook just as the cars were proving themselves viable and popular.

Volt 100
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Stamp of Approval

Plug In Partners

E PRI and the National Resource Defense Council have recently released a new study which shows the environmental as well as the economic benefits of plug-ins. Plug-in hybrids seen as vehicles for change A study projects lower emissions and sufficient power grid capacity. LA Times By Martin Zimmerman, The widespread use of plug-in hybrid vehicles — which could be driven up to 40 miles on electric power alone — would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States without overlo

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Debugging, Debugging, Debugging.

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Okay, things don't seem to be working too well. We have three issues: 1. The controller simply cuts out at high acceleration (bad) 2. Many times the controller doesn't even start up at all 3. There's very little power from the system, I can't go much above 30mph After sending error logs to Azure Dynamics, they came back with the following: " Vehicles with improper or substandard grounding and shielding sometimes exhibit nuisance errors flagged as EE3LastError = 16.

Exhaust 100
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How serious is Norway about climate change? So much that its streetlights self-dim

emissions global warming Norway climate change carbon dioxide youtube lighting

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Power calculations

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

After looking at the specs on the ElectroAuto website, I'm thinking that a maximum input power rating of 50000 watts is really too much. Here are the ElectroAuto specs: AC24 Aircooled Motor Length Diameter Weight Controller Efficiency 15.55" 9.45" 83.6 lbs. DMOC445 83% Specifications @ 156 V Input Ft.Lbs. Amps RPM HP KW Peak/Maximum 54.57 280 rms 12,000 57.66 @ 4,500 rpm 43 Continuous 22.12 180 rms 12,000 18.77 14 55 Ft-Lbs peak is 75 Newton-meters.

Power 100
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Hoods Installed

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Well, we're getting closer. My friend Rick and his friend Amy came over today to help install the front and rear lids. I was rather relieved when both lids closed without any interference. I installed the engine compartment cover this morning and realized that the rain gutter would have to be completely removed to not interfere with the rear battery box.

More Trending

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Closing the Boxes and Fixing the Suspension

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

I took a few minutes (just a few) to go out with friends to celebrate. Here's my girlfriend Krista enjoying a very brief ride to the bottom of the driveway. The front tires still bottom out when I turn the wheels too hard, so I'm holding off major test drives. Here are my friends (Krista, Ruth and Rick) just before we went walking to get some gelato on this fine day.

Batteries 100
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Close, but no Cigar.

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

I didnt' get a chance to do much tonight, but I did hook up the final fusible links in the battery system. Before hooking up the links, I jacked up the rear of the car and put in on jackstands just in case something started happening with the motor. I also put the transmission in neutral. Here's the front fusible link in place. No sparks yet! Here's the rear fusible link.

Volt 100
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Wow, This is Really Fast! NOT!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Just a quick update. I removed the jack-stands, cleaned out the garage and fired up the 914EV. It responds properly to the accelerator, but at full throttle, the car goes about six inches a second both forward and reverse. Looks like I've got more DMOC parameters to adjust. Fun, Fun. Things still to do: - Fix the right window - Install the 12V transformer for the charger interlock and fans - Add the battery box covers - Put all hoods and lids back on the car - Add the gauges and control switches

Clean 100
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Aha! A Broken Wire!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

I collected a bunch of controller data over the serial port on my laptop and sent that off to Azure Dynamics for analysis. After looking at the data, the ISR2Hertz variable (i.e. RPM) was pegged at zero. This led me to believe that there was something wrong with the motor encoders. I opened up the motor speed monitor box and probed around. All the encoder signals were up at 4.9 volts and the black ground wire was also up around 4.83 volts.

Volt 100
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Faurecia and Accenture partner on products and services for connected and autonomous vehicles

Brief

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First Driving Test!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Well, I carefully fixed the black grounding wire to the motor encoders and the system seems to work fine now. I got the AC motor to rev up quite quickly in neutral. Both forward and reverse movements are fairly smooth. For yucks, I drove the car around the block. It has very slow acceleration, probably due to all the battery weight. I drove it in second gear.

Motor 100
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9:12am July 27, 2007 - It's Alive!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

This morning, I hacked together a serial cable to talk with the ccShell program provided by Azure Dynamics to communicate with the controller. You need to contact Azure Dynamics directly to get the.ccs file that works with ccShell; it's not available on their FTP site. Here's the hacked up serial cable attached to the laptop. After setting up Hyperterm for 19,200 baud N,8,1,no handshake, I was able to turn the keyswitch and get a boot screen and binary data dumping out the serial port.

2007 100
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Top Climate Scientist on Lessons Not Learned from Electric Car Debacle

Plugs and Cars

Dr James Hansen is perhaps the top climate scientist in the country. From his post at NASA he warned Congress and us what's up with global warming long ago. There are some lessons we need to learn as we are inundated with adverts about "clean coal," if we are not to get snookered as enviros did over the electric car. California had a regulation that would have required automobile manufacturers to produce a small percentage of cars without emissions by such-and-such date, and a larger percentage

Climate 100
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Let My People Convert! - The A123 Challenge

Plugs and Cars

Les Goldman wants you to convert (your hybrid.) Easy as 123. So he proposed at the California Air Resources Board ZEV workshop on Tuesday. An ARB ZEV meeting is ordinarily a predictable affair. What began as a simple program requiring an ever increasing percentage of Zero Emission vehicles (read electric cars), has become mired in cumbersome bureaucratic complications.

Convert 100
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ExxonMobil announces 6th oil discovery offshore Guyana with Ranger-1; Guyana may move from non-producer to regional powerhouse

Oil

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Plug-in Hybrid Race on as Toyota Tests NiMH PHEV; A123 Challenges CARB to Authorize Conversions

Plugs and Cars

From today's NY Times Toyota to Test Plug-In Hybrid, Rivaling G.M. Toyota said it would provide prototype versions of plug-in hybrid vehicles to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Berkeley.The prototype plug-in hybrids will be powered by two oversize packs of nickel-metal hydride batteries Yesterday, in Sacramento A123Systems , the battery manufacturer being used by GM for the Vue and Volt, challenged CARB not to wait for OEM plug-ins.

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Toyota's Plug-in Prius: Out of the Pod, Into the Podcast

Plugs and Cars

Toyota's plug-in Prius comes out of the closet. No translation needed. Take a look. [link] Main Specifications of Toyota Plug-in HV Vehicle Name TOYOTA Plug-in HV Length / Width / Height 4,445 / 1,725 / 1,490mm Weight 1,360kg Seating capacity 5 persons Performance in electric vehicle mode Cruising range 13km in the 10-15 Japanese test cycle Maximum vehicle speed 100km/h Engine Displacement 1,496cc Maximum output 56kW(76PS) / 5,000rpm Maximum torque 110N-m (11.2kg-m) / 4,000rpm Motor Type AC sync

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Ford in the PHEV Race, too?

Plugs and Cars

MSNBC and NBC News have report on plug-in hybrids , focusing on the Volt. But there's some news about Ford, too, buried within. Ford is also in the plug-in game and could get to the finish line first. It is already testing two plug-in hybrids, [Ford's Sue] Cischke told the Chicago Tribune, and it expects to deliver the first road-ready vehicles for testing in California by 2009.

Ford 100
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Hauling Lead and Confusing Connections

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Tonight was an evening of heavy lifting. These high-capacity 8-volt golf-cart batteries are 70 pounds apiece. I'll definitely take some ibuprofen before tomorrow. Here are the batteries in the front box. The fuel compartment box. And the rear box. I pre-laid out these batteries on the floor to guestimate what the connections between the terminals were.

Connect 100
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Busy Day - Time to get your WooGah On

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Whoosh! Despite being exhausted from yesterday, I got up early this morning and just cranked through a bunch of EV stuff on my day off. Here is the board that the charger tray mounts to. There's a clear piece of acrylic providing a small gap so that the board can hinge forward and upwards without any edge interference. I'm holding this in place with clamps so I can drill the hinge holes without the board moving around.

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Toyota Hot and Cold on Plug-in Hybrids

Plugs and Cars

A month or so ago word was Toyota was postponing the new generation Lithium Prius. That seemed to be a hint that Toyota wasn't moving too quickly on plug-ins. As if to confirm that notion, recently a Toyota spokesman in DC was denigrating plug-in hybrids as Hymotion/A123 and Rob Lowe were making a plug-in splash in Congressman Ed Markey's global warming committee.

Plug-in 100
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We are Green for 12V Electrical!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Whew! I spent the evening debugging the small sparking issue I ran into yesterday. The behavior was interesting in that the keyswitch relay closed for about a second and then released. In the process, the DC-DC converter turned on (indicated by red LED) and then slowly decayed to the off state. It turns out that this behavior is explained by the rather large capacitive load between 12V and ground provided by the capacitors in the system, probably from the CD player and the VDO clock.

Green 100
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Forcing a Fit and Letting Sparks Fly

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Well, after yesterday's letdown with the front battery box not fitting into the steel frame, I loaded up on caffeine and pulled out the grinding wheel. Here is the front battery box not fitting into the front rack. If you click on the picture for a larger view, you can see the front-side edge not in the rack. I first tried a hand file, but made much more progress with a paint removal wheel attached to a drill.

Kits 100
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Plug-in Hybrid Study: Electricity Better

Plugs and Cars

The basic question addressed, which appears on the study homepage (epri-reports.org) is this: How would air quality and greenhouse gas emissions be affected if significant numbers of Americans drove cars that were fueled by the power grid? Simply put, the study found what advocates of electric transportation have long held to be true: as regards greenhouse gases and pollution generally speaking, the worst electricity is still better than petroleum.

Plug-in 100
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More Wiring and ACK, It Doesn't Fit!

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Yesterday I ran out to Parkrose Hardware again to pick up the remaining wire I needed (hopefully) and all the bolts/nuts/washers for mounting the stuff in the front trunk. Continuing with the wiring, here is the bundle of EV wires in the front luggage compartment, covered with the flexguard. Again, the front luggage compartment with the vertical all-thread in the battery rack for the battery-box tie-down bars.

DC 100
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GM: Electric Opel by 2010

Plugs and Cars

Thomson Financial reports in Forbes that General Motors Corp unit Opel plans to bring out an all-electric car at the end of 2010. GM's European chief Carl-Peter Forster is said to mention the EV in an excerpt from tomorrow's Auto Motor Sport magazine. He told the magazines that hybrid technology is too costly to use in small cars, suggesting a city car, perhaps too small to be marketed in the US.

2010 100
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EPRI/NRDC Plug-in Hybrid Enviro Assessment to be Released

Plugs and Cars

The long awaited report assessing the environmental impact of plug-in hybrids undertaken by the Electric Power Research Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council will see the light of day on Thursday morning in Washington DC. Roger Duncan from Austin Energy and Plug-in Partners is participating in the press conference, so the results must be positive.

Plug-in 100
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Hanging out with NEDRA

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Summer events have held me back from working on the 914EV, so I headed out to Portland International Raceway to get a boost of inspiration from NEDRA (National Electric Drag Racing Association) to continue the project. Here are some photos. Here's the famous KillaCycle powered by just under 1000 A123 batteries, the same kind that go into the DeWalt cordless drills.

Lead Acid 100
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Green Autos in the Times: Hybrid Hype, Hydrogen Hooey and Electric Dreams

Plugs and Cars

A number of articles about "green cars" worth perusing in Saturday's New York Times Automotive section. Usually devoted to crass boosterism of America's largest manufacturing industry, these articles still contain a lot of that. Especially as displayed in Adam B. Ellick and Don Sherman's moronic and facile hydrogen vehicles video shot in the New Jersey field where the Hindenberg met its firey demise.

LS 600H 100
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Plug-in Hybrid Bills in Congress Scare Auto Makers

Plugs and Cars

The Detroit News Autos Insider column today is reporting on Congressional efforts to promote plug-in hybrids and the backlash from the automakers. Toyota made the car, the Prius, that made plug-in conversions possible, and now they are trying to rein in the desires unleashed. Neither CARB incentives nor the efforts of Plug-in Partners have moved the auto makers to produce plug-in hybrids, so conversion efforts are moving along.

Plug-in 100
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Norwegian Investors Rally to Revived Think Electric Car

Plugs and Cars

The Aftenposten reports (in English) on the success Jan Olaf Willums is having at the helm of the revived Think Global. Many of Norway's tycoons and heirs are making significant investments in the company which is planning production of as many as 10,000 cars by 2009. My first electric car was a Think City, produced when the company was owned by Ford.

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Ford and Edison set to announce plug-in hybrid venture

Plugs and Cars

Ford Motor Co and Southern California Edison, provider of electricity to 13 million, are set to announce something Monday relating to plug-in vehicles. Reuters has a first report. Tags: Ford electric car plug-in hybrid southern california edison.

Plug-in 100
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Routing Thick Cables

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

My friend Rick came over last night to help me feed the thick cable bundle through the driver-side heater duct. I didn't get any action shots, but here's the result. Here is the left side of the passenger compartment under the fuse box with the cables routed down into the heater duct. I've already added the 3-hole cap-plug provided in the kit. Here are the same cables coming out into the fuel compartment through the large grommet behind the fuse box from the passenger compartment.

Kits 100
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Despite the propaganda, waiting for plug-ins

Plugs and Cars

Despite the Prius ads pushing an anti-plug-in message, many are waiting for a hybrid that can plug in to cleaner, cheaper domestic electricity. Daily Economy Fuel Tip surveys why people don 't buy hybrids now. 49% of respondents stated that hybrid cars are too expensive 29% of respondents stated that they were waiting for plug-in hybrid vehicles 11% of respondents stated that they just are not interested in buying a hybrid vehicle 9% of respondents stated that hybrid cars are too small 2% of res

Plug-in 100
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Hacking Big Cables

Porsche 914 EV Conversion

Work was pretty quiet today with the July 4th holiday in the middle of the week, so I took the afternoon off to work on some of the high-current cables. Here are two of the PowerPosts that I purchased yesterday from West Marine. The one on the right is the most-negative terminal and the one on the left is the placeholder for the high-current shunt that ElectroAuto hasn't sent yet.

Kits 100