Serious electro-automotive projects

Vehicles & Mobility
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Feel free to post links to real electro-automotive projects here, from carts to cars to vans to trucks, to let the community discuss the feasibility and practicality of the projects in all aspects.

The main focus is on the technical aspects, as well as the aesthetics and financial/economic aspects.

Please keep it to real existing projects, so cars that are available on the market. No utopian projects please.
Also mention some prices and energy costs, since this is really important.

I'll start out with what I think is the best really existing project for the moment:

http://e-go-mobile.com/de/modelle/e.go-life/

What I think was done particularly right in this project is:

  • complete redesign for efficiency, only 650 kg car with a technician-friendly design for maintenance and repair;
  • 2+2 seater despite the modest outer dimensions, good use of available space, easy to park and reach any kind of charging outlet with;
  • no need for a subscription of any kind for batteries or charging, focus on home-charging, with the option of charging through any available power source;
  • only 14.4 kWh battery is good for 140 km range, that's pretty spectacular in terms of efficiency. At a price of about 24 Eurocents per kWh, that's between 2 and 3 Eurocents per km of energy cost. That's ten times less than petrol.
  • modern European style suspension, agile and safe in all conditions.
  • this is a big one: made to be cheaper than similar internal combustion engine based cars! I think this is the ultimate goal to make electromobility break through. It was the VW Bug and the Citroen 2CV that made cars common, not the Rolls Royce Phantom or the Jaguar Type E or the Mercedes 300SL Gull Wing... the price of the e-go life is set at under 16000 EUR including taxes, and in Germany there is a subsidy of 4000 EUR for pure electrics, so that makes it into a 12000 EUR car without subscription costs. That's cheaper than a Smart ForTwo!
  • proven drive train, using tried and tested mature and technically sound Bosch hardware.
  • designed at one of the best engineering faculties in the world, at the RWTH, using some of the most advanced design techniques, including the AixCAVE, a full size 3D virtual reality deck with very high resolution (only 1.5 mm pixel distance for such a large setup), which permits engineers to get a really good impression of what a designed product looks like in reality if it were actually built.
  • built in Germany, with German parts, in a new factory that's being built at the former Philips site in Aachen.
  • a real product, can be ordered, is tested, certified, and will be delivered from spring next year.
  • not a "first product", as the engineers behind this project, have already successfully designed and marketed the electric vans for the Deutsche Post (DHL), which not only are being used in real life situations, but due to their success, are now also being sold to third party customers by the Deutsche Post (so de facto, Deutsche Post is an automotive manufacturer these days). The e-go project can build upon the experience of making hard-wearing, solid electric vehicles for extreme duty, no other electric vehicle manufacturer has this kind of experience in tough commercial use cases.
  • not from a big automotive industry leader, so no garage model to finance, no dependency on historical money-grabbing schemes, no oligopolistic behaviour, etc
  • nice design, certainly on par with Smart ForFour/Renault Twingo, Toyota Aygo and iQ, VW Up, and other very popular small city cars
  • the engineers did not pretend to make a car that is anything other than a city/commute car. This is also a big one for me. Most big manufacturers market their expensive electro-vehicles as if these vehicles can substitute internal combustion cars for all kinds of uses. That is simply not the case. Electro-vehicles are simply not suitable for travel or Autobahn use, but they make very good city/commute cars. By positioning their product as a budget product, people can buy a normal car for travel, and a small electric car for daily commute, whereby the electric car doesn't take much space in storage. I find that very intelligent, because it may save the normal internal combustion car industry, and allow people to travel freely going forward, because a middle class person would not have to choose between either car, but can have both. I think this is the way to go, because there is no technology at this point in time that offers an alternative to internal combustion engine based cars for travel, but for city/commute use, big internal combustion based cars are very anti-social because they take too much space and are very inefficient in a traffic jam or when agility is required in an urban environment.
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Where I think electric vehicles shine today:

I was hoping energy storage was going to surpass batteries. Gasoline is still better until the technology is released or improved.

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That's a good point, one that may be discussed by the community.

This link is very interesting that respect:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6969567.PN.&OS=PN/6969567&RS=PN/6969567

It is a patent from 2000 about technology acquired by Texaco in 1996/1997.

In the patent, they explicitly say:

Nickel-metal hydride batteries ("Ni--MH batteries") are superior to lead-acid batteries and are the ideal battery available for electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles and other forms of vehicular propulsion. For example, Ni--MH batteries, such as those described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,277,999, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, have a much higher energy density than lead-acid batteries, can power an electric vehicle over 250 miles before requiring recharge, can be recharged in 15 minutes, and contain no toxic materials.

That was in the nineties. So in the nineties, Texaco had the ability based on NiMH technology to have vehicles charge in 15 minutes without toxic materials (unlike Lithium Polymer technology), and then drive for more than 250 Miles.

So it's 2017 now, literally 20 years later, and we still don't have that technology on the market lol... but they have a new pipeline now and more extensive fracking rights... this is very relevant to the whole electric vehicle debate in my opinion.

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Workmate and I put an old DC motor from a forklift into a Daihatsu HiJet van. Direct to driveshaft. We actually coupled the hydraulic motor to the drive motor and used a micro to trigger the contactor at Wide Open Throttle. Did mad burnouts haha, but was a bit slow due to 12inch wheels and 5:1 diff ratio.

We separated the control gear from the contactor supply and ran the control gear on 48V (same as donor forklift) and added another 12V battery to get 60V through the contactors to the motors. Accelerated harder, still was lucky to go 50kph hah.

It was an interesting exercise. Selling the scrap metal and battery cells from the donor forklift paid for the engineering to graft the motors together, and get the 12V NS70 automotive batteries we used to power it. We then ripped it all out and scrapped the van, and the motors and control gear is all stacked on a pallet in the racking at work.

I fix forklifts for a living, and am an auto-electrician by trade. I find it amusing with things like the Tesla, as it's technology that has been used in forklifts for 10 years; AC drive motors and inverters. They just add cooling so they can pump the voltage and current up and not have it melt down. Considering you can now get forklifts that will double-shift (run for 16 hours) without a battery change I'd say that public perception is a lot of the stumbling with uptake. Maybe.

Pic on my instafood of the motors getting ready to go, splined and flange made to bolt together.

A post shared by Nigel ( @ignitionigel ) on Jun 20, 2014 at 8:49pm PDT