914 EV discussion, Who's doing or done an electric 914? Options

[Joe Bob]

http://www.electroauto.com/gallery/vp914.shtml
http://electric914.wordpress.com/
http://www.evcl.com/914/

Electro Automotive has a kit for 14K...yikes.....
Otmar seems to be REAL busy building components.....

I'm thinkng of doing one for my twins..... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)
I have two years to get it done.....

[pjf]

I'm restoring a '76 914 intending to convert it to electric. I've been kicking around the AC/DC question while I'm welding and have come to the decision that DC is the only way to go. AC is more efficient than DC but only slightly so. You do get regenerative braking with AC but again the gains are not that great (like 10%). There is really only one anywhere near affordable AC system for the 914 and that's the one used by ElectroAutomotive AC kit. Unfortunately it delivers about half the horsepower of the 914 gas engine and the car weighs about twice as much after the conversion. You are supposed to get more range with an AC system but with amount of electricity used quotes I've seen I'm doubtful. With DC you have more options, horsepower, and torque. You can match or exceed the horsepower and torque of the original engine. I'm looking at a Zilla controller (from Otmar) and a WarP motor right now as the best options. As far as lead acid batteries go, yes they are heavy and they don't last forever (2-3 years) but they are the best we have right now and they can be used to make an electric car with decent performance and range. All the other options are just too expensive right now. As far as costs go, the parts are expensive but will last (except for the batteries) pretty much forever. The motors for instance (with brushes replaced) will go a million miles. Once you get past the price of the conversion parts the actual cost of batteries and electricity I work out to be less than $3/gallon gas.
If you have any question or want to discuss this further, I'd be glad to.

P.S. That avatar is going to be hard to look at alot dude.

[banger]

You may want to look the the ford ranger ev motor that is on ebay. For $2000 the price isnt bad. The nice thing about the AC motors is that they have nice flat torque from 0-4000 rpm, and typically have a top speed of 12-13,000 rpm. As for batteries, there are some sources of Nicd cells which work quite well. As for the cost effectiveness, a 914 that gets 30mpg costs 10 cents per mile with gas costing $3/gallon. If you use lead acid batteries on a 914, you would probably get around 50 miles per charge. If you figure a battery cost of $3000, and around 300 cycles, then the cost per mile for just the batteries is 20 cents. Add to this the cost of recharging at around 3 cents per mile, and you are up to 23 cents per mile. This ends up being far more expensive than driving the gas version. If you are able to use a better battery technology, then you can get the cost down. The Nimh batteries used in the EV-1 and RAV4-EV have a life of around 100,000 miles, which makes the cost of operating them much lower. A Nicd or Nimh pack may cost double or triple the cost, but will last more than three times longer. It just a bit hard to get over the initial sticker shock of the batteries.

[smontanaro]

You may want to look the the ford ranger ev motor that is on ebay. For $2000 the price isnt bad.

Except as I recall it doesn't come with the inverter which is NLA, which makes the motor pretty much worthless.

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[banger]

The inverter is just a siemens Simovert, which can be purchased from Metricmind. The AC motors are pretty much all the same, you could use an inverter from Siemens, Brusa, or Azure Dynamics.

You may want to look the the ford ranger ev motor that is on ebay. For $2000 the price isnt bad.

Except as I recall it doesn't come with the inverter which is NLA, which makes the motor pretty much worthless.

Skip