Friday, August 7, 2009

Floor mats

While these del Sol floor mats I found on ebay are really faded, they are still pretty cool.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Throttle (me)


So, I had the throttle wires connected to the micro switch on the front of the potbox. As you can see from the picture (I got lucky) and there is a 3rd post on the throttle. With some internet reading I connected the 5V input to the unused 3rd wire and grounded the 1st wire (white) and the middle (wiper or black wire) is the throttle input. Now the throttle and gas pedal work correctly.

Note: At this point in the conversion I cannot recommend a Kelly KDH for the simple reason they don't support 0-5K throttle input.


Batteries

Several new things have happened with batteries in the past 9 months. The price of Lifepo4 cells has dropped from about $250/100 Ah to $120/100 Ah and there are a few importers who are offering that price, including evcomponents.com and jungle motors.

Perhaps the biggest indicator is that LG Chem and its US division, Compact Power Inc (CPI), will supply the batteries for the Chevy Volt. They plan to spend $800M on a Korean factory. Also, A123 will supply the batteries for Chrysler and Kia and Nissan Leaf (with NEC) have announced EVs.

A quote from an article about the Leaf:

"However, the battery, the most expensive component on the car, will only be leased to customers.

The Leaf is powered by laminated compact lithium-ion batteries, which generate power output of over 90 kW, while its electric motor delivers 80 kW/280 Nm."