Lithium Ion El - Progress!

Own the fantastic City El trike ?
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aminorjourney
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Postby aminorjourney » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:26 am

It was very good to see yesterday Kelvin. It made the plugging event a bit more important as we had an audience!

;)

We had some more good news today after a quick test down the road at 6am. I hit 40mph without a problem and had very nippy acceleration! I think the car will go faster given some decent road.

The cables seem to be a bit fussy when you put the seat back on - it seems you have to carefully close the lid of the underseat component without pulling any wires accidentally otherwise it won't work :D

I've also dumped the laptop. I think I'll probably take it with me to check charge levels when I'm out and about but as it's a really old machine with no network connectivity I wasn't too keen to keep using it.

Luckily for me my garage actually has an old 1998 iMac - same year as my car! - and I've rigged up a USB to serial connection to it. The iMac's main job is to provide me with music and Internet access for checking technical specs etc when I'm working on cars in the garage as I live in a coach house and the rest of the house is on first floor level!

With a bit of quick searching on the Internet I found a driver for OS X for the serial/usb device I have and installed that on the garage machine. Next a quick trip up to my office where I have my main work machine. I opened up a terminal , started an SSH session to my garage iMac and voila! I have charging status and info on my desktop machine from the garage! My car is HOOKED UP TO THE INTERNET!!! *Grins like a mad woman*

Image

The window in the centre with all the numbers etc in it is the output from my car's BMS. It's currently showing a full charge (in fact it's showing over voltage based on the settings I gave it so has stopped charging) and is equalizing the cells; something the BMS does when the car isn't charging or being used.

Next: The road test propper!
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

EVangelist and Media Relations Coordinator, www.ZeroCarbonWorld.org
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http://about.me/aminorjourney/bio

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:41 am

Well done!

Now you can do barrel roles even faster!!!! ;) it would be a real shame to see all that work turn turtle though.

I wouldn't be surprised to find the wires will need some securing as there's a lot of vibration involved in taking any vehicle down a road. (Especially round my part of the world as there's so many dairies around me here half the roads are pretty much farm tracks) It's all part of the fun/frustration of building your own car. Trust me many a time I've had to carry out surgery to a newly built car of mine on the side of the road but after a few niggles getting sorted you become very familiar with your vehicle and it's great being able to fix something in a matter of seconds because you know exactly how it was all put together.

Some how it didn't surprise me that you'd wind up networking the data as soon as I saw it on the laptop I thought it would be accessible from the other PCs / macs sooner or later :lol:

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aminorjourney
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Postby aminorjourney » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:05 pm

Well, I'm back from my first run and what can I say? I think EVERY CITY EL should have these babies!

Going in to town I took a longer than usual route to pick up an extra long USB cable to use so I can interface my car while it's outside. I used two bars out of 16 on the "fuel" gauge and did just under seven miles. Acceleration was brilliant (compared to the old version) and I was able to climb all the hills at 30 mph rather than 20. Not a glitch!

After I finished the work at my client's base I headed across town, something I'd never dream of doing with the old batteries as they only had a range at best of about 15 miles and there are big hills out of Bristol!

I got to Kate's office at about 10 miles on the odometer. I pointed the City El at a huge hill which I knew the old car wouldn't even contemplate climbing and the City El positively scampered up it, slowing down to only about 25 mph at the top. I was very happy!

A trip out of town in the rain with wipers etc on and I finally ended up completing about 18.7 miles with 7 out of the 16 bars now gone.

I can only say that I am most impressed with the car thus far. I have to drive it until it's empty for the first charge so the BMS can self-calibrate.

After plugging the car into the USB port on the computer I'm reading a reported 53.67 AH left, with lowest and highest cell voltages being 3.734 and 3.803 V respectively. I set the charging voltage to be 4.200 V.

Nikki.
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

EVangelist and Media Relations Coordinator, www.ZeroCarbonWorld.org
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http://about.me/aminorjourney/bio

anachrocomputer
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Postby anachrocomputer » Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:06 pm

Glad to hear that the new batteries and the BMS are working! Sounds like a massive improvement in range, too, over the lead-acid batteries.

Do the cells look like they're reasonably well balanced so far?
1994 Suzuki Cappuccino
1992 Mini-El electric bubblecar

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aminorjourney
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Postby aminorjourney » Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:08 pm

Yup!

Most of the cells are 3.803V at the moment. the last four are slowly equalising too :)
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

EVangelist and Media Relations Coordinator, www.ZeroCarbonWorld.org
Host, www.transportevolved.com

http://about.me/aminorjourney/bio

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qdos
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Postby qdos » Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:05 pm

Blimey that's pretty good I've seen them hills in Bristol and they are pretty steep ones. Wonder if you can make Brighton in one charge? ;) That would be seriously impressive

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aminorjourney
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Postby aminorjourney » Mon Jul 09, 2007 4:10 pm

Well, if it's a nice warm day and I drive slowly I may just be able to, but ask me in a few weeks once I've done things a bit more often!

Nikki.
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield

EVangelist and Media Relations Coordinator, www.ZeroCarbonWorld.org
Host, www.transportevolved.com

http://about.me/aminorjourney/bio

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MB
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Postby MB » Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:12 am

That is great news Nikki.

I've seen a couple of conversions with electric cars being switched from lead acid to lithium batteries, and the transformation is absolutely amazing.

I am convinced the G-Wiz would be a completely different vehicle with lithium batteries: there would be a weight saving of around 200kg which would improve the performance - and probably the handling - no end. Range would be significantly improved as well... in fact, I'm almost itching for the G-Wiz to get out of its guarantee period and for the batteries to need replacing...

But then, the longer I wait, the cheaper the lithium batteries should be. Ah well, I'll just wait another year or so I guess.

clnbrtltt
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Postby clnbrtltt » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:00 pm

Well done Nikki :)

It sounds so much improved :D

clnbrtltt
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Postby clnbrtltt » Tue Jul 10, 2007 12:02 pm

Very well done Nikki :)

It sounds very much improved :D


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