Battery Vehicle Society

I have been offered a quite tidy Suzuki Carry van.
It looks like it would make quite a good conversion.
Our daily mileage would be 20 miles on one charge.
Our speed requirements would be roughly 55-60mph flat out, 50mph on straight bits of road, 40mph average for the journey.
A section of the rear floor comes out to allow rear seats to go in.
It has a live rear axle so an easy connect up to the propshaft. Crownwheel and pinion ratio is probably around 3:1 with those small wheels.
The van is fairly lightweight
The front has a big empty space for electric power steering pump and vacuum pump. I am not sure if there is a non-power steering option.
The underside has two big spaces that look like they could be adapted for taking batteries.

Anyone converted a suzuki Carry van?

Can anyone start me off with where to look for a suitable motor and batteries / charger and what controller or how to make one.
I am very hands on and can make / modify / fix most things so if there is a good way to avoid buying the expensive 'proper' thing I tend to do that.
Rob

The carry is pretty similar to my old solar van project you can find all that detailed via google.

40-45mph tops is a more realistic speed. 60mph is a big ask considering the aerodynamics of the vans.

Brick on wheels springs to mind

My Fiesta would do 75mph but even that was chewing up 200amps @ 120volts to do that and the batteries wouldnt let it do it for long, about 10mins and that was it

The Berlingo, while it will do 60mph, the 28kw motor is gobbling up huge amounts of power from the nicads to do that sort of speed and its not something you want to do for long periods.

ChrisB

retepsnikrep wrote:The carry is pretty similar to my old solar van project you can find all that detailed via google.

40-45mph tops is a more realistic speed. 60mph is a big ask considering the aerodynamics of the vans.

I realised the top speed might be fairly high but our round trip would only be 20 miles so was hoping the motor load could be sustained for the shortish distance. Much of the journey would be down below 40mph with a few faster straight bits between the villages.
The next time I drive that way I will watch and get a better idea of the speeds we do and for how long.


Edit: Does the solar van still live?

Edit 2: Just found the bit on the web site that says you sold it to a nice man in London.
Edit 3: Have spent a little while looking at the Solar van Web site. I am impressed. Looks like a lot of expense.
Rob