Decals on your Electric Car?

A good friend, Ash Brown from Ash Stripes detailing, popped over to see the car. He made some suggestions and as I had used his services in the past for my other Starion GSR, I thought it’d be good to add some kind of signage. I initially ordered the plastic chrome-look lettering for the rear, namely ‘StarEV electric vehicle’ aka ‘starev (starion ev)’; but somehow in a moment of madness (I was unwell at the time, again), Ash talked me into doing a full sign on the tail hatch.

Too much? What do you think?

I gotta admit, it looks great. Unfortunately for me, I don’t consider myself a boaster of any sort (unlike a lot of the EVers I see who boast their names and company endeavors on their cars so much and talk it up 24/7 that you’d think their traction pack is their vocal chords). Yet those guys are successful – it pays to spank that monkey so I am told but in my case, there is some regret about a bold sign.

Then I thought, well this would be good for an EV show and maybe I could do a magnetic blanking strip to cover it up when casually driving down the road. Nope, silly me had forgotten that this part of the hatch is fiberglass. Do’h! Maybe I’ll put in a strip of mild steel behind the fiberglass – but that probably wouldn’t work given the fiberglass thickness. Ah well.

A discreet ‘electric vehicle’ on either side may have sufficed. As more and more shopping centers here are providing charging spots, a decal may prove to anyone else stealing the spot to go buzz off.

So, if you want decals and new striping on your electric vehicle, do a bunch of Photoshop samples first on a photo of your car. I did – looked great – but then a good gin and tonic can make anything look great :-D. All in all, most people who have seen it love it and it sends a message that electric cars are out there now and the future is not just hybrid (every time I watch that commercial selling the bloated local-built Camry hybrid, I have a laugh).

Anyhow, for signage, I’d still recommend a guy like Ash to anyone who wants to present their car as electric.

Sydney 2009 AEVA Field Day

Like last year, a good turn up and assortment of EV eye-candy was to be had for one and all and the Thunderskys are holding out well as expected with few reports of any issues with them in performance, range or charging. Some guys from my R&D group turned up, some friends from the ham radio club, plus the usual media parades and wannabe media parades as the cameras clicked and rolled while the EVs rolled out for a spin.

Nathan's Sparky, smart as ever.

Many came to ask lots of questions, excited after reading the news about the long distance Tesla run on a single charge, (see http://blog.internode.on.net/2009/10/28/we-did-i/).

Notable technology changes this year since last? Nope; but then we all know that an EV can be built from stuff that’s been around for decades. Of course there’s always new battery developments happening, and this really helps the EV cause. Despite some more AC conversions whizzing about, DC is still popular due to availability and cost. This will change over time. I’ve put up some photos in this post below (hi-res ones to come later).

Safety Last?

When it comes to EVs, some back-yarders may well be up there with the Harold Lloyd types, dangling on a high voltage precipice. What am I on about? You’ll recall my expensive BMS master controller I griped on about some time ago – it handles the high current charging brought into the car via a relay in the box which also houses the comms relay for battery management. The 12v line was built into the same box on a board my mother could have etched (actually, she’s pretty cool at offering board, so sorry Mom) and there were some safety/durability issues we were concerned with. Nakey’s actually got me a separate box for the 12v line, plus a separate relay box for the DC-DC converter for which I cut a hole out the other day in the opposite pillar from the charger. Keeping primary and secondary lines separate, and ensuring absolute safety against grounding the high voltage to the car is paramount.

Charge port relay and BMS housing.

Peak Lithium 2015?

Mitsubishi knows full-well that it may be a possibility, as they themselves have stated recently that lithium demand will outstrip supply as early as 2015. While we all expect and hope that prices will fall as production and popularity of EVs increase, prices could possibly rise instead, forcing us to other automobile alternatives (air-compression technology perhaps – see http://www.mdi.lu/english/). With such a demand on batteries worldwide for all sorts of applications, the implications pose new challenges to make better more efficient batteries using less lithium.

And competing countries are getting the edge over the US, who seek funding to stay ahead of the battery pack –http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/18/us-tech-companies-unite-for-car-batteries-seek-gov-aid/.

Where to get more lithium? Bolivia may come to the rescue – if only they can sort their internal political/economic issues first…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/17/bolivia-lithium-reserves-electric-cars

Ya Gotta Love Panel Beaters

The guard on my car needs a fix after a bump – oops – a simple job one would expect, but shopping around for a good panel beater is difficult as most don’t want to guarantee their workmanship on anything that could bring on the slightest hint of rust. I have a spare guard but it has spot rust in a corner. The little dent can be hammered out and re-sprayed. A recommended panel beater turned out to be indolent and over six weeks promised the world and offered nothing, except personal comments about my looks, boobs, etc. I’m lucky I guess; a friend left his EV with a panel beater recently who drove it around happily, not caring for the ‘fuel empty’ alert and in so doing, wrecking a couple of the batteries.

It’s a bit of a battle in a bloke’s world – whaddya do? Anyway, at least Nathan is good at cutting holes and has done an excellent job on the car – he knows what’s important and takes advice on-board instead of saying ‘I know better than you’ like a lot of fellas do. As he’s said, we’ve both learned a lot in the past year.

Bodgy mounting? No, because it's mounted on the inside firewall and easily accessible.

‘Mounting my Charger’

Me being a picky, persistent and annoying person at times, (okay okay, often), I didn’t want the Zivan to be mounted somewhere awkward and intrusive. The shape of the car is restrictive but clues on where to place stuff were staring me in the face. Some time ago I said, why not mount it in the pillar? After some research and legality-checking, Nathan agreed it could be a good place so I mocked up a dummy Zivan. Always mock up components if you have space issues! The Starion pillar has a kind of natural venting which is assisted by a small fan. It’s still easy to reach the Anderson connector should I need to. Oh, and the DC-DC is mounted on the opposite pillar – neat.

Zilla Back in Production?

News in from Otmar – the high-powered motor-controller maker has found new manufacturing feet for his famed Zilla controller. Double the top current-handling of my Curtis, the Zilla fills a much-needed hole in the EV market in the high-performance end. With water cooling built into some models, these things when fitted into a sports EV will give the Tesla a run for its money.

From the DIY Electric Car forum last month…

The Zilla will return later this year.

My production crew has been busy finishing up the last orders that I accepted in September. Meanwhile my engineer Arthur and I are finishing the design changes needed for effective higher volume production. The automated test equipment that Arthur built will support volume production and has already increased the quality of Zillas going out the door. The improved Hairball code I’ve been working on ran today for the first time in my 914 and promises to increase reliability as well as make diagnostics easier.

I am in talks with a very qualified licensee, and although we have not signed any formal agreements yet, we seem to be finding common purpose and I expect things to be well established soon.

I apologize for the delay. My less than ideal health and my possibly unreasonable requirement for quality has not been conducive to moving faster on this path, but it is encouraging to see the transition coming to fruition.

The waiting list on our website continues to grow and I hope the new manufacturer will be contacting those of you on it soon.

Thank you all for your patience, – Otmar, http://www.cafeelectric.com/, The Zilla factory.

More threads here:

• http://www.diyelectriccar.com/forums/showthread.php/zilla-coming-backi-31922.html
• http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html#nabble-td23634546

A Charge is in the Air

Reports have been coming in of a new type of air-charged battery which could provide up to ten times the energy storage of a conventional lithium cobalt battery. Called the STAIR (‘St Andrews Air,’ where it was developed at Scotland’s University of St Andrews), it provides improved capacity via a porous carbon exchange cell lattice which they say is a chemical-free lightweight battery technology ideal for electric vehicles.

Oxygen exchange battery

It’s early days yet, but developers aim to get a ten-fold increase in storage capacity. A reagent in the battery draws oxygen from the air during the discharging phase and the carbon lattice interacts with the air to achieve an efficient charge/discharge cycle with little degradation over time, unlike what one would typically get in your regular chemical exchange systems.

Nissan Gearing up for Competition

The Nissan Nuvu (aka ‘new view’) announced some time ago may finally be arriving in Australia next year to compete against the Mitsubishi MiEV (and possibly Toyota iQ if they sort their red tape with the government) in what is gearing up to be a new spark of electric auto competition. An alternative to the Nissan Cube, this little cutie will be in a price range to match the MiEV and it is expected fleet and government sales will take up a large chunk of first shipments.

The Nissan Nuvu

This design features a pretty windscreen/roof overlay of solar collectors integrated into a conduit that leads to the battery pack…

My Breaker Broke :-(

My Airpax breaker, the main breaker switch, now has a busted switch-arm (I’ll save you the painful images). Just a few test throws under tension, the supposedly strong Bakelite switch arm shattered. The Airpax breaker is expensive, and we’ll have to see if it’s still under warranty as I paid for this some time ago. Considering the breaker is there for safety, it’s a pretty serious failure.

I suspect the cable linked to it and the pivot bend may not have been aligned on quite the same axis and hence some side-ways pulling met with plastic stress thus causing the break. Anyway, another delay. One would assume that such a switch should be strong enough to handle a quick throw.

Blinkin' good

BMS LEDs Now A’flashin’

When I first received the BMS modules, I noticed that Ross Blade hadn’t included charge status LEDs. I bought a bunch and soldered some on but my error at the time was to solder them on the wrong way around, i.e. instead of shutting off when the battery reached peak-defined charge, they stayed on while discharging. The polarity on the modules was not indicated; I had guessed the correct positive end, though Nathan was convinced otherwise at the time (men are always right, right?) so I soldered them the other way.

Fine? Well no, but in a sense, yes…

Echo and the Funny Men

While my car waits for some final parts, the Echo conversion is progressing well and we hope to have it drivable very soon. There’s an EV show coming up and the Echo will be perfect for it, taking pride of place amongst the smaller vehicles and some funny guys riding funny go-carts etc – yet demonstrating what can be done with the new generation of lithium phosphates. Small cars will be a big feature, with lots of folks contending for the ‘smaller is better’ stakes – hah-hah.

Like the Getz, the Echo is reasonably easy to convert (and a lot easier to work with than the angular confines of my Starion) and if such things were mass-produced as EVs to start with, the price would be a lot lower than a converted car (in fact comparable to a gas equivalent).

More talk? More action please!

While Ford are thinking of releasing a fully-electric work van in 2010, Mercedes has got in on the EV action with a proposal for a new EV in a B-class range, namely the BlueZERO.

Mercedes BlueZERO concept car

Blue is not so Green?

While the BlueZero has a concept proposal for a 100% electric ‘E-cell’ vehicle, we wonder if this will actually come about as compromises in the form of internal combustion range extenders are also in the planning for complementary models. However, they have touted a battery range of 200km or so on electric only for a single charge – not bad. Their ‘hybrid’ version would extend the range to some 400km or so, and a fuel cell version is also proposed. All these range figures are arbitrary, as whatever batteries they wind up using will chiefly dictate this. Evonik are in the game for now.

[Video] Electric Starion EV Part 7

Here’s the latest video. It’s got stuff about water boilers, IGBTs (which I talk about further in this post), a brakes test and revs testing. I’m guessing there’s probably only a couple more videos to go as finish time approaches. Most of the scenes in all the videos have been shot on a Nokia N93 which has been very handy.

Will we get more EVs in 09?

I get that question a lot, along with the usual ‘fuel prices are cheap so why bother’ comments. I am not concerned; there are many other benefits to not having to use gas. An ideal world should have 80% of cars as EVs – oil is used in so many other things we take for granted. Anyway, I will not ramble, it’s new year and all that!

Other Stuff such as BMS Conformal Coating…

The BMS conformal coat has been interesting…