Recently by mattW

The DIY website has been going under some pretty impressive changes and has included some pretty interesting threads over the past few months, but with over 3000 members and an average of 400 new threads a week there is a lot of content to go over. So I thought it would be helpful to pick out some of the highlights of what I have found to be the most interesting threads and developments of DIYelectriccar over the past few weeks:

Last week I said that this blog would be part journal, part guide to the conversion process but I've decided to separate those two categories by having a build thread for the bike with pretty pictures and having this blog as a sort of step by step guide. I'll still give you updates here but primarily the build thread will be about how I'm doing it and the blog will be about how you can do it. Step one in that process is making your plans, what do you need to know in advance before you start in order to make the process go smoothly? What parts do you need and how much will it cost?

I have been researching Electric Cars since September last year, in that time period I have gone through many plans and thrashed out many budgets as I worked out how a student could make a satisfactory EV. I have planned an RX7, CRX or Civic and pick-up conversion, even to the point of being outbid on eBay for a donor.  I started my own mini EV project as documented on this Blog, but since it was going to be just a toy, that I couldn’t fit in and didn’t feel comfortable giving away without testing, I decided it wasn’t worth putting money into and donated the peddle car to family friends. But recently I’ve been planning a project that was easier to do well, while on a budget but was useful enough to be worth investing in… An Electric motorcycle. And two weeks ago I became the proud owner of this 1984 Suzuki GSXR 400 off Ebay for the grand price of $495.

I've decided to try and work out the cost comparisons for a Lithium pack vs a Lead pack for a set range and a set number of years. Is Lead Acid actually cheaper or does is just seem that way up front? This article aims to find that out. The method is to get 10kWh of usable energy, I’ll try to get that with Lead and with Lithium and see what we find is cheaper in the long run. Assuming an efficiency of 250Wh per mile (a compact car) we should get a range of 40 miles (65km) with either pack. I’ll be using Australian prices since I’ve already researched them, but the comparison is probably close in other countries too.

Ah Oil, we’ve had plenty of good times together haven’t we? Remember me learning to drive… buying my first car… our first road trip together. We’ve made some pretty good memories… you and I. But if I’m honest I think we should start seeing other fuels. The last thing I want to do is hurt you but I think we are just drifting apart, heading in separate directions. You are having such a fantastic career, you’ve really found your niche and that more expensive demographic really suits you. I know your parents in the Middle East are really proud; $100 a barrel, wow, you’ve really made it. But you know I’m not that kind of guy, it’s just not my world. It was great when your career was just starting to grow and we could afford to spend a lot of time together, we could just hop in the car and go for a drive, just because we felt like it. Our relationship used to be about freedom, the open road, but now that you’re moving on with you life I feel like I’m being left behind, playing catch up. It’s taking big sacrifices in other areas of my life to keep this relationship alive, it seems like every week I’m have to put in more and more but you just stay the same. I’m starting to question whether or not its worth all the effort. Let’s face it you’re a bit high maintenance, making all these demands about your needs for us to stay together. First it was just lubricant, but now you want me to get coolant and filters. It’s all too much.

Just out of curiosity I thought it might be interesting to record to statistics of DIY electric car, since it seemed like it was growing pretty fast. After just a month of fairly sporadic recording of the threads, posts, members and active members I found the results pretty surprising. If you're interesting in statistics or just want to see how the website is going then check out these numbers (and excuse my dodgy excel graphs)...

My concern for the environment started when earth, fire, wind, water and heart combined to fight the forces of corporate greed and irresponsibility. Yes, Captain Planet was my hero. I’ve had quite a lot of greening influences in my life, from cartoons, to a kid’s solar experimentation kit, to my friend’s parent’s weird composting toilet. I’ve developed quite an awareness of global environment issues, especially to do with energy and I think make a decent effort to change my lifestyle in order to reduce my impact on the world. But I don’t call myself an environmentalist, not in a million years. How can I care about the environment on one hand yet refuse to join the ranks of like minded individuals on the other? The reason is that calling yourself green is about as definitive as calling yourself the world’s best street fighter. Within 24 hours of making such a claim you are almost guaranteed to be in a hospital ward after being well and truly schooled by a Thai underground kick boxing champion, or in this case a vegan Greenpeace activist who lives in a solar powered mound of dirt.

Could the answer to our transport needs have been right in front of our faces all this time?

Conventional cars work by exploding fuel and air in a chamber to exert force on the pistons, but what if rather than using an explosion to provide that pressure on the piston, you just stored your ‘fuel’ at a constant high pressure. That’s the concept behind the air car, and it looks like a pretty promising technology. Like hydrogen the air is not actually the source of energy, it is the storage medium, but unlike hydrogen the production of an air powered car is surprisingly cheap. According to Wikipedia, without the need for a cooling, ignition or starter system these vehicles can be produced for approximately 20% cheaper than conventional car engines. That factor should not be underestimated since up until now, greener options have always seemed to come at a premium. Unlike battery electric vehicles a full tank of air will stay more or less full for a long time, they have very low discharge rates. Again compared to battery electrics the storage medium (tank) is not limited by a shelf life or number of cycles and therefore reduces waste. As the air expands in the engine it actually cools it, which can be used for passenger comfort. The car itself has no emissions since it just uses normal air (the air might actually end up cleaner because of filtration) and the compression can be done using renewable energy to make the entire system emission free. It can even run underwater if need be! This technology is honestly quite promising, but like the other ‘green’ options will this fail to stack up when it is looked at more closely?

The more I delve into this topic the more detail I want to address, so rather than cover all three energy storage options in this post I’ve decided to give a more detailed look at hydrogen. Keep a look out for a look at compressed air and battery electric in the next two weeks.

Hydrogen is the darling of the media, car manufacturers and oil companies alike. The general public seems fairly convinced that hydrogen vehicles are going to be the way of the future and a simple replacement for oil. Just about every car manufacturer has done at least a fuel cell concept, if not a ‘production ready model’ or even consumer testing. Hydrogen can be filled up in more or less the same way as conventional cars meaning that consumers can continue in their established transport patterns. It can be produced from a variety of different sources including electricity and has the potential to be created with zero emissions. Best of all the only thing to come out of the tailpipe of a fuel cell vehicle is water vapour.But is hydrogen really the miracle cure for oil dependence and transport environmental damage that everyone thinks it is?

Photo from GreenCarSite

Last week we established that the so called green car is a myth; cars are inherently harmful to the environment. Despite this, most of us would like to carry on using our cars because; let’s face it, they are really convenient. Those of us lacking the environmental zeal to give up the mixed blessing of the automobile are left to seek an alternative to the current expensive black stuff that has us hooked. What are the options for a recovering oilaholic? Well this week I’m going take a rather critical look at the five most talked about options to see, blind optimism aside, whether our love of cars has any hope to continue. The main factors we will look at are efficiency, impact, viability and availability. In this post we’ll look at the two big Biofuels before covering hydrogen, compressed air and battery power later in the week.