[remy_martian]

" There are zero reasons to use them [lead-acid], not performance, not cheapness, not durability, nothing."

Actually, there *are* good reasons to use them.

The problem with this thread is that you are pretending solve a fictitious/hypothetical problem, making design compromises, which is called "engineering", without defining the constraints and the problem set.

Example. I live in a cold climate. My usage model is to go into town twice a month for supplies, the vehicle sits there the rest of the time...outside, getting charged by [your favorite energy source...for me, it'd be a Plutonium-driven TEG, because a NASA buddy had one lying around, unused]. A lithium battery is probably the WORST choice and lead-acid is favored. Even for merely traction in the snow...

Or not needing to have an f'ing heater running 24/7, which makes an F-350 start to look economical with my mission profile.

Another example - the guy who got a free DC forklift motor, total noob. You threw him out with the bathwater by eroding his confidence through "obsolete" namecalling.

You can't win on this thread. Evar.

All you're doing is declaring yourself to be a winner, bolstered by calling any critic or counter-arguer a loser.

If there was one panacea, *everybody* would be doing it. Somebody would offer a complete kit (because, according to you, each block only has one optimal choice, cost be damned).

But there isn't - everyone's needs, mission profile, resources, and the fill level of their bags of money are different. If they weren't you could pick this and that and put together a "beginner's cookbook". Or offer a kit. EV West would have a long time ago. But they haven't.

There's also the Heisenberg Principle...mess with something and it changes. Two guys using an EV West motor, or battery, are very different than 400 guys seeking out that same motor from EV West, or even from a Tesla Model S, for example. Again -- resources. Availability. Cost. Speed. Torque. Living in Illinois vs Oregon. Alaska vs California. Room in the vehicle itself. Weight & balance. Duty cycle ("driven by a little old lady on Sundays, a quarter mile at a time"), etc etc etc

While you might think you're god's gift to a universal EV build, it's weapons-grade bullshit to even think there is one.

There's no such thing.

All you can do is put the choices out there and their specs/capabilities. Going beyond that, even in the best interests of a total rookie, by making the selections, or even listing strengths/weaknesses (like you did with lead-acid) without understanding each builder's constraints, problem set, mission profile, resources, skillset, etc, is doing them a huge disservice.

 

[remy_martian]

"What I did was kickstart a community project to address what I think is the biggest hole in our knowledgebase, and be the easiest way to fill that gap for people who join the community."

You're again being busy defending *your* choices to *your* problem set, and seem to be completely missing my point.
"Who's done lead acid lately?" is crowdthink nonsense. It all depends on the problem being solved...not goading someone into the direction a mob typically takes. Yes, there are still people doing lead-acid, including OEMs.

And if you constrain to solving a particular problem set, you'll miss the entire reason for doing an EV conversion...a commercially available EV doesn't solve the problem, whereas a customized machine does.

For me, a "ludicrous" Tesla is not ludicrous enough, and for the cost to get what I want, it has to last more than a half dozen times, before a lifetime software throttledown, and it has to get the groceries reliably to enable its displacement of a 650HP ICE in the stable (which is a following project...a hybrid conversion for that one). That's quite different than someone wanting to "hypermile", or someone wanting a reliable daily commuter, or someone wanting to build a work truck ("how about using a Ford Ranger...is it "easy"?"), or someone wanting to do their part for climate change.

The biggest hole in "our" knowledgebase is knowledge, not decisionmaking. The latter you can't do for anyone, though I perceive that's exactly what you're trying to do, because your assumptions will be incorrect due to every problem set being different. The former is formidable, in itself because it's an unbiased database -- one which actually enables the decision to use lead acid for a problem set that selects it as an optimal choice (like sitting out in the weather... a lot of Tesla owners, this past winter, were in shock after discovering their cars being dead after a couple of days of being unplugged, Norway be damned). A huge, neverending, database that gets appended for every noob that comes along...which is why forums have multiple threads on noob projects. Can you put all that in one thread? Maybe. But its signal to noise ratio's gunna suck as every noob that comes along starts their post with "yeah, but..."

You also completely missed to point on a kit -- since you're deciding everything else, you can decide on a host vehicle as well. Something readily available and cheap. Something that also addresses the environmental conscience that justifies the spend vs dropping an LS engine into a Bug. Then, according to you, you can take a dichotomy from there..."performance" and cost.

As was said by someone else here, the cost of DIY is very rarely economically viable, though; it's naive to think "I'll save money on gas", and one is better off procuring a Leaf and maybe tweaking it if that's, or treehugging's, the goal.

The definition of "hobby" is throwing non-justifiable amounts of money at something to pass time or gain knowledge. Conversions are a hobby -- anyone trying to make a commercial go at it, or thinking they'll get some kind of payback, on their time, alone, would be insane to think so if they can't do all, or most, of the engineering without a cookbook and without resorting to the 80/20 rule and coming here for the 80 instead of the 20.

I'm going to grab a bag of popcorn and watch where this goes. Surprise me. I'm open minded, but, being a curmudgeon, I'm skeptical this will go anywhere without being optimized for one specific problem set -- yours.