i am considering starting an EV conversion project for the taxi vehicles in my city and would like to know if this is at all doable.
The proposed donor cars weigh from 1000 kg to 1500 kg (without passengers).
The cars in question are WV Passat, WV Golf 3 and 4, Reno Megane, Opel Astra, etc.
I was wondering if a conversion is possible for these types of cars to carry passengers with a range of at least 100km and with a top speed of 80-100km/h ?
Also what would be the price for a conversion like that ?
Does it make sense to do it with a BLDC like the one from Golden Motor https://www.goldenmotor.com/frame-bldcmotor.htm
?
Any advice is welcomed
I would recommend visiting Institute Metron in Slovenia (see here). They have converted many vehicles and will be able to give you realistic costs for your fleet based on 'local' knowledge.
That said, it would probably be a lot cheaper to buy older Leaf's and a few rapid chargers
What gearbox and gear ratio would you use between the motor and the drive axles?
What size tires/wheels are on these taxis?
What would be the fully loaded weight that you would want to transport, and what is the nominal and top speed needed with this weight, and what is your acceleration requirement--e.g. how quickly would be acceptable to go from a stop to 60 kmh while fully loaded?
You will also need an on-board DC-DC converter to run auxillary functions such as lights from the 12V aux/starter battery and keep it charged.
Also some sort of junction box with high voltage contactors and fuses.
What will you use to provide heating in the winter, diesel heater or electric?
What would be the fully loaded weight that you would want to transport, and what is the nominal and top speed needed with this weight, and what is your acceleration requirement--e.g. how quickly would be acceptable to go from a stop to 60 kmh while fully loaded?
- I would say that +400kg when the car is fully loaded.
- Top speed can be 100km/h and nominal would be 60 km/h.
- The acceleration from 0 - 60km/h would be about 10 seconds.
- I was originally thinking about using an electric 1kw heater, but then i found out a unit called webasto which runs on gas, so i was thinking on getting one of those.
My biggest concern was the motor and controller, if the DC BLDC Golden Motor 20kw was a good choice for a taxi car of 1300 kg, this weight is without passengers/load, so add to that weight another 400kg.
I did try out a conversion of Chevrolet Matiz (small car), which had the 10kw golden motor BLDC and was going up-hills great with a manual transmission.
But i have no experience with conversions and have only read about then, so i am totally new, but thought that this idea i had could be possible
I was also thinking of battery swaps but i think that is also not a good idea
that explained a lot...
As others members said, you can't beat the price, the quality and the reliability of a used EV car like a Nissan Leaf.
They have been designed by thousand of experimented engineers and built at many thousand of examplars. How can you think to beat that with cheap chinese parts and no experiment?
You can build an EV for fun, to learn or to have a unique project, but not to save money*.
Your idea to put more EV on the road is good, but you will need to figure out an other manner than conversion to reach it.
*Except by building a poor quality EV or by finding really cheap used OEM EV parts.
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