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Hello All,
I've been toying with the idea of a DIY EV for a while. It's been all words and ideas but no action for quite a while. I finally got motivated by George Karellas on his YouTube channel and series he's producing called SOUP. It's all about "get up and get to it" and him documenting as he does just that. If your motivation is waning or never was, you should totally watch that series.
Then I found this forum and it prompted me to start on the EV project I've always thought about. So I'm going to document the project here so maybe I'll keep motivated (or shamed) into keeping at it. I might even get some useful feedback once in a while, eh?
Here is the project - a 1966 VW Beetle patient and JAC Motors HFC7000AEV (rolls off the tongue, don't it?) organ donor.
The Beetle was acquired in the mid 90's. I drove it for a while, handed it off to one of my brothers who drove it a while and then handed it off to the next brother. He built modded the single carb 1600 to a dual carb 1914, welded some Pontiac Sunfire bucket seats to the pan, and welded a barn door hinge to the top of the passenger door to make some kind of janky gull wing that's held closed by a bungee from the window crank to the shifter. He gave it back to me and it has sat in a barn for about 20 years. Mostly fine but the motor doesn't turn.
The JAC was wrecked and abandoned around July this year. The state recovered it and when no one claimed it sent it to auction. The guy that bought it works on cars for fun to make interesting and functional hotrod-style vehicles. (He's got a project under way now putting a 1927 GMC truck on an early Silverado chassis/motor.) He didn't know what to do with this EV and sold it for the $600 he had in it.
I can't find any info about this car at all and no idea who sells them or parts. Frankly, I have no idea how it even got in the country. JAC apparently only distributes to countries outside the US. I can't imagine this car is DOT approved for street use. Given the lack of info and parts I'm going to have to reverse engineer this thing as I pull it apart to try to figure out what everything does.
I thought it was going to be a cheap-as-dirt mass produced piece of carp, but as I started taking it apart I grew to love it. The car is light weight and not put together very tightly so it would never hold up on the country roads I drive, but I think it would actually make a dandy city car, which is where an EV shines anyway. It seems thoughtfully designed and the workmanship is pretty decent. As I started getting into it I decided I'm going to transfer every system I can over to the Beetle - power windows, ABS power brakes, electric A/C, drive electrics, everything. Maybe even this doodad:
Not sure what it is, but looks useful. Tracker maybe?
The battery pack was a suitcase in the trunk under the deck. There is a steel tube at the back of the pack, passes through a box with wires to it, then disappears into the RR fender. A couple smaller tubes exit on the other side of the pack and go to a steel member under the seat pan. Cell cooling maybe? The charge port appears to be a GB20234.2-2011 standard.
Not going to find a charger like that laying around so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to see about maybe pulling the bus bars/cables off the LiFePO4 cells and charge them individually or in small series banks with an off-the-shelf charger. I just want to see if they'll take a charge and if I can get this beast rolling under its own power before I start digging into this project too much. From what I can tell it's only been a few months since it was operating so I'm optimistic all will be well once I get a charge into this thing. I popped the top of the battery pack to see what it would take to get to the cells. As a former industrial/commercial electrician I was impressed with the neatness and layout of the battery control cabinet.
Moving up front, this is the engine bay:
I think this is the onboard charger:
I'm not sure what the big heat sink down by the LF wheel was:
Oooo, electric A/C. That is definitely going in the Beetle.
Finally, the drive motor. It appears to be an air cooled 3ph AC. I opened up the controller just to look around. Woof, those caps make me real nervous. I suddenly got a lot more careful with my tools and screws when that top was off.
I'll have another installment when I get the battery cells exposed and try to charge them up somehow. With any luck I'll get the JAC rolling, at least enought to let me know it's OK to proceed with the project as planned.
Harmon
I've been toying with the idea of a DIY EV for a while. It's been all words and ideas but no action for quite a while. I finally got motivated by George Karellas on his YouTube channel and series he's producing called SOUP. It's all about "get up and get to it" and him documenting as he does just that. If your motivation is waning or never was, you should totally watch that series.
Then I found this forum and it prompted me to start on the EV project I've always thought about. So I'm going to document the project here so maybe I'll keep motivated (or shamed) into keeping at it. I might even get some useful feedback once in a while, eh?
Here is the project - a 1966 VW Beetle patient and JAC Motors HFC7000AEV (rolls off the tongue, don't it?) organ donor.

The Beetle was acquired in the mid 90's. I drove it for a while, handed it off to one of my brothers who drove it a while and then handed it off to the next brother. He built modded the single carb 1600 to a dual carb 1914, welded some Pontiac Sunfire bucket seats to the pan, and welded a barn door hinge to the top of the passenger door to make some kind of janky gull wing that's held closed by a bungee from the window crank to the shifter. He gave it back to me and it has sat in a barn for about 20 years. Mostly fine but the motor doesn't turn.
The JAC was wrecked and abandoned around July this year. The state recovered it and when no one claimed it sent it to auction. The guy that bought it works on cars for fun to make interesting and functional hotrod-style vehicles. (He's got a project under way now putting a 1927 GMC truck on an early Silverado chassis/motor.) He didn't know what to do with this EV and sold it for the $600 he had in it.
I can't find any info about this car at all and no idea who sells them or parts. Frankly, I have no idea how it even got in the country. JAC apparently only distributes to countries outside the US. I can't imagine this car is DOT approved for street use. Given the lack of info and parts I'm going to have to reverse engineer this thing as I pull it apart to try to figure out what everything does.

I thought it was going to be a cheap-as-dirt mass produced piece of carp, but as I started taking it apart I grew to love it. The car is light weight and not put together very tightly so it would never hold up on the country roads I drive, but I think it would actually make a dandy city car, which is where an EV shines anyway. It seems thoughtfully designed and the workmanship is pretty decent. As I started getting into it I decided I'm going to transfer every system I can over to the Beetle - power windows, ABS power brakes, electric A/C, drive electrics, everything. Maybe even this doodad:

Not sure what it is, but looks useful. Tracker maybe?
The battery pack was a suitcase in the trunk under the deck. There is a steel tube at the back of the pack, passes through a box with wires to it, then disappears into the RR fender. A couple smaller tubes exit on the other side of the pack and go to a steel member under the seat pan. Cell cooling maybe? The charge port appears to be a GB20234.2-2011 standard.

Not going to find a charger like that laying around so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I think I'm going to see about maybe pulling the bus bars/cables off the LiFePO4 cells and charge them individually or in small series banks with an off-the-shelf charger. I just want to see if they'll take a charge and if I can get this beast rolling under its own power before I start digging into this project too much. From what I can tell it's only been a few months since it was operating so I'm optimistic all will be well once I get a charge into this thing. I popped the top of the battery pack to see what it would take to get to the cells. As a former industrial/commercial electrician I was impressed with the neatness and layout of the battery control cabinet.

Moving up front, this is the engine bay:

I think this is the onboard charger:

I'm not sure what the big heat sink down by the LF wheel was:

Oooo, electric A/C. That is definitely going in the Beetle.

Finally, the drive motor. It appears to be an air cooled 3ph AC. I opened up the controller just to look around. Woof, those caps make me real nervous. I suddenly got a lot more careful with my tools and screws when that top was off.

I'll have another installment when I get the battery cells exposed and try to charge them up somehow. With any luck I'll get the JAC rolling, at least enought to let me know it's OK to proceed with the project as planned.
Harmon