I have an old '69 Ford F600 flatbed that is going to be a Vinyard fruit truck. It will transport fruit from the vinyards to the winery in our little valley. I doubt it will every go more than 30 miles in a day, and never over 55mph(probaly not even 45). I might start using it as a run around truck so it is used more throughout the year, but that still keeps it in the same daily range. I am a heavy equipment mechanic by trade, right now maintaining a fleet of readymix trucks. I have no experience with the EV side of the industry but want to learn. Can anyone recomend a place to start. My goals for the project are to eliminate the need for a transmission and either go direct drive or use a gear reduction box, but i do not want a transmission to have to shift, including for reverse. Definitely want regen braking. I wont need most of the accessories found in modern vehicles. I am considering making it 4wd, and would like to hear thoughts on possibility of using 2 motors instead of needing a transfercase, and if that means 2 motor controllers with everything else. any thoughts or direction would be greatly appreciated.
I have a similar truck to this one, and have thought about doing this. I just rebuilt the gas engine, so I'll stick with that for a while. You probably have a Rockwell or an Eaton 2 speed differential. Mine is a Eaton Dana 16244 with 6.17/8.58 ratios. It would be important to know the ratios and tire diameter for a direct drive EV conversion. In my case, the differential can be set up with ratios from ~4 to ~10:1, with different gear sets.
If you have a wide set of ratios available to play with and don't need a high top speed, you may be able to use one of the 13" diameter series motors from Kostov or Netgain in a direct drive app. Other people can recommend controllers for these motors. As series motors, unfortunately, there's no regen option available. Regen is available with the brushless motor options: Other people can tell you about their ideas with Leaf and Tesla motor/gearboxes. Maybe a large induction motor or the running gear from an electric bus?
If you have good(cheap) access to lead-acid batteries through your work, that might be the way to go for starters. Twenty 8D truck batteries in series would be ~250V (Kostov max V?), ~60 kWh of energy, take up a lot of space, and weigh ~3500lbs.! At a ~50% depth of discharge(recommended depth for reasonable cycle life) you might get 30-40 miles range (30kWh / 1000 to 750Wh per mile). The lithium people are screaming right now, and will tell you about the lithium options.
If you ever want to put a hoist on this truck(dump truck option), you should think about the battery and motor placement in the frame. I have a hoist on my truck and frequent a local quarry, up a steep hill. I think about the ideal regen scenario (going up a hill empty, coming down with a full load) every time I pick up some crushed rock and have to rev out the engine braking and stand on the brakes, going down this hill!