[InspireAutomotive]

Hello all. My name is Nathan and I've been in the automotive fabrication industry for over 10 years (inspireautomotive.us). I specialize in different types of CNC machining, one of them is plug machining for the fabrication of composite automotive body panels. Anyhow, Ive been planning an EV micro car build for about a year now and doing some rough designing in CAD (attached are some pictures). The reason why im here is that although know how to make the parts of this vehicle, I dont know enough about DIY electric car building beside the general stuff (motor, motor controller, battery potentiometer, basics of electricity,ect.) , so i was hoping i could start here and learn as much as i could from fellow DIY builders on the best components to use for my drive train. At this point I would like to start buying the motor and planning for the battery so that i can implement it in my CAD design. So my design is a micro car thats likely to weigh around 1400 lbs. I was thinking about using the electric motor from a smartcar fortwo ( bosch electric ev motor | eBay), or if you have any suggestions on a motor that is proportionate terms of power for the weight of my vehicle and a motor controller for it, something between 600-1000 $ used for the motor and 500 for the controller. Thats the only questions i have for now. Looking forward to your input.

 

[brian_]

... At this point I would like to start buying the motor and planning for the battery so that i can implement it in my CAD design. So my design is a micro car thats likely to weigh around 1400 lbs. I was thinking about using the electric motor from a smartcar fortwo ( bosch electric ev motor | eBay), or if you have any suggestions on a motor that is proportionate terms of power for the weight of my vehicle and a motor controller for it

I think you'll want the transaxle (reduction gearing and differential) that is used with the motor in the original EV; the motor plus transaxle is often called a "drive unit". The Smart ForTwo unit would work (if you can get a controller for it that you can work with), but so would the drive unit from any reasonably small recent production EV. Rear drive units tend to be packaged to fit under a floor (the controller doesn't sit on top), which may be easier to work with, depending on the details of your configuration. I suspect that availability of a controller that you can use will be a greater factor in selection than the motor itself.

The rear drive unit from a hybrid which has an engine in the front and only drives the rear wheels electrically is also a possibility, in addition to units from pure battery-electric vehicles. The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV rear unit would be a good example. They're typically too low-powered to drive a car by themselves (the Outlander unit is rated at 60 kW peak), but might be acceptable for a very light car.