This is a project started by a man named Paul. He wanted to build an open source EV Controller that would be inexpensive and versatile. He started a thread on EcoModder and it grew like wildfire. It didn’t take long before people from all over the country/world were coming together and offering their expertise, their time, or other resources to bring the project together. It was and still is an amazing effort that came together from the work of an entire community.

I stumbled across the thread one day and spent the next 3 days reading through all the posts. That was a few revisions ago and things have continued to progress at a fast pace. It is this type of innovation that is going to move EV’s forward.

The controller that has been created it truly remarkable. Check out their site to get all of the specifications. If Paul and/or Sabrina come across this page – THANK YOU!

I hope to be placing my order for one in the very near future. Due to the work that everyone has done on the Open ReVolt project, I will be able to upgrade my EV and put it back on the road rather than parting it out and selling it. I can’t thank you all enough.

The post Open ReVolt appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

• I designed the system a little too close to spec (to save money on the initial build). I designed the car to bring me from work to home in near ideal conditions. My commute is about 9 miles and my max range is about 12 – in ideal conditions. When it was raining hard or the wind was whipping I would be crawling by the time I got to work. Also, as the batteries wore down it became the norm to be “limping” into work. This is the primary reason the car was parked for much of the year last year. I also started going to the gym each morning which added an extra 6-7 miles to my morning commute – the car simply didn’t have the juice to make the trip. Now I’m faced with an expensive upgrade to the controller, batteries, and charging system in order to safely put my car back on the road. By saving some money in the beginning on the initial build, I’m costing myself a small fortune now to upgrade.

I do plan on remedying this flaw this summer. With some luck I can do some fund raising and get the new parts I need. I plan on bringing the system up to 120v (I’ve read where others have taken the same motor up that high). This leaves me to replace the controller, purchase more batteries and upgrade the charging system. The additional power should make the drive much more reliable. If you’re looking for inexpensive used EV parts, subscribe to the RSS feed and you’ll be updated when I’m ready to sell the parts.

The post Update – March 2010 appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

With any deep cycle lead acid batteries you have to add distilled water to them on occasion. I’m not sure what the schedule for this is yet, but I think probably once a month or so it what I SHOULD be doing. I did not water them at all last year – although I did set aside a day to do it, it just never got done.

I took about 2 hours today and did my first watering, and the batteries sure did need it. I ended up putting about 3.5 liters of distilled water into my 6 batteries. That’s more than 1/2 liter for each battery! I’m pretty sure when you have to add water to the batteries you shouldn’t have to add this much. This could very well have been the cause of some of the range woes I’ve been having lately.

Watering the batteries is pretty simple. I have to remove a sticker that was covering the access screws to the battery cells. There are 6 plastic screws that need to be removed to add the water. Once removed you just have to have some patience pouring the water in. I’ve never watered a battery before so I hope I filled them to proper levels. I left about 1/2″ between the fluid level and the top of the hole I was pouring into. Time will tell.

Ever since the car defrosted this spring, I haven’t been able to get the pack charged over 78 volts. Last year I would get it to 81 without much trouble. Because of the lesser charge, the car was becoming sluggish long before I remember it. I chalked it up to the batteries just being run down a little, and from being frozen all winter. Now, I think it was because of fluid levels in the battery. It’s not fully charged at this point, but it started charging at 675 watts – I haven’t been able to get it to charge above 550 watts yet this year so I think I’m on the right track.

In my quest to increase range I’ve been doing a lot of research. Once very important fact that has been overlooked is motor and controller cooling. I have no cooling for these components as my front grill is completely closed off to protect the front 4 batteries. I babied the car around town for a few miles today and the controller and motor were very hot. I didn’t pull over 100 amps at any point during the trip and these still uncomfortably warm. When these components heat up you loose efficiency. I need to find a good way to keep these components cool under a proper amp load. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet – I’m still juggling a few ideas. I’ll post again in a few days when I come to a conclusion.

The post Watering the Batteries … appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

When the temperature began to drop last fall it drastically reduced the efficiency of the batteries in the car. Because of that I had to park it for the winter and use my gas/oil burning Jetta. I didn’t do any prep work for it to sit, I just parked it in my driveway – and worst of all the batteries were on about a 50% charge at the time. Luckily, the fact that they were mostly discharged doesn’t seem to have effected the batteries performance now that the car has thawed out.

It hasn’t been quite warm enough to take it to work yet, the night time temps are still below 30 degrees. The forecast looks good and hopefully I’ll be able to take it to work in another week or two. Over the last few weekends I’ve been on a fairly regular schedule of charging the car, driving around town some, and then charging some more. At first the batteries wouldn’t charge at a rate higher than 300w (last summer it would charge at about 650w). That could be because of the cold, or because they sat so long. After a month worth of charge/discharge cycles, the battery pack is back to it’s former self again. I haven’t drained it much more than maybe 70% DOD, but even with that they will still take a charge around 500w. I suspect when the weather warms some, and the batteries get worn some more, I’ll be charging at a higher rate.

There are a few projects that need to get done this summer.

• Motor Mount. There is a small amount of rust that is starting on the mount, and I want to get at it before it actually becomes a problem. It’ll be nice to get the whole thing apart again – I’ll be able to get some high res pictures of the different components that I didn’t take last year, and we’ll see if I’m able to put it all back together again.
• Performance Logging. I really didn’t do any of this last year, all I did was record my observations – I didn’t write down any numbers or take any useful measurements. I’ll be recording data directly from my controller, temperature data, before and after voltage readings, tire pressure readings and anything else I can think of by the time I start driving it each day. If you can think of anything else, please send me a message using the Contact Us link or by leaving a comment.
• Air System. I noticed last year when driving down a dirt road that all the dust that was in the air made its way into the car. It was really bad on a couple of dry days when the dust was abundant. I should’ve thought this through last summer, but there are no more air filters and the outside intake is completely open. I’m sure I threw away any filter boxes or anything that I had, so it’ll be fun to solve this problem.
• Body Work. The rocker panels and the trunk need some work. The paint could use some attention also. This will be awesome.

I think that’s pretty much the list that I have for this year. I’m sure more things will come up, but there is where we’ll start.

The post It’s Spring Again … appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

The post Pictures Update appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

When I first began commuting to work the car was running beautifully. Had plenty of power while driving and plenty of power left over by the time I got to work. When I first started driving it everyday, the temperature at night was about 40 degrees at night and in the high 50’s during the day.

About a week later it got down to 20-30 at night and was only up in the 40’s during the day. Now my commute was a bit more of an adventure. It would be very sluggish for all but the first couple of miles of the trip, and by the time I got to work the car was crawling – doing about 15mph by the time I got to the driveway of work.

This week has been much more like the first, 40 degrees or so at night and in the 60’s during the day. The car is back to it’s old self again – responsive and full of life. I knew the cold was going to play a factor but didn’t think it would be quite so drastic.

Because of this I’ve purchased 4 battery blankets. They’re miniature electric wraps that go around your battery to keep the core temperature up when it get’s cold. Generally used to make sure your gas car will start on cold winter days. They are regular 110v 60w wraps. I haven’t wired them in yet, that’s a project for this weekend. The literature says it should raise the core temp of the batter by about 30-40 degrees. Since I’ll be wrapping 4 batteries with 2 blankets (instead of 1:1) I hope to get half that. Even so, if it’s 20 degrees outside and I can keep the batteries up to 40 degrees that will make a huge difference.

I’ll be sure to get some pictures this weekend. I haven’t found a very technical way to record the results as I really don’t know how to accurately measure the temperature of a battery. I think it’ll end up being a perception measurement. If anyone has a good idea of how I can get some actual data with this little project please let me know – contact@zerogasoline.com. Thanks

The post Weather Control appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

I just posted a video in the videos section that has a couple different shots of us driving the car at different speeds. The car really is silent – all you can hear is the tires against the road. When you’re driving it you actually hear more than you do when you’re outside the car. Outside you hear nothing. Inside you hear the whining of the motor. The noise inside isn’t much, but you do hear things working. The interior noise does is only present when you first start driving, before the motor warms up a bit. When the motor is all warmed up you really can’t hear much in or out of the car.

On a different note, I’ll be working the next couple of weeks on redesigning the site. It was always my intention to rebuild it once the project got closer to completion. Although the project will never actually be completed, there shouldn’t be any more major changes. My biggest project will be organizing the pictures page so it loads a bit quicker and you can actually find what you’re looking for.

If you have any ideas about what the new site should be, or should have, please let me know. You can use the email form on our contact page, or you can email me directly at contact@zerogasoline.com.

The post Whisper Quiet appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

I got the wiring diagrams finished last week and finally got them posted today. You can find them on the bottom of the page. They are not the most technical drawings, and they are not pretty, but it should give a good idea of how it’s all hooked up.

There’s also a great video of my brother at the shop!

The post Quick Update appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

We had a good charge on it from the night before. We set out late afternoon for our ride into town. All was going great when we got to the hill – and it kept going great. I won’t lie, the car did slow down from 50mph at the bottom of the hill, to about 35mph at the top of the hill – but as soon as I got over the top it quickly went back up to ~50mph. It didn’t’ suck down too many amps going up the hill either, the gauge was stuck right at about 250 amps on the way up. Again, I was pretty happy with this.

We made it back to the shop without any problem. I checked the batteries when we got there and they were pretty much empty. After settling for a little bit they did level out to about 75 volts. Now I was faced with a bit of a dilemma – I needed to get the car home so I could take it work Monday, but 75 volts was definitely cutting it close. I could have left the car at the shop to charge for a few hours, but I would have had to come back after dinner and use more gas in the regular car to go back and forth. I decided to go for it and take it home then. Luckily, I had my brothers buy in to help me push it to the nearest outlet if it couldn’t make it.

We started out on the voyage home. Everything went perfect for the first 4-5 miles. Then I started loosing power. Again I lucked out and the car lost power when the speed limit changed from 55 to 45 so I was still doing the speed limit. We got to my town without much problem, however there was one more big hill to climb before we could call it home free. I made it to the hill doing 25mph and at the top of the hill I was doing about 10mph (the speed limit there is 25). Once I got over the top of the hill speed picked back up a little and I made it the rest of the way home doing about 30mph.

So the official range right now is about 20 miles. I would say the practical range is probably more like 15 miles. It was very sluggish by the time I pulled into the driveway.

No pictures or video for this weekend. I haven’t forgotten about the wiring diagrams though, I will work on those this week and get them posted soon.

The post Distance Testing appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

The bulk of the work is now done on the car. I can’t wait to have my weekends back to myself!

Saturday morning I went up to the shop to work on the heater. I had everything installed and hooked up but it wasn’t making any heat. I suspected it was a wiring issue.

I got up to the shop about 9am and got to work. First I tried switching the hot line and the neutral lines in the junction box. This did not fix it. I switched them back and scratched my head a little bit. I decided to test the rocker switch and see how it worked. I disconnected the switch, connected the hotlines together with another piece of wire, and plugged the car in. The heater almost immediately got hot! I played with the rocker switch a little more and got it working. There are 3 prongs on the back of the switch, I had my connections wrong. I connected everything back up using the rocker switch and it all worked great!

I left the car charging for a bit and went home. A couple hours later I returned with my brother so we could make the first 8.6 mile drive from the shop to my house. He followed me in his car as we took off down the road. I was very impressed at how the car performed on the way home. There are two very flat stretches of road we drove on and on both of them I got the car up to 54mph! I was thinking 45 or maybe 50, tops. I was pretty happy to get it up to 54mph, the speed limit is 55mph so it works out quite well.

The car made the journey home just fine – I even had some battery to spare. It conquered all the hills just fine and kept with the speed limit the whole way. I couldn’t be happier!

The post First Voyage Home appeared first on ZeroGasoline.