The body has been parted out for another Tercel (gasoline) and the electric parts are now in my father’s garage. I hope to someday build another electric vehicle using them, maybe a little aluminum framed summer vehicle.

The project was a lot of fun and taught me a lot. For me, building the car was less about the car itself, and more about getting through a rough time in my life. I hope the fact that my car is no more does not discourage anyone from going at it themselves. Home built EV’s are a great bit of fun and are very worthwhile in the end. I had gotten to the point where I needed to replace the batteries but it did not make sense financially for me and my family to buy a new battery pack. As with everything in life, there is a priority list, and my hobby car did not make the cut this time around.

With that being said, if anyone is interested in the parts that I have (check out the kit components), make an offer and I’m sure I can make you a very good deal. Also, as I’ve been doing, I’ll try and answer any questions that come my way.

Thank you everyone who contributed and supported the ZeroGasoline project.

The post The Tercel Is No More … appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

The car is in proper working order – however it is very near time for the battery pack to be replaced. You can find a complete list of parts on the Costs page in the menu on your left. I would like to sell the car as a whole, but would be willing to sell parts if no one is interested in the complete vehicle. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

I’d like to get out of it what I put into it, $5000.00, but would be very willing to negotiate that price if “Molly” were to make it to a good home.

Thank you all!

The post The ZeroGasoline Tercel is up for sale! appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

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.

I am starting my ev and purchasing the parts here and there, but could not find the heater parts.

Thanks
David

David,

The liquid heater in the car was basically a bust. I used a 500W heating element and it was pretty much useless – I may have had some better results with a 1500W unit. On warm days, there would be some warm air coming out of the vents, but it was only barley noticeable. Others have had success with a similar setup but I did not. In the end it’s quite alright for myself as I don’t run the car in the winter anyways (gets far too cold here in Maine).

The parts are all off the shelf type stuff. The heater I used was a 120v block preheater – you can get these anywhere online and you can even pick them up at Tractor Supply. The pump you can again find online or at any marine supply store.

If you’re serious about running the vehicle in cold weather, I would suggest looking at a more commercial solution. There are some propane fired heaters that I have heard great things about. I know it goes a bit against the ideals of an electric car, but when you’re cold you want heat.

Thanks for taking a look at the site. Best of luck on your project.

Ed
ZeroGasoline Administrator

The post Questions About the Heating System appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

The post Electric Car Show! June 20th appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

-Marvin-

Marvin,

The motor mount that I put in the car increases the integrity of the front end. It is bolted to the original motor mount on the passenger side of the car, and there is a new mount that is welded to the frame on the drivers side. Now, I haven’t had an engineer review this, but a custom car builder of 20 years agreed this was the best route to take.

Maine has special inspection and registration laws for 3 wheeled and low speed electric vehicles. My car has 4 wheels and is technically highway capable (55mph) so I don’t fall into either of those categories. I spent a good month tracking down all of the Maine laws on electric vehicles and the two above were all I found. Actually, the low speed vehicle law just came into effect recently. After asking around at all the inspection stations, I just brought the car into one. It was a pretty standard safety inspection. I had to prove that all the safety features of the car were in proper working order (lights, blinkers, horn, wipers, etc…) and had to show that the car could stop in a reasonable distance. There was no problem with any of the standard safety checkpoints so the car was then inspected.

Thanks for taking a look at the site.

Ed
ZeroGasoline Administrator

The post Structural Integrity & Safety Inspection appeared first on ZeroGasoline.

This is a post from www.diyelectriccar.com:

I’ll give you a few examples. Let’s say it takes 10,000 Watts to keep your car at 50 mph. And we’re striving to maintain speed.

First example…
Say you put the wind generator attached to the outside of the car. Wind generators work by creating drag on free flowing air to convert the wind energy into rotational then into electrical. Thus the wind generator can’t produce any more energy than the drag it creates on the air. So if you installed a 100% efficiency 1,000 Watt wind generator on your car, your car will then need 11,000 Watts of power to maintain speed. Your wind generator is supplying 1,000 Watts of that, so you’re back to 10,000 Watts to maintain speed. Hence without even looking at efficiency losses, there is no gain.

Second example, slightly more complex…
Your car needs the 10,000 Watts to maintain speed because of the drag on the body and wheel friction. We’ll just look at the drag on the body as at high speeds it is much larger than the wheel friction. Now imagine you removed the radiator under the hood as you don’t need it for your electric car. Reason stands you could duct the air from your car’s grill into a wind generator where your radiator once was.

Let’s assume again everything is 100% efficient. The car is already suffering from drag because of the air being stopped under the hood so we’ll say drag is the same with the wind generator, 10,000 Watts. Let’s imagine you can fit a 1,000 Watt generator underneath the hood driven purely by the frontal area of the grill. With everything perfectly efficient, you will deliver 1,000 Watts additional to your motor, effectively decreasing your energy needs down to 9,000 Watts.

Sounds good right? Well in actuality there are inefficiencies. 95% loss from motor, 95% loss from controllers, 95% loss from transmission. 1,000 * .95 * .95 * .95 = 857 Watts. So now 10,000 – 857 = 9,143 Watts. Still better than nothing.

Now let’s approach this differently. Instead of trying to harness the drag we’re creating, let’s try to get rid of it. Buy a $20 sheet of aluminum and place it over your grill. Your drag has reduced by 1,000 Watts, meaning your car only need 9,000 Watts to maintain speed. Much easier, simpler, and cheaper than a complex ducting/generator system.

Third example…
We’ve been assuming no external wind. Say like your car was parked with your wind generator running. It would generate power from the external wind and store it into the battery. You then bring in the generator to remove the drag and begin driving. That is completely doable and why many people install wind generators at their house (it’d be a pain in the butt to haul it around in the car).

The post Couldn’t You Put a Wind Generator on the Car to Charge the Batteries While Driving? 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.