Weekend Driving and Weigh-In
Posted on August 10, 2010
ChargeCar Team
Recently, one of our team members has been using the Civic as his primary commuter car and he has been recording data.
To home: 5.8 miles
2.407 kw-hr used
0.216 kw-hr regen
2.191 kw-hr total
To work: 5.8 miles
2.037 kw-hr used
0.316 kw-hr regen
1.721 kw-hr total
[...]
News
honda, scion
Driving Evaluation Data
The bad LiFePO4 cell was replaced with a cell we charged last night and topped-off this morning. The BMS incorporated it perfectly and the cells are all within +/-0.02 V of one another. Another issue we encountered yesterday were potholes. The small sharp shocks seem to trip the contactor (essentially a large relay or electromagnetic switch) and the throttle could cut out for brief periods. We resolved t [...]
News
honda, scion
Honda Civic Driving!
The Honda Civic is now a true conversion. It was completed last week (July 23rd) and it has been taken out for drives in our parking lot and on local roads. Some drives incorporated serious hills (i.e. Forbes Avenue towards Squirrel Hill, if you are aware of Pittsburgh's roads) with varying numbers of passengers (up to four adult males).
Honda Civic EV Update
A week ago, we received 36 TS-100 (100Ahr) Thundersky Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries, 33 to go into the Civic (with 3 spares). While we've been waiting for them, we've also been prepping the controller and motor to go in, including modifying the adapter plate to connect the AC motor to the transmission and clutch. With all the key pieces coming together, we've managed to mount the first components into the car and even made t [...]
News
honda
ChargeCarPrize Contest Launched!
The ChargeCarPrize programming contest (beta phase) has launched! The software & data are available to download, and the leaderboard is live for submissions. We have real-world data collected by our secret set of drivers available for training and testing your algorithms.
For those who haven’t heard alread [...]
Contest
contest
Battery Tech Talk
On June 23rd, we had Carnegie Mellon professor Jay Whitacre come to our weekly tech meeting to give us a quick overview of battery chemistry, performance characteristics, and tuning for high performance. We were able to record the video, and it's available at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute website. From that site:
< [...]
Tech Talks
batteries, video
Car of the Future showing at the Garage
Hello ChargeCar community,
A huge thanks is in order to everyone who braved the dreadful weather and to come to last week's event! It was excellent to see lots of enthusiastic people interact at our open house, as well as after the screening of "Gasland." If you couldn't make it, there will be two more summer events on Friday's through the end of July for everyone interested in any part of ChargeC [...]
Community Events
Electric Garage, community events
Electric Garage
You may be aware that we've moved into the empty garage on Forbes Avenue which formerly housed University Exxon. We've now set up all our tools and testing equipment there, and are using it to convert the Civic, do work on the Scion, and evaluate battery performance. While we're at it, though, we're also working hard to clean the place up and turn it into a community center where everyone will be welcome to stop by. As such, we [...]
News
Electric Garage
Power Manager Programming Contest
The ChargeCar Prize programming contest will be officially launching on July 1st. The contest is to design a management algorithm that controls how the super-capacitor is used in the compound energy-storage system. The contest serves two purposes, reaching out to a new community for involvement and improving the effectiveness of the system by harnessing their intuition and creativity. The contest will feature [...]
Contest
contest, power management
Civic Update
We are making progress on the conversion of our 2006 Honda Civic. The engine and associated components were removed by Baum Boulevard Automotive, for a net weight removal of about 310 pounds. An AC-31 motor/controller (Curtis 1238-7501) was ordered from Thunderstruck EV, along with the Curtis controller programmer and pot box and Tyco LEV200 500A contactor. The motor was shipped to the Electric Car Company in Utah, who will mak [...]
News
Civic
Scion Update
The Scion has become an active supercapacitor-battery testbed. We have 3 kilowatt-hours of deep cycle marine batteries in the car, together with a 50 watt-hour supercap, and have installed all the circuitry that enables us to drive around with either or both batteries and supercap, charging and regenning. We are measuring overall efficiencies of approximately 3.5 - 4 miles per kilowatt-hour, which is about right for this size c [...]
News
Scion
Battery Testing
The Scion has been exhibiting very disappointing range, and we began to suspect that the batteries' performance was degrading under heavy loads. This prompted us to perform some stress-testing on the batteries to see how they would hold up under the high currents we have observed in typical driving conditions. The Scion was using four, 75Ah Optima Blue Top, AGM SpiralCall batteries (0.9kWh nominal per battery). We built an expe [...]
News
batteries, Scion
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