Citroen saxo electrique

Hi anybody got any technical experience with this electric car?

Found a few for sale at reasonable prices 5000-10.000euro range, 2000-2005 models with anything from 2000 to 80000km om the clock. Already street legal and tax free. It doesnt look too advanced. Seems like a great little car for a nicd to lithium swap. Guess you could increase the 75km range quite alot with lithium insted of the 12kwh nicds

I know its a european sold car but theres very little techinical and conversion info on the net about this car and theres some euros lurking about this forum

"...(Paris, May 17, 2000) - PSA Peugeot Citröen today rolled out the 5,000th electric car, a white Citroën Saxo, produced at the Heuliez assembly plant in Cerizay, France.

Since series production began in September 1995, the Heuliez plant has produced 2,200 electric versions of the Citroën AX and Saxo and 2,800 electric versions of the Peugeot 106, in 3 or 5-door passenger car and commercial models.

The plant also produced 25 Peugeot 106s and 25 Citroën Saxos, which were delivered to the city of La Rochelle in September 1999. The vehicles constitute the first fleet of self-service EVs made available to residents on a subscription basis, as part of the Liselec (lease-electric) program.

As the majority of EV sales are to business and government fleets, PSA Peugeot Citröen decided to broaden its offer in 1998 to include electric versions of the Peugeot Partner and Citroën Berlingo commercial vehicles. Both are manufactured at the Group’s plant in Vigo, Spain on the same assembly lines as combustion-engine models.

Since the first electric car was introduced in November 1995, PSA Peugeot Citroën has sold nearly 6,000 units in Europe, where it holds the leadership position in a total market of 9,000 vehicles. The Group is also the world’s leading manufacturer of electric cars.

Its customers in France include Electricité de France, La Poste, Aéroports de Paris, and a number of cities including Paris, La Rochelle and Lyon.

Outside France, the Group has sold vehicles to Britain’s Royal Mail, to power utilities in Berlin and Stuttgart, Germany, and to the cities of Coventry (UK), Stockholm, Copenhagen, Milan, and Athens..."

Hmmm,...as of dateline 2000, they had sold over 9,000 EV's ? I read a lot, and I'm suprised I haven't heard of them before.

From a euro-EV-blog (veracity of testimonial unverifiable):

"...The Peugeot 106 / Citroen Saxo electric has an much lower peak power rating (than the C1-Evie), 22kW or so,
but in town driving it's acceptably nippy even with 3 people on board..."

Motor is "...separately excited DC, 20 kW peak...", battery pack is 120V NiCD, size is 12-kWH, top speed 90-KPH, claimed max range (at modest speed) is 150-k...

found this peugoet 106 electric (almost the same car) converted to thundersky claiming 240km range with that kind of range I wouldnt need my ICE for anything other than holidays.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zwazxjPI_g

just wierd there are not more lithium conversions around... maybe the nicds are working too well

Also had a chat with the seller of a 00' saxo electric and it turns out it only has 2000km on the clock and hes 1st owner. Batteries have never been replaced and he cant tell in what shape they are other than that the car works perfectly. But they will be dumped for lithium at some point anyway. Hes willing to sell it for 5500euro, sounds alittle suspect compared to other cars for sale but I will have a look at it in the weekend.

those nicads will still work, no reason to trash them, maybe supplement with TS. does the guvment offer benefits if you drive EV? how many do you see advertised and all over europe or just france?

I do a lot of hunting for citroens,(mostly sm,masserati)and have run across these for sale by citroen dealership in England.Ex postal fleet.Has to be info available from gov't,or citroen dealers.Try ebaymotors england.

found 2 here in denmark, a few in norway and about 10 in germany/france.

Yes theres no tax on electric vehicles until 2012 after then noone knows what obscure tax they will come up with. So I need to own a electric car before 2012 thats for sure

If the Nicds are still in good shape and you just really want to have lithiums, then you could probably sell off the NiCds to help pay for the lithiums. Seems like that would really offset the price of Lithium nicely.

gilnet is man with similar tastes. the sm is so beautiful, i used to own '63, '65 ID's and DS. 4 in all. what a labor of love, especially in the US. but could not keep them through grad school. there are still several oldies around portland i see parked, i have never seen an sm outside of a few collectors i knew, never on the road. but of all places to see one, 4 houses down the street from my dad's house in rural central alexandria,louisiana a man had a beautiful white '72 sm parked in his driveway. could not have been more out of place.

am citroen fanatic for 40 years, but drive antique '84 honda wagon outa necessity for versatility and the ability to haul big stuff like lumber and other ungainly loads like gravel, rebar, plywood, and sheetrock.

Went and bought one yesterday 9 years old and 3000km on the clock, the tyres never even been changed and the seats looks like they just came out of the factory.

Its shocking these cars didnt sell because its pretty much the perfect car for city driving, regen kicks in automatically and it pulls nicely up to about 60km/h after that its pretty slow. Some funny details like the turn signals blinking in case of a fault when charging and reversing is engaged by pushing a button next to the button for the heater





The 11kw powertrain

BRAND NEW! the tires look like they have never been on the street. very very nice, and the little things are important. like the charging port has a cover that hinges from the top to keep the rain out. and when you think about it flashers are the best way to signal charging problems since most people will be charging outside and they can look out the window and see when it is having problems, but keeping the rain off the charge plug is really neat.

i saw my first ZENN close up last tuesday, the charge port is on top of thefender in back, right where the diesel fill port was in the body, this is the long wheelbase MC2 from mirocar, but it is exposed to the rain and water will run down the side to that spot so looking at the hinged flap just is so neat, good engineering in the layout of the motor and battery, just a perfect design

you lucky dog. great purchase.

you may be able to add speed by addimg batteries on top, think you will keep it stock or mod it? will the authorities there harass you for modding it?

The cover over the plug also has a little light so you can hook up in the dark and it also locks together with the doors so you can leave it out on the street without having to worry about someone unplug it.

Just did a 40km test ride and the energy meter dropped about 10% for each 8-9km so it seems like the battery pack is living up to the 70-100km claimed range. Was a fun little ride on small country roads with alot of full throttle and a lot of regen. You can pretty much drive this car only touching the brakes at full stops.
Ill top up the batteries with new water and do another test but doubt it will improve a lot.
Changing batteries shouldnt be a problem but dumping the sepex dc for another motor might not be so popular with the authorities, but on the other hand they will probably never be able to tell if you have a different motor than the stock one.

I dont really want to change the batteries when they seem to be in such a good state unless someone offers me a good deal on them. Ill probably look into building a lifepo4 back to throw in the trunk.
Something like dual agni motors would seem ideal for this car but it will probably require new controller and some tricky adapting plus integrating it with the rest of cars systems.

Hi thomas, I'm about to get the same car!! I'll buy it as soon as I sell my yaris.
How much did you pay for yours? Do you feel comfortable with it? I can't wait to get mine!!

I got it for 40000 dkr about 5300euro.

Its a great little car for city driving but it lacks the top speed so on roads with speed limits above 80kmh you are not so popular It also struggles to keep 80kmh up the hills.

Be sure to get a car with batteries from 2000+ since there was a defect in the SAFT modules in the earlier models. Mine are 9 years old hardly used and after a watering they gave me 90km of range so nicds defiantly doesn't wear much over the years when not used.
Im planning to replace the nicds with lifepo4 at some point. right now it looks like i can fit 40 200Ah thundersky cells wich would give about 200km range judging from other saxo lifepo4 conversion with 160Ah cells.
This will up the nominal voltage a little so hopefully it will improve the top speed.

Also dreaming about replacing that big chuck of a sepex motor with ac induction or maybe the hub motors from enertrac

The brushes wear down quite quickly and I'm planning to replace them at every 5000km with my aggressive driving. Or its aggressive from 0-30kmh then you hit the knee on the torque curve DC motors are really not ideal for direct drive.

Its a very complete electric car that seems to hold up very well if you change brushes and water the batteries at every 5000km. The top speed is the only major downside of this car.

Well, the deal on mine is 7000€ for a 2005 car, so with the new design, and with almost new batteries. I plan to water them regularly, do you have the evlite3 or a diagnostic system so you can do it yourself? I was going to build myself an instrument like the evlite3, as I work for an automotive diagnostic company and my job is exactly this: to reverse-engineer the protocols and duplicate the functionality of other instruments!
The slowness of the car is good to keep up with speed limits, as police here is very picky!

I was thinking about replacing the motor too, but I wanted to replace it with an Agni, or better, 2 Agnis in parallel. 44KW!!! Also the control will be easier as i will be able to build my own controller. It weighs 35kg for a 22kw motor. Too bad we can't do this, or in case of an accident we will not be covered by insurance.

Be careful with the water pump, as you will need to replace it every 20000km due to wear of brushes. I plan on replacing mine with a brushless one as soon as it burns, and I'll be done for life. :wink:

The knee on the torque curve should be the fault of the controller, as he limits the current to 100A... Too bad, but it's for the safety of our cells!

Yeah I got the ev lite very easy to do.

I dont think the controller limits at 100A the evlite can read the amp draw and it tops at 230A at acceleration.

Dual agnis would be cool but the gear, differential and motor is all in one unit. Differential and gear is in one side(left) and a axle through the hollow motor axle connects to the other drive axle.
I haven't had the motor out but you would probably have to replace the whole thing with new differential and gear.

This pdf got a cutaway drawing of the motor and differential.

http://www.rmsconsult.co.uk/berlingo/files/manuals/Saxo/SaxoMoteur5.pdf

Mh.. Maybe with a similar motor with the axle protruding from both sides... Oh well. I'll forget about it. 11kw is enough.

Hello Thomas,
have you been along the norwegian EV-forum?
http://elbilforum.no/forum/
They have collected a huge amount of practical knowledge about the Saxo and other french PSA-EVs.
Have a look at this:
http://elbilforum.no/forum/index.php?topic=644.msg4724#msg4724
and also at the wiki:
http://elbilwiki.nipen.no/wiki/PSA
We have a Saxo here at Køge near Copenhagen and like it a lot, but the batteries are not so easy to manage, if you wish them a long live.
jorno1

Sorry to say, but the norwegian EV-forum is in their native language, not in english. Other scandinavians will manage to read it

Norwegian is Danish with straight forward spelling So no problem.

Browsed the forum a few times but there doesn't seem to be much activity but thats the same on all the Scandinavian forums. Can't say i contribute much to change that. Great place to look up info and help dealing with the PSA vehicles though.

Hi thomas,
I see you have a saxo electrique.
My friend has one also and we are triing to fit it with LiFePo batteries.

Have you done this also?
Do you have a separate charger for LiFePo or do you use the existing one (sagembox)?

We tried with 96Vdc lifepo system with a separate charger.
The problem is that the controller starts the reserve at 105Vdc (and our battery pack can go down to 90Vdc) so the range is not very good.
Do you maybe know a way to reprogram the controller?