Electric DeLorean using A123 7s3p Modules

Sutho

Sutho

10 W
Joined
Apr 11, 2012
Messages
72
Location
Newcastle, Australia
A few months back I was among the "unhappy campers" purchasing A123 modules from Victpower for use in my electric vehicle project. While my business dealings with them were frustrating and disappointing to say the least, I am pleased to report that I managed to pull together enough modules to get my project finished.

For any that are interested, some details of the the build process can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/dmcev

And the result can be seen here:
http://youtu.be/PMVffnrYL5k

The vehicle performs much better than it did with the factory 2.8l V6 engine.

Cheers,
Sutho
 
Hey Sutho! How's the AFM140 go? Which wind did you use? #4?

It's the same motor going into next year's race bike :D
 
jonescg said:
Hey Sutho! How's the AFM140 go? Which wind did you use? #4?

It's the same motor going into next year's race bike :D
Click to expand...

The motor is great. It has a stack of torque and makes some really cool sounds. :D

I will send you a PM of some other details.
 
That car is simply amazing!
otherDoc
 
deVries said:
Bet you love the acceleration. :twisted:

Did you ever try to cut out or replace defective single cell(s) or determine if it is easy to do?

Thanks. :D
Click to expand...

The motor provides 500Nm torque, so the acceleration is great. :)

I still have a bunch of A123 modules here that I will be playing with in the near future. I will report back when I have pulled one down.
 
nice work Sutho, if ever there was a car deserving of an EV conversion it's the delorean :)
Can't be many of those kicking around in Australia, I think I've only ever seen one in person.
I take it it's a locally delivered one so the speedo is in km/hr ? Yeah, I was going to make an 88 mph joke :p
 
Hyena said:
I take it it's a locally delivered one so the speedo is in km/hr ? Yeah, I was going to make an 88 mph joke :p
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The speedo has both kph and mph. The standard DeLorean speedo only goes up to 85mph....not 95mph as per the movies. This was due to some safety campaign in the US back in the 80's where they thought that having high numbers on speedos was encouraging people to try to reach those high speeds, so they limited most speedos to 85mph.

Either way, this motor pushes the speedo off the dial......and yes, I'm still here.....I think? :)
 
I talked to Delorean at a car show in which they brought an electric Delorean. They are planning to offer conversion kits. The kit was to include a Remy motor and j1772 charge port hidden behind front grille. I was surprised to find that there are a number of electric deloreans.
 
I can only drool.......your at warners bay? can people drop in and have a look at the vehicle? I would imagine your busy guys so understand if not possible.
 
also 150km range mentioned on the news program, have you run that distance or was it estimate? if thats actual distance where did you drive to?
trying to get realistic idea of what you've achieved
 
whatever said:
I can only drool.......your at warners bay? can people drop in and have a look at the vehicle? I would imagine your busy guys so understand if not possible.

also 150km range mentioned on the news program, have you run that distance or was it estimate? if thats actual distance where did you drive to?
trying to get realistic idea of what you've achieved
Click to expand...

We are pretty busy, but give us a call if you would like to have a look at the vehicle and we'll work something out, but note that it will be at the Hunter Valley EV Show in Newcastle on Aug 18th.

With regards to the range, the 150km would be a pretty accurate estimate. I have so far driven a over 100km on one charge with capacity remaining. The vehicle seems to be consuming about 185Wh per km and I'm not driving super conservatively. The battery bank has a usable capacity of over 23kWh and the vehicle has regen putting charge back in on downhill runs and braking.
 
excellent I"ll say hi at the ev show, are you doing the gokart track day also? or just the first day on display?
 
whatever said:
excellent I"ll say hi at the ev show, are you doing the gokart track day also? or just the first day on display?
Click to expand...

Will be at the show on Sat 18th only. Joining some mates in the Variety Children's Charity Bash the next day (not in this car) so won't be able to stick around for the challenges unfortunately. See you at the show.
 
what sort of current are the a123's soaking up when regen braking?
 
whatever said:
what sort of current are the a123's soaking up when regen braking?
Click to expand...

The amount of regen is adjustable. I typically have it set to give about 30 to 50 Amps which is quite a comfortable retardation level. This level requires much less use of the brakes, but doesn't try to launch you through the windscreen. :)

The A123s seem to handle that easily. I haven't really seen any significant rise in cell temp even after heavy acceleration drawing 6C+.
 
I saw it yesterday at the show. Looked absolutely awesome, great work on it. Does it require any special certification for road use or does it just get classed as an engine change? Engineers certificate at the least I'm guessing
 
Ditto - very nice!

Was good to see it running around the track with the Tesla as well :)
 
jman231994 said:
I saw it yesterday at the show. Looked absolutely awesome, great work on it. Does it require any special certification for road use or does it just get classed as an engine change? Engineers certificate at the least I'm guessing
Click to expand...

Thank you.

Yes....required Engineering Certification which was pretty involved. All points that needed to be satisfied made sense from a safety perspective. The VCSS Engineer that certified the vehicle had not done an EV conversion before so was very thorough. Just when it seemed that we were done, he would think of some other possible scenario, so we would need to work out methods to satisfy that. The whole process took about 6 weeks.

He primarily concentrated on braking and battery pack restraints. Even with regen braking, he wasn't convinced that an electric vacuum pump was the solution to provide brake boosting. He was concerned that if the vacuum pump and regen failed we wouldn't be able to stop the vehicle. We done numerous brake tests under all conditions and proved that it could pass all regular brake tests from various speeds up to 100km/h without regen and without the vacuum pump running. We had to add battery pack restraints made from seatbelt material to help satisfy the NCOP14 requirements.
 
It was quite a good event ( except for the wind!), I saw your delorean but didn't get a chance to say hi.
Will you be at the gokart track day this weekend?
 
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