My New 2010 EVT-168

[granolaboy]

Too excited not to share

Managed to score a wicked deal on a spankin' new 2010 EVT-168, with the Lithium battery pack! Ecodrive is going out of business here in Vancouver, and I took advantage.

Battery: Amita Technologies Inc.
http://granolaboy.net/evt/AM048040.pdf

I'm guessing it's LiMn2O4, since 13 x 3.8 = 49.4 V, and in this thread:
http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=39101
phase_boy opened it up and discovered 26 cells...so 13s2p. Not bad.

Controller: 130A EVT

I'm guessing that's phase amps, since all the wiring is through Anderson SB50's. Need to get a CA to get some real data.

Motor: 1500w brushless

Only 8km on it

And a few more for good measure:

Acceleration is good, but top speed only hits 60km/hr on flat. It seems limited, though un-limiting it likely requires opening the controller; I didn't see any easy loops to un-plug like on other controllers. Adding another 12v of Lithium would also be nice, but need to save my $$ for a while!

 

[allen_okc]

awesome bike though, i love the vespa look...

 

[granolaboy]

Took some more stuff apart today.

First off, I wanted to have a look inside the battery...

There's a small box and a big box. I just opened the small box...

12 "cells" in the small box, and there's 14 in the big one.

 

[granolaboy]

Next I wanted to see what's up inside the controller:

Took out the 3 screws holding it to the frame, then I removed the brackets from the back holding the wires. After that, I removed all the screws holding the back on.

Then I got the back off

Crazy controller...seems to be a lot of stuff in there. Hard to really see since I'm looking in from the bottom. I didn't want to start removing the boards to see what was underneath...there seems to be two board sandwiches in there.

Still nothing obvious to remove the limiting...if it is limited, or if it's even possible...

 

[granolaboy]

Oh, and here is the charger...

 

[steam25]

hi,
looking cool!
i think with 48V battery you wont go any faster than 60. i am surprise you can really go 60. i would guess more like 45-50 like other elektric bikes with just 48V battery.
and the controller... never seen something like that. seems the BMS and all other stuff is also inside.
not sure how to unleash little more power. the motor looks pretty beefy and could stand more though.
keep on posting

 

[Tench]

That controller looks scary! I think the easiest way to a little more speed may be to change the rear rim dia! That way if the controller is speed limited you would fool it because it is basing its speed on motor rpm's. 2" on the dia would only need 1" clearance for the increased radius and should get you another 15% = 9kph.

 

[steam25]

but would that give him not just a few km/h? i think bigest possible tire could add 3-4km/h max.
or not
i would go for new battery and controller. leave the motor inside and just increase voltage to 72V. that should make ~25km/h more.

 

[granolaboy]

I'd like to put a 110/70 on the rear, since it's currently a 100/60, and there just isn't very much rubber between the rim and the pavement. But it's really tight back there.

Getting a new controller and going up to 72v is an obvious choice, but one I can't afford right now.

I think the stock controller should do 60v, though one has to be sure to wire the brains of the bike to 48v.

And yah...I've never seen a controller like that before. It's not BMS stuff, as you get the same with lead batteries or lithium. It does a bunch of power-on tests and things, so I'm guessing the extra electronics in the controller are for that stuff. Still though, very bizarre.

And yes, it does a proper GPS-verified 60km/hr....it's not an e-bike, it's a limited speed motorcycle (like a 50cc scooter), rated at 1500w. Needs plate/reg/insurance.

The guy at the shop said there was a limiter on it, and it could be disabled, but refused to tell me how. I've dug around a bit and I can't see anything. I think he might have been making it up...

But adding another 12v 40ah sould likely get it up to 70-75km/hr...

 

[phase_boy]

granolaboy, you don't know how exciting it is to see a new EVT owner on this forum!

Congratulations on your new scooter. I was wondering what EVT stock remained when Ecodrive went out of business. Montreal's own EVT reseller (Ecomoto) went out of business over a year ago, but I wasn't aware of any sweet deals at the time. Would you share how much you paid for your EVT 168? No pressure, of course.

I bought my own 2010 EVT (4000e) two years ago from the original owner, and it has been a wonderful, reliable scooter. Until this winter, when the lithium battery died. Replacements are brutally expensive.

The two battery boxes in my scooter, which have slightly different dimensions than those in yours, both looked like they were swelling when I checked in on them in February. I was afraid to open them up at the time, but finally did last week. Sure enough, every single cell is swollen: the plastic cases have popped open, and the steel rods that hold the cells together are bent; I'm getting a reading of only a few volts from each pack.

So I've spent the better part of a month looking for a local supplier of lithium packs. And with the weather warming up at last, everyone else is out riding their scooters except me.

Regarding the brushless controller, it certainly is a mess of wires and boards. When I opened up mine last summer looking for an obvious way to "delimit" the scooter, I got turned off by the shear amount of stuff within. I took some photos very similar to yours. At the time, I noticed one semi-fixed variable resistor, which is visible in the upper left of your controller photos. Might this be related to speed or acceleration limits? The available documentation on these brushless EVTs is depressingly limited. Perhaps that Ecodrive guy could shed some light for us. Assuming he's not making stuff up.

Have you taken your scooter on a long-distance ride to see what the range is like? During last summer, my scooter's fourth season, the 40Ah lithium battery was really beginning to show its age. The original owner of my scooter said that she routinely got 45KMs of range, but by last year I was lucky to get 15KMs. And when I rode with my girlfriend, which was often, the range was of course reduced.

I am so tempted to buy a conventional scooter now, but then I remember why I love my electric one so much: quiet, fast acceleration, no exhaust, high efficiency. But my god are batteries expensive!


Sylvan

 

[granolaboy]

granolaboy, you don't know how exciting it is to see a new EVT owner on this forum!

Oh, believe me, I do!

Would you share how much you paid for your EVT 168? No pressure, of course.

He was selling the 2010 EVT 168's, with the lithium batteries, for $2200. I got a better deal than that, however, because they promised me a lower price with lead batteries, but then they couldn't get lead batteries, so they gave me lithium batteries for the same price.

I bought my own 2010 EVT (4000e) two years ago from the original owner, and it has been a wonderful, reliable scooter. Until this winter, when the lithium battery died. Replacements are brutally expensive.

Sounds like your battery is toast man...

I would suggest replacing them with 40ah LiFePO4 Calb cells:

http://headway-headquarters.com/calb-ca40fi-40ah-cell/

then see if you can get a honkin 16s bms from bestech:

http://bestechpower.com/512v16spcmbmspcbforlifepo4batterypack/BMS-D170.html

I haven't run the battery right down yet, but I'd guess I have ~40km+ range. I have a watt meter on order, so I'll have some numbers soon enough.

The guys at ecodrive vancouver either don't know if/how these things are limited, or they refuse to tell me how. I'm certainly not going to just start futzing with random pots in the controller without knowing what they do...

I'm just going to get 4 of those Calb cells and a 4s bms and boost the sucker to 60v...

 

[veloman]

Just be careful you don't overheat the motor with the extra power. I run my old brushed evt168 at 67v (replaced controller with a Kelly). Motor gets pretty warm riding at higher speeds. 60kph is really not bad at all. Make sure your controller can take the extra volts too.

 

[Knallbert]

Hi Granolaboy thanks for an interesting article, it’s the first pictures I have found showing the internals of an EVT brushless controller.
These controllers have a digital communication interface so I suspect the speed limitation is set in software.
Anyhow if your scooter is able to reach 60 km/h it is already un-limited. My scooter have the same controller (BLM-0299-2801) and its top speed is somewhere between 45 and 50 km/h.

I expect the standard configuration of these scooters to be the same as the ES15 electrification kit http://www.evt.com.tw/product/FileLinks/8383?KeepThis=True&TB_iframe=True&height=500&width=550

 

[Knallbert]

Phase_boy, I see you need new batteries for your EVT 4000e, and are considering to by unoriginal lithium packs. When I upgraded my 4000e from Lead-Acid to LiFePO4 I installaed two 48V 30AH Battery Packs from PingBattery for a total of 60AH http://www.pingbattery.com/servlet/the-17/48V-30AH-V2.5-LiFePO4/Detail they fitted quite neatly, all that was needed was a cradle to hold the battery packs in place, and some wiring. Even the chargers fitted into the slot where the original charger was mounted.

 

[granolaboy]

So I've modded my scooter and added a booster battery for more speed. The mod itself is really simple, but I ended up having to re-arrange some stuff to get the new battery to fit, so I figured I'd post what I did. I went looking for a post from someone who's over-volted a brushless EVT, and found a bunch of old threads on visforvoltage where guys had done it to their older brushed EVT's, but none on the newer brushless ones with the different controller. I would have liked to have seen at least one post that someone had done it and not fried anything...so here it is.

I put together a 4s2p LifePO4 pack using the A123 Amp20 cells and kit from OSN Power. This gives me an extra 14.4v fully charged, so add that with the 54.6v of the main pack, and I have 69v fully charged. The LifePO4 drops to 13.2v pretty quick, though, but stays there for a lonnng time.

Here is a link to my battery build thread:

https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=69856

In retrospect, I might have chosen a different battery format, maybe one made out of 18650's so it could be split into 2 packs or something so I wouldn't have had to take anything else apart to get the battery to fit, but I'm certainly not complaining about how it all turned out.

As far as hooking it up, there is an Anderson SB-50 connector right before the controller. Just make an adapter to add a battery between them, and you're done. This connector is after the relay box, and after all the bike electronics, so only the controller sees the extra battery, and the bike still thinks it's at 48v. It's also nice that when the bike is off, the relay box disconnects the two batteries from each other, removing any chance that the two chargers could possibly interfere with each other.

The original connector was black, but I only have a bunch of red SB-50's lying around, so I swapped out the black housings for some red ones.

Now, I don't know if the older brushed EVT's have a similar connector right before the controller, but I'm guessing they don't, since the posts on visforvoltage have them cutting wires and splicing a 48v feed off the original pack into the wiring harness. This is much easier.

So I just made an adapter to stick in between this connector:

And put it in:

Unfortunately, there isn't room in the trunk under the seat to put the new battery. I decided to re-arrange the original pack so that it was longer and flatter. I took my time removing the connectors and heat-shrinking the ends, one at a time, to dissasemble the top half of the pack:

Now I can change this arrangement:

Into this arrangement:

I also got rid of the hunk of metal the SB-50's screw into for the Lead-acid version:

I made a quick & dirty tin box, put a plastic top on it, re-attached the connectors, and now it sits quite a bit lower.

And now the booster battery fits:

To make it fit even nicer (the seat was a bit too snug on the battery for my liking), I cut out the plastic at the back of the trunk so I could slide the booster battery back an inch or so.

And there it is:

And another shot of it before cutting:

The results are awesome. No issues with over heating or anything else. I haven't checked my real speed yet, but my speedo goes past 75km/hr now, so I'm guessing I'm hitting between 65km/hr and 70km/hr. It sure feels fast.

Economy mode is faster than power mode was before the new battery.

If you have a brushless EVT, you should totally add some voltage. It's wicked.

 

[Scottydog]

Awesome build, will read more on it when I have time! Not all your battery build photos are working though!

It is great to know it can be overvolted, be curious to see how things work out in long term. I have a friend who used to see these EVT's he had to set to the dump maybe 5 brand new ones which he raided the batteries to keep customers happy. He still has maybe 4-5 now, but no batteries to get back on the road. I did come up with options, but being on an island and having a 33% tax on batteries he mulled the idea of new batteries. That all said I have heard some news relating to applying to tax relief on EV batteries, so if this proves true could be the opportunity to bring the bikes back to life!

 

[granolaboy]

GPS verified, 69km/hr on flat WOT.

It seems Volts == km/hr on this bike.

 

[Bosoxsteve]

Too excited not to share

Managed to score a wicked deal on a spankin' new 2010 EVT-168, with the Lithium battery pack! Ecodrive is going out of business here in Vancouver, and I took advantage.

Battery: Amita Technologies Inc.
http://granolaboy.net/evt/AM048040.pdf

I'm guessing it's LiMn2O4, since 13 x 3.8 = 49.4 V, and in this thread:

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=39101

phase_boy opened it up and discovered 26 cells...so 13s2p. Not bad.

Controller: 130A EVT

I'm guessing that's phase amps, since all the wiring is through Anderson SB50's. Need to get a CA to get some real data.

Motor: 1500w brushless

Only 8km on it

And a few more for good measure:

Acceleration is good, but top speed only hits 60km/hr on flat. It seems limited, though un-limiting it likely requires opening the controller; I didn't see any easy loops to un-plug like on other controllers. Adding another 12v of Lithium would also be nice, but need to save my $$ for a while!

I'm looking for the 48V 6amp charger with 5 pin...also need the front EVT badge below the handle bars...?

 

[hallo_world]

Phase_boy, I see you need new batteries for your EVT 4000e, and are considering to by unoriginal lithium packs. When I upgraded my 4000e from Lead-Acid to LiFePO4 I installaed two 48V 30AH Battery Packs from PingBattery for a total of 60AH http://www.pingbattery.com/servlet/the-17/48V-30AH-V2.5-LiFePO4/Detail they fitted quite neatly, all that was needed was a cradle to hold the battery packs in place, and some wiring. Even the chargers fitted into the slot where the original charger was mounted.

Could you elaborate on the wiring? I just bought 4 12.8v LiFePO4 batteries but the wiring is scaring me, specifically the smaller wires that currently connect to the two 48v Amitas batteries in parallel .. wiring diagram are hard to come across.

I plan to have a 4s arrangement, but there are additional wires (three) going into each battery. One of which is blue.. very overwhelmed.

If anyone has converted their 2p amita li-ion to a 4s LiFePO4 setup, please share your insights

 

[Chalo]

If you're using only four 12V LiFePO4 batteries for a 48V system, you won't be using any parallel wiring at all. So you can ignore that part.

You only need to connect the controller (+) wire to the (+) terminal of the first battery, then the (-) terminal of that battery to the (+) terminal of the second battery, and so forth until you connect the (-) wire from the controller to the (-) terminal of the fourth battery. There may be a fuse or a main power switch attached to one of the controller leads; if so, leave it in the circuit. Attach the new batteries where the old ones were connected to the bike.

Work slowly, and stop if you become confused, so you can reorient yourself.

 

[hallo_world]

If you're using only four 12V LiFePO4 batteries for a 48V system, you won't be using any parallel wiring at all. So you can ignore that part.

You only need to connect the controller (+) wire to the (+) terminal of the first battery, then the (-) terminal of that battery to the (+) terminal of the second battery, and so forth until you connect the (-) wire from the controller to the (-) terminal of the fourth battery. There may be a fuse or a main power switch attached to one of the controller leads; if so, leave it in the circuit. Attach the new batteries where the old ones were connected to the bike.

Work slowly, and stop if you become confused, so you can reorient yourself.

Thank you very much. Have you experience with the EVT168?
There is some difficulty/confusion with additional wires coming from the stock lithium Amita batteries..

This blue wire should connect somewhere, but I don't know where exactly..
See here re blue wire from the controller:

 

[Chalo]

I'm not familiar with that scooter. If it displays any kind of status for the packs separately, then that's what the extra wires are for. If you follow them, they may just be Y connectors to the main (+) and (-) cables, though. If that's the case, either tape off the extra ones so they can't short on anything, or double up your pack end wires so you can attach to all the connectors.