New Member Introduction -2

[madmadscientist]

Hello All,

I've posted a short note on the EV-bicycle forum but I've got another idea I wanted feedback on.
It does seem like this board is mostly geared towards electric bicycles but I thought I would try this here. If someone knows of a more appropriate board please do pass it on.

The I live on an 'island' city in the San Francisco bay. Its flat, not terribly large and the speed limit is very, very strictly enforced to 25mph. The island already has a zap-zenn dealer and I see the little NEV's often.

I, being a madscientist, want to make my own NEV. Is that totally crazy? I've built lots of things with metal, and I've even built a motorcycle based trike just for the fun of it. This would not be a fully enclosed-practical thing like a zenn. This would be more of a fair weather, take the wife shopping for grocerys kinda thing.

I would dearly love some input as to which motors, controllers and battery packs I should be looking into?

Batteries: I've been doing some searching on the web and around and talked to some people in the homemade PHEV crowd and heres the short and not complete list I've got.
A123, Altair Nanotech, Lithium Ion technologies, enerdel, advanced battery tech company, China BAK battery tech, I don't know if most of these companies are even selling batteries to endusers like me or if they are all 'in development' or what?

I do know that when I asked the zenn dealer why in the heck the car comes with 'old tech' lead acid batt he said that the Li-Ion batts were just too expensive.


Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks,
Daniel Neumansky
Alameda CA

 

[fechter]

Good! another mad scientist

You're in the right place. One of the biggest obstacles is making it street legal. I'd suggest starting with something that can already be registered, then modify the crap out if it.

Used golf cars might be a good platform. There are others. We can help with the hardware selection. You are lucky to live near many good sorces of EV parts. Electric Motorsport is very close in Oakland.

 

[madmadscientist]

My initial thoughts on this was to start with a late 80's japenese motorcyle as the road legal base and turn it into a trike.
Starting with a mc you get all the legal stuff-lights-turnsignals-a legally registered vehicle from the get go. You could use running gear from a smaller ~250ish MC or even a free-way legal scooter and you'll know those parts were designed for free way speeds.

We've already built one trike out of older mc bits. You could consider this v 1.0 in that its gas powered and a total deathtrap but it is fun to drive it around the desert.
http://www.madmadscientist.com/galleries/bman2k5/steve05/index.htm

Just to show that I'm not totally with out skills in the building of things out of metal dept.

Like I said in my other post in the bike section I am hoping to engage in some spirited arm-chair engineering with ya'll about this before I take plasma cutter to metal.

Or if someone knows a better forum to bounce these ideas around in please let me know.

Thanks,

Daniel Neumansky
Alameda CA

 

[fechter]

We've already built one trike out of older mc bits. You could consider this v 1.0 in that its gas powered and a total deathtrap but it is fun to drive it around the desert.
http://www.madmadscientist.com/galleries/bman2k5/steve05/index.htm

Cool. Was that thing approved by the DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles)?

I think as long as you start with something that was street legal and has a VIN, you can do quite a bit of modification without running into registration problems.

 

[iberkt]

You could build an electric version of the Moonbeam!

What's a moonbeam? Look here http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6omtd/jorysquibb/index.html

This guy built this thing in his garage using regular shop tools. He kept his running on gas but you could easily do an electric version.

I sent him an email once and he seemed very like a nice guy. I'm sure if you shoot him an email he would be able to give you some ideas to help you get started.