After motor installation and transferring components from garage test board to the truck, it was time to hit the road. It was amazing to see the truck perform like a real truck! The 7 batteries totaled 84 volts which is at the low end for the controller. The initial drives of a few hundred feet showed slow pickup but it worked. after gathering up my nerve, I adjusted the controller for increased current ramp and max current draw and the pickup became tolerable.

Learning to drive the truck with an electric motor was interesting. I found that I could leave the clutch engaged in second gear and drive up to 35 mph and back to a stop without shifting. The current draw in second gear at 35 mph was around 125 amps. Shifting to third gear jumped the rpm down and the current up to 150 amps. I have gotten it up to 55 mph but current draw is high: 200 + amps.

I have added an eighth battery and current at 35 mph in second gear is around 100 amps. My batteries are 125 amp hour rated and the approx. range is 20 miles at this point. I have used up to 60 amp hours and still have good drivability.  The recharge time is in the 3 hour range at about 5 kwh.

I am looking for additional batteries to increase the voltage, top speed, range and pickup.

While web searching for batteries, I found what looks to be a bargain at Sears. A deep cycle 100 amp hour 12 volt battery is available for $90! The battery is a marine/RV battery model: Diehard Group size 27M. This is slightly smaller in capacity than my 125 amp hour ones currently in use. I am going to get 4 to bring my battery count up to 12 and my voltage up to 144 volts. I am hopeful that these will extend my range and improve pickup some. Oh boy! UPDATE: After about 400 miles and 40 charges, the battery voltage began decaying much faster than the other batteries and this dropped the range to 15 miles or so. Also I believe high currents during acceleration were over heating the battery indicated by battery fluid coming out of the fill caps. I replaced these batteries with the heavier duty platinum series and the range is back up to previous levels.

Well after a controller problem handled by a replacement promptly sent by Logisystems, I resumed my test drives at 144 volts. The range with city driving seems to be 27 miles – a little shorter than I hoped for. I used around 64 Amp Hours and required about 12 kwh to recharge. At $0.10 per kwh, that means it costs about $1.20 to drive 27 miles. This would have used about 1.25 gallons with the old engine and cost around $3.10 to fill up.

Currents are in the 60 amp range in second gear cruising at 35 mph and in the 85 amp range cruising at 45 mph in third gear.

The batteries when fully charged were at 154 volts and dropped to 121 volts after 27 miles.

I have the ramp current on the Logisystems controller set at mid range or around 50%. With this voltage the car jerks strongly at startup if you just have the clutch out and hit the accelerator. I find that I can make a smooth startup using the clutch like a gas engine: start the motor with the clutch disengaged and let it out slowly until the truck is moving then leave it out.

I am installing the main battery charger behind the drivers seat where the small jump seat used to be. I have run the AC input cable using 10 AWG stranded wire through conduit to the gas fill door and have put a regular AC plug on the cable to attach to the extension cord for charging. I mounted a breaker box in the rear wall behind the driver’s seat and put a single phase 30 Amp breaker in. I also installed a neon lamp that shows when power in on and a duplex outlet in the breaker panel to power a 12 volt IOTA charger for the accessory battery. So to charge all the batteries, plug in the extension cord, turn on the AC breaker (if off), then turn on the charger power switch/breaker. Both chargers will charge until full then shut off until power is removed.

I am playing with a new air conditioner solution. I have purchased 2 Haier NuCool 2.8 CU ft refrigerators.  These refrigerators use solid state coolers (peltier effect) which have no freon and don’t need a compressor. They draw around 2 amps off 120 volt AC when running. I am thinking about removing the cooling units and mounting them in the truck someplace and using the cool sides to cool the car. I think I will have to vent the hot sides out side the cabin, but may use some sort of door to use the hot side for cabin heat. These could be plugged in when charging the truck and have it already cool before driving. Then later use a solar panel to run one unit or at least a fan while parked away from a plug in. More to some on this.

I now have  almost 800 miles on the truck.  I have had routine problems with a bad tire and battery replacements as follows. One of the 125 amp hour batteries dropped to ~ 5 volts and would not charge. I replaced it with a Sears platinum marine battery. I replaced the accessory 12 volt battery with one of the smaller Sears deep cycles to add a little more reserve power for lights, etc. I replaced the three remaining “cheap” Sears batteries with platinum versions after the smaller batteries started to degrade. (discussed in an UPDATE above).

Current battery configuration: 5 each Sears Platinum Marine batteries (PM-1), 7 each 125 Ah surplus deep cycle batteries, accessory battery: 100Ah deep cycle battery

I have also tried to check connections and wiring every month to make sure that vibrations are not loosening connections or stressing wires. I am also doing some body work getting ready for a paint job. Otherwise the truck performs reliably.

10-27-14: The truck has been on the road over 5 years now with very few problems. 3 of the original surplus batteries have been replaced as they failed. My average drive is under 10 miles and total mileage since the conversion is around 2,000  miles. The replacement batteries have less Amp hour ratings and the range has decreased from around 25 miles to less than 20.

Assembly of the transmission adapter to motor was straight forward with bolts, and washers provided.

The collar provided is well made and “presses on” the motor shaft with a woodruff key to lock it in place. Allen head set screws are used to help secure the installation.

The flywheel which has been resurfaced at the local machine shop bolts to the collar with the bolts from the engine installation.

The clutch and pressure plate bolt to the flywheel just like in a standard engine to transmission interface. Use of a clutch alignment tool keeps things straight.

With the motor and clutch assembly together, an engine hoist was used to lift it in to the engine compartment. The Hood was removed and the motor assembly fit nicely in to the compartment with little worry about hitting anything.

Installation required an engine hoist and a few helpers came in handy. Everything lined up well .

Engine mounts are next and the electrical components: controller, contactor, cables, fuse, etc.

After seeing how well the motor lined up with the cross frame member, I got the idea to build simple angle bracket mounts which bolt to the frame cross member and the motor lifting holes. I made a model with light stell plate and had a machinist cut and bend the brackets.

The transferring of the other components from the test board to the truck went well. I mounted the controller in the front of the engine compartment where the radiator had been.

I made mounting rails from angle aluminum and screwed the controller with fans onto it. I found some cooling fans at Radio Shack that had some fancy blue lights.

I mounted the contactor on the firewall along with a relay which is switched by the keyswitch and energizes the contactor. The fuse is mounted on the truckbed front side near the batteries. I ran conduit from the truck bed to the engine compartment with the 2/0 cables to bring battery power to the engine compartment.

The batteries are a little bit of a mixture of surplus 125 Amp Hour deep cycle used batteries and new sears 27M 105 Amp Hour marine batteries. They have a couple of terminal styles that I had to adapt to in order to hook everything up. Here’s what they look like with the initial set of 12 – 12 volt batteries:

I mounted the Manzanilla main battery charger in the passenger compartment behind the drivers seat. I removed the drivers side jump seat which let a nice opening that just fit the charger. I installed a breaker panel with an duplex outlet and connected the charger to it. I ran conduit to the gas fill door and put a connector on the end of the cable for charging. I also mounted an Iota 12 volt charger for the accessory battery.

A battery cover was constructed using a hurricane window  protection sheet called Storm Busters Clearview (www.storm-busters.com). The plexiglass-like 4′ x 8′ sheet is light weight and strong. It is also easily cut and shaped, sanded and drilled. I used aluminum channels to make a grove to slide in the top cover then made a rear door with a hasp and lock on the bed floor and a aluminum channel strip in the underside of the top to hold the rear door at the top. I used door bolts underneath the top mounted on the bed top rails to lock the top in place. Finally I made side panels on either side of the rear door to fill the space. I put circulation fans on each side blowing in on one side and out on the other. These right now are each driven from a different battery in the main stack and controlled by a switch on the rear side panel. It is not thief-proof but at least it will make battery theft more difficult and provide some rain prrotection.

After reviewing various web sites in the links page, and researching motors, controllers adapters, chargers, etc., I settled on a package deal offered by Grassroots Electric Vehicles. The parts list is:

• (The parts are in!)

War P 9″ Motor by Netgain

Listed as a 32 hp continuous, 100 hp peak motor.

Logi144AFX 750amp Controller by Logisystems

• A solid state motor controller working up to 144 volts and 750 amps

Emergency disconnect

EV200 Contactor

PB-6 Pot Box Accelerator

• Uses a 5000 ohm potentiometer (variable resistor) to direct the controller to deliver current to the motor

IOTA DC to DC Converter 30amps

A30QS500-4 Safety Fuse

Xantrex e-meter

PCF- 20 battery charger

• This charger will charge any battery from 12 volts to 156 volts from 120 volts ac input.

10 X 14″ 600V  2/00 gage Cables

I also ordered the adapter plate kit for my GMC Sonoma.

• The adapter includes a motor hub to flywheel fitting which seems very hefty and a housing to fit around the flywheel and clutch assembly which is heavy gauge aluminum and nicely finished.

The Grassroots prices were better overall than other places I looked. Plus they have a shop in Fort Pierce, Fla, not far from Cocoa Beach.

The Warp9 series of motors seems to be the standard in use today. The controller, charger, and DC/DC converter were selections from a series of options, each with pros and cons but any would have worked. All parts are in.

The motor has a test setup recommendation to run the motor from a single 12 volt source to verify it survived shipping. I am setting up a fixture to hold the motor made from an old engine plate I have that is pretty sturdy.

I am also putting the other components on a board and plan to run the motor to test all components I can before installing the the truck. There are warnings against running these types of motors (Series Wound) without a load. So I am focusing on only short runs until I check out parts and connections. Then I will dismantle and install in truck.

Update: see video page for motor running with controller in garage,

Why aren’t there a bunch of electric street vehicles for sale at your local car/truck dealers? Are they really hard to build or super expensive? Are they unreliable or worse yet dangerous? These are things that bothered me when I started thinking about making an electric vehicle.

To learn about electric vehicle design options I read “Build Your Own Electric Vehicle” by Bob Brant (McGraw Hill-1994). This laid out the basic considerations and options. Many of the key decisions were discussed with pros and cons listed. After reading this book and finding web sites for electric vehicle conversions, such as those listed in the “Links” tab on this site, and talking with builders at electric vehicle meets, the decisions started coming into focus one after another.

I learned that this was not a start from scratch effort, but that much work had been done and parts were readily available.

Here’s what I found:

Motor: AC versus DC – Alternating current motors are available and offer the advantage of allowing regenerative braking, i.e.: turning the motor into a generator to charge the batteries when braking. For DC motors, this seems to still be in the doctoral thesis realm. However AC motors don’t run directly off batteries and require an inverter to change the battery voltage into an alternating voltage to drive the motor. Some web sites state that AC motors are cheaper but when I priced similar systems, the AC motors were more. I believe in some cases the AC motor’s price includes the controller. After reading, it seemed that most take the DC motor route, so I decided to as well.

While there is some discussion that permanent magnet DC motors are more reliable, the preference for available motors seems to be series wound DC motors. A number of companies make these and I have read that they are maintenance free for 100,000 miles and then only requiring replacement of brushes.

The sizes and ratings for a DC motor needed seem to be in the 20 hp (equivalent) range for cruise and 100 peak horsepower for acceleration for a moderate sized vehicle with reasonable acceleration, and range. Many of the web sites have good explanations on the rating of motors and how they differ from internal combustion engines. Engines have high horsepower ratings, but the horsepower is achieved only at high rpm. So a 200 horsepower engine may not reach 20 hp until 4000 rpm. The dead-stop takeoff horsepower is much less. An electric motor has high torque and power at 1 rpm, so a high horsepower rating is not needed. When a car is cruising at 50 mph, it needs only around 20 hp. I am choosing a motor that is around 32 hp continuous and 100 hp peak.

The DC motor requires a controller. The decision points on the controller are the continuous current, peak current and cooling requirements. The motor curves seem to show that a continuous current in the 200 amp range would be needed for cruising and above 500 amps for acceleration. I am picking a 750 amp controller for this project.

Another decision point is whether to use the transmission or select a direct drive option. After talking with the experts, a motor is available which can hook up directly to the drive shaft. This would eliminate the transmission but require an electrical reversing solenoid, which is available from several sources. The experts tell me that the problem is starting out. A direct drive system has no mechanical advantage provided by the transmission gear reduction and requires huge currents to start off. This means sizing the controller, fuse, contactors, batteries, etc. for the huge startup currents which drives the price up. Also the clutch is an additional way of disconnecting the motor from the wheels for certain failure modes. I picked using the transmission option. There are several sources for kits to adapt the transmission to the electric motor for a variety of vehicles. There are also instructions available for making your own. I selected the buy option, since the spacing is critical between motor and transmission and I worried about the balance of homemade collars and adapter rings.

Another decision point involved selecting a vehicle. My thoughts were there would need to be lots of room for batteries so a pickup would solve that problem. I would have the bed and possibly room under the bed for battery space, if needed. A smaller truck would reduce weight  and I preferred an American brand, thinking replacement parts costs would be lower. I found that the Chevy S-10 was a good candidate. It seems to be well liked among owners, uses many standard GM parts and has a strong frame. I found a 1997 truck in good shape for a decent price. Photos are on the site photo page. The truck has 121 K miles but the engine still runs and the transmission seems sound.