So, what is involved in swapping to an electric drivetrain?

IIRC the EV West cars use 2nd and 4th in the stock trans. The strength of that transmission is going to be a limiting factor for sure.

When talking safety of EV and battery systems, the safety factor is pretty strange and difficult to understand since it's so different from gas. Consider that you can remove all the gas from the tank, but removing the fumes that actually burn can only be done with displacement or giving them time to break down- contrast to batteries, where depending on voltage I just need to cover the terminal with a piece of plastic.

On top of this, all batteries are DC by their nature- what voltage is the DC module? Tesla Model S batteries (until the Plaid) are 22.8 volts nominal, which is so low that it physically cannot hurt you if you grab both terminals bare handed; OSHA says DC volts less than 50 are "safe", and I think volts less than 30DC can't be felt because they can't go through skin.

So in short- consider how you connect the batteries to their busbars, and how many you have, and what your final voltage is. A pack less than 30 volts just kinda needs a good cover over the terminals.

In reply to sleepyhead the buffalo :

It kept them from needing a custom differential/rear end being built, which also helps because their kit uses a modified off-shelf AC motor. Volts=speed, so it makes sense though they loose out on regen.

BLDC would be neat. Axiom is still plugging along for open-source BLDC motor drivers up to 100Kw, but they're limited because they went for more of a VESC architecture for ease and because large BLDC motors may not have provisions for sensors needed in other controller methods. Thanks to frequency matching, AC may be considered worse but w/e

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I have given myself a burn with 12VDC, so it is technically possible to injure oneself, from experience.

(Sweaty hands plus trying to move a battery in an older car (late 60s A body GM?) without disconnecting the battery, hand was wedged between fender edge and positive terminal.)

alfadriver said:

triumph7 said:

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

Lots of YT videos of gas cars bursting into flames too. In both cases, if they catch on fire, they are by definition not perfectly fine. There's a LOT more energy in a tank of gasoline than a fully charged battery pack. We're just more used to dealing with it.

 Sure, but the risk of fire is much more intuitive and easy to understand with gasoline than it is with batteries.  If something is thinking about an EV swap then this is something he needs to learn about and consider carefully.

 

This is why you go with lithium iron phosphate batteries.  A little heavier, a little less power but no fire danger from the batteries.  Get prismatic cells and don't try to size the pack for a 400 mile range (100 is doable without the car gaining a lot of weight).

That works great for long term fire risk and whatnot.

But accidentally shorting the battery, well....  That scares the crap out of me, too.  If you do it "right", you should have over 100V in batteries.  When you watch videos of people doing the installation, they rope off the area, and wear special gloves and gear just in case of a short.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has shorted my 12V battery.  Scale that up by 100x.  

I think it's easier to deal with spilled gas than spilled electricity.

I worked for a company that converted Dodge ProMaster vans to all electric... we were up around 250 to over 300 volts.  We didn't do a lot of the safety stuff but never had any incidents.  The batteries were in plastic cases and the individual cells were rectangular plastic boxes that connected to the next cell by heavy copper tie bars.  300V at 200A would move an 8000 pound van pretty nicely.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I did similar once; Attaching my battery tie-down and I accidentally stuck the positive terminal, shorted it to the chassis. Because I was mid-turn it "flicked" the terminal and splattered molten lead and sparks 

I just ran across this channel today, but apparently YouTube has already solved the problem of mating a Leaf drivetrain to a Type 3 VW, so this might be worth binge-watching:  Ugly’s EVs Channel

Also if you just want to see a lot of examples of what folks are doing: http://www.evalbum.com/type/VOLK/

so, I watched this today, and thought it had some interesting insights/thoughts about EV conversions that might add to the discussion here.

*although, there's one section of the video that I skipped through without watching, which I expect will become a what a section of the site will focus on.  I skipped that part, I reckon it falls under the part of the site about "not standing in the middle of the room after the conversation has moved on".  ymmv.