electricporsche.rwaudio.comElectric Porsche 944 – The transformation from gas to electric.

Electric Porsche 944 The transformation from gas to electric. Menu Home KM’s and Fuel Savings Parts List Consulting Store Scroll down to content Posts Posted on September 21, 2020 December 9, 2020 Let’s talk about Batteries Back in 2008 I started my journey into the feasibility of building an electric car. At the time it wasn’t going to save any money as the component costs were simply too high. In 2009 I looked at it again, but with the perspective of what kind of performance car could I build for a reasonable budget. This changed the game and led me on the path that brought me where I am today. My 944 went from a 2.5L 4 cyl with 150hp to a 300hp monster with the big DC motor. This was unbelievably fun but proved unreliable and I couldn’t afford to keep fixing it so that’s where the 150hp Siemens electric motor came from. It was smooth, quiet, efficient and most importantly reliable. Here we sit 11 years after that initial change in direction of the 944 project turning from a humble commuter to an electric sports car and the 944 is going to become something I never could have imagined all those years ago. The battery that made my car roll was LiFePO4 from A123, these were gray market cells, and worked alright. The power was there, but the reliability proved subpar, the pack was never fully built out before the next chapter began. Next came the CALB CA60’s which are still in the car as I write this, to say they’ve proved themselves is an understatement. The pack was 16kwh when it first went in the car, it was expanded upon a couple of times increasing marginally, and has also degraded over time, I currently have about 15kwh of usable capacity or just over 100km of conservative driving. In my search for new batteries I stumbled across BatteryHookup , these guys were mentioned in the last post, and will probably come up time and time again. Use code Robin to get 5% off your order and help support my future endeavors. They were selling what they called 5.94Kwh battery modules made by LG. The part that got me excited was the fact they were selling for $594 US, that’s the magical $100/kwh that the OEM’s are trying to achieve. So was this for batteries that only had 50% capacity remaining? No, this was for modules that were new and had NEVER been cycled. A capacity test came in at 180Ah of a rated 180Ah, or 100%!!!!!! The best part is battery hookup often has promo codes, and I was able to get 10% off plus discounted shipping making the deal even sweeter. I’ve since bought some BMW modules that test at 104% of original capacity (yep, also new) as well as Tesla Model 3 21700 cells that I’ve been building from fantastic small vehicle batteries out of. I have my first gamble arriving this Wednesday which is a lot of 1900 Sony VTC6’s that have discharged in the modules they were assembled into. I’ve recovered a number of these cells that came from another source and they are pretty resilient cells with only a handful not being recoverable. The icing on the cake is they come out to 77 cents Canadian after exchange/shipping/duty/tax per cell!!! Now assuming they aren’t all recoverable, the cost per cell goes up but I’m optimistic at being able to recover 80-100% of them. There’s another player in this game, sadly they don’t have the friendly shipping to Canada that Battery Hookup has. However, the product offerings are considerably greater!! BigBattery often seems to have the same or similar products provided you live in the USA. What’s the moral of the story you might ask? Back in 2012 my CALB CA60 pack (16kwh) cost more than the Chevy Bolt LG battery (66Kwh as new) that I just bought. If you look back in my posts throughout the years I make mention many times is that the reason I eventually upgrade the battery won’t be because the existing one is no longer usable, it’s because there is something much bigger and better that I can’t resist. The LG/Chevy pack is everything I knew the future would bring, though I didn’t actually expect the modules to be new. Is that a Tesla BMS board mounted to a Chevy Bolt battery module??? Posted on May 18, 2020 December 9, 2020 The most exciting update for my 944 HV After I blew up my Netgain Warp 11HV and Evnetics Soliton 1 controller I opted for a safe and reliable” system in the Siemens/DMOC645 combination that were leftovers of the bankrupt Azure Dynamics transit connect project. I’ve had this in my car for years, and while it has been flawless, it’s not quite as powerful and exciting as the DC motor system that preceded it. The battery system is also a carryover, the CALB CA60’s have been fantastic however they are heavy and capacity is limited. This is all about to change! I’ve been battery hunting for quite a while, seeing what’s available, what’s new etc. I found a deal on LG/Chevy Bolt modules from Battery Hookup: https://www.batteryhookup.com Use code Robin to get 5% off your order and help support my future endeavors. These are 10S3P modules comprised of LG 60Ah pouch cells. This is 180Ah and 36v per module or roughly 6.6kwh each. I have 10 of these modules on order to create a 100S pack or 360v nominal 66kwh total battery pack. Let me remind you that the CALB pack is currently about 15kwh. Now this is fairly large, fairly heavy, and simply won’t fit in my existing battery box. The solution? To remove virtually everything in the car, motor/inverter, adapter/coupler, torque tube and transmission. Split the pack up to 6 modules front and 4 rear, plus a small Tesla drive unit in the rear. This pack is just adequate to power a small Tesla drive unit from a power perspective, but it should work pretty well with some liquid cooling on the battery modules. The overall weight of the car won’t change significantly but going from 100km to over 400km of range will be incredibly exciting. Bolt module as seen on the WeberAuto youtube channel (Check him out for complete teardown and assembly videos) Each module is around 70lbs, making the total pack over 700lbs. Currently I have about 450lbs of LiFePO4. This makes it seem like the car will balloon by over 250lbs, however because of the change from the Siemens/DMOC to a small Tesla drive unit, the car will lose roughly 250lbs keeping things roughly the way they are. Tesla small front Drive unit from HSRmotors Tesla small rear drive unit from HSRmotors I have the space to use either the small front, or small rear drive unit in the 944. I technically have the space for the large rear drive unit, however the battery system isn’t capable of putting out that much power. The small drive units are capable of 220kw which is nearly 300hp and should be a welcome change to the Siemens/DMOC coming in around half of that power output. Posted on May 18, 2020 September 12, 2020 An Overdue Update First I’ll say, the car is fantastic, full stop. The drive system has been flawless, the Siemens AC motor is smooth and powerful. The Azure Dynamics DMOC645 has been great, I had the water pump feeding the DMOC fail and instead of stranding me on the side of the road, it simply throttled down the power to keep itself in a safe temperature range. I was able to gently drive home without incident. The stock heater core in the 944 (which could very well have been the original making it 33 years old) failed, leaking coolant all over the interior. There is a plan shortly to remove the heater core and switch to PTC heaters in place of the stock heater core. With various changes over the years more items have ended up in the rear of the car than originally planned. The front battery box was removed when I switched over to the Siemens motor, the 12v car battery ended up in the rear in the form of a 4S LiFePO4 battery pack. The DC-DC converter has always been in the rear but there was always a plan to move it to the front. The Brusa charger also lives in the rear. This wasn’t the original plan for weight distribution where I wanted 50-55% of the weight in the rear. The total weight of the car...