Batteries

Peak Lithium 2015?

June 18, 2009

Mitsubishi knows full-well that it may be a possibility, as they themselves have stated recently that lithium demand will outstrip supply as early as 2015. While we all expect and hope that prices will fall as production and popularity of EVs increase, prices could possibly rise instead, forcing us to other automobile alternatives (air-compression technology [...]

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Ya Gotta Love Panel Beaters

June 18, 2009

The guard on my car needs a fix after a bump – oops – a simple job one would expect, but shopping around for a good panel beater is difficult as most don’t want to guarantee their workmanship on anything that could bring on the slightest hint of rust. I have a spare guard but [...]

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A Charge is in the Air

June 2, 2009

Reports have been coming in of a new type of air-charged battery which could provide up to ten times the energy storage of a conventional lithium cobalt battery. Called the STAIR (‘St Andrews Air,’ where it was developed at Scotland’s University of St Andrews), it provides improved capacity via a porous carbon exchange cell lattice [...]

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My Breaker Broke :-(

April 11, 2009

My Airpax breaker, the main breaker switch, now has a busted switch-arm (I’ll save you the painful images). Just a few test throws under tension, the supposedly strong Bakelite switch arm shattered. The Airpax breaker is expensive, and we’ll have to see if it’s still under warranty as I paid for this some time ago. [...]

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Echo and the Funny Men

February 5, 2009

While my car waits for some final parts, the Echo conversion is progressing well and we hope to have it drivable very soon. There’s an EV show coming up and the Echo will be perfect for it, taking pride of place amongst the smaller vehicles and some funny guys riding funny go-carts etc – yet [...]

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More talk? More action please!

January 14, 2009

While Ford are thinking of releasing a fully-electric work van in 2010, Mercedes has got in on the EV action with a proposal for a new EV in a B-class range, namely the BlueZERO. Blue is not so Green? While the BlueZero has a concept proposal for a 100% electric ‘E-cell’ vehicle, we wonder if [...]

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Hey, What’s the Problem, Jackass? Gas Prices Have Chilled!

November 5, 2008

Funny how some humans have such short term cerebral attributes. Maybe it’s because we’re all so busy worrying about today (nothing new there). Yes the price of gas has gone down and yes the global economic downturn is responsible. Hmmm…, conundrum, which came first; the oily chicken or the oily egg?

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Time To Get The Accessories Sorted and Install Safety Breaker

October 30, 2008

For accessories, a DC to DC converter (such as the Curtis 1410) is used to buck down the 144v (actually higher on peak charge) from the Thunderskys to an isolated 12-14 volt source for accessories such as lights, radios, airhoon, ahem I mean horn etc (which an alternator would otherwise handle in a gas car). [...]

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Interesting Times as Nations Start to Act on Mass Production EVs

October 27, 2008

Just when we thought there was no hope for local innovation, spin-off otherwise, there was an announcement in Physorg (link below) on Thursday (and other media) about a bold plan to roll out electric vehicles and charging stations in Australia’s major cities by 2012. The initiative by Shai Agassi’s Better Place organization of California will [...]

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[Video] Power Cabling & Battery Balancing

October 13, 2008

Most of the hard part of cabling through the sub-frame has now been done. The car’s been pretty well stripped to the bone but all this work should be worth it. Where to Run The Cable While a lot of EV builders get their cabling to run under the car, protecting it in the sub-frame [...]

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Battery Balancing Time – and ‘Why Thundersky?’ Someone Asks…

October 10, 2008

A few people are asking me why I have chosen Thundersky Lithiums over conventional lead-acid deep cycle batteries. Firstly, lithium phosphates are lighter than deep-cycles, and Lithium polymers are even lighter again, approximately half the weight of the phosphates, making them useful for a variety of applications other than just electric vehicles, such as electric [...]

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Engine Battery Layout Update

September 30, 2008

This has been somewhat of an issue as we have to fit in other components. The battery arrangement may now look like this, simply so as to fit the required batteries in the available space….

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