Thundersky

Safety Last?

July 23, 2009

When it comes to EVs, some back-yarders may well be up there with the Harold Lloyd types, dangling on a high voltage precipice. What am I on about? You’ll recall my expensive BMS master controller I griped on about some time ago – it handles the high current charging brought into the car via a [...]

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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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Zilla Back in Production?

June 5, 2009

News in from Otmar – the high-powered motor-controller maker has found new manufacturing feet for his famed Zilla controller. Double the top current-handling of my Curtis, the Zilla fills a much-needed hole in the EV market in the high-performance end. With water cooling built into some models, these things when fitted into a sports EV [...]

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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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Nissan Gearing up for Competition

May 22, 2009

The Nissan Nuvu (aka ‘new view’) announced some time ago may finally be arriving in Australia next year to compete against the Mitsubishi MiEV (and possibly Toyota iQ if they sort their red tape with the government) in what is gearing up to be a new spark of electric auto competition. An alternative to the [...]

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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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[Video] Electric Starion EV Part 7

January 5, 2009

Here’s the latest video. It’s got stuff about water boilers, IGBTs (which I talk about further in this post), a brakes test and revs testing. I’m guessing there’s probably only a couple more videos to go as finish time approaches. Most of the scenes in all the videos have been shot on a Nokia N93 [...]

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Time for Final Wiring

December 19, 2008

While parts for the Curtis cooling components are being finalized, we’ve commenced permanent wiring, including the BMS daisy chain. Nathan and JD (our most excellent firmware buddy) have sorted the tacho send issues (and improving the notching on the hub helped immensely). Naturally that had to get sorted first so stuff could be restored in [...]

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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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