Now that I’ve come up with the truck idea I’ve gone back to the drawing board about the batteries. This is coming together so fast that I will be driving an EV by summer. I need batteries… fast and cheap. Went back to my support group and asked. Why not a leaf? There are lots of wrecked ones, and they can be had cheap!
Open up Google and here we go. There are a lot of people doing this. Looking at some forums, I stumbled on this: http://media3.ev-tv.me/news031414-1280.mp4 (Leaf portion starts @ 1:24:08). They test the batteries, and show you the good and the bad. Seems like the perfect fit for a daily driver to me! Now to find one.
On to http://www.autobidmaster.com/, type in Nissan Leaf and find one close. Be sure to read the rules here and a few people’s experiences and you’ll be good (although at the point of writing this I have no experience yet!)
Then the gold mine… http://insideevs.com/putting-nissan-leaf-battery-modules-chevrolet-s-10-truck-video/ This guy Jay, lays out everything I need to do to this S10 to get it running on leaf batteries. WOW! I’ll do it slightly differently, but this is a great place to start.
One hiccup is that I doubt the leaf will give me enough range on it’s own. The S10 I have coming is setup to run at 156 Volts. I can get the leave to 128 volts, 144 volts and 160 volts with setting them up in 16 volt packs as Jay does. I’ll have to make some decisions. I’d like to get 100 miles out of the leaf as I’ll need some extra for the AC, but that means I need 60 cells. That’s 1 and 1/3 of a leaf (more than 1). How to sell this one to the wife. My plan of attack currently, is set it up so that I can add the extra 2 16 volt packs, and just start with 1 set of leaf cells. See what I can get for range, and plan from there.
With this, I’ve discovered that I need to be able to access level 2 chargers on the road. Back to the research. I found out that from the Leaf I’m buying I can just take the J1772 connection port and hook it up. The S10 though has a 2008 PFC-30 Charger so it won’t talk to the EVSE… Damn. Alas, I found the AVC2. This little baby tell the EVSE when the car is ready and let the juice flow! Woohoo! Future problem solved! I can get around with a leaf pack, even if I can’t quite get my 85 km day on one charge. Guess I’ll have to stop for coffee that day 🙂
Onwards!