Electric Powered X

M

mbusman

Big Bird
We all know how our X's can leave everyone in the dust on a winding, curvy road, however, off the line we are a bit lacking.

Watch the video of what this guy did in his garage with an old 1972 Datsun. The way it blows the muscle cars off the line in the quarter mile, it makes you wonder what Detroit has been doing. If the thumbnail link doesn't work, I've also included the web link.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://media.opb.org/clips/embed/mM82131k20110206145148.js"></script>
Oregon Field Guide: Electric Drag Racing

Go out to the drag strip for some racing gone green – without a drop of gas.



http://www.opb.org/programs/ofg/videos/view/56-Electric-Drag-Racing

This might be an interesting mod for Bob Brown. If it is, Bob, for work we looked at an advanced battery storage system that packs 1 megawatt-hour of storage in a cubic yard. For an X, I think considerably less would be needed.

Mike
 
While not a drag racer

My sister spotted an electric X in the parking garage at Dreamworks. I had her put a note on the windshield about joining us here at Xweb. He did respond to her via email, but I am not sure if he ever checked Xweb out or not.

electric_74_1.jpg


electric_74_2.jpg
 
It might be "green" racing......... at the track.

But to create electricity...... you still have pollution. You just don't make that pollution out of the cars tail pipe. It's made somewhere else.... at a power plant. So it's some one else's problem right? What kind of pollution does it take to make the electricity to charge the battery? What about the pollution to make the battery in the first place? Or the pollution to make the tires?

I'm just pointing this out because my Dad is an electrical engineer...or was I should say.... then taught electronics at a college.... and is now retired.... but When he was teaching every year his class would make an electric car. I helped on a few of them. Even My x I have right now used to be an electric car experiment for his class back in the day before it became mine and I went back to gas with it. I used to give him a hard time about the pollution factor all the time...... yeah.... that's right go burn some coal..... plug that car in and charge it up. lol. Even though in Great Falls there is technically a hydro dam ... but last I heard good old California got a lot of that power shipped down from it.... along with a bunch of our hydro dams and wind mill farms.
But it just amuses me... the focus on "being green" well.... maybe you are..... but the pollution just comes from something else then.

my point.... just to think about.
http://onemansblog.com/2007/03/27/prius-outdoes-hummer-in-environmental-damage/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316604,00.html
http://reliableanswers.com/general/prius_v_hummer.asp
http://www.greenfootsteps.com/hybrid-car-disadvantages.html

My point is... I feel there will always be pollution in some form. And you could fight about all aspects in whatever direction. But in the end it still is what it is.

But on the other hand..... Electric motors are insane torque monsters. Unfortunately I never got a chance to play with any of my Dads class toys to "make them fast" because their focus was efficiency. And for efficiency the trade off is power. The big limiting factor is the batteries however.... and these cars I dealt with were just deep cycle lead acid batteries... late 90"s when he was doing this. They are very inefficient. Perhaps one day they will make a battery that is not a pollutant factor at all that has insane power output capability. Then this would be a great break through for electric vehicles.

That guy in the video with the Datsun..... I wonder how many passes he can make in a 1/4 mile before he has to charge it up. I have to admit it's the coolest electric car I've seen.... But for a road racer.... um... i wonder how long of a race before you had to charge up or quick change battery packs?

maybe I can find some pics of my car when it was electric..... or find the newspaper article about it when it was in the paper.
 
I first saw an electric X19 20 years ago at the Seattle International Auto Show.

Anyway, electric motors are vastly superior to internal combustion engines for cars. That's why locomotives and city buses have been using them for decades. If it wasn't for the power supply issues the internal combustion engine never would have been popular.
 
Has to be Hybrid

With Gas engines, you have plenty of warning and distance.
With electric, you need a power source if you run low.
I'm not ready (yet) for thinking electric propulsion is a way to go on an X.
A Tesla, well that's another story... :thumbsup:
 
The white zombie is amazing. With his previous battery pack (I think it's the one in the car when the video was shot) he had to charge for every run. He is running a new lithium pack last I heard and IIRC can drive to the track, run for the night and still make it home on one charge.
 
Power plants

Saw a show on PBS the other day about them installing large batteries stations at power plants to charge at low use times and to offset at peak load times. More efficiency is more efficiency. Yea power plants are dirty, but for now, the fraction of us that would use electric cars wouldn't even put a blip on the load of the electrical grid. We all need to stop looking at the top of the mountain as an impossible journey and just take another step.... we'll get there eventually. (Yea, I know I sound like a hippy. And a hypocrite with my gas guzzling "hot rod" X with dual webers!)
 
Far from a tree hugger here but...

I really admire the performance side of electric cars. If I had the knowledge and the time (and money I think too) I would love to convert my X to an electric only car.
 
The white zombie is an animal, he's even faster now, his blog is a good read: http://www.plasmaboyracing.com

My original plan for the X was to be an electric conversion, but the toyota twincam is just too reliable for me to scrap it now. When it eventually dies I'll turn it into an electric. I've built an electric bicycle, a couple of stand up scooters and a skateboard, and it's far simpler than having to work on an ICE. Plus my bicycle has more torque than a 1200GS BMW.

My goals for the electric X are 60 mile range, 0-60 in 5 seconds and a top end of 100 miles an hour. Not too difficult to do actually, the motor I have in mind can do 270kW, but my battery pack will only supply 150kW at the moment. I need about $20 000 which is where I'm stuck right now, but you can bet that if my engine dies I'll find the cash quickly!

$20k sounds like a lot, but when you subtract all fuel and oil change prices for the next 5-10 years it works out quite well.

The argument of power stations making as much pollution as an internal combustion engine is completely false. Even using coal power, electrics are still far far cleaner than gas powered cars. Plus if the coal station uses cleaner processes it applies to all electrics instantly. ICE cars generally get dirtier as they age.

Just FYI on evalbum.com there are already a number of electric powered Xs.
 
$20k USD is WAY too much to throw at an X for DIY - of course I am talking about my DIY skills and not yours :)

Now, if there was a "elextric-X" conversion package with a set price I would consider it but not $20k.

Does anyone know if there are any us gov grants or subs for doing gas to electric conversion?

patrickza said:
The white zombie is an animal, he's even faster now, his blog is a good read: http://www.plasmaboyracing.com

My original plan for the X was to be an electric conversion, but the toyota twincam is just too reliable for me to scrap it now. When it eventually dies I'll turn it into an electric. I've built an electric bicycle, a couple of stand up scooters and a skateboard, and it's far simpler than having to work on an ICE. Plus my bicycle has more torque than a 1200GS BMW.

My goals for the electric X are 60 mile range, 0-60 in 5 seconds and a top end of 100 miles an hour. Not too difficult to do actually, the motor I have in mind can do 270kW, but my battery pack will only supply 150kW at the moment. I need about $20 000 which is where I'm stuck right now, but you can bet that if my engine dies I'll find the cash quickly!

$20k sounds like a lot, but when you subtract all fuel and oil change prices for the next 5-10 years it works out quite well.

The argument of power stations making as much pollution as an internal combustion engine is completely false. Even using coal power, electrics are still far far cleaner than gas powered cars. Plus if the coal station uses cleaner processes it applies to all electrics instantly. ICE cars generally get dirtier as they age.

Just FYI on evalbum.com there are already a number of electric powered Xs.
Click to expand...
 
fiatmonkey said:
$20k USD is WAY too much to throw at an X for DIY - of course I am talking about my DIY skills and not yours :)

Now, if there was a "elextric-X" conversion package with a set price I would consider it but not $20k.

Does anyone know if there are any us gov grants or subs for doing gas to electric conversion?
Click to expand...

True it does sound like a fortune, and I'm quite a frugal guy by nature, but I end up with my favourite car having loads of power and being a daily driver with no fuel/servicing costs for 5-10 years... I could do the job for $10k, but then it wouldn't meet my requirements and I'd have to replace the lead every other year at best. The lithium should last 5-10 years easily. If we go for the average and say 7.5 years, what do you think your future fuel costs would be for a daily driver over 7.5 years...

Plus it's something I really want to do :thumbsup:
 
I don't see anyone from Canada replying. Heat would be a major drain on any battery system, not that I'd drive a Fiat in the winter (Salt is a KILLER). Still the heat is on long before the snow comes and sometimes well after. Way back when gas/elecrtic cars were a 50/50 split untill they started running gasoline which was burned off as waste. It was so cheap the electric cars died out. The massive differance is the over 700 moving parts compared to 1. Still I'm waiting for the return of two strokes. I think the two strokes are suffering from the manufacturers the same way electric vehicles are. If they made a decent two stroke or electric car their maintanence and repiar shops would be out of buisness over night.
 
I have to come clean now, that red 74' is mine. I have been lurking and laughing 'this forum is golden" periodically during the rebuilding process, and been meaning to share, so here it is.:pigsfly:
While looking for a donor vehicle to convert, I found this X with a blown controller, many other issues as well as its own history. It had been converted by a solar engineer 20 years ago, with a range of 60-80 miles, charged with a home solar array, and was an early EV Rally participant. It had been an every day driver "Ca" and desperately needed gone through and is on the forth set of batteries too. Being a long time fan of the X1/9, I jumped into the project head first. I bought the car in May 2010 and began to strip it. I then realized a clean slate is my style, oh well. October it was running again with a new AC drive system. Yea, that was a fun day! Sounds like a giant angry RC car, even with oil in the gear box.
I live in Michigan now and drive it when salt free, curse salt the rest of the time. 60hp 155N-m of torque allows for excellent off the line acceleration in 2nd gear. 2nd and 4th are all that are used now, switch on dash for reverse:thumbsup:
The next step is to put together a small battery pack and see if I can get this thing under 2000# for a few loops around some cones.
This project has been a blast. I already want to do another one with 150hp system...cost to drive irresponsibly $0.02 mile.
 
Bob/Dr. Auto,

I wasn't making any statement about being green. That was a remnant from the link I attempted to insert for the video thumbnail. I was just fantasizing about the possibility of a kick-a$$ X based on what that old Datsun can do in the 1/4 mile. I agree that recharging from a typical fossil fueled power plant will have roughly the same fuel/electricity conversion efficiency. The ICE is probably better on emissions with all the pollution control gear.

Now to make the math easy, let's round off a hp to equal approx. 1 kW. THere's a company called iCel Solutions or Technology or Power or something like that. It's been about 2 years since I looked at their stuff. THey make modular batteries that store about 1 kWh in a "brick" a little larger than a shoe box. I'm not 100% sure about discharge rate capability, but if you had a 100 bricks, you could get roughly 100 kW/100 hp for an hour, 200 kW/200 hp for a half hour discharge duration, or about 300 kW/300 hp for 20 minutes duration. You could go with more "bricks" for more time or more power at less time. As I recall, they claim about 15,000 charge cycles, which beats the pants off lead-acid batteries....and probably the weight also.

Now, Bob, if you really want to go green, there are a number of alternatives for your funds unlimited check book. First is a photovoltaic charging station, but you'd have to sweep the snow off the top of the panels. You might be interested in a Bergey Windpower 10 kW wind turbine, which as I recall will only cost you about $25k. THere's smaller vertical axis turbines from WePower or horizontal models from Southwest Windpower (beware, my employer is a venture capital investor in that company). Or if you want to go whole hog, Northern Power Systems (Vermont company last time I checked) has the Northwind 100 kW turbine designed for Artic environments, which are probably not a whole lot different from Maine these days. A Northwind will only set you back about $350k-$400k installed.:drink: Plus you get some great web-based software to remotely monitor what the meat grinder is doing. I'm assuming it blows over there, maybe not like West Texas, but sufficiently. At least it doesn't suck like an unnamed portion of a very large state.

When it's all said and done, I'll think I'll keep the gas engine. There's something about the drone of the engine when you're cruising along with the top off that's hard to duplicate and contributes to the fun of driving an X.

Mike
 
EVX19 said:
I have to come clean now, that red 74' is mine. I have been lurking and laughing 'this forum is golden" periodically during the rebuilding process, and been meaning to share, so here it is.:pigsfly:
While looking for a donor vehicle to convert, I found this X with a blown controller, many other issues as well as its own history. It had been converted by a solar engineer 20 years ago, with a range of 60-80 miles, charged with a home solar array, and was an early EV Rally participant. It had been an every day driver "Ca" and desperately needed gone through and is on the forth set of batteries too. Being a long time fan of the X1/9, I jumped into the project head first. I bought the car in May 2010 and began to strip it. I then realized a clean slate is my style, oh well. October it was running again with a new AC drive system. Yea, that was a fun day! Sounds like a giant angry RC car, even with oil in the gear box.
I live in Michigan now and drive it when salt free, curse salt the rest of the time. 60hp 155N-m of torque allows for excellent off the line acceleration in 2nd gear. 2nd and 4th are all that are used now, switch on dash for reverse:thumbsup:
The next step is to put together a small battery pack and see if I can get this thing under 2000# for a few loops around some cones.
This project has been a blast. I already want to do another one with 150hp system...cost to drive irresponsibly $0.02 mile.
Click to expand...

Welcome and congrats on the car evx19, I'd love to hear more about it. Why not start your own thread here and give us some more info. Do you perhaps have a thread on diyelectriccar or an evalbum page?
 
EVX - thanks for weighing in with the update. Got to agree that there's something very interesting in the idea of an electric X with bags of torque. (I've never wanted high Vmax.)

I saw quite a few electric Xs on the EVALBUM site. My first thought was OK - they've proven it's feasible, but have any managed to keep the X's balance? Spreading out the batteries into the front and rear boot/trunk would surely mess with the handling? More understeer and less oversteer, presumably?

It'd be a shame for an X driver if the benefits of a boost in torque was undone by handling changes.
 
Welcome Mr. EV...

Sure would like to see more of this car... Can you provide fotos and maybe some details of the re-build?

There was a company in Santa Rosa California many moons ago that converted one of these... and I've always had an interest.

Here is a foto of someone that posted 5 years ago... but I can't remember anymore than that.






Love to see your conversion along with cost estimates... I see NO reason why electric cars can't be FUN and also LOOK GOOD!

HA!

Looking forward to hearing more from you...
 
Unlimited Check Book?

Ahh Mike, you've gotta be talking about someone else. That ain't me man!
If I was going to buy an electric car. it would be a Tesla. (100K +)
But I wouldn't want to live in it! Ha!
(If I brought something like that home, Carol would definitely tell me I'd be living in it.)

With all the "crazy money" I've spent on my 86X, it pales in comparison on what folks spend on their Street Rods.

My definition of "crazy money" is money spent that has more value than the object it buys. It's an "I want it" kind of thing...
 
Count me in as another who would be interested in seeing what you did to your electric X. My X is just sitting in my driveway rotting away. I want to restore it at some point, and turning it into an electric X1/9 has crossed my mine more then once.

Dr.Auto said:
But to create electricity...... you still have pollution. You just don't make that pollution out of the cars tail pipe. It's made somewhere else.... at a power plant.
Click to expand...

Yes this is true, nothing puts out zero pollution if you count the entire line of energy production. But it you add that to gas cars as well, their output gets even worse. Try adding greenhouse gases made just in transporting the fuel to the pump, not to mention refining, etc. We know pollution is bad, so I think it only makes sense to pollute less if we can.
 
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