first kilomile, data?

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KazooPaul

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Mar 11, 2009, 12:48:46 PM3/11/09
to Civic EV Kit
Hey, Tim,
Great to see you got the Civic on the road. I'm in the
midst of uprating mine to 144 V and fixing some problems. Are you
keeping track of power consumed? I'd love to have your Wh/mile to
compare with my non-standard motor and batteries.

Tim Kutscha

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Mar 11, 2009, 3:13:15 PM3/11/09
to civic-...@googlegroups.com

Hi Paul,

Best wishes with your upgrade. I've done some rough calculations on power consumption and came out to 270-290 Wh/mile depending on how fast I drive.

Cheers,
Tim

Rob Connelly

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Mar 11, 2009, 3:42:53 PM3/11/09
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Tim,

That is great news. I read your blog on it, and saw the charging issues
that you have had. Can you tell us how well balanced your pack in these
days at the end of a charge? That was one of the reasons that I pulled my
whole Belktronix setup -- my BATMON's could not get their stuff together to
work properly even after much, much effort. My pack took some abuse because
of it, and the shunt resistors were throwing away lots of wasted energy in
heat (the terminals were french-fried by the time I removed the whole
system, after 1,200 miles).

I have a Curtis controller in mine now, and I use 12 Soniel chargers that do
great -- the pack voltage floats out to a total voltage of 166.0 +/- .02
volts EVERY time, and there is no shunting of power, so no heat buildup.

Great work there, Tim. I am glad to hear that you are enjoying driving it!

- Rob

Tim Kutscha

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Mar 11, 2009, 5:44:06 PM3/11/09
to civic-...@googlegroups.com

Hi Rob,

As long as I leave the charger plugged in long enough, the pack is
pretty well balanced. The unfortunate thing is that it took quite a bit
of reverse-engineering to understand how all the BatMon boards and
charge controller worked. After blowing the charge controller three
times, I actually modified the charge controller circuit to reduce many
of the issues I was seeing. The new charging system from Belktronix
get around this, so I can't speak for the current product.
Having the controller and the contactor powered off part of the main
traction pack also contributes to the pack imbalance which doesn't
sit too well with me. If I had to do it all over again, I probably would go
with the individual Soneil chargers and get the new controller from
Synkromotive. I've worked closely with the Synkromotive guys and their
controller matches the Zilla and has a much better user interface with
everything being configurable.
Having said that, I'll probably ride this system out and replace the
system when something breaks.
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