Battery Vehicle Society

Re EVAIRA; extremely interesting to see that someone has not only got there first but is well on the way to having a couple of demonstrator vehicles. With Philips behind them the resources are clearly there too. 34,000 sq.ft. of factory space sounds pretty serious. Great what you can do when you can...

It's very tempring to think that getting rid of the standard gearbox MUST be more efficient, but that's not always true. To be honest, Paul, I cannot assess the relative efficiencies of the various systems so have to take your word for this. I note what you say about GM and their single motor decis...

A mass of useful info since I last posted - many thanks again, especially Paul and Jeremy. If I've grasped the idea of brushless motors right, running several coupled together might mean they all need to be perfectly synchronised ? Could this be why modellers who've done this don't necessarily get 2...

Well I do appreciate all the time everyone has spent on this. A quick response to Greg: I most certainly would NOT be committing myself to a conversion on the basis of such a figure (kw:gvw) As I said several times, the idea was just to get a starting point, etc etc etc. Thanks for going over your e...

A lot of the tech. above on these motors went over my head. Can anyone suggest a link to provide me with the basics on brushless motors please ? Apart from that: the one comment which seems obvious is, why use a high performance motor if you're going to halve it's power by using 24 instead of 48V ? ...

Now the "clutch or not" debate has taken over my thread ! HELP ! It's staggering how hard it is to get the idea across. Yes, there are all sorts of sources of info to help work out the requirements for an individual case, but I repeat, this is NOT what I'm trying to do. Read my last post a...

I will definitely be watching to see how this goes, Jeremy. I've been wracking my brain to find a reason why this is not a good idea and apart from complexity (quite a good reason, actually) it sounds very promising. The performance levels of these little motors are so far beyond the big old dinosau...

Christopher, you're very welcome to a ride here; the machine is now a runner, though I've yet to drive it any distance myself. Waiting for a fine sat. afternoon.

Thanks for all the input, guys. I think I've not quite made clear what I'm looking for here: a simple power:weight ratio figure which can be applied quickly as a rough guide. For example, my Fiat VIN plate says 1150kg GVW and any conversion should bear GVW in mind. If I used a figure of 48kg per kw,...

There are two reasons I suggested gears instead of timing belts: one is, as you're discovering, that timing belts and their sprockets are very expensive; scarcely any cheaper than gears, in fact. The other is that, even for just four motors you cannot get enough wrap on the driver to use only one be...