Project Daydream

[qdos]

What about an Electric Honda Jazz then? now that would be a good one for Honda to do! I wonder if anyone's looked into that as a possible conversion? Not sure how much they weigh but they are very much like a Tardis you really have to get inside one to experience it. My father has one it's amazing how much room there is inside, you really can't believe it when you get out that the body is so small by comparison.

[MalcolmB]

Would you believe 1050 kg? Everything's built to do 120 mph and survive a high-speed impact. Safety is obviously important, but if you only want a top speed of 60 mph and don't intend to use motorways then most cars are massively over-engineered. I guess I'll just have to build my own

[qdos]

Yeah all these airbags and stuff are so much nonsense If they really wanted cars to be safe they would put a dagger in the centre of the steering wheel and point it at the driver then there would be some VERY safely driven cars on the roads!:wink:

The Jazz would be a cracking EV though wouldn't it I hadn't considered it at all till just now

[Peter Eggleston]

I drove from Manchester to Newcastle with 500 kgs of lead acid batteries for my monolistic float in a Renault Clio. I had 80 kgs in the passenger footwell and the rest in the back and the rear end was nearly on the bump stops. My problem is whether the suspenion on small cars can take the weight of the batteries especially with lead acids. That is why many Americans decide to convert pickup trucks.
My choice of conversion for a small car would be a Suzuki Jeep or Jimney. They are reckoned to be light weight but have suspension which would take the battery weight.
I would use one electric motor on each axle with no gearbox because in Britain it is a lot easier to find two suitable small ev motors than one suitable large enough motor.
Peter.

[EVguru]

Well, 500Kg is a lot of batteries, but you're making too much of the suspension problem.

You fit a set of uprated springs (and preferably uprated, or at least new, dampers).

Minis, Fiestas, Metros, Fiat 126's, etc. have all been done without any real supension probelms.

Even if you're doing a pickup, you don't really want to end up with no load capacity and would need to uprate the suspension. Pickups are by no means the most popular conversion in the US.

Even a small 4WD has 'barn door' aerodynamics compared to a small saloon and you've the aditional drag of the 4WD axles. Going without a transmission means you need a bigger motor, even if you split it between two. If you really want a 4WD, it's perfectly possible. Did you see the one I helped build on Scrapheap challenge?

It's all too easy to build something with the speed and acceleration of a Milkfloat. You might as well just drive a Milkfloat. EV conversions are 'mission intensive' and you have to taylor them to the task you want them to perform.

I would really rather leave behind the mobile roadblock vehicles that represented many converions in the past. Even if you restrict yourself entirely to an urban environment, you should be able to keep up with traffic and not hold people up on hills (if you have them).