This is a fun project a 100% electric Jeep! I
have about 220 hours on the project and it is complete. This was a
collaboration with Leslie Grossman the president of the
Knoxville EV association. For some more
details see the EVALBUM or you can see
a video taken by AV at
Eastman Chemical Co.
Update Sept 15 2011 - the Jeep came back home for a few weeks
to get an upgraded battery pack. The Thundersky 90 amphr cells were
replaced with 200 amphr Calb cells. Now the Jeep can drive 75 miles
between charges.
Update October 2015 - the Jeep passed 24,000 gasoline free
miles :)
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We started with a nice 1997 Wrangler with a blown engine. The body and
frame were in great shape. I would have never picked a Jeep up-front
for a conversion but I have to admit it is way cool to drive. There is
also a lot of room on a Jeep and it is easy to work on.And NO-ONE suspects it is
electric until you pop the hood and then it is TOTAL surprise.
It is also
a LOT of fun to drive. I thank Richard Siggins a friend and
amateur photographer for the nice photographs. |
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Electricity at $.077/KWH is about 23% the cost of gasoline.
The other day I drove 20.4 miles and it took 8.4 KWH or $.64 to charge it.
I definitely could not go nearly that far on $.64 worth of gasoline. We
decided to go with a 120V charging system so we can charge at virtually any
plug. If the pack is fully depleted it should take about 9 hours to
fully charge. The plan is to plug it up every night and you are ready
to go for the day in the morning.
The range is about 30 miles. Leslie said she only needed 25 miles
so we saved and purchased smaller 90 amp-hr batteries. They make much
larger sizes for greater range. The weight of the battery pack is about
400 lbs. |
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Here is a shot of the engine compartment. You can see
half of the battery pack, 6 ThunderSky 90 amp-hr batteries. Total
battery weight is 350 lbs with half the batteries up front and half in the rear.
You can see the 12V battery for the 12V systems in the upper left and the
safety quick disconnect (in orange) between the two batteries.
The NetGain Warp 9" is barely visible mounted to the transmission.
I am just testing and we are currently one battery short but the Jeep
will easily do 60MPH and I have driven 35 miles with the batteries still
with some charge. |
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Here is a shot of the rear battery pack. I cut a hole
in the floor to hold the rear 6 batteries and the Zivan 144V charger.
This area held the fuel tank and muffler. So you still have 100%
of the space in the Jeep.
The battery boxes were made in town by Johnson Hilliard who does great
work. They also made the front motor mount. As you can see we were
short one battery. One was bad and we had to wait for a replacement. |
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The
Blue View monitoring system is WAY cool! It was
easy to install and shows voltage, current, RPMs and capacity. Again I
just got it installed and am working on getting it calibrated. The system
uses the rear camera input on a DVD in-dash stereo to project the image.
A very simple and elegant solution. |
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Here is a shot of the NetGain WarP 9 motor. It does a
very good job with off the line acceleration in 2ng gear and will even allow starts in
3rd gear.
We ended up going way overboard on the adaptor plate as it is 1.5" of
aluminum which is way too expensive but VERY solid. Whites Performance
did a great job as it slipped perfectly together. In the lower left you
can see the Curtis 1231C controller rated at 144V and 500 amps. |
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We also added the Mini-BMS to ensure the cells stay between
2.6v and 3.5V. The early testing indicates they work quite well.
I would definitely use them in my next project. We ended up with 16
cells in the rear and 32 up front for 48 cells overall. |
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