John, that hill you climb, if I recall from your previous posts, is Mukilteo Speedway from the ferry landing up to the intersection at the top, then left up a another 12% grade to the Boeing Freeway. I'm not sure what the elevation gain is, but I'm guessing 400-500 feet over about a mile. Perhaps someone in the area with a GPS unit can check it out.
It is quite a climb for any vehicle; it is also a fabulous regen hill coming down the other way towards the ferry landing. I often climb this hill and back in my Ranger EV. Climbing it will put a dent in the "fuel" gauge and seems to sap about double the miles from the range-o-meter. Coming down, I can apply very fine control of off-throttle regen to avoid burning up potential in the brakes to keep speed down. On my 312v nominal pack, I'll typically be pumping 60-80 amps back in over the mile grade. I'll get most of the original "dent" in the gauge back. This is yet another reason to get those Sparrows using AC drive in addition to mitigating the issue of the single-speed reduction. >From what I've read here, getting 3000-6000 miles from a pack of YT's is about par for the course (someone correct me if that's not typical). My last pack of 8v AGMs in my Ranger went 12,000 miles before showing signs of degrading. I'm told the new East Penn pack I have will last significantly longer due to manufacturing improvements... I've got about 3,000 miles on them now. AGM lead is expensive operationally and pretty much blows the cost/mi out of the water, so one tends to drive the vehicle fewer miles per year to stretch the cost/year out as long as possible. I think it would be interesting to try the Evercels in your Sparrow. But it would be a risk. Hopefully they would last longer than YT's. Then there are concerns of altering CG... Someone suggested getting a different EV. The Sparrow does have the benefit for your commute of qualifying as a motorcycle. You get to skip the ferry line. How has that been working out for you? -- Geoff Shepherd Everett, WA '98 Factory Ford Ranger Electric '00 Honda Insight HEV 5sp On 10/5/02 8:40 AM, "John G. Lussmyer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, in the 6 months I've been driving my Sparrow (-2 1/2 months of > crash/broken/sick time) I've put 3000 miles on it. The 13 Optima YT's were > new when I started. This is about 120 charge cycles where I pulled about > 5KW from the pack each time (about 32AH, both numbers from the > EMeter). I've had Reg MKII's installed almost the entire time. > I've found that the YT's are still holding up IF they are warm! This > becomes really important during my commute to work, where the last 1/4 mile > is significantly uphill. The car sat all day Thursday and cooled off, and > on Friday morning during that last bit of uphill, my undervoltage > indicators on the MKII's lit up like a Christmas tree. I've only > occasionally, on bad traffic days, had a random 1 of them light up > previously. The batteries were still cool when I arrived at work, they did > warm up during the charge cycle. (and I had to run the Zivan NG3 twice to > get all the regs to activate - not good.) > > I doubt they will last another 3000 miles (14 weeks of commuting) > though. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised! I REALLY need to find a > better battery pack though. I should probably start nagging Evercell and > Dragon-Sky to see who can ship me a pack first. > -- > John G. Lussmyer mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Dragons soar and Tigers prowl while I dream.... http://www.CasaDelGato.com >
