I know the question of AC and DC motors is a controversial one, and probably done to death. But if all y'all might humor me, I'd appreciate a bit of guidance on this.
To recap, I have a chance to buy a 1964 1/2 Mustang in good shape for not much money. The goal is to get something not unlike the driving experience of a Volt, with an all-electric range of roughly a couple dozen miles and a "traditional" Prius-style hybrid range limited only by the gas tank. The thought is to replace most or all of the driveshaft with one or more electric motors. I've now spoken with somebody at both HPEVS and Netgain. The guy at HPEVS wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the plan, but thinks it can be done. He recommends a rear differential ratio in the 6:1 range to make an AC-51 not be miserable. That would require a new 9" rear end for the car and a custom transmission geared appropriately taller to keep the combustion engine happy. He doesn't know much about people doing direct drive or hybrid stuff with HPEVS motors. The guy at Netgain was most encouraging, and has done something nearly identical to what I have in mind. He didn't recommend any gearing changes; indeed, he suggested that a higher ratio (3:1 or higher) might be better than stock, instead of the other way 'round. He had many very helpful suggestions, such as ways to couple two motors or to get the electric motor(s) to supply most of the power at low speeds and little power at high speeds, thereby maximizing overall gasoline economy. It seems the beaten path for this type of project is therefore a Netgain DC motor...but I still like the regen capabilities of the AC motors and the reduced maintenance. I'm aware that only limited efficiency gains are available with regen, but I have a secondary concern. When running in hybrid mode, once the batteries get depleted, the car would become a pure-gas vehicle. It'd be nice to instead use the combustion engine to just barely recharge the batteries enough to still provide acceleration assist -- the same way the Prius and the Volt do things. With regen, that should be straightforward. Without, I'm left thinking of kludges such as using the combustion engine's 12 volt system to trickle-charge the electric motor's batteries, and I'm not so sure that's even safe, let alone possible. However, as a practical matter, this might not actually be a concern if a full battery charge would be comfortably ample for a full day's worth of hybrid-mode city driving. So...I'd appreciate a bit of insight on all this. Would a pair of AC-51s be as happy in a direct drive application as a pair of WarP 9s, despite the HPEVS guy's lack of familiarity with the matter? Am I worrying too much about regen and brush maintenance? Is there something else I should be worrying about instead? Thanks much, b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140723/4e0f8876/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
