Mike sent: I have one more bit of unsolicited advice. From the information below, you > are obviously very experienced with high performance gasoline engines. I > would bet that you worked with many other ICE projects before you tackled > the 1000 hp nitrous engine. >
Actually that's 1600 hp with the nitrous but who's counting? ;^) > If you were talking to somebody that wanted to build a 650 hp > super-charged race car as a first project with gasoline engines, what would > you recommend to them? Would you recommend that they start with a smaller > project that was less performance with less things to go wrong? That is > what I would recommend, personally. > Ahhh, that's what's different between you and me. You want to go "the safe route" that thousands before you have gone. My approach is "Screw that! In the end it will only get me to where thousands already are. What's the point in that?!?" > The electric drive you want to build is the equivalent of that race car > motor. Personally, I would recommend some sort of lower performance > project to learn on first. Make the mistakes with a 50-100 kW system > rather than a 400-500 kW system. Either one could cause serious damage or > injury, but the high power system can do it a lot faster. > Is it going to kill me? Not likely... what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. What comes closest to killing me on the way gets me there quicker. > You could probably get a conversion project from someone else for a few > thousand dollars. Take that apart and put it together. You will learn a > lot. Read through the EVDL archives. There are a lot of subtle items that > don't seem that important, but are critical. For example, fuses and > contactors that are suitable for AC may be completely inappropriate to use > on a high voltage DC system. They could be the starting point of a plasma > fire if something goes wrong. > Personally, I'd rather contract out the whole EV thing. My goal is not to become an EV expert. My goal is to have an EV ONLY because it is a marketing tool. I personally would be just as happy with an ICE because I can't justify the added cost of an EV. > Be careful and meticulous with all your assembly. You need to take as > much care with assembly and torquing all your electrical connections as you > would be in assembling an engine. > Anyone on the list want to do the EV part for me? > This is an exciting project you are tackling. > Well, if I have to go the "safe route" the EV option is out. I simply do not have the luxury of the time it would take. Let me explain... Tesla already has the "$100k family car EV" market, so no point in going there. They soon should have the $100k EV SUV market as well. GM beat them to the punch with the "affordable 200 mile EV". They won;t sell a lot because $37,500 isn't really "affordable" for and ugly EV with only 200 miles of range when you can buy an ugly ICE with 400 miles of range for half of that. That said, I see the gap between those and above those filling very rapidly with EVs no later than 2 years from now. So I have LESS THAN 2 years to get past a prototype and into limited production. If I had an EV prototype meeting my performance goals tomorrow it would still be difficult to hit that target. If I screw around for 6 months to a year playing around with low end EV conversions, I might as well hang up the entire project right now. Oh I could get a car to market with that approach, but it will be "Too little, too late". Besides, I'll run out of money taking that route as well. Every penny I spend on distractions is a penny I can't send towards reaching my goal. So, if I had unlimited time and unlimited budget, the "safe route" would work. But I simply don't believe that I do. Since you asked... I would recommend someone 1) Hire a professional to find a good used race car from someone moving up to the 2500 horsepower class. Used race cars are (relatively) cheap at somewhere between $20k and $75k (it would cost 4 times that and 1 - 2 years to have one built). 2) Go to a drag racing school. One weekend, $8k, 5 second 1/4 mile at 240 mph. Fastest and easiest way to get the license required to race a car that goes that fast. 3) Start racing the weekend after the class! If you find out it's not for you, sell the car and you still can say you drove a 5 secind 240 mph funny car and you have the license to prove it! Few people can say that. Value: PRICELESS!!! I did it the way you recommend and it took me decades. Wish I had known then what I know now. I would have been a MUCH younger guy racing VERY quick cars! More accurately, I'd be my age still but have DECADES more experience racing those cars. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20160116/a31b235c/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org Read EVAngel's EV News at http://evdl.org/evln/ Please discuss EV drag racing at NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
