Hey everyone,
Figured I'd do an intro here as well... My name is Quintus and I'm out in Port Orchard, WA. I've been interested in EV's for quite a bit now and am finally jumping in with both feet. Recently, I went to the Mother Earth News Fair up here near Seattle and met a neat guy named Ben who did a presentation on the conversion of his motorcycle (and showed a few pics of his Geo Metro as well). I jabbered with the cat for a bit, got his DVD and am now totally inspired to hopefully dig into a conversion this next year (maybe start it here in the winter?). I'm the type of guy who digs tinkering with things and figuring out how things work. I've always got a hunger to learn how to do something new... Anyway, moving on to where I'm at and my questions...
I just purchased an XM-3150 scooter and will be picking it up tomorrow here at their showroom in Fife, WA (saved me a few extra bucks). :) Read through Chasbro's excellent review and will be posting up on his threads really soon here. Also, I bought a couple of little Razor scooters within the last couple of weeks. One for my kids and one for me to tinker with as a toy for me (In a way, I guess you can say it's my first EV) :P Plus, messing with this thing will be a good way to practice and learn a few things as I go before I dig into a big project. Anyway, like I said, I'm new to this EV thing- so trying to learn a few things. Here's the questions I have:
~ I've messed with NiCd and Nimh batteries before, but have never done anything with Lipo- so here I am of course, giving it a try. I purchased a couple of 6s (22.2 volt) 5 amp 25C batteries from here:
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__9180__Turnigy_5000mAh_6S_25C_Lipo_Pack.html
I watched a vid on youtube about charging these. You plug in the charge wires to your charger, but then there's another set of cables that come out of the pack that you plug into a balancing board to make sure that everything charges equally. So, my question is when dealing with EV's such as cars or electric mopeds/motorcycles- how do they achieve the balancing when charging the batteries? Do they have a huge number of cable connections coming out that go to each individual cell or do the manufacturers chargers even take that into account??? I'm asking in case I decide to upgrade the 3150 to lipo later on or should I decide to do lipo's for the car conversion... Like I said, new tech for me...
Now, more to my question on my first little guinea pig project:
~ I'm tinkering with a Razor e300s scooter. I'm trying to achieve 30mph, with decent hill climbing ability, and decent range (ie. 20+ miles). I'm using the above mentioned battery packs to attempt to accomplish this.
~ The motor I'm considering upgrading to is one of these:
Now I was reading over on Endless Sphere, that there are some concerns over running that first motor in regards to a controller that can handle it. I'm honestly thinking I can get away with the smaller one (80cc) equivalent and still get my results on a 44.4 volt set up. Any suggestions as to a controller that can handle either one of these things? And is my 25C rating on my batteries going to be enough amperage output? I'll probably keep the sprockets stock (55t on the tire, 11 on the motor arm), but I'm open to changing them out if need be to get enough power for hills and such.
Thanks everyone for your help and suggestions...
